Sex stereotypes

[liv]

In a discussion in a locked post, someone mentioned those stupid "statistics" about how often people think about sex. Because I am incurably nosy (and also procrastinating), I decided to make a poll.

Please answer based on your direct experience, which means you and people you've been sexually involved with, rather than what you think is true for most people.

[Poll #907893]

As usual, feel free to argue with the poll, suggest options I've left out, clarify beyond the detail of the poll options, etc.

Comments

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

"It depends" misses two important options for me: How focused I am on what I am doing, and how tired I am.

[karen2205]

For me 'it depends' also includes busyness levels - the more busy I am, the less I think about it, tiredness - generally (but not always) the tireder(sp?) I am the less I think about it.

I feel I don't have enough experience to answer the last question.

[pthalo]

i mostly think of it in a "ew, glad i'm not in a relationship so i don't have to have it" sort of way

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

To pretty much all the comparisons of men and women, my experience suggests that the answers, adjusted for cultural conditioning, come out as two almost completely overlapping bell curves, so that while I might without fibbing say "yes, I believe this is true on average", it's a value of average that's pretty close to useless as a guide to interacting with any given individual. This may also be skewed by sample bias in the kinds of people I get close enough to to have a feeling for where they are on things like this, by me generally having many more female close friends than male ones, and by small sample size in general, so I'm really reluctant to commit to saying anything at all.

[ Which reminds me, fwiw, of something Samuel Delany says somewhere, I think it's in The Motion of Light in Water, about not being willing to make any statements about heterosexual sex because he felt that a dozen female partners was entirely insufficient data - this by contrast with living for some years in a gay male subculture in New York in which it was quite possible to have several different random casual encounters in a day, and therefore having a male partner count into four digits. Which makes me wonder how many straight people there are in the world who aren't qualified to make statistically significant comments about heterosexual sex by that standard; my guess is most of them. ]

[j4.livejournal.com]

Being male or female has no effect on any of these things.

I chose this option, which doesn't feel exactly right, but is closer to what I think than any of the others; I think I'd want to say something more along the lines of "Being male or female doesn't seem to be the sole or even the main determining factor in any of these things." I don't know if being male/female (or self-identifying in a way that makes maleness/femaleness important, or, or, or) has any effect, because it's very difficult to factor gender out of the equation (apologies if I am heinously misusing scientific terms and concepts; I'm an English graduate, I mean it all metaphorically*).

There also should have been an option for "I am now thinking about sex because of this poll". ;-D

* this is not actually a valid excuse for sloppy thinking, but insufficient caffeine may be... :-/

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

I only think about cuddling and foreplay. Sex is more for men. I feel emotional attached to the person I get that close. Men often don't feel this attachment. They can do it with anybody. For me it does matter with whom.

[shreena.livejournal.com]

I wasn't quite sure what "Women are better able to handle being interrupted in the middle of sex than men can" meant. Is it about whether you can carry on after an interruption physically or whether women or men are more or less likely to be embarrassed by an interruption?

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Have I said how much I like that userpic of yours ?

[syllopsium.livejournal.com]

Of course it's not always easily possible to quantify 'more', and it's important to differentiate between thinking about sex, and being able to concentrate on other things.

There probably isn't /that/ much difference in my sex drive over the years (if anything it's increased), but I'm better at going out and doing things so it's forgotten about, temporarily.

Also note that basing on direct sexual experience may be a bad idea. If that metric is used I'd have to untick 'women are more often sexually submissive'; however direct, non bedroom encounters/discussions with other women leads me to believe it is simply not true except in certain communities.

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

Interesting!

I'd answer, but I only speak about my sex (fantasy) life if the entry is f-locked or the poll results aren't visible to anyone but the creator, if I trust her or him (which is definitely the case with you, but, alas, all open, and I'm weird that way).

[liv]

OK, those things are examples of specific mental states, rather than general ones. Fair point. I'm more likely to think about sex when I'm bored, and I didn't really have an option for that in the poll.

[liv]

Yeah, busy-ness and tiredness and the like I didn't really cover. I suppose I was thinking that if someone only thinks about sex when they're wide awake, they would give a frequency based on how often they're not tired. But that can vary over the longer term too, so I should have included it.

I think most people don't have "enough" experience to answer the question in any meaningful way. I just wanted to know if people's (limited) experience supports or contradicts the stereotypes about gender. On a good day, 100 or so people answer my polls, and I was thinking that a few dozen people talking about their experience with perhaps a couple or half a dozen partners would be marginally more meaningful than each person trying to make generalized guesses. But it's an LJ poll, meaningful isn't really a consideration!

[liv]

Well, I hope one day you find someone to be in a relationship with who has similar ideas about sex to you; ideally, being in a relationship shouldn't mean that you "have to" have sex.

(I'm quite glad I'm not in a relationship too, but it isn't because of sex, it's because of liking my own physical and emotional space.)

[liv]

Oh, you're completely right, and I really like this comment. I think the statement "in my experience, more women than men like X" can be very dangerous if stupid people are going to interpret it as gender essentialist. Averages are totally useless for specific individuals, of course.

I like the Delany reference. And I do think most people can't make statistically significant observations about how gender plays into sex, or about sex at all. I would be surprised if more than a very small minority of my flist have had more than a hundred sexual partners, and anything less than that gives you a ridiculously small sample for generalizing. Especially since, as you point out, there is going to be considerable bias in whom one chooses to sleep with.

The kind of people who write books of usually sexist advice about this area are at best working from surveys, and most likely just regurgitating stereotypes. That's why I phrased the poll as I did, because I wanted to get away from people just talking about vague factoids they may have come across, or what they think is the politically correct thing to say. As I said to Karen, a few dozen people talking about their direct experience is marginally more useful in terms of aggregating this stuff than the same people trying to guess about the general population.

[liv]

Yes, thank you. Your metaphorical, artistic paragraph is actually more precise than my supposedly "scientific" (ha ha) poll question. Being male or female isn't the main determining factor, yes, that would have been better. And also, yes, differences between gender and sex, but I didn't really want to get into that at the level of the poll anyway. I guess "I reject the gender binary" would just about fit into my "none of the above" option, but not very well.

And you're totally right that I should have included an option for the poll reminding you to think about sex. I'm not that witty with self-reference, though.

[liv]

Thanks for this comment, it's very open and honest of you to talk about this here on LJ.

I'm really not sure about the "emotional attachment" business; for me, it's not so much that I get emotionally attached to people as a result of having sex with them, it's more like, I wouldn't want to have sex in the first place unless I know and trust and like the person quite a lot already. Perhaps because of that preference, I haven't really encountered many men who will just sleep with anyone without any emotional engagement, at least not people I know well enough to include in my direct experience in this poll.

[liv]

To be honest, I don't quite know what that means. I've heard the stereotype that being interrupted is really traumatic for men whereas women don't really mind. I tried to phrase that in a relatively formal-sounding way to match the rest of the poll, but I realize that what I actually wrote doesn't even make grammatical sense thanks to mixing up "can" and "able". Sorry.

[shreena.livejournal.com]

I'd never even heard the stereotype! Ah, well.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Likewise.

[liv]

I was only asking how often people think about sex, not how often they are so obsessed with sex that it gets in the way of other stuff. I'm nosy, but not that nosy! It is interesting that you've got better at distracting yourself with more maturity, though.

I wanted to ask about direct experience to avoid people either just repeating stereotypes or trying to be politically correct. As far as an LJ poll is useful at all, I thought it would be more useful to aggregate the direct experiences of a few dozen people, than to ask people to make generalizations based on (in most cases) too little experience to say anything meaningful.

[liv]

Completely fair enough. I hesitated over whether to lock this down, and decided that, on balance, the questions I was asking were general enough that it would be ok. Obviously, I was wrong in your case. Thanks for letting me know anyway.

[syllopsium.livejournal.com]

It's not so much about getting in the way as concentrating hard enough that other things don't intrude. Of course when one is in a new relationship or somewhat emotional this may be tricky..

The difficulty with excluding non sexual experience is that in addition to choosing certain people they also choose you :). Therefore i'd include honest, open discussion with friends, at bicon etc

[spin0za1.livejournal.com]

I've heard the stereotype that being interrupted is really traumatic for men whereas women don't really mind.

Ohhh hohohohohBOY was it the opposite in my... ahem... experience.

And... the last set of questions really does presuppose a lot of stereotypes, and doesn't allow for an answer of "my experience has been the opposite of this." Like, a woman having a higher sex drive her male partner, or the man being the more submissive (or there not being much of a power dynamic at all) or what have you. I realize that you are trying to judge the value of these stats/stereotypes and I realize that this is just an LJ poll... but all you're finding out is how many examples you can get, and not taking into account counterexamples.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I've heard the stereotype that being interrupted is really traumatic for men whereas women don't really mind.

*ring*ring*
*ring*ring*
"I'm sorry, can I call you back, I'm in the middle of someone - thing, something, damn it... "

[redbird]

Under "it depends": I think about sex more often at the gym than in most other non-sexual situations. I suspect this may be because I'm more focused on my body as what I'm doing, and what I'm acting with than I am in most other contexts, and because I've detailed at least part of my verbal self to the work of counting things, which isn't really terribly interesting. (Math can be; counting to 12, or 15, or 30 repeatedly isn't.)