What would happen if men were only as horny as women?

[AHunter3]

Very obviously inspired by this thread, which was not only titled around the inverse situation but has remained focused around it (i.e., what would happen if women's sexuality were more like men's, why women are not as indiscriminate even if every bit as horny, etc etc), so I didn't want to hijack it.

As in the above-linked parent thread, let's start off with the disclaimer that we don't necessarily mean to imply that men genuinely are more horny than women — that's just a shorthand way of saying "more horny and/or less picky and/or more immediate or more imperative in their horniness or more casual in the way that their interest in sex isn't diffused by necessary concerns about emotional attachment etc etc".

What would happen if, however you conceptualize what's really going in with this difference, men's sexuality were like that of women?

If you assume women = less horny, that means men no more horny. If you think the observed difference is one of pickiness or the need to feel safe and secure, that means men having those concerns in equal amounts. And so on.

How would that change things? What would happen?

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by AHunter3

Very obviously inspired by this thread, which was not only titled around the inverse situation but has remained focused around it (i.e., what would happen if women's sexuality were more like men's, why women are not as indiscriminate even if every bit as horny, etc etc), so I didn't want to hijack it.

As in the above-linked parent thread, let's start off with the disclaimer that we don't necessarily mean to imply that men genuinely are more horny than women — that's just a shorthand way of saying "more horny and/or less picky and/or more immediate or more imperative in their horniness or more casual in the way that their interest in sex isn't diffused by necessary concerns about emotional attachment etc etc".

What would happen if, however you conceptualize what's really going in with this difference, men's sexuality were like that of women?

If you assume women = less horny, that means men no more horny. If you think the observed difference is one of pickiness or the need to feel safe and secure, that means men having those concerns in equal amounts. And so on.

How would that change things? What would happen?

A population crash, as the majority of the population never gets around to sex, and men and women segregate themselves from each other. Most men I know find women either boring or annoying, and most women seem to hold men in contempt; without sex as a lure, I doubt the genders would mix much.

[Wesley Clark]

Hilarity ensues

Beyond that, not much seeing as how as long as women feel this way about sex men are required to follow their directives as it takes two to have sex. It is like saying 'There is a store that only allows people in from the hours of 1-4pm even though the customers want to get in all day. What if we lived in a world where the customers only wanted to enter the store from 1-4pm as well as the store only wanting them to enter from 1-4pm?' Basically as long as women are more picky than men the men have to go along with what the women want anyway, so if women only want sex because of X,Y,Z, then by and large that is the only time sex will happen. The only real side effect would be a decrease in prostitution in my view.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by Wesley Clark

Hilarity ensues

Beyond that, not much seeing as how as long as women feel this way about sex men are required to follow their directives as it takes two to have sex. It is like saying 'There is a store that only allows people in from the hours of 1-4pm even though the customers want to get in all day. What if we lived in a world where the customers only wanted to enter the store from 1-4pm as well as the store only wanting them to enter from 1-4pm?' Basically as long as women are more picky than men the men have to go along with what the women want anyway, so if women only want sex because of X,Y,Z, then by and large that is the only time sex will happen. The only real side effect would be a decrease in prostitution in my view.

Thing is, with a lowered sex drive men won't be driven to live up to a woman's standards. The fact that women are picky will mean the majority of people just won't have sex; the men won't consider it worth the effort.

[Good Egg]

You make it sound as if men only go near women because they want sex. I know many husbands who dearly love their wives, and it snot only for sex.
Men and women are fundamentally different, and its not because of how they were brought up. I guess sex was one of God's ways to keep them together and mating.
Would any men here feel better if they were less horny?

[AHunter3]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

A population crash, as the majority of the population never gets around to sex, and men and women segregate themselves from each other. Most men I know find women either boring or annoying, and most women seem to hold men in contempt; without sex as a lure, I doubt the genders would mix much.

Not my take on it at all.

I don't tend to think of "the sex that happens" as being the sum or even the product of how much men seek out sex and how much women seek out sex. Certainly the popular premise in the other thread is that women select from among the sexual possibilities created by a surplus of men seeking out sex, and in so selecting choose the rate at which sex occurs. I believe this is the point Wesley Clark is making directly above, although he doesn't seem to have thought it through. (C'mon, Wes, are you saying nothing would change for either men or women if it were no longer true that women were the gatekeepers of how often it occurs as a consequence of not wanting it as often or as intensely as the guys do? Really?)

Der Trihs may be right, that if men's sex-seeking tendencies were to drop off to the levels of women, the result would be a dropoff in the rate that sex happens, but if sex is happening more or less as often as women want it to, aren't there a range of possible behaviors that women might engage in to keep it from becoming such a rare thing?

Meanwhile, what about male behavior? Assuming that men's interest in sex were to be essentially identical to women's interest in sex, that doesn't translate into "men in such a world would be no more inclined to seek out sex than women in this world do", any more than it translates into "men in such a world would be just as likely to adorn themselves and slink around seductively to lure women as women do to men in this world". In both cases, the existing behavior of women makes sense in the context where men's sexuality is like it is. And the question wasn't "What would happen if men were only as horny as women while meanwhile women were suddenly as horny as men?"

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by Good Egg

You make it sound as if men only go near women because they want sex. I know many husbands who dearly love their wives, and it snot only for sex.

How many would have hung out with them enough to fall in love, without the lure of sex ? For that matter, how often do marriages collapse because the wife ( or husband, for that matter ) loses interest in sex ?

[rayh]

There would be a lot more sex happening.

[Evil Captor]

The population problem would be getting enough people around to be called a "population."

[davenportavenger]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

The fact that women are picky will mean the majority of people just won't have sex; the men won't consider it worth the effort.

So women would never have sex if it wasn't for the men bugging them? Really? I beg to differ.

There would be a lot less rape, and a lot more happy couples, since men wouldn't feel the need to shanghai women into an unhappy marriage just to get the snatch. The population may go down, but that would be a blessing at this point. Since the couples would be happier, since they were not driven by animal lust or the need for boinking, they might even be compelled to have more children, unlike unhappy couples that have one or two and then split up.

Of course, that's all taking as a given that women's sex drives are always lower than men's or that they are considerably lower than men's, something I doubt greatly. I also think it is hilarious that all but one of the people posting to this thread are (to my knowledge) men. What would you know?

[AHunter3]

Yeah, and no one's commented much on how male behavior would change. (Maybe they think that's self-evident from the premise? Not to me....)

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by davenportavenger

There would be a lot less rape, and a lot more happy couples, since men wouldn't feel the need to shanghai women into an unhappy marriage just to get the snatch. The population may go down, but that would be a blessing at this point. Since the couples would be happier, since they were not driven by animal lust or the need for boinking, they might even be compelled to have more children, unlike unhappy couples that have one or two and then split up.?

Frankly, without the incentive of sex, I think violence towards women would go up. Have you ever heard the joke "The problem with the War Between the Sexes is fraternization with the enemy" ?

As far as marriages being more harmonious, I'd expect a greater drive towards patriarchy. Most men who get married in that situation will likely just be looking for a breeder, not a friend/companion. Also, women will have less influence over a husband who doesn't really care if she sleeps with him.

Without sex to fix a man's attention, I think most men will simply avoid women. If they want a friend, they can hang out with other men.

Originally Posted by davenportavenger

Of course, that's all taking as a given that women's sex drives are always lower than men's or that they are considerably lower than men's, something I doubt greatly.?

Just look at the porn industry and prostitution. For that matter, look at the way women have always been able to manipulate men with sex, but not the other way around. Male sex drive is obviously much higher than the female, at least as a rule.

Originally Posted by AHunter3

Yeah, and no one's commented much on how male behavior would change. (Maybe they think that's self-evident from the premise? Not to me....)

It was male behavior I was talking about; females won't change much at all.

[Wesley Clark]

I don't know. There are gay men who still have alot of female and male friends.

And men tend to lose interest in sex as well as women. In the original thread I posted that 20% of marriages & LTR are considered sexless, and a good deal of the time it is the man who loses interest in sex with his wife (think Al Bundy).

Women don't have porn, but that is because they are aroused differently. They have romance novels. Or read the covers of female magazines like seventeen, Vogue or other magazines. The covers are filled with sex info. How to be good in bed, new positions, etc.

MEG: I brought you a magazine.
DEATH: Glamour, great. I can learn how to please my man. Go get me an Entertainment Weekly.


I think you guys are exaggerating what would happen with the sexes. Men would just lose interest in casual sex, everything else would stay the same.

[Aeschines]

Men would have more sex with men.

[Lilairen]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

How many would have hung out with them enough to fall in love, without the lure of sex ? For that matter, how often do marriages collapse because the wife ( or husband, for that matter ) loses interest in sex ?

My social groups have always been mixed-sex, and I have consistently been more able to form friendships (yes, 'without the lure of sex') with men. (As an acquaintance put it recently, "I get along with men and women who don't get along with women.")

I don't know anyone who I've perceived as spending time with others with 'the lure of sex' being a significant factor at all. I find that sort of thing extremely creepy, and I wouldn't spend time of any sort with someone -- male or female -- who behaved that way.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by Lilairen

My social groups have always been mixed-sex, and I have consistently been more able to form friendships (yes, 'without the lure of sex') with men. (As an acquaintance put it recently, "I get along with men and women who don't get along with women.")

Remember how things were before puberty ? There were the boys, and there were the girls, and they seldom socialized more than to throw insults at each other. If our sex drive never kicked in, I suspect many of us would never grow much past that. You may be able to get along with men, but I suspect that lowered-sex drive men would be less able/willing to get along with you.

Sex in humans is not just about reproduction; if it were, we'd be like many animals and have high fertility, and very little sex. For us, sex is more about socialisation than breeding, and I can't believe you could inflict such a major change without major consequences, probably bad ones.

[BlackKnight]

Originally Posted by Good Egg

Would any men here feel better if they were less horny?

If I could flip a switch and completely turn off my sex drive, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Granted, I have a rather low sex drive anyway, but it still gets annoying from time to time.

As to the OP: I really have no idea. I do think there's some merit to the idea that men would be less likely to socialize with women. Not because men socializing with women is always about sex, but because it often is. (Even when it's about something else as well.)

[AHunter3]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

Remember how things were before puberty ? There were the boys, and there were the girls, and they seldom socialized more than to throw insults at each other.

I remember life before puberty. There were the girls, who were clearly other, but who were distinctively competition-worthy and therefore deserving of admiration. Mixed feelings: wanting them to admire me too, but also wanting to outdo them, and definitely sometimes feeling antipathy from them because I was a boy. Meanwhile, then there were the boys, most of whom were an embarrassment to be associated with, and hostile as hell towards me, and violent, and sharp as a cobblestone.

All in all, girls were better companionship than boys, generally speaking.

[eleanorigby]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

Remember how things were before puberty ? There were the boys, and there were the girls, and they seldom socialized more than to throw insults at each other. If our sex drive never kicked in, I suspect many of us would never grow much past that. You may be able to get along with men, but I suspect that lowered-sex drive men would be less able/willing to get along with you.

This is not a description of my childhood in the slightest--I had good male friends as well as female ones. I was never a "girly-girl" aka Miss Priss, but I wasn't butch or contemptous of my own gender, either.


The kids at my elementary school played with either gender overall--yes, there were a few boys who wouldn't play with a girl and vice versa. But those were usually the kids who weren't popular on the playground, either.

Boys didn't throw insults at me, nor did I to boys. A certain amount of teasing went on, but more than that was just plain mean--boy or girl.

I am saddened by the prevalent attitude that "women" manipulate "men" with sex. And I have a funny picture in my head of all these men being led around by their cocks, like it's some kind of leash. There also seems to be a high level of resentment re this perceived state of affairs.

Lilairen said it best. Why not see people as people and start from there?

As to the OP-I answered this in the other thread. Not much. I think there would be less porn and prostitution, and maybe more stable relationships, but that's iffy. Maybe a slight decrease in STDs--and unwanted pregancies, but I doubt it. Frequency doesn't matter much when it comes to lack of protection.

I think it would make a radical change in how women are perceived by a segment of the male population--and that might be all to the good.

[Polerius]

Originally Posted by AHunter3

How would that change things? What would happen?

What would happen would be something like lesbian bed death.

[Lilairen]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

Remember how things were before puberty ? There were the boys, and there were the girls, and they seldom socialized more than to throw insults at each other.

The customs of your planet are strange to me.

[Elret]

Originally Posted by eleanorigby

This is not a description of my childhood in the slightest--I had good male friends as well as female ones.

Ditto, and still do. I’m actually quite saddened that there are grown, intelligent adults out there who not only feel that the only value in a male-female relationship is sex, but who also believe that the majority of adults feel that way. Sure isn’t that way in my social group, and never has been.

[AHunter3]

Since I posed the question in the OP, I shall put forth my own answer (incomplete as it is).

First off, whether it's "less horny" or "more picky" or "less imperative & immediate" or whatever, women in this world have some of it even if less than men do. So the reason men tend to come on to women, making overtly sexual overtures, so much more often than vice versa, is not that women are that uninterested but rather that they don't have to.

If you're a moderately horny female, sex can happen for you often enough to satisfy you if you respond favorably to some subset of the males who come on to you. If the males completely stopped taking sexual initiative, that would no longer be true, you wouldn't be getting at all, so perhaps as a moderately horny female you would come on to men as often as you needed to in order to get laid as much as you wanted to.

Similarly, if you're a fairly picky female, sex with a sufficiently satisfying partner can happen for you often enough if you cull from among the many men making overt sexual initiates those few who meet your picky standards. If, once again, the males completely stopped taking sexual initiative, that would, once again, no longer be true, so in order to couple up with a sufficiently satisfying partner that meets your fairly picky standards, you'd have to choose from among men who weren't coming on to you overtly and come on to them as often as needed in order to get what you want.

I'm not sure it works at all the same way if the difference is mostly due to feeling sufficiently safe and secure. Emotionally safe and secure with leaving yourself open to getting your feelings hurt, yeah, but if we're talking safe from the specter of rape, physical assault, and other related stuff like that, I don't know as how magically making the males all cautious and in need of feeling safe would make women feel any safer or act any bolder, so let's bracket that one off.

OK, back to horny and/or picky — let's say the men are as much so as women, no more & no less. That would imply that men would not (necessarily) stop taking sexual initiative, but they would have no reason to do so any more often than the women did. And if women started taking up the slack in sexual initiative, there would be no reason to assume they would start doing all of it (since the men haven't stopped). So one sort of assumes there would be a balancing-out, an equilibrium. I sort of assume the asking would be more casual, and the accepting or rejecting more casual as well — I mean, as it stands now, when you're a male doing the asking, you're distinctively on the Asking Sex side of a divide, and she who is being asked stands distinctively on the Always Being Asked side, but with the horniness or pickiness evened out, presumably you would not have that, so even if you're a male doing the asking you would not be Of the Asking Sex, your sex would be getting asked overtly and often, so it's not like you have to ask and succeed or you ain't gettin' none. That's going to affect how you feel about yourself and the process of asking, right? I think it would be like "Hmm, you're very nice, you know, I'd kind of like to do you / no? / well, too bad <smile and shrug>". Not so often with so much determined intensity. Not so often with such anger. Probably a lot less hostility towards women in general, that whole "Goddam hot bitches I'd like to fuck them all, chicks acting so Miss Don't Touch Me like they're better than me, she'd like it though I fuckin' assure you of that" sexual-hostility rant that we've all overheard a few zillion times.

How about her? When she's being asked, that whole meat-market Always Being Asked thing wouldn't normally be part of her personal past, especially if the asking is more casual-like as described above. Would there be insulting aspects of guys far less often being far away from a <shrug>, rarely mounting much of a campaign about it? Then there's the asking part of it. Maybe that would feel fine, liberating, empowering — pick a selection-worthy guy when you're in the mood and chat him up and make an overt pass at him. Most of them will have heard it before, more or less as often as you've heard it from guys, will that mean he's less awkward about saying either "yes" or "no" so the whole thing feels less weird, for you to be doing the asking? Or would it feel, I don't know, demeaning or like coming down to a less exalted level, as if you had to be desperate to be doing the asking like that? To these things I don't know the answer, never having been female and having no access to current female experience, so it's really hard for me to imagine how such a situation would make me feel if I had.

Now the safety thing seems complicated. If women were doing the asking as often as the men, then, like I surmised above, it seems like there's be a lot less of that male hostility and the pushy emphatic way so many men have of asking women for sex. And that would reduce the extent to which women felt unsafe about sex (especially casual sex with folks who are more or less strangers, if that's the biggest disincentive for women w/regards to casual-cute-stranger sex). But can you get there from here, or is this circular reasoning? The only way women would be doing the asking as often as the men would be if they felt safe and unthreatened, which would transpire, by my logic, if the women were doing the asking as often as the men. And on some base physical level, women being smaller and genital architecture being what it is, you could argue that it's hard to posit a world where men are as concerned about safety and security in sex as women are. But if we do it hypothetically as an exercise to satisfy the terms of the OP... OK, if somehow all threat of rape and physical assault by males were just completely erased, or at least erased to the point that women felt no more at risk from men than you'd expect men to feel from women, what then?

For me as a male, a blessed relief from female eyes cast backwards not in curiosity or interest but in self-protective assessment of me as a possible danger...relief from female hostility that's an expression of fear and of anger at being made afraid. Possibly...probably...a world of more receptive female strangers, less of a pattern of female strangers being standoffish and remote in public lest some stranger-guy get "the wrong idea" -- ?? But really most of the changes wrought by that would be experienced first by the women, it's their world that would change principally and most vividly. OK, women, how would that be for you, what would change for you? And even if it's kinda far down the list of things it would mean for you , how do you think it would change your sexual behavior? Flirting, courting, making passes, casual sex yea or nay and/or under what circumstances, etc?

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by Aeschines

Men would have more sex with men.

Why? At present, there are men who have sex with men because that's their natural inclination, and there are men who have sex with men because they are in settings (prison, work camps, at sea, etc.) where they have no access to women and their own hands just don't satisfy. If men were less horny, the latter group might be satisfied with masturbation, or with nothing; we would still have gay men, but none of them would ever even have heard of a "glory hole." (Ya gotta be really horny to use a glory hole!)

[Der Trihs]

AHunter3, I think you underestimate how much of our behavior is genetic. No matter how much men are changed, I doubt women will change much. Also :

Originally Posted by AHunter3

Since I posed the question in the OP, I shall put forth my own answer (incomplete as it is).
Probably a lot less hostility towards women in general, that whole "Goddam hot bitches I'd like to fuck them all, chicks acting so Miss Don't Touch Me like they're better than me, she'd like it though I fuckin' assure you of that" sexual-hostility rant that we've all overheard a few zillion times.

Probably not; instead, we'd have a resurgence of good old fashioned bigotry. People tend to hate that which is different; with a lowered sex drive I suspect women will be classed with gays by most men. I think you really underestimate how much suppressed hostility there is between the sexes, especially given how repressed it is on the male side.

Originally Posted by Elret

Ditto, and still do. I’m actually quite saddened that there are grown, intelligent adults out there who not only feel that the only value in a male-female relationship is sex, but who also believe that the majority of adults feel that way. Sure isn’t that way in my social group, and never has been.

To make it clear, I personally don't feel that way towards women, but I think you're wrong about how many men have little or no interest in women beyond sex. I'd be happy to be wrong, but I don't think I am.

[Lilairen]

Originally Posted by AHunter3

But really most of the changes wrought by that would be experienced first by the women, it's their world that would change principally and most vividly. OK, women, how would that be for you, what would change for you? And even if it's kinda far down the list of things it would mean for you , how do you think it would change your sexual behavior? Flirting, courting, making passes, casual sex yea or nay and/or under what circumstances, etc?

I will now attempt to say something substantive.

I suspect with regards to my relationship-initiation patterns very little would change; I have consistently (not quite exclusively, but consistently) been the initiator of relationships I've been in. This is primarily because the men I'm attracted to tend to be geeks, and geeks are frequently oblivious; my favorite response to an, "I'm interested in you, treat this data accordingly" was my boyfriend's, which was (more or less direct quote), "Actually, it hadn't occurred to me to think about it, but now that you mention it, I'm interested in you too."

I suspect I might not be actively hostile to propositions. My primary experience with propositions is that they are followed up with pushiness and may well culminate in assault; as a result, I tend to find them extremely threatening. If I were limited in my sexual experience to selecting from people who sought me out, I would not have sex; people who seek me out scare me too much. I consider this an overreaction on my part, but I don't know how to fix it without extensive therapy; I would be more motivated to seek out that therapy if I had difficulty finding partners because of it, but I currently have three sexual relationships.

Casual sex? I have no idea. I have a notion that in a different timeline (without the aforementioned bad experience set) I might be more liberal in my partner selection and willingness to have sex than I am at the moment, but in this one, the one time I started up a friends-with-benefits relationship it lasted a grand total of a week (which included no actual sex due to external constraints) before turning into a committed partnership. I don't think I have the data to speculate.

In private life? I think that would depend on what differences there were in specific. As constituted at the moment my sex drive is fairly strongly reactive; I don't know how much of that is a constraint induced by bad experiences and how much is just how I am natively. If, however, my partners were also shifted to strongly reactive sexualities, I suspect that the sexual activity would go down due to lack of initiation. (I note that as it stands at the moment, I have a higher sex drive than one of my partners and lower than the other two.) If the levels were similar, but people's proactive/reactive stuff was kept the same (and I know women who are strongly sexually proactive, so that is not restricted by the parameters of the situation), then not much change.

[Lilairen]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

To make it clear, I personally don't feel that way towards women, but I think you're wrong about how many men have little or no interest in women beyond sex. I'd be happy to be wrong, but I don't think I am.

I typically encounter the existence of these people when reading snark/cattiness forums where other people are laughing at them for being utterly pathetic. Not my subculture; I don't much feel like swapping subcultures in order to find this sort of thing, so I don't know which ones it would be common in.

[audreyayn]

Personally, I would probably have had sex earlier and possibly more often. When I was young it occurred to me that if I really wanted sex, all I had to do was walk down the street propositioning men until one said yes. I didn't imagine it would take very long. For that reason I never felt the need to prove to myself that I could get sex the way perhaps men do.

[Aeschines]

Originally Posted by BrainGlutton

Why? At present, there are men who have sex with men because that's their natural inclination, and there are men who have sex with men because they are in settings (prison, work camps, at sea, etc.) where they have no access to women and their own hands just don't satisfy.

You're right that the latter would go down, but a proportionately greater (not absolutely greater, sorry I misimplied that) would be having gay sex, since 1) heterosexual men would be less inclined to "hunt" women and 2) hunting is much less a part of gay pairings. In other words, the gay "magnet" would be weaker but there still would be very few barriers to those magnets sticking together.