On Female Needs and Star Trek

What follows started as an email response to Joey on Sunday, then turned into a blog post, then I didn't post it and went to bed.

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This is why I don't write anymore.

Because women need to be desired to be aroused? No.

I don't write much because you have to manufacture an opinionated topic in order to gain any sort of interest.

This author could have written a more balanced piece about the role of external sexual interest in a persons sexual self-confidence, and contrasted some of the likely minor differences between men and women. But instead, she writes a heavily biased article with the tired tropes of support for "most real women" (read as not angry feminists) and revolution against "political correctness" (which doesn't exist anywhere, it's a strawman).

Of course you can't just write a piece stating that human sexuality is an almost infinitely complex thing, with as many different motives and responses as there are human beings. That would be accurate, intellectually useful, and likely not sensational enough to generate page views.

Instead, massive generalization is used to foster animosity, and reduce the level of the discourse to a point where the entire populace can find something to take a stand for or against. No real benefit can come from this discussion now, it's reduced to a political/religious type argument where people just opine angrly at one another, and no progress is made to finding out anything new about human nature. All we're doing now is reinforcing the most well known of human traits, generalization and discrimination in order to support one's own life choices and values.

And that's just the article structure. The subject itself is also offensive in more specific ways.

You, as a woman, are proporting to speak for the other 3.5 billion registered uterus-drivers on this planet? Really? You are saying that regardless of the obvious diversity of sexuality across continents and cultures, you've finally gotten to the heart of the matter with no scientific analysis or even so much as a web survey. I may be supposed to infer that the likely target of this article, and the one you are speaking on behalf of is the same 30-55 white female demographic that you are part of, but that isn't mentioned anywhere. After all, proper qualification and speciation of your point would dilute it's provocative intent.

So you've managed to establish yourself as the visionary for your gender. What do you do now? Reinforce traditional gender stereotypes which are specific to your own insecurities of course!

It really couldn't be any more transparent. It would be like me stating that ALL men inherently, genetically, and without any ability to self-moderate, really only want women who will have sex while watching Star Trek. And like it.

And then I'd claim that any men who claim this isn't specifically true for them are just fooling themselves. Just admit it. You want to do it while watching the saucer-section separate. I KNOW that you do, because I do, and I'm a normal man. You, also being a normal man, must also want this. Unless you're some kind of freak.

There is no doubt that the degree to which a person receives sexual attention will effect their sex drive, but so will an untold number of other things. And if you want to write an article about how, FOR YOU, this external validation is the primary driver of your libido, that's great.

But don't try give one of your own insecurities a higher level of perceived legitimacy by trying to tie it your entire gender as a whole.

And don't artificially polarize a subject just for page views. There are enough genuine problems that could use discussion, we don't need to make up new ones.

Stereotypes are stupid

I see this crap all the time and it never ceases to make me angry. (They've changed the title now, it used to be Women and Money, and this used to be the image beside it.) For me, it's not a feminism issue, it's a logic and reason issue. Do you think it's even remotely accurate to judge a full 50% of the population (male or female) based on one massive generalization or another?


by kenjimori

It's everywhere all the time, in all forms of media, and many conversations. The poster for The Ugly Truth is a great example. It's a visual distillation of one type of BS that's constantly spouted by those devotees of gender stereotypes. Women are morally elevated above petty concerns with sexual desire and follow their heart, while men are brutish, crude and follow their crotch.



I don't see why they didn't take the extra step of making their message even more obvious and just have Katherine Heigel bathed in white light and suspended in the air by her own smug sense of superiority as Gerard Butler grovelled on all fours drooling, trying desperately to sniff her butt with his unshaven face.


by urish

Anyone who has had open conversations with their friends and partners about current and past relationships knows that there are orders of magnitude more difference between any two people than there are between the sexes in general. Yet for some reason most people feel the need to seek out and attribute certain qualities to the gender as whole rather than the individual specifically, while conveniently ignoring the exceptions that disprove the rule. It's classic example of confirmation bias.


by mary hodder

You say anything you can think of being true for men in general, and I'm sure I could personally name half a dozen guys that would disprove that stereotype. How about a bit of a reality check? Write down the relationship histories of 100 men and 100 women under 30, complete with details such as cited breakup reasons, real breakup reasons, opinions of sexual chemistry, any commitment issues, and so on. I would bet real money that you couldn't accurately guess the gender of each history with more than a 50% accuracy.

Fully 50% of the women I've dated have have had a higher libido than me and I'd consider myself an average person. Sometimes I'm more into the relationship, sometimes they are. The only detail that's reasonably consistent is that I'm generally the more emotionally stable person in the relationship, but that's because I'm borderline empathically inert as an individual, not because I have a penis.


by Springsun

I read this article in the Globe and Mail, and while there is a hint of historical accuracy to it, that's clouded over by the smog of ignorance and casual sexism, re-enforcing traditional gender roles as it goes. Without citing any studies, statistics, or even a crappy internet survey, Zosia Bielski proceeds to make all sorts generalizations about the role of women in home finance for the last 50 years.

The fact that women may have had disadvantages forced on them by societal pressures not to pursue post-secondary education is never mentioned. And forget that encouraging women to be housewives and never letting them handle money may impact their ability to balance a check book 30 years later. Those are minor insignificant details. What's important is to continue the perception that somehow the women of today have just recently gained the genetic ability to use currency. Hurray! They've finally evolved!


by Farther Along

Gender stereotypes may have had a place in our society 100 years ago when there were huge differences between the life choices available to a man and a woman. Making sex-based assumptions then may have been occasionally accurate, not because of chromosomally imposed differences in ability, but because of socially imposed ones.

But suffrage, the women's movement, WWII, the pill, and anti-discrimination laws have changed all that. Not just for women, but for men too. We may not have equality yet, but at this point any assumptions based on gender roles are more likely to be wrong than right. Continuing to reuse, reenact, and generally re-enforce these myths only serves to belittle both sexes, and should be beneath any modern member of our society.


by dorywithserifs

Link - Humor, Sex, and Verbal Jousting

This is an interesting article on the role of humor in sexual politics.



It comes across as a little too generalized in some places, but the intent is good, and it's backed but by some expert opinions and studies on the subject.

“Men taunt other men with clever nicknames and insults. That isn’t something that women do. They don’t tend to play practical jokes, or engage in humor that humiliates or puts somebody down.” (John Morreal, a professor of religion at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia, who has studied humor for 25 years.)*

“For women the primary goal of conversation is intimacy and, for men, the goal is positive self-presentation. Women’s humor supports a goal of greater intimacy by being supportive and healing, while men’s humor reinforces performance goals of competition, the establishment of hierarchical relationships and self-aggrandizement.” (from Mary Crawford’s book, Talking Difference on Gender and Language)