(TL;DR: Lets please stop dismissing the female opinions on this topic, especially since we’re discussing female vs male issues here!)
I think this topic has taken a decidedly ominous turn over the last few days, mostly around the idea that “no, you’re wrong, here’s the data”.
When it comes to the scientific method, results, interpreted correctly, really should be the bedrock of decision making and inform our public debate. But, as any good scientist knows, the results can only be as good as your ability to control the variables.
When you start talking about things like behaviour, that’s almost impossible - just think about the massive number of experiences, advice, teachings, and events that have worked together, along with biology we don’t fully understand, to make you. There isn’t a legit scientist (or psychologist/psychiatrist) in the world that would claim to be able to bottle that down into a study. All they can do is try to build the best study they can and hope that, in aggregate with other studies, the results are meaningful.
The problem is, when these studies are tossed around as a sort of “answer key” to absolute questions like “who has the greater libido” or “who thinks about sexuality more often”, the studies almost certainly weren’t meant to be viewed this way. So much more than biliology applies - just look at Japan where the governement has to initiate fertility festivals because culture had made the idea of sex with your partner difficult. I don’t think anyone would argue the Japanese are less libidinous than anyone else biologically.
This topic is so difficult to disucss with most people that it suffers from the same issue trying to suss out homosexuality had in the past - people lie for an abundance of reasons, but people also take their social conditioning and apply that subconciously to their answers. (This same issue happens with religion, too - there was a great article on how the arab world treats atheism given the social pressures in many countries).
Since we can’t actually measure this stuff (yet, I’m sure a point will come where brain imaging will be able to give us better answers, but that resolution of scan will probably follow right behind the singularity anyway), we need to rely on experiences, and or consider external factors (all those variables the studies cannot control) instead.
And here in this topic, that concept seems to be falling short. There are vastly more men than women here, and a large part of the latter part of this topic has been men telling women they don’t have the libidos or sexual desires men have. The answers from our female community members have been on a spectrum from “yes we do” to “yes, because reasons (mostly societal)”, and the general response has been something to the effect of “nope, wrong, trust us” or “nope, science answered this question definitively”.
In the former case, men aren’t women, they can’t know, and in the latter case, no, science has only been able, IMHO, to show that sexualty is expressed or practiced differently between women and men, very likely because social pressures have made it that way.
Does biology play a role? Almost certainly, given how important hormones are, and the fact that there are gendered differences. But can we definitevely say that they play the dominant factor in determining sexuality, or that the male hormone soup is inherently more libidinous than the female hormone soup? I think the social variables at present make that answer unobtainable.
In light of that, lets please, please not marganalize the responses from our female members. We do a disservice to this community and these discussions as a whole when the male majority here (inadventantly or otherwise) dismisses these valuable opinions.
Thanks!
