All Comments on 'In Defense of Difference'

Although it obviusly does not apply to ALL women, I learned a HUGE difference between the way my first wife and I thought about sex when she, after rejecting my advances one evening, said "I can't BELIEVE that you want to have sex when the house is such a mess!"

This would pack a lot more punch if you backed up your claims with examples. But you don't: movies say this, feminists used to say that and now they say the other thing, etc. Not all men long for no-strings-attached sex, either, and I could name several women I've known who were quite a bit hornier than I was when we were together. (In fact, that's true of most of the girlfriends I've had, including the one I married. We deal with it pretty well, but it is a challenge to our relationship.)

Mind you, you probably could find some feminists who say the things you suggest here. But you could also find others who say the opposite. You could also find women who love casual sex and men who don't. And I can think of dozens of movies and TV shows where women show little interest in sex beyond holding it out as a way to manipulate the men in their lives. Which is a pretty darned sexist (against women) way of looking at things, and not a very realistic one in my experience.

Sexuality is a good thing. The attitudes you call for on behalf of both genders are not.

You want everyone to admit to experiencing the world just as you see it. You want to generalize about all men and all women, as well as about groups such as "feminists". Wrong, simply wrong. I have known men who weren't so interested in sex. I've known women who couldn't get enough. I've known people who wanted a lot at some point, and then less at others. I remember in my 30s hearing women friends complain about how their men, who once wanted it several times a day, were now hard to entice at all, just when these women felt their hungers had multiplied. Stop wanting to make everyone fit into nice little gender boxes.

I have had the good fortune to be with a couple of women who genuinely enjoyed sex, however, you are correct that there isn't a woman alive who understands what it is like to be a horny young male with a nearly perpetual boner thinking about sex most of the day. And of course many women seem to be able to take sex or leave it - it is the pursuit that most seem to really enjoy. Well written essay; upon reflection I agree with you.

I would be willing to bet that this piece was last weeks sermon at your church almost verbatum. You should have sighted your paster as a reference. While I will admit that there are many men who would fuck any woman who would let them. There are also many lustful women that let them. Evidenced by the number of devorces that are granted for women's unfaithfulness. I was personally married for fiftythree years to a woman whose libido matched my own. we kept it in our own bed. which to me proves that at least my woman's libido was equal to my own. God rest her soul. It also disproves your main idea. we also had seven children. the fear of becoming pregnant accounts for the only difference in the libidos of men and women in my view.

Nicely written essay, although necessarily general in nature. As others have pointed out you cannot put everyone neatly in a box and call it a day. Men tend to look at sex differently, particularly when younger and the hormones are raging, something to do with the urge to procreate before they die young as our distant ancestors did. Women "tend" toward settling down with one man, although there is less pressure on them to do that these days. Women reach the peak of sexual desire later in life, which may have something to do with the "biological clock" that we hear about often enough.

Sex has become more recreational in nature for a number of reasons, better contraception, better education on the subject, smaller family sizes, changes in the type of employment, etc. Changing societal mores have allowed women to feel better about sex with multiple male partners, although while we call the male counterpart "womanizers", we don't refer to these women as "manizers", which some of them may well be. Women also are more likely to pursue a career than in the past and for the same reasons that men look for casual sex without commitment, women do the same.

Whether this has any long lasting effect on the psyche of women who embrace more frequent sexual partners, I have no idea. The divorce rate is high, unfaithfulness in marriage is common according to polls and clearly this is not the society of our parents, although all of these issues existed in their day. I suspect a lot of what we read about is misleading, polls are often taken with a viewpoint in mind and the mindless pap on TV and movies is about as close to fantasy as what we read here.

I suspect that some of the talk around the water cooler is from those people who like to project an image, that may not be entirely truthful. Some of them may well be totally honest about their life, but most of the people listening and walking away would not be comfortable doing the same things, even if they think about doing it.

One last comment; life in small town America, is often quite different than in a large urban area. Not to say that the same games are not played and that people do not have sex, but everything is less anonymous. They are different cultures and so when you talk about this subject that is another factor to consider.

I've met plenty of beautiful young women who are focused on their careers or on just plain having fun and definitely just want NSA sex. I've also met more than a handful of men who desire romance and intimacy with committment over a one night stand. People are different and only when we realize this will we be able to put aside knee jerk reactions to stereotypes that lead to disharmony.

One can observe a basic difference in real sexual attitudes by taking note of the fact that there are many more women prostitutes servicing men than there are male prostitutes (gigolos) servicing women. This discrepancy is at least one reliable indicator of the different levels of sexual drive in the two sexes. It appears that women can more easily than men to take sexual activity or leave it. Apparently the whores, full time, part time, or just poor underfunded USA college coeds earning their college expense money, can separate their sexual proclivities from love or other emotions. Obviously some whores never have an orgasm, but quite a few of them do and enjoy their work with no emotional attachments. Certainly the financial rewards for high end "escorts" is worth the effort and many of them actually love their "work".

Before making "scientific" judgments, one should try to explain the whore "discrepancy" of women vs men.

No two women are the same. There are women out there with higher sex drives than most men have just as there are women out there that would be happy to go thru life with no sex. You only have to attend a few real large couples swinging parties to realize women can go all night with many different men and enjoy themselves totally and that men for the most part have neither the ability nor desire to do the same. As in all the other cycles women go thru the sexual cycle responds to the monthly cycle so that many women are most active during the period they would be most likely to be made pregnant, a carryover to basic genetic links. And many women once taken by one man can and will like, females in the ancient clans, will sexually couple with many males to insure they are impregnated. This is a natural action of the female and being on birth control does not alter the natural actions. Society has decreed a married woman be faithful to her spouse but we all know how well that works. And if you assume men commit more adultry, if you omit same sex groups, then committing adultry with that male is a female. And since many men committing adultry have many different partners one must accept maybe the number of sexually active high drive females is greater than assumed. One must also account for the higher sex drive in females is from the ages of about 13 (puberty) to the early 40s and then usually drops after that. The book Human Sexual Response actually statistically gives a more valid set of statistics on female behavior.

I was born in the late 30's and there seems to me to be a difference in women of my age and younger women in the way they approach sex but of course that just might be the one's I have known.

Without a doubt our wiring is: Men, sire young. Women, build nests.

There are exceptions to every rule but if you could establish a set of trend lines I think the difference would show.

usually i take a look at a sentence or two of these essays, expecting something badly reasoned, too general or just plain crazy but yours was well written and i agree with it. we sure are different. women produce one egg each cycle; men produce millions of sperm a day. some have proposed that our bodies and all our psychology are just a biological means for getting our genes out there. most men need to get off a lot more often and urgently than most women do. it's possible that a lot of so-called "gay" men are just men who like the easy sex that gay encounters provide. and there was a movie a few years ago in which a female character got to be a man for a few days and confessed that she had no idea about the strength of a man's sexual drive until she got to experience it herself. women by nature, being the mothers, tend to be more conservative and more realistic. they need to raise their young. it's not surprising they want a committed partner who will provide a safe environment for the family. but i believe that men, too, want committment. that is, with the right woman. our random selection process makes meeting the right person difficult. it happens, all the time, as we witness in happy marriages, but most marriages are not that and fall in the middle of the bell curve of something tolerable, an arrangement both parties can live with. marriages at the lower end of the curve end one way or another. those at the high end make our lives, by nature fillled with suffering and loss, as good as it possible to be and often provide real happiness for some lucky couples. that's something to shoot for.

But I'll grant you that generalizations are often based on truth. The problem is, when you say "men are lustful" and "women are less (or not) lustful", the people who don't fit that generalization are left in the lurch. As in ALL things, there is a Bell curve. There are people of both genders who fit into the lustful camp, and others who have little interest in sex.

I am a woman whose marriage ended, in large part because my husband was lustless. For some reason, the lustful and the lustless often are a couple. Opposites attract?

To the author of this, since when can one person(I.e you) know what a wide group of people all want?

What I know is that a man's genitals are made known to him every day. His cock grows and shrinks through the course of the day depending on his hormones and temperature not letting him forget.

He (even She) assigns names such as Willy, Johnson, Mr. Pube, Junior, whatever. His cock is referred to as his 'other brain', 'thinking with his cock'. Then to pee, he has to hold it so the stream goes where it is supposed to. With all this stimulation, he then feels obligated to use it.

Being a male, I have no idea how a woman's genitals feel during the course of their days, but I know they are hidden inside, rarely have names and don't have be held while peeing.

basic truth. as a maleI have never found it otherwise. thank you.