Sex in the Times

Today’s Science Times features the latest research on human sexuality. Articles by Angier, Wade, Tierney… the sort of all-star section they might have published for Valentine’s Day; I guess it didn’t get done in time. Anyway it’s got the latest on the differences between the sexes and between “orientations,” the latest debunking of stereotypes – like, that when looking at erotic pictures men are more likely than women to be interested in close-ups of genitalia, whereas women look more at faces… I could have told them that was bunk.

As for the surprising findings indicating that men’s emotions are triggered by glandular stimulation, whereas with women the two tracks seem to be separate… what else is new?

I remember back in the last millennium reading an early version of the report that women often deny being “aroused” when looking at certain pictures even though their glands clearly are responding. Back then, it was written up in terms of denial, repression, lack of emotional self-awareness… Now they’ve learned to take women’s word for the fact that they aren’t really aroused just because their glands are. Whereas with men there really doesn’t seem to be much of a difference.

Along with this goes the fact that women are a lot less exclusive in their “orientation.” Whether straight or lesbian, they have a greater tendency to be aroused by images of both sexes than men. Someone even says women may not actually have an orientation like we do, but only (sometimes very strong, to be sure) preferences.

And the brain. The male and female brain. They haven’t yet isolated the map-reading versus direction-asking regions, but I’m sure that will come in time…

In today’s Science Times

a Dr Richard Wassersug, who underwent “chemical castration” to treat his cancer of the prostate, reflects on his experience and on the concept of a “eunuch.” He refers to speculation that the traditional depiction of angels was based on eunuchs – men castrated before puberty, thus tall, beardless, with high-pitched voices, employed by earthly potentates as councillors and agents.

It seems that castration interferes with multi-tasking, and the Talmud claims that an angel only undertakes one mission at a time…

New MA Senate President

It seems to be official: Robert Travaglini has resigned in order to take up lobbying, and Therese Murray of Plymouth, hitherto chair of Ways and Means, has been elected to succeed him.

She is the first woman to head either house of the Great and General Court.

Perhaps of more immediate impact, she opposed Travaglini’s move to let the “Defense of Marriage” nonsense get certified at the last Constitutional Convention, which raises the possibility that she will manage to prevent it from getting the necessary second reading.

Hooking Up

There’s been a bit of a fuss lately over an author – Washington Post reporter Laura Sessions Stepp – who claims that the current trend away from dating and towards more casual sex is harmful to young women.

She claims among other things that the experience lowers self-esteem for many though not all young women, may make them incapable of entering long-term relationships later, and in any case is slanted towards the needs and desires of young men.

Granted that a lot of suffering results from the non-matching of sexual needs, the man’s craving for episodic gratification contrasted with the woman’s stronger relationship-need which Stepp claims they are repressing or denying.

But the old solution of making men conform to the romantic relationship model didn’t work that well either; many men even if they started out with good intentions ended up behaving badly, beating their wives or walking out on them or simply freezing them out of their lives.

The more women learn that they don’t really need to have A Man In Their Life, the better off I think both sexes will be.

The gender of the beholder?

Also in the Metro an interview with author Lionel Shriver (a woman), whose new novel The Post-Birthday World has a “sliding doors” type plot, in which alternating chapters tell how a woman’s life develops according to whether she a) stays in her cozy 10-year-long relationship or b) runs off with a snooker player.

Shriver objects to reviewers’ characterization of the stay-at-home version as “boring” or “humdrum.” “It’s their right; they can have whatever opinion they like of my characters. But their creator can also get defensive. I find that relationship moving… It’s not hum drum; it’s nice. She loves it when he walks in the door.”