Sorry I used the wrong word there. I meant just casual sex.
But which gender is it? You didn’t answer the question.
Furthermore, many animals that scientists thought were monogamous based on careful visual study, turned out to be cheating based on DNA studies. So, the cheaters were not only good at fooling their spouses, they were tricky enough to fool the scientists too. Both males and females were “caught cheating”.
This subject is one of the big fields in [url=Sociobiology - Wikipedia]sociobiology](Love for Life? 12 Animals That Are (Mostly) Monogamous [Slide Show] | Scientific American), which is the study of social behavior as molded by evolutionary pressurs. It’s a controversial field; the wikipedia page gives a pretty fair summary of the controversy. [sidetrack] Oddly enough IMHO, the great evolution scientist Stephen Gould lambasted sociobiologists; he was an adherent to the now disfavored “tabula rasa” (blank slate) model of the human mind, believing our behavior to be thouroughly plastic/moldable by environment, with very few ingrained social behaviors.[/sidetrack]
Sorry I can’t find a good cite for this, but the basic model of human sexuality according to sociobiologists is that (much like many birds, where both parents invest heavily into rearing offspring):
Males tend to choose a principle mate, but spread their seed as widely as possible. They strongly dislike being cuckolded because they don’t want to waste resources on rearing unrelated young. (Thus the common ironic tendency we see, to play around but then get terribly mad on finding their woman has also.)
Females tend to choose a principle mate, but tend to “step out” to mate with males of higher status (however status may be measured, but primarily, having genes that make offspring survival higher).
The reason for the difference is that males can procreate with a much larger number of partners, whereas women are limited in the number of young they can bear.
If you believe that evolutionary pressures can mold social and sexual behavior, then the above outcomes make perfect sense. However, it’s important to keep in mind that these are only general tendencies, not dictates. In practice, there are more variations and outcomes than we can imagine, I’m sure.
The above is from people like Daniel Dennet, EO Wilson, and Steven Pinker, IIRC. If I get time later I’ll try to find some decent citations.
Personally, I’ve been monogamous since 1986, married since 1987. Other women appear in my fantasies, but it’s far more important to me to share my life with one woman than to threaten it (and a dalliance would be fatal, my wife assures me!) Fantasies aside, I don’t feel a strong urge to step out, and goodness knows my life is a lot simpler remaining faithful.
I don’t cheat.
Women have not gotten less attractive to me, however. There are a lot of really attractive women out there. I like women.
I don’t cheat. I love my wife, and my kids, and I my integrity. I know it wouldn’t remotely be worth the cost.
“Procreative drive” is not the driving force behind behavioral differences between sexes vis a vis casual sex. You confuse the cause with the effect. Men don’t like casual sex more than women for any reason that relates to a desire to “spread their seed”. They like casual sex more than women because it’s easier for them to get off on it. Any seed-spreading that goes on is a tangential result of this fact.
First of all, I haven’t said why I think men are more inclined to casual sex than women. I didn’t use terms like the ones you’ve put in scare quotes.
Now you ask, I think it largely is why those differences in attraction exist, but it is important to be clear that there is no part of a guy’s subconscious thinking “I must reproduce”. Guys who didn’t refuse offers of casual sex just were better represented than guys who did. Meanwhile it makes sense for women to be more discriminating, and more cautious.
I know evo psych are dirty words around here, but ultimately, the fact that anyone ever wants to have sex at all is of course down to our evolutionary history. If you didn’t want to get down, you weren’t represented in the next generation.
Given this reason for why we desire sex in the first place, it makes perfect sense for the genders’ sexual attraction and “readiness” to work a little differently: the cost/benefit of casual sex is very different.
Now it’s my turn to be confused. I don’t get what you mean by this.
There are two kinds of “why” questions.
One is “Why does he/she do that?”, which you answered. Another is “Why are people like that?” which I addressed. No contradictions, just different answers to different questions, but the causes and effects tend to be reversed.
People have sex because they have an instinctive drive to do it, and because it feels good, and because they choose to. People have an instinctive drive to do it, and it feels good, because it encourages procreation.
For a man: fucking an indifferent wet hole with your dick is quite likely to induce an orgasm for you.
For a woman: getting your wet hole hammered by an indifferent dick is not likely to induce an orgasm for you. Heck, even if the man is making an active effort to help the woman get off, it’s not a given that it’ll happen.
(bolding mine)
I don’t think “because” is a very clear word to use here. People do get really, really confused about the difference between “selective pressures against the fraction of the population who, because of some heritable aspect of their makeup, don’t much enjoy having sex have resulted in humans today who generally do enjoy having sex” and “The holy purpose of sex is to spread my seed! Anybody who has a problem with me attempting to stick my dong every-which-where has a personal philosophy that conflicts with the essential nature of humanity!” And I see that last sentiment tossed around way more often than I’d like.
I don’t think that’s a big factor. I mean, virtually all men and most women can give themselves an orgasm any time they want. Orgasms aren’t the driving force for why we go to the trouble of finding a partner.
Are you kidding me? It’s a huge factor. It’s not easy to enjoy the companionship of a partner who gets off on the sex that you two have when you yourself haven’t been getting off on it.
I don’t think this is true at all for the majority of women.
They absolutely are a large part of the driving force.
Well, we can debate that, but you do agree about men?
I mean, your original point was that the reason why men are more willing to engage in casual sex was because of a better expectation of orgasm.
But put it this way: would I rather get to third base or whatever with a girl, and we stop short of orgasm, or just stay at home and masturbate? The former.
Heck, just holding hands with a pretty girl has greater value to me than a solo wank.
The prospect of orgasm has little to do with what motivates men, it’s just a “nice to have”.
If your early experiences with accepting casual sex offers from women who asked you out mostly concluded with them getting off and you not getting off, my guess is that you’d eventually grow rather sick of having to either pretend you did get off or explaining to your partners that they shouldn’t take it personally when they ask about why you don’t seem to be getting off.
Plus, I’m not talking “stopping short of orgasm.” I’m talking about the woman receiving no physical pleasure at all from the encounter. This happens quite commonly for women, especially younger ones. This is because giving explicit instructions to your partner is kind of tough to do without feeling like you are “breaking the mood”.
Well, you guess wrong.
I don’t think like that, and most guys don’t either. If I was physically incapable of having an orgasm, and my partners would take it personally when I failed to cum, I’d still find casual sex appealing. You get to touch boobies etc.
OTOH, if your hypothesis here was correct we’d expect women who’ve only had positive sexual experiences so far to be as willing to engage in casual sex as a typical man. We don’t see that.
I accept that that is what you believe about yourself. However, you really can’t claim to speak for anybody but yourself on matters like this.
Perhaps you don’t see that. But then, how many women are you close enough friends with to discuss details as personal as that with? Probably not as many most women are. 
But look, you don’t have to take my word for it. If you’re interested in learning more about how women’s experiences of casual sex typically differ from men’s, there’s no shortage of literature on the subject. Here, check this article out: Women Enjoy Casual Sex as Much as Men Do.
(Bolding and italics mine.)
OK, how about I start a poll: “Would you accept an offer of sex with a beautiful woman, knowing that you were physically incapable of orgasm?”.
If only I could make a wager on what the result of that would be…
Hmm I’d like to read the study itself.
Early indications are not good; I think lines like this are quite telling:
“I think a lot of my work is just about applying common sense,” she says. “Are we really going to believe women do not like sex as much as men?”
Quotes like that suggest to me Conley:
a. Has been strongly influenced by the baggage of this topic, and wanted to find data to show women are just like men.
b. Has missed the point. It makes sense for the genders to have different mating desires/strategies and that’s what we see in most mammals. You can’t just say “Well, we all like sex – duh!”
(Not that I’m saying women don’t like sex as much as men, my point has been about how attraction and desire for sex works a little differently between the genders)
I scanned through this thread, but didn’t read everything in every post. So, forgive me if I’m repeating something someone else has said.
I think men are generally more inclined to be promiscuous. My reasoning is that a man can spread his DNA out more effectively by having multiple sexual partners. Of course that doesn’t mean he has no choice in the matter. He can choose to be monogamous.
A woman, on the other hand, cannot spread her DNA more widely by having more sexual partners. Therefore, I think women are less inclined to desire it.
Do what you wish.
Here’s the abstract.
Abstract
In a highly influential paper, Clark and Hatfield (1989) demonstrated that, whereas men were quite likely to accept a casual sexual offer from a confederate research assistant, women never did so. The current research provides a more in-depth explanation of gender differences in acceptance of casual sex offers via 4 (quasi-) experiments. First, using a person-perception paradigm, I assessed people’s impressions of women and men who proposed a casual sexual encounter in the same manner that confederates in Clark and Hatfield did. Women and men agreed that female proposers were more intelligent, successful, and sexually skilled than men who made the same proposals. Second, I demonstrated that the large gender differences from the original Clark and Hatfield study could be eliminated by asking participants to imagine proposals from (attractive and unattractive) famous individuals, friends, and same-gender individuals. Next, I assessed factors associated with likelihood of agreeing to the casual sex proposal. The extent to which women and men believed that the proposer would be sexually skilled predicted how likely they would be to engage in casual sex with this individual. Finally, I examined these factors in the context of actual encounters from the participants’ previous experiences, and the results were replicated in this context. Overall findings suggest that the large gender differences Clark and Hatfield observed in acceptance of the casual sex offer may have more to do with perceived personality characteristics of the female versus male proposers than with gender differences among Clark and Hatfield’s participants and that sexual pleasure figures largely in women’s and men’s decision making about casual sex.
If by “baggage” you mean “her own personal experiences”, then yes, I imagine she was influenced by those. So are you. So am I. Her experimental protocol is, nevertheless, quite sound.
In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that the inferences she draws from the results perfectly correspond with my own rather extensive personal experience with accepting offers of casual sex more or less indiscriminately. I do apologize for the lack of detail.
Yes, it does. What I am explaining to you is a big part of the reason why it does: women are not as easily sexually stimulated as men are. Their mechanical masturbation habits–in other words, the activities that they find most sexually pleasurable-- are much more diverse and specific than are those of men. I can give a successful handjob while reading a book. But fingering a woman to orgasm? That shit takes concentration and mutual communication, and it’s exhausting.
I completely agree with your first paragraph. Touching boobies is always nice, even for old people like me.
However, I don’t get your last paragraph. Without asking every woman on the planet, how would you know?
Well, that’s still not a link to the actual paper but the abstract shows several of the flaws, and makes a number of ridiculous claims. For example:
Are you honestly going to suggest that expectations of skill is the best predictive factor for whether a man accepts an offer of sex?
I mean, based on that we’d expect men to be drawn to older women and repulsed by younger women, right?
All of those examples are misleading, and I expect similar behaviour for both genders in all 3 cases. The first two are individuals the subject knows, and may respect and admire. The last is someone that the subject is unlikely to find very attractive assuming they are heterosexual.
It’s cherry-picking to try to fit a conclusion.
Actually, no, I don’t mean that.
I mean the history of our traditionally patriarchal society, and the relatively recent and ongoing struggle that women have for equality.
The effect this can have on some individuals is that when they hear “Men are more X than women” there’s a strong desire to prove them wrong and agree that “Women are just as X as men!”, even where X is something negative or trivial.
I’ve never disputed any of this. What I’m disputing is that that is a primary reason why women are less willing to consent to casual sex.