I was reading this articlethe other day–it’s about the ESPN sportscaster who was filmed naked in her hotel room by some lowlife with a “peephole camera.”
It got me to thinking (actually I’ve thought about this before, but the article kind of gelled it for me)–based on your experiences, male Dopers, is the article right? Is it pretty much impossible for an attractive woman to do her job competently without almost every straight guy in the room picturing her naked and thinking about having sex with her? Is it really that prevalent, or does the article exaggerate?
I’ve asked my own spouse (who is a very kind, funny, non-sexist, and considerate guy) and he reluctantly admits that yeah, in his experience, guys (including him) do spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about sex. Do any other women find it insulting to think that their interactions with men are almost always colored by this sort of thing, even if the guy is completely subtle about it? Does it bother anyone else just how often comments sections of posts or news stories that have a picture of a woman in it contain several comments from guys mentioning her attractiveness (or lack thereof) and what they would (or wouldn’t) want to do with her?
What about women–how prevalent is it for women to be unable to relate to an attractive guy without thinking about having sex with him or undressing him?
I readily admit that I’m probably oversensitive about this (I’ve always been rather oversensitive to gender issues, being a tomboy and preferring to relate to most men as “one of the guys”) but I’m curious to see what other Dopers of both genders (gay Dopers too–guys, do you scope out other guys, picture them naked, and think about what you want to do with them, even in contexts where it isn’t really appropriate?)
A considerable amount of time, but certainly not all of the time. If I’m talking to a woman and it’s not a dating-type situation, and if she’s not super-hot, I’m probably concentrating more on the words she’s saying. Even if those conditions are true, I might be more lost in her eyes or something like that. In fact, I was in just that situation last night. Sure, I checked out her cleavage, and I looked at her butt whenever I got the chance, but I was more riding the wave of our conversation.
It’s TODAY that I can’t stop thinking about what she looks like naked.
Well, yes and no. I think that women do tend to underestimate how much men think about sex, and while a man may or may not think about having sex with her he IS going to have the prettiness of a pretty woman up front in his mind. However, I don’t think that necessarily translates to men being unable to respect women, unless they are the sort of man who thinks sex is sinful and automatically sneers at any woman he thinks of sexually in order to justify his lust ( the whole Madonna-whore thing ). A type of man who is a lot rarer than he used to be, I think. I think plenty of men are capable of thinking that a woman is hot and capable at the same time, and in many cases that making them hotter.
Although there’s some fuzziness to the definition of “thinking about sex”–does admiring a pretty girl walking past count?–, my guess is that I spend 10-20% of my time thinking about sex. (Waking time, that is.)
The first thing to remember is that there are millions of men who work with women, go to school with women, buy from and sell to women and otherwise interact with women every day in a completely professional manner – no inappropriate remarks, no girlie magazines in the bottom desk drawer, no hostile environment.
That said, yeah, men are pigs. Let’s go ahead and get that out of the way. We like to look at attractive women, and we like it even more if we can look at naked attractive women. That doesn’t mean we all want to drill peepholes in the wall and take pictures of them in their hotel rooms, or even that we want to look at the pictures that someone else took.
And it cuts both ways. Every man on this board can tell you about some experience in his life where women focused their attention on the rich guy, the handsome guy, the powerful guy or the asshole guy, and dismissed the “average guy.” Human beings are shallow.
Your husband is “a very kind, funny, non-sexist, and considerate guy” who admits he spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about sex. Is he a bad person? Does he treat you in a demeaning manner? Do you not trust him around the women in his workplace? Does he hit on your friends at parties? Or does he keep his hands to himself, his zipper zipped and his inappropriate comments inside his own head?
In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson wrote “all men have secret thoughts that would shame hell.” The real issue is how we deal with them.
That’s the thing – Are we talking about the stray, almost unconscious thoughts that come up when we see someone attractive? Or are we talking about conscious, detailed fantasies while in the presence of someone like that? Those are very different things.
If the former, I’d say that yeah, it’s pretty much all the time. I would bet that women are much the same way. We’re sexual creatures. That’s pretty normal. As someone once said, there are no gender-free interactions.
No, men are NOT pigs and saying so is as insulting as calling women all cows or sows. And since you are male, self destructive as well. And there’s nothing wrong in fantasizing about having sex with a woman, either, nor do women have the right to insist we don’t. They don’t own our thoughts.
I was hanging out at Fiesta in Santa Barbara yesterday on State Street. I concluded that it is entirely situational. If you are a nerd at at an engineering company with the only occasional interaction with the hot secretary (or the even rarer hot engineering chick; Inga or Stacey, I’m talking about you!), you are not thinking about hot chicks and are actually trying to solve problems.
OK, I’m back off to downtown where I can spend 100% of my brain capability lusting after scantily clad hot chicks.
Of course. But when is it not “appropriate”? Obviously, photographing someone undressed without their permission is inappropriate, and should be criminal . . . but picturing someone naked, or thinking about having sex with them . . . what is inappropriate about that?
Does a fantasy of wanting to touch a woman’s face and run one’s hands along the curves of her hips down her legs count as “thinking about sex?” If so, I did that a lot more as a teenager than in my thirties.
For the win. I’ll never understand the mindset that if a man thinks a woman is sexy, it means he doesn’t think she’s anything else. If I find a man sexy, I don’t assume that’s *all *he’s good for, so why would the reverse be true? I don’t care one tiny bit if the guy I’m discussing a business issue with is thinking about having sex with me, as long as he’s capable of holding two thoughts at once, and the other is about the business we’re discussing.
I’m a woman, and I think about sex pretty constantly. I wake up thinking about it, I go to sleep thinking about it, and in between, it’s mostly what I think about, unless something else really requires my complete concentration.
I think about it all the time when interacting with women, in the sense that I’m figuring if I could, would, or should pursue it. Actually thinking about performing the act, in the sense of imagining her naked or in a specific position? Hardly ever. I think the former stems from a motivation to find one’s social position. Are we peers? Is she smarter than me? Do I have more money? That sort of thing. After that’s sorted out, it’s not much of an issue.
So to be more succinct, I think about potentials for sex all the time. I think about sex hardly ever.
I hope you’re saying that chicks in engineering are rare. Not that engineering chicks are rarely hot.
As far as I can tell, men think about sex more than women do, but it’s my understanding that biology makes them that way. I don’t find it insulting at all. Especially since they’re just thinking about it … how would I know, anyway?
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Maybe I am unusual for my gender but if I see a hot guy – on the street, at the supermarket, at school, whatever – yes I will probably be mentally undressing him. The same is true if I see a hot girl, but I think that is irrelevant to the thread. The real point I am trying to make is that I’m sure this varies from person to person. It is just assumed to be normal when it’s a man who can’t keep his mind off sex, whereas this seems more unusual for a woman.
Of course…not to make this thread too low-brow, but it’s, erm, easier to TELL when a man is getting all worked up thinking about sex…
