“WHAT DOES A WOMAN WANT”? IS FREUD’S PROVERBIAL QUESTION STILL ENIGMATIC FOR TODAYS SEXOLOGISTS?
Saturday, March 13th, 2010You are at www.garyjamesblogs.com
In the process of reading their work I discovered the professional sexologists confirm and validate the theory known as, “The Mammalian Way”…. It’s a theory, a book & a curriculum that teaches men how to better understand their woman’s wants & needs and thereby be in a position to engage in more sex, love, & romance….It teaches women how to finally figure out yourself, especially if you’re the type who “wants it all”… So,
photo courtesy of Ryan McGinley
Sexologist Meredith Chivers
“WHAT DOES A WOMAN WANT”? SEXOLOGIST MEREDITH CHIVERS, LISA DIAMOND, AND OTHER PROFESSIONALS STILL STRUGGLE WITH SIGMUND FREUD’S PROVERBIAL QUESTION: From an article by Daniel Bergner, author of the book, “The Other Side of Desire”.
It’s a journey and for Meredith Chivers a sexologist and well respected social scientist, Freud’s question, “What do women want” prevails in her life’s research because within the world of relationship issues where sex can become a factor, Chivers admits she still struggles to make sense of the data she collects with respect to women’s actual responses to sexual stimuli vs how women say they respond.
One report I read about her work seems to indicate Ms Chiver’s data supports the notion that regardless of what women say, and since there is a tendency for women to become wet between the legs whether they view sexual encounters between women & men, men & men, or women & women, that Ms Chiver’s therefore concludes, “all women have homo-sexual tendencies”.
Of course such a ridiculous statement only adds to the confusion about what women want and it does not come from Meredith Chivers or her peers. It’s merely journalists doing what they do best, that is, to report facts completely out of context with the truth.
What Chivers data actually turned up was that women regardless of what they predicted about how they would feel (behave) had a tendency to be aroused (as opposed to desire) by the connections depicted (perceived) between an amalgamation of two people in various visual images that were shown to women participating in Chiver’s study.
Be that as it may, still, as a professional Social Theorist I can understand the confusion journalists, sexologists, and plenty of other social scientists have with regard to what Ms Chivers along with a number of her colleagues have discovered. That is, women can be physiologically aroused by any number of stimuli (not just sexual) where a connection between two people seems to convey some sense of warmth (security) that reaches deep down into a woman’s physiological self and touches her insatiable need for safety.
However, such an arousal does not necessarily point to her true desire, let alone her true sexual desire. (such as homo sexual tendencies despite saying she is straight)
The story I read about Chiver’s study was also used as a basis for the Daniel Bergner article I found in the New York Times magazine, where Bergner is a contributing writer.
Meanwhile, Chivers uses a device called a plethysmograph that attaches to the genitals and measures men’s erection and blood flow as well as a device that measures a woman’s secretions and blood flow. Chivers collects the data and then weighs the actual responses of the participants, against the subjective opinions from the same people who type their response on a key pad. The stimuli used to induce responses are various visuals of sexual content.
The overall results of the study:
For men, the results were painfully (and for me & my research as well) predictably standard. Men’s minds were in agreement with their genitals. Men actually got an erection when they typed that they got an erection on the keypad (subjective).
However, with the women, “mind and genitals seemed scarcely to belong to the same person. The readings from the plethysmograph and the keypad weren’t in much accord”. In other words the women reported (subjectively) less excitement than their vaginas indicated;
To which I say No kidding. No offense to my colleagues or the journalists but anyone who has even a modicum of understanding of my theory and book titled, “The mammalian Way” could tell you the responses that were recorded in the study are the typical responses to expect from each gender to produce, so long as we live in an imperfectly safe world. (See the book, “The mammalian Way” for further explanation)
Accordingly, it’s also nice to see that the academic world’s findings also hold the tenets of my theory to be true and accurate. Meanwhile, the Daniel Bergner interview of Meredith Chivers and others in her league such as Lisa Diamond, have once again validated much of my theory and frankly I am glad because it also gives me a number of recent studies to refer my readers to as a cross reference for further understanding of how “The Mammalian Way” operates and exercises great influence over even moment to moment decisions humans make in dealing with daily relationship issues, especially where sex can become a factor.
Out of sheer professional interest I suggest the following consideration with great respect for the challenges my colleagues face. The issue Chivers et. al. seem to face is,…While in the process of comparing arousal & desire in order to obtain predictable patterns of behavior, they all seem to have thus far completely failed to factor into their body of work (and studies) the other instinctive factors that often dramatically affect social-sexual behavior in addition to sex or sexual content. There are a number of instinctive needs to consider but the two that can be most volatile for social-sexual behavior are safety for women and honor for men.
Or, to put it plainly, women’s innate need for safety and men’s innate need for honor greatly influence and at times even control sexual arousal and desire in a human being far more often and intensely than do mere visual cues of various types of sexual content. (Reference the book, “The Mammalian Way” for further understanding)
Similarly, Sexologist Lisa Diamond conducts studies similar to Chivers. Diamond’s conclusions concur with Chivers for the most part. However, it is interesting to note that during Bergner’s research for his book and the article I found in NY Times magazine that lead me to Chivers, Diamond, et al., at one point in Bergner’s interview with Diamond, in an effort to exemplify the physiological issues that Diamond believes still exist between men and women she showed Bergner “a photograph of two control panels, one representing the workings of male desire, the second, female, the first with only a simple on-off switch, the second with countless knobs”. If either of Chivers. Diamond, Bergner or the others of the group of professionals, were to read my theory chronicled in the book, “The Mammalian Way” where I describe men’s sex drive as, “SWITHED ON WHEN THEY WAKE AND AT FULL INTENSITY AND THEN OFF AGAIN WHEN MEN ARE ASLEEP (MAYBE)”, they could see there is no in between for men’s innate sex drive and this fact is the major reason why men are able to consistently view women as sex objects first and remain focused on behavior that is predictably the same during the studies conducted by Chivers, et al.
As for women’s “countless knobs” attached to their sex drive my theory sets forth that, “UNLIKE MEN, WOMEN ARE ABLE TO DIAL DOWN THE INTENSITY OF THEIR SEX DRIVE OR DIAL IT UP TO FULL INTENSITY OR PLACE IT ANYWHERE IN BETWEEN, AND KEEP IT AT HER OWN DESIRED INTENSITY INDEFINITELY”. This fact I also theorize is because just like other female mammals, Women instinctively pick men for sex men do not pick women and this inequality alone could therefore make it necessary for the genders to possess the precise sex drives they do, calibrated such the way they have been described in the Chivers, Diamond, et al. studies (as prime examples) that humans receive as part of a gender specific package of instincts given them at birth.
This I realize places “The Mammalian Way” theory squarely in the face of decades of accepted presumptions in the social sciences, one of which is that men and women’s sex drives are basically the same. That notion could not be further from the truth.
Meanwhile, since women instinctively pick men for sex, a woman only needs to dial the intensity of her sex drive up when she is ready for sex, and men must have their sex drive on at full intensity all of the time when they are awake because they need to be ready for when they are signaled that she’s ready for sex. This is but one example of how “The Mammalian Way” instincts actually operate within the human species.
And once again my findings have been validated by the works of several colleagues’ third party study conclusions.
Conclusions that until my theory hit the streets are/were somewhat of an enigma for many social scientists, psychiatrists, etc. And this includes the late Sigmund Freud. My theory provides the world of social science with a more complete paradigm of “behavioral psychology-sociology” that helps to provide better care and understanding of our physiological and psychological selves such as, “What Women Want”! But that’s another blog…….
The importance of why you need to know the tenets of “The Mammalian Way” is embodied in the theory, the book, and curriculum by the same name. Learn to have more control over yourself & your relationships and achieve much more pleasure and far less pain in your quality of life. That’s a given… Gary James, professional social theorist
I do not encourage comments or questions on this blog. However, if you wish to contact me direct, you can email me at garyjamesauthor@live.com I am the only one who reads mail sent to that location so privacy and your anonymity is far less an issue.
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