For a long-term partner yes there are standards. For a one night stand a surprisingly large number of men don’t really care. Add in alcohol and you’d be surprised by the number of men who would hump fatty, drunken, bad teeth mama in the corner to et a bit of poontang on a night out.
I’m not saying the majority would but enough that the vast majority of girls could get laid if they wanted.
“Any hole’s a goal” has often been said on a night out.
And the vast majority of men could get laid if they wanted to, as well. Sure, they might not find a WOMAN who wants to get it on, but there’s usually enough gay/bi guys around who’ll be happy to have a go.
Masturbation is empowering for women because it’s a statement that women enjoy sex, and enjoy having orgasms. For a long, long time the idea was that “nice” women didn’t want to have sex, and if they DID have sex, it was only with their husbands, to please those husbands and/or try to get pregnant. The thought was that “nice” women, the kind of woman that a man would be pleased to take home to Mom, only put up with sex, they didn’t initiate it, and they damned sure didn’t didn’t play with themselves. Or at least, they didn’t admit to it. When you add in the fact that many if not most women won’t achieve an orgasm from vanilla sex without some addition clit play, most women considered sex to be more of a chore that might or might not get them aroused, but that wouldn’t give them a happy ending.
Masturbation, for women, is a way of almost guaranteeing sexual release. It’s an acknowledgement that a woman has sexual feelings, and that a woman is entitled to an orgasm, just like a man is.
Another person weighing in on male vs female sexuality…
I don’t think that men are sex mad, but for us sex is a simple, free act, that is more enjoyable with a hot girl, but is pretty good with just about anyone.
We don’t get why women need to be convinced / seduced into sex (and this is true even for one-night stands – they don’t normally proceed from “Hey, wanna have sex?”).
Women OTOH can sleep with just about anyone they want.
However, they don’t often perceive themselves as the selectors. I suspect that this is because women are attracted to guys who act like selectors themselves. If a guy’s surrounded by girls, he becomes desirable to other women.
So, as a simplification, women like guys they feel they can’t easily have.
Obviously this is all generalizations.
No, actually we can’t. We can’t walk up to a man who we think is really attractive, and say “Let’s get it on”, he might be in a relationship, he might not be into women at all, and he might not like to be approached by a woman. Or he might not be attracted to the particular woman who approaches him. But no. We can usually get laid by SOMEONE almost immediately…if we lower our standards enough. But the same is true of men.
Sure, there’s a good chance a guy will be in a relationship, or gay or whatever.
But really it is not a symmetric situation.
For a guy to immediately ask about sex is not even seen as a neutral question: he’s a jerk or whatever.
But a woman…the biggest problem she’d have is being taken seriously. If she could be taken seriously most guys would be willing. I don’t consider myself highly sexed, and yet any woman that’s at least average-looking and wanted sex, no strings attached…sure, why not?
This is in fact why the captains of industry and politics are overwhelmingly men. The genes are whispering. For women, it is not so.
Umm, no. Because there are plenty of solo pornography videos depicting men. I don’t know if there’s a specific site or sites dedicated to it, but I’d be very surprised if there weren’t. You know, I don’t want to shock you or anything, but they even have videos showing men having sex with *each other *these days! :o
Statistically, half of women are below average looking.
Take a trip to WalMart and you’ll probably see a number of women who cannot have sex at will- grossly overweight, hairy, aging and just-plain-ugly faced women are still women and might desire or seek out sexual companionship. But there comes a point when you fall below the men you are attracted to’s minimum standards, and your option is to lower your standards (anything with a stick!) or not have sex.
I think the disconnect here is women over 40, the morbidly obese, etc. are just not being considered as “eligible women” in this discussion, while men with simliar drawbacks are being considered as “eligible men.”
Most women have at least a couple stories about a time they got shot down. I’m reasonably good looking and have had my share of rejection. It happens.
This is the point. A lot of men don’t have standards when it comes to a drunken one night stand.
I’ve had attractive, male friends in their 20’s go home with drunk, fat and unattractive women in their 40s and 50s just because they know they can get an easy lay.
They could probably have got a more attractive woman if they’d tried but often these ladies know that being forward and almost grabbing a mans cock will basically get them pushed away a few times and taken to bed eventually. They think, why try when a women falls in your lap (literally) that will do the job.
If a man tried that he’d be slapped, blogged about and publicly chastised.
I don’t think it’s right for a man or woman to act like that but it happens a lot.
You have remarkable experience of being a man trying to get laid. From one who has been, no it wasn’t. Not until I learnt a ton of song and dance and psychology and a fair bit of improvisational acting, which is what hooking up with a stranger basically is.
And/or haven’t read “My Secret Garden”. 
Sex toys are like wheelchairs: when people need them, we’re impressed with your bravery in the face of adversity. Since most women are handicapped, masturbatorily speaking, their use of sex toys highlights them as brave little troopers, the Tiny Tims of the whacking off Christmas Carol, soldering on in the face of orgasm adversity.
If you’re a guy using a sex toy, it’s either because you suck at masturbation or you’re way, way too into it. You’re the lazy neckbeard riding the disability scooter through Walmart because years of World of Warcraft have left your leg muscles atrophied and useless. Society has, and should have, nothing but scorn for you.
Sure, women can sleep with anyone they want. As long as they are willing to sleep with anyone. I hate that diea - that if I wanted, and I somehow met a Jude Law-look alike in a bar, I would be able to fuck him. No, he wouldn’t even look at me because he can get Sienna Miller or any number of hot lookalikes.
ivn1188, is that you?
I think the major difference is the climax. I might be wrong, but I think the percentage of women that have a easier time climaxing with a sex aid than with a man is higher then the opposite. I have heard many women say that, while they enjoy sex with their male partner, they usually have to “finish the job” themselves-something I have never heard said by a male of the species. Also, I think that sex aids are used more by female same-sex couples than by male same-sex couples.
You, sir, are my message board god.
I’ve never known a beautiful, sane woman to sit around bitching about not being able to find someone, either. Smart, beautiful, sane–pick two out of the three.
There are a TON of guys who sit around bitching that they can’t get a woman… who meets their standards. Usually they’re pasty puffy gamers looking for Lara Croft. They start threads with titles like “Why don’t women like nice guys?” and “Why do women only want jerks?”
But that’s probably inspired by the differences in what attracts men and women. (More generalizations coming…)
For a woman to be “ineligable” for sex for many guys, she has to be old or morbidly obese, as you say. And even then, it’s not that no men are willing to sleep with them, just that most aren’t.
OTOH looks don’t tend to rule guys out (unless we take it to a whole other extreme). The things that would blacklist a guy would be nervousness, lack of confidence / experience and generally needing to be “led”.
Of course some women are happy to have a one-night stand with a 40 year old virgin who seems nervous as hell. Just that most aren’t.
I’m not saying women never get rejected, I’m saying that there’s a fundamental asymmetry in attraction, and it’s kinda frustrating in these conversations that women often insist that it’s just the same for them.
I’m going to open the door to ridicule here, but I am someone that has only got to grips with dating quite late in life, despite being reasonably good looking (I’ve done modelling work).
And no, I don’t think it’s because I’m an arrogant jerk, or whatever (as people may assume when I mention modelling); I’ve always had lots of women friends. It’s just that to be “boyfriend” rather than “friend” involves me acting in a way that never came naturally to me.
Looks play a bigger role than you’d think. I think the difference is that women have a wider range of “looks” they find attractive. Men, generally, overwhelming prefer one or two body types, one age age range, etc. But one woman may prefer muscly guys while another prefers slim ones. I like shorter, slim, baby-faced guys. My best friend prefers larger and more mature looking guys. I find her ideal unattractive, and vice versa. But together we cover a pretty wide spread, even if we are individually pretty picky.
If you think women don’t care about looks, try being a shorter Asian guy for a while. I lived in China for two years, and I know only a few Western women who dated Chinese men, while tons of guys were dating Chinese women. The “why we don’t date Chinese guys” conversation was always about looks, height and body type, never about money or personalities.
Of course men can overcome looks by sheer force of personality. Women can do that, too. There are plenty of women who are just smoking hot sexy even if they are objectively less attractive than the other girls around them.
*Women do this, too. *
Seriously. When I got back to the States, I decided it was time to find a man friend. I started tweaking my behavior just slightly, in ways that I’d observed men are attracted to. It worked like a charm. Amazingly, a lot of the stuff guys compliment me on are the bullshit fake stuff I’m doing because I know it will lure them in.
For example, I realized guys tend to like a touch of high maintenance…something that seems counter-intuitive to laid-back me. So I started doing little touches, like getting my nails done professionally instead of doing it myself. Suddenly, guys were coming to me fascinated, saying they loved how I “take care of myself.” Not much changed…I wasn’t a hideous beast before and I don’t think guys really consciously care about how nails look if they are clean and not a mess. But there are touches you can do that subliminally make guys think “this women has high status.”
We do this stuff.
We’re all playing a game. It may not be the exact same game- yours involves a bit more swagger, and mine involves a bit more high heels, but it’s working hard to make yourself attractive in some way to the opposite sex. I work hard to maintain my sexual attractiveness- both physically and through my actions.
I’m not impressed by people telling me how haaaaaaaaaard it is to be a guy, when I spend a serious amount of time and money maintaining myself. Attractive women are not just sitting on their duff while the men gravitate towards them. It’s work.
I don’t want to belabour the point, because it’s a hijack anyway.
But no, I maintain that there is a much bigger difference between the roles the two genders play than make up vs designer stubble.
I’ll try to dig out a cite in a bit, but I remember reading psychology research about people who are exceptionally shy when it comes to relationships.
They found that women with the condition have essentially “normal” love lives (or at least, no statistically higher chance of having difficulties).
Men with the condition meanwhile, essentially have no relationships at all, until they seek therapy.