Jerome Burne
BODY LANGUAGE
When it comes to sex, women have the edge on men. It’s nothing to do with being from Venus, as opposed to Mars. It’s all about “erotic plasticity”. While men are “hard-wired” in their sexuality, women are more responsive to changes in social and cultural influences – which means they’re not attracted exclusively to a nice face or a fat wallet but can fall for the owner of either if the time is right.
A greater erotic plasticity means women will choose to be monogamous or promiscuous – or perhaps even gay or straight – according to the prevailing trends in the culture in which they live.
Roy Baumeister, of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, posits this theory in a paper to be published next year. He has trawled the research literature and discovered a mound of evidence that, when it comes to sex, women are more responsive to what is happening around them. In the Swinging Sixties, it was women who altered their behaviour the most.
Women who become involved in orgies and partner-swapping, says Baumeister, are far more likely to have sex with other women, while men in the same situation almost never do the same with other men. Immigrant women are more likely to adopt the sexual habits of their adopted country than the men.
Educated women are twice as likely to engage in oral and anal sex as uneducated ones, according to Baumeister, but the sexual differences between educated and uneducated males is far smaller. Women are even prepared to change their sexual orientation to fit their politics – some feminists in the Seventies became lesbians because it was politically correct. “It seems intuitively doubtful that political writing and speeches would persuade men to give up women and begin having intercourse with other men,” says Baumeister.
His research finds support from a survey in the Philosopher magazine that finds that women are twice as likely to believe in such esoteric and unscientific ideas as karma (“What goes around comes around”) or that aliens have visited Earth, although the survey of more than 1 000 people finds that when women study philosophy they start thinking in a more sceptical, masculine way.
These latest forays into the differences between the sexes are part of a rich seam being mined by academia. One of the best- known stereotypes – that men are naturally promiscuous but promiscuous women are messed up – took a hammering when Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University, compared a group of women who had had an average of 60 sexual partners with a similar group whose average was four, and found that the promiscuous ones were perfectly happy. In fact, they were choosier about how men looked, were better looking themselves, didn’t come from difficult backgrounds, enjoyed sex and had high self-esteem.
The evolutionist view that women are basically monogamous, seeking men with the physical and material resources to produce and maintain children, while men are promiscuous in an attempt to spread their gene pool, has been given a new spin by Knox College, Illinois.
In a study of 9 000 people from 37 cultures, scientists found it was basically true – except in places such as Scandinavia, where women’s earnings are on a level with men’s. Then wallet size becomes less important.
Australian neuroscientist Leslie Rogers has recently published a book, Sexing the Brain, that rejects evolutionary psychology as an unscientific, patriarchal plot.
Anthropologist Helen Fisher believes it is because women are biologically different that they will be the winners in the next century. Her new book, The First Sex, claims women are better at holistic and contextual thinking, long-term planning, and working co-operatively, and are more in touch with their emotions. United States management consultants are already predicting that companies will increasingly adopt a more female approach to gain a competitive advantage.
Research at Florida Atlantic University has found that men feel more turned on by their partners when they have been separated for a couple of days. This is because there is always the chance that the female has had sex with another man. So the man is programmed to find her more attractive, have lots of sex and overwhelm any rival sperm inside her body.
Males as puppets on a genetic string and women as flexible and adaptable to the world around them. Is this the end of the game or just the perfect excuse for more male bad behaviour?