Back in the 50s/60s the RCMP were using a “fruit machine” much in the same way (physically) to try to weed out homoesexuals from serving in the police force and civil service.

They’d strap in a chair, show them gay porn and monitored them to try to detect a sexual response.

Seriously!

It’s like ice cream, most of the time it is the same delicious pleasure, a pleasure that you are familiar with, that you know, a pleasure that you even crave at times….. but every now and then, you want something different bolder more… craven, decandent…and you lick your lips well in anticipation of the new treat that beholds you…

Listen, this is going to sound blasphemous and all but if you are thirty years old with a pussy and you still don’t have a clue what you want from the space between your legs I am not sure your prospective partners should really give a shit either, particularly since you are the ultimate educator of what you want and need.

Call this complex and complicated all day long. I call this a self-knowledge famine which borders on oblivious stupidity.

A woman who knows what she wants and doesn’t fear the social backlash of asserting her sexuality is an emotional genius among her peers.

The purely scientific aspect of it however, is fascinating, and poses some genuinely compelling follow-up questions. Thanks for posting the link, Violet. I would have missed it otherwise.

The absence of a tail suggests Bonobos are the most awesome horny little apes.

R — seriously, who are these engineers? I want their jobs! or at least to interview them… :)

… i hate to say this, but did you read the whole article? this *isn’t* just about what arouses women physically, but what women consider mentally arousing as well. about the fact that there is a distinction between these two things in women, whereas men report arousal and exhibit arousal at the same time.

i’m not saying that women don’t like porn, because quite obviously, women do, and, as the article indicates, woman like a wider variety of it (according to our physical reactions). i’m just saying that to indicate that this article is only about porn is very misleading. it’s about the fundamentals of sex, where the lines of physical and psychological desire meet. it’s a comfortingly analytical look at the fact that how women feel emotionally and react physically aren’t always in accord. it’s nice to know that there are scientist out there trying to figure out why this is. that it isn’t all “just imagination” on the part of women that they aren’t feeling desire.

porn is wonderful, and helps get the sensitive bits lubricated most of the time, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that one *feels* desire. we need to recognize that most of us are lucky if looking at sexy things makes us feel sexy, because for many people, it isn’t that easy.