Eupraxsophy

And so I’ve been dumped for the 5th time.

1 week ago - 8

The Orgasm Gap: The Real Reason Women Get Off Less Often Than Men and How to Fix It

Freudian echoes, anatomical mischaracterizations and gender stereotypes are part of the logic naturalizing the orgasm gap, but there is nothing natural about it. We know this because women who sleep with women have many more orgasms than heterosexual women, almost as many as men who sleep with women. Women also have no problem experiencing orgasm through masturbation and the same women who frequently have orgasms during masturbation report many fewer orgasms when they’re with a partner. Men are also not faster to climax than women; it takes women the same amount of time to orgasm during masturbation as it takes men, on average, to have an orgasm through intercourse: four minutes.

Instead of being driven by biology, women’s rate of orgasm relative to men is a function of social forces. For one, we often bifurcate the sexual experience in line with gender norms: men are sexual (they experience desire) and women are sexy (they inspire desire). The focus on men’s internal wants and sensations also draws our attention to his satisfaction. Thus his orgasm, but not necessarily hers, becomes a critical part of what must happen for a sexual encounter to be successful and fulfilling. This is part of why intercourse – a sexual act that is strongly correlated with orgasm for men – is the only act that almost everyone agrees counts as “real sex,” whereas activities that are more likely to produce orgasm in women are considered optional foreplay.

Meanwhile, the idea that women’s primary goal in sex is to deliver a sexy body can focus her attention on how she looks instead of how she feels. This can lead to spectating, being worried about how she looks from her partner’s perspective, which decreases the chance a woman will have an orgasm. It can also lead to active avoidance of orgasm because of worries her face or body might do something unattractive.

In other words, we’ve created this artificial notion of what counts as “true sex” at the expense of women and, by extension, men (since one sexually unfulfilled partner can lead to a troubled relationship). Instead of obsessing over what “should” be done based on what social norms dictate, we should simply be pragmatic and do what works for both partners.

However, I think a lot more people are more avant garde about their sexual lives than they’re willing to admit. The problem is that there is this pressure to conform to a certain social norm that a lot (if not most) people privately know is untrue. It’s sad to see relationships suffer because we’re trying to appeal to some arbitrary, dated, and sexist (to men and women) notion of sex that shouldn’t matter in the bedroom anyway.

Regardless, I’ve seen men and women alike feel guilty about not being able to orgasm through traditional intercourse, even though they pull it off just fine through other means. Basically, if it’s not “real sex” it doesn’t matter that it works — it’s still upsetting to people’s pride or sense of masculinity/femininity.

1 month ago - 10

I love the way the taste of someone’s kiss stays with you even after they leave, and the warmth and softness of someone’s hands when you’re holding them. It’s the little things like this that I cherish.

1 month ago - 9

There Is One Color You Need To Wear on Your Dating Profile

Why does red trump other colors in the mating game? There are at least two possible reasons, one more convincing than the other. The weaker reason is that we’ve been conditioned to associate red with love, passion, and romance. Red is the color of hearts and roses, lipsticks and rouges, sex districts and femmes fatales, and the letter “a” that advertised Hester Prynne’s adulterous past in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter. But where does this association come from? Why aren’t yellow, black, blue, or green associated with love?  The ultimate origin of red’s romantic past probably reflects the second reason: Animals, from humans to baboons to finches, flush red when they’re sexually receptive. A woman’s skin tends to redden as she approaches ovulation, and then lightens during the infertile midpoint of her menstrual cycle. The rush of blood that accompanies flirtation also reddens the face, neck, and upper chest, reinforcing the link between redness and sexual receptiveness. The good news for men is that red clothing makes them more appealing as well (men also blush red when they’re sexually excited), and that people across the world—from the USA to China to Germany—show the same preference for red-clad mates. Since the effect isn’t confined to just one culture or species, and disappears when the rated women are post-menopausal (and therefore no longer fertile), it’s safe to assume that animal biology explains at least part of the effect.

Colors influence our judgments in other contexts as well. In the late 1980s,Mark Frank and Tom Gilovich analyzedthe penalty records of 21 National Hockey League and 28 National Football League teams. Five teams in each league happened to wear mostly black uniforms, and since black is associated with evil and aggression, the researchers found that those teams were called for more penalties than their lighter-clad counterparts. In the late 1970s, the Pittsburgh Penguins and Vancouver Canucks traded in their nonblack NHL uniforms for black uniforms, and almost immediately began conceding more penalties. Frank and Gilovich also showed that students behaved more aggressively when they wore black uniforms, and believed other students were more aggressive when those students wore black as well.

At the other end of the spectrum, researchers seized on a bright pink color in the late 1970s that appeared to calm aggressive prisoners. Gene Baker and Ron Miller, two naval officers at a corrections center in Seattle noticed with frustration that aggressive inmates were just as violent after cooling off in solitary confinement. Psychologist Alex Schaussoffered the officers a novel solution. In a series of experiments, Schauss found that healthy young men were weaker after staring at a sheet of bubblegum pink cardboard. Baker and Miller ran with the suggestion, and painted the inside of one of their holding cells with the bright pink hue. According to legend, prisoners entered the cell angry but emerged 15 minutes later pacified and relaxed. The facility normally saw dozens of aggressive incidents, but not a single inmate who spent time in the pink holding cell behaved violently in the ensuing nine-month period. The effect briefly infiltrated popular culture, and football coaches at Colorado State and the University of Iowa began painting their visitors’ locker rooms with the same color pink, hoping to weaken their opponents. Local athletics conferences eventually intervened, cleverly requiring that home and visitors’ locker rooms were decorated identically. The famous shade of pink, affectionately known as Baker-Miller pink, or Drunk Tank Pink, has a number of detractors, but Schauss and his supporters maintain that the color’s effects are real.                 

Black and red and pink have a remarkable capacity to shape our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in contexts that defy belief. It seems crazy to suggest that the same person can be luckier in love because she wears a red T-shirt, that the same football player becomes more aggressive when he dons a black uniform, and that strongmen become weak in the presence of pink paint—but, at least as far as experimental evidence goes, those effects are real. And of course colors aren’t the only incidental features of the world around us that influence how we think, feel, and behave. What these examples show is that a huge part of our mental lives goes on, like the proverbial iceberg, below the surface of conscious awareness—something to think about the next time you compete for love in the over-populated waters of Match.com, OkCupid, and eHarmony.  

1 month ago - 3

You don’t need a reason to help someone. The thriving and wellness of another human being is enough motivation.

2 months ago - 16

Watching the Couples Go By

Why is this basic woman so valuable to the man whose hand or arm she is holding as I see them making their way up to the Kennedy Center? I think there are three simple things.

First, she is a warm body in bed. I don’t refer to their sexual activity. That is important but too varied for me to generalize about. I refer to something that is, if possible, even more primitive. It is human contact.

A baby crying in its crib doesn’t want conversation or a gold ring. He wants to be picked up, held, and patted. Adults need that physical contact also. They need to cuddle together for warmth and comfort in an indifferent or cold world. At least, they need to be able to do that. The plain woman and plain man I am watching do that for each other.

But conversation is also important. These couples may have been talking to each other for 30 years or more. You might think they have nothing left to say. But still they can talk to each other in ways that they cannot talk to anyone else. He can tell her of something good he has done, or something good that has happened to him, without fearing that she will think he is bragging. He can tell her of something bad that has happened without fearing that she will think he is complaining. He can tell her of the most trivial thing without fearing that she will think he is bothering her. He can count on her interest and understanding.

The primary purpose of this conversation is not to convey any specific information. Its primary purpose is to say, “I am here and I know that you are here.”

Third, the woman serves the man’s need to be needed. If no one needs you, what good are you, and what are you here for? Other people—employers, students, readers—may say that they need you. But it isn’t true. In all such relationships you are replaceable at some price. But to this woman you are not replaceable at any price. And that gives you the self-esteem to go out and meet the world every day.

So this “ordinary” woman—one like about 50 million others in America—has this great value to this man she is going to the theater with. He surely does not make a calculation—doesn’t mark her to market. He probably never says how much he values her, to himself or to her. But he acts as if he knows it.

I see that I have written these views entirely from the point of view of the man. That is only natural for me. But I don’t for a minute think that the relationship I have been trying to describe is one-sided. On the contrary, I am sure it is reciprocal.

I can hear you saying: “How do you know all this? You are only an economist, practitioner of the dismal science. You aren’t Ann Landers.” That is all true. But my wife and I walked up that hill to the Kennedy Center many times.

2 months ago - 3

: We need to talk about the Friendzone

yeti-detective:

How is this even a thing? I’m a dude. I get it. Girls can be scary. They look just like humans, but they make Weird Things happen in your pants-area. It must be magic. They are the Gargamels to your dick’s whatever-Smurf-your-dick-is.

(Sidenote: the makers of The Smurfs…

Well said. 

3 months ago - 42248