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.
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.
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.
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?
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?”
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 ?
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?
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.
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.
It was male behavior I was talking about; females won’t change much at all.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.