Men and women behave very differently in sexual scenarios. Key behaviours include male promiscuity, women’s sexual passivity and women’s focus on relationships. We use behaviours to enhance the way others see us. This has nothing to do with responsiveness. Women use behaviours more than men do. Some people try to enhance the perception others have of their sexual amenability, sexual experiences or responsiveness (by using bravado). Men focus on sexual opportunities. Women focus on attracting a supportive partner. These behaviours provide crucial evidence for human sexuality.
Behaviours are more strongly influenced by sex than by orientation. This is because our sex, but not our orientation, affects our responsiveness. Some behaviours are determined by our responsiveness. Others are a result of conscious decisions resulting from our personality or culture. Sexual behaviours include enhancing attractiveness, being sexually proactive and being willing to pleasure a lover. We can differentiate between groups, such as men and women or gays and heterosexuals, according to their behaviours.
Men’s behaviour with a lover reflects their responsiveness. Men’s focus on obtaining the turn-ons and stimulation they need, men’s proactiveness (including initiating sexual activity) as well as their refusal to continue sexual activity once they have ejaculated are all evidence that men orgasm with a lover. Women’s behaviour with a lover reflects their lack of responsiveness. Women’s willingness to assist with male orgasm (rather than achieve their own), female sexual passivity, and women’s ability to continue sexual activity until male orgasm are all evidence that women don’t orgasm with a lover.
Men initiate most heterosexual activity including dating and intercourse. Men seek out sources of eroticism to enjoy their own arousal. The vast majority of men masturbate regularly. Men’s bravado involves boasting about the number of sexual opportunities and partners they have had. Men may exhibit perversions and deviant behaviours. Men can be paedophiles. Men may have fetishes. Only men can perpetrate sexual assaults and rapes.
Men instinctively know they have the greater sexual need. Men need to pursue and date women. If women were keen, it would not be a male conquest. Young women, flattered by men’s advances, think they are being clever by giving men what they want. But a woman needs a strong character to stand up to a man’s highly persuasive tactics. The difference, between a lady and a tart, is that a lady keeps her legs crossed. Ladies are respected; tarts are not. When a man pressures a woman, he knows that she does not want sex in the way that he does. Some women are too timid to say no. Others hope that by offering sex they will gain some advantage, or just love.
Men learn that women can be persuaded into bed when they are inebriated. This is because alcohol suppresses women’s natural reluctance. It’s called inhibition because of the assumption that women should respond as men do. Whereas, in truth, the key emotional reward (when a woman loves a man) involves giving pleasure. Women can choose not to participate in sexual activity because they don’t have a sex drive and because they do not obtain any particular pleasure from sex. This is not inhibition, in the sense of repressing natural urges. Women don’t have sexual urges in the first place. Once a man finds a lover, he may be motivated to protect a woman who provides him with so much pleasure. Women look for this protection as a form of emotional reassurance. Men look for reassurance through sex. A woman uses intercourse to keep a man dedicated to her. This female behaviour together with male responsiveness are crucial to reproduction.
Kinsey noted that many people were reluctant to have their sexual histories known for fear of the consequences. Human society loves gossip of a sexual nature but our interest is judgemental and critical rather than enthusiastic and supportive. In extreme cases people are victimised for their sexual habits. Even men punish other men (gays for example) because they feel safe that their own sexual preferences can be hidden within a social marriage. It is women who are at the core of the negativity over sex. Wives and girlfriends rarely engage in shameful sexual behaviour. Heterosexual women consider intercourse to be acceptable because it can be justified by their family goals.
A woman offers her body to a man to give him the pleasure he wants but she may feel embarrassed by her passive role. When a woman leaves a man’s bedroom, she can feel awkward on encountering another woman. Mothers often dislike the idea of teenage (or adult) children having sex in their home. The idea of sexual activity is offensive to them unless it is linked to the commitment of a serious relationship. Women are more willing to accept intercourse (with all its risks) as a loving-making act because it leads to family. Yet men want intercourse more frequently than is required for reproduction.
A man can be made to feel ashamed of his sexual activities (by a woman for example) but he feels no natural shame because of the pleasure he enjoys. Once she is married, a woman engages in sexual activity in the privacy of her own home. There are no observers and her participation can be implicit rather than being explicitly acknowledged to the world. This reflects the shame many women feel over the trade between offering sex and having a family. Women’s embarrassment over sex derives from the sexual trade. Having the facts of their sexuality is critical to women gaining some of the confidence men naturally have to face the world with their heads held high.
Males are much more inclined, and females are less inclined to discuss sexual matters with other persons. (Alfred Kinsey)
Excerpt from Learn About Sexuality (ISBN 978-0956-894748)