Do "straight" women really exist?

Mr. Tea said:

Sorry, this is a bit ambiguous:



Do you mean the trashy-gonzo-threesome scenario is going to be more arousing to a man than the classy-girl-on-girl scenario is, or more arousing than it is to a woman? Because if you mean the former I'd say it would very much depend on the man in question (though I'm sure there are plenty of men for whom it would be true all the same).

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Yes, I meant that the trashy scenario would be more arousing to a man than it would be for a woman, while a more softcore lesbian scenario is going to arouse a woman more than/as much as a man.

But it kind of seems telling that you even asked that question. Because a woman would've thought most about the look of the clothes and the hair/makeup/setting and immediately I think understood what I meant. Unless the wording was just that ambiguous, in which case I'm just not being clear enough.

swears said:

No, I've been been feeling pretty good lately for a change.

I suppose the thing with the plethysmographs was quite interesting, actually. I heard about another one of these experiments were homophobes were way more likely to be aroused by gay sex scenes than non-gay-hating straight men. Don't know if it's online, though.

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Me too, I feel good lately. Usually I only think sex is boring if I'm really depressed.

But for me sex means something other than intercourse which I've tried to explain so many ways and it just isn't working. I guess I should just give up.

Mr. Tea said:

You'd have thought homophobes might have begun to wonder about their true motives for taking part in a genital arousal study that involves watching hot gay cock action before the tape even started rolling.

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Haha.

Yeah, you have to respond to those calls for test subjects willingly.

They probably show up and start filling out paper work hard.

IdleRich said:

Ha really? That's so conveniently what everyone sort of thinks or hopes to be the case that it seems too good to be true. To link it with the other thread (the good movies one) it seems to coincide with the huge moan that my friend was having about Sam Mendes the other day, I distinctly remember him saying - of the redneck soldier in American Beauty who turns out to have repressed gay feelings at the end - "if only it was that easy and all homophobes are simply repressed and unable to admit it - unfortunately it's only like that in Mendes' facile and simplistic world".

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I really, really hated American Beauty. Really really hated it. Probably wouldn't have guessed he made Revolutionary Road.

IdleRich said:

Well, you should meet my friend, once he got started putting the boot in I couldn't get a word in edgewise for about ten minutes.

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Have you seen it? Talk about your trite pieces of heterosexist cinematic garbage...

Mr. Tea said:

David Sedaris* (who, incidentally, is gay, dunno if that's relevant here but anyway) hates computers but objects to being called a technophobe on the grounds that "phobic has been declawed by the pompous insistence that most animosity is based upon fear rather than loathing". So I'm sure there are plenty of classic secretly-gay homophobes, but probably at least as many straight men who are just small-minded bigots.




*v. funny deadpan/laconic/bitchy American writer, check him out

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You know you read too much philosophy when you have to read the word "objects" ten times in context in a sentence before you realize it's obJECT and not OBject.

Research Methods 101

Ok, I've been waiting for someone else to spot the obvious flaw in the methodology, but since no one else wants to I'll do it myself.

As far as I'm concerned, the problem with the research in the article is that the sort of the arousal you can prompt in a subject by exposing them to pictures or pornography is very far removed from what arousal patterns and attraction looks like in a real world setting.

When the only thing you know about the person in a picture is how they look, the only information you can use to decide whether they are suitably attractive as a partner is their looks. Quite a lot of people probably pass muster for either sex on this standard alone, as do quite a lot of activities (there are some hardcore vids that may absolutely revolt some, but for the most part they're negligible in this view).

In the real world, on the other hand, you usually have tons more information about a potential partner. This complicates matters considerably. On the one hand, it makes it more difficult to concoct a fantasy sexual scenario with that person as your ego-ideal (which is what, I think, a lot of men like porn for--beautiful women without the complications, who don't say I'm too tired tonight, who never make you feel insecure, etc.) On the other, it gives you a lot more to work with psychologically. And I know that for me, this is where it gets interesting. If a person can turn me on intellectually, they can probably turn me on physically. I'm not someone who is obsessed with a certain "type"--male/female, tall/short, blonde/brunette, whatever.

Anyway, it's obvious if you even take a sample of your close friends, and think of how different they all are about relationships and sex, that Poetix put it best when he said "difference is what there is."