women not visually aroused? really?!

The Male Body

Feminist sex blogger Ms. Naughty who is the largest producer of online porn catering to women, has a powerful recent post debunking the much media featured book A Billion Wicked Thoughts by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam. Their study looks at searches for internet porn to find out what they reveal about human desire.  Ms. Naughty points out serious flaws with this hyped up study, revealing how the book reiterates the age-old notion that men seek out visuals whereas women prefer stories.

Ms. Naughty's post is important. -- A study conducted back in the nineties has already found that women do in fact respond physically to sexually explicit imageries, regardless of their nature. Professor Ellen Laan at the University of Amsterdam had a group of women watch an episode by female catering porn maker Candida Royalle as well as a scene from a typical mainstream porn film. She found that the women responded physically to both films, but when interviewed afterwards the women spoke with disgust about the mainstream porn film while they were more positive to Royalle’s film (New York Times August 13, 1995).

Ms. Naughty has been critiquing fallacious research claiming women aren't aroused by sexually explicit material for years (see e.g. this post). And in a recent more personal post where she stood up for the beauty of penises in response to the Anthony Weiner penis photo drama, she writes that she thinks "cocks are lovely. They’re a fantastic piece of the human anatomy and we should celebrate them." She concedes, however, that

I didn’t always think this way. I remember feeling a little squeamish about cocks when I started out. I enjoyed looking at handsome faces, muscles, hairy chests, gorgeous legs and pert butts… but the penis didn’t really thrill me. I may have considered them to be a little ugly to be honest (although, to be fair, I didn’t find female genitals all that appealing either). I was a typical example of my culture at that time; as a woman I wasn’t encouraged to look at men nor was I exposed to male nudity very often. While female nudity was common, the cock remained secret and hidden. Especially images of the hard cock, which were (and are) regularly censored.

She continues that what changed is "sheer exposure:"

Over the years I got to know the penis and I finally came to appreciate how lovely it is.

I think more and more women will begin to feel the same way, especially now that we have easy access to a plethora of cocks on the internet. It’s time we stopped deriding the male body and started admiring it.

Consensually, of course.

Ms. Naughty's thoughts here speak to sex blogger Rachel Rabbit White's recent sharing in her post about the male body (hot or gross):

“Wangs are ugly. It’s like God went to tie a bow, and just kinda forgot what he was doing in the middle.” This is one of my best friends, joking, over coffee. I had asked her about this cultural idea–the female body as a work of art (who doesn’t like naked women!) and the male body as, well, gross. And it’s not just penis that gets painted with “ew”–it’s the whole of male bodies: hairy, sweaty, narrow or bulky. (And of course not all male bodies have penises or extra hair.) While my gay friends were hooking up with dudes saying things like “you are so hot, you make me wanna cum” my female friends had been raised to think: the dick is just lucky to be here.

White concludes her post by stating,

I think from now on, when I hear men=gross, whether it’s from guys or girls, I’ll challenge myself to own my lust and remark: The male body isn’t gross. It’s sexy.

These women's posts, which I followed up on with my own on beautiful male bodies, are pertinent. The sexuality of both women and men are continuously denied and repressed in our culture. Reaching an open, positive celebration in our culture of the human body and its sexuality is a continuous goal for me.