Women As Likely As Men to Want Casual Sex

Thank goodness someone finally debunked the “Sexual Strategies Theory” which claims that sexually, we are driven primarily by our desire to pass on our genes, which means men just want to spread their seed far and wide and women are more selective with sexual partners because they’re looking for a man to provide for them during the child-rearing years.  Seems a little too simple and antiquated, right?

Surprise, the new study says, women are just as motivated by sexual-pleasure seeking! (Note: most women I know may not find this very surprising).

Still, this new finding about women wanting casual sex as much as men has a lot of rather significant caveats.  Namely, according to the psychologist who authored the study, “when women are presented with proposers who are equivalent in terms of safety and sexual prowess, they will be equally likely as men to engage in casual sex.”

But when you enter into a casual sexual encounter, you never know 100% that the person you’re with is safe, so that’s an impossible-to-satisfy requirement.  Moreover, equivalent  “sexual prowess” in this case refers to  the imbalance in sexual pleasure — orgasms — experienced by men and women in first time sexual encounters.  In other words, “women orgasm only 35 percent as often as men in first-time sexual encounters” so for men the odds of getting sexual pleasure (ie, orgasm) are always better – in fact, damn near 100%!  How do you make that equivalent?

Which leads to my favorite quote of the article:

“Women’s perception that their heterosexual casual sex partners will be unlikely to give them pleasure is not unwarranted,” Conley states.

Read the whole article here.

-Nicole