What Do Women Want? Carolyn Jean & Little CJ discuss the NYT article

So did anybody see the New York Times Sunday Magazine article, What Do Women Want? I would suggest checking it out--very fascinating, all about women and desire, and figuring out what turns women on and why.

Little CJ: Oh yeah? Did they figure out why cartoon porn movies where hentai elfs are tied up by robbers and ravished are so hot?

Carolyn Jean: What are you talking about?

Little CJ: Oh. Uh, never mind.

Carolyn Jean: Well, actually the article is sort of about that. It seems that women are aroused physiologically by a wider range of stimuli than men.

Little CJ: Like what?

Carolyn Jean: Well, in tests that measured subjective (reported) and objective (bodily) response, men were predictably aroused by photos of men and women having sex, women and women have sex, and a naked woman exercising.

Little CJ: Well hot diggity damn! There’s a shocker.

Carolyn Jean: But women were physically aroused when shown scenes of men with men, women with women and women with men. They were more aroused by an exercising woman than a chiseled-faced, strolling man, and even aroused by the sight of bonobo apes having sex.

Little CJ: Mmmm, bonobo apes.

Carolyn Jean: But they generally reported only being aroused by the men and women having sex. They would not tell all. Or, they didn’t realize.

Little CJ: Bonobos are hairy all over.

Carolyn Jean: There are a number of interesting perspectives on forced seduction, which of course people argue about a lot here on the blogs as far as storylines in romances. One researcher speculates on how physical arousal (as opposed to mental arousal) during forced seduction relates to evolutionary biology. It was totally fascinating.

Little CJ: I’m into Cornelius, from Planet of the Apes. I think his hands would be super leathery, like really hard gloves, don’t you think so? But really furry, too.

Carolyn Jean: You have been hanging on that wall too long.

Little CJ: Well over three decades, dude!

Carolyn Jean: So you like to say. Meredith Chivers, psychology professor at Queen’s University in Ontario, suggests that, while the actual experience of forced seduction isn’t wanted, such fantasies offer “a pure glimpse into desire” and suggest it comes out of a “wish to be beyond will, beyond thought, to be all in the midbrain.”

Little CJ: Midbrain. Whatever. I like the leather outfits that Cornelius wears. A lot. Do you know what I’m saying?

Carolyn Jean: Marta Meana, a professor of psychology at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, suggests that women’s desire “is not relational, but narcissistic” and that it’s 'dominated by the yearnings of “self-love,” by the wish to be the object of erotic admiration and sexual need.' Quoting from the article:

A symbolic scene ran through Meana’s talk of female lust: a woman pinned against an alley wall, being ravished. Here, in Meana’s vision, was an emblem of female heat. The ravisher is so overcome by a craving focused on this particular woman that he cannot contain himself; he transgresses societal codes in order to seize her, and she, feeling herself to be the unique object of his desire, is electrified by her own reactive charge and surrenders.

Little CJ: But it would be weird to kiss him, because he kind of has that snout. But you never know. It could be advantageous in certain ways.

Carolyn Jean: *shocked look*