A discussion of the “biology” of sex, by gender

[ronburgundy]

The potentially valid point of the article is greatly undermined by the author's stupidity and dogmatic ideology that undermines any rational analysis.

The following destroys all her credibility:

[P] "PubMed has 393 clinical trials studying dyspareunia. Vaginismus? 10. Vulvodynia? 43 [conditions related to pain experienced by females during sex]. Erectile dysfunction? 1,954.

That's right: PubMed has almost five times as many clinical trials on male sexual pleasure as it has on female sexual pain. And why? Because we live in a culture that sees female pain as normal and male pleasure as a right."[/P]

No, it is due to the obvious fact that clinical trials are paid for by drug companies, and there is far more profit potential in ED drugs. This is due to two other facts. First, is that erectile dysfunction prevents intercourse from happening at all, which greatly impacts the well being of both men and women. Intercourse-preventing chronic ED is far more common the chronic vaginal pain that is so severe it prevents intercourse. Second, almost all those ED clinical trials are to test to the effectiveness of patented drugs specifically designed to treat ED. The drug companies are the one's paying for the research, and vaginal pain is not a specific problem that can be treated with a targeted drug. It is a collection of symptoms due to highly variable causes. Most treatment entails behavioral changes that have no profit opportunity. Those treatments that involve drugs, involve already established medicines that serve a more general functions such as yeast infection creams, lubricants, or hormone therapy. Thus, far less need or motive for clinical trials.

You're not really getting the picture.

Your not getting the basic scientific and economic facts that easily explain why ED treatments have more clinical trials. I already explained them, but here is another (likely futile) attempt at getting you to think beyond your dogma.
Drug companies research medical problems they can profit off of, which requires a new drug they can patent. ED is a specific biological problem that, no matter its underlying cause, can usually be treated with a pill. That is big profit potential.

Dyspareunia and other forms of pain related to intercourse is not specific problem with a specific diagnosis, but a collection of many different possible issues with completely different types of treatments, with very few that involve a prescription drug developed for Dyspareunia itself. Thus low profit potential or need to test the safety of the drug (aka clinical trials). These realities alone would mean more trials for ED drugs, even in a world with zero sexism and with equal regard for female sexual pleasure. That doesn't mean such sexism doesn't exist, just that it has little to do with the greater prevalence of ED research.

Products are aimed at men because most researchers, most business people, are male. It's not necessarily a deliberate effort to serve only men and ignore serious needs on the part of women as it is severe myopia.

There are plenty of products designed to make women more appealing to men--marketed towards women. Very few products beyond deodorant and shampoo designed to make men more appealing to women.

And that has little to do with the sexism of the researchers or companies that make the products. They are trying to make profit, not send ideological messages. It is due to what products people will buy. Do you seriously think that companies would not try to take more of men's $ by selling them "beauty" products? Of course they would and try to, but it fails because men are not interested in using those products.

Why? Well for one, men do not pressure other men into buying such products, but women constantly pressure each other to do so. Part of that is due to what seems to matter in mate attraction and sex differences in sexual arousal, which a good deal of research shows is far more tied to visual cues for males than females. And contrary to your dogma, this is not simply a product of culture, but of basic biology. Numerous experiments show that manipulated testosterone levels (in both men and women) directly cause greater response to visual sexual stimuli. Those responses are not only to reported subjective arousal, but even to levels of activation in the occipital lobe that receives the basic visual information, plus there are actually sex hormone receptors in the eye cornea itself, which means sex hormones can impact information is even getting to the brain.

Women are socialized to please other people, especially men. They are socialized to be nice, to be pretty, to compromise,to be compliant--and to accept men's urgent need to have sex on demand as just how men are, with very little thought to what the women want, need, feel about any aspect of their lives.

Men are taught to win.

Using that to explain the prevalence of ED research is myopic ideological blather. Millions of women are massively harmed by erectile dysfunction. It directly prevents them from having intercourse with their male partner. Believe it not, there are women who like men and want to have sex with them. And when ED occurs, it is easily known to both parties. Combined with the fact that it directly prevents both of them from having intercourse at all, this means that both parties will be motivated to seek a medical treatment for it. This is unlike dyspareunia which is typically not severe enough to prevent the woman from having or even wanting intercourse, which means that many such women would be less motivated to find a treatment for it than they would to find a treatment for their partner's ED. And the male's motivation to find a treatment for their female partner's pain often does not come into play because they male has no direct knowledge of the problem or its severity (unlike ED), unless the woman tells him, which they often do not.

Vaginal pain is not the only pain that women may experience during intercourse. Cysts and fibroids can produce significant pain in the abdomen and in the pelvic floor, for starters. There's more.

Exactly! Now if you'd just bother to apply the slightest reasoning to these facts, you might realize that these facts are part of why there is less clinical trials for female pain during intercourse. If you need help, I already explained it twice.

For the most part, women are conditioned to believe that if they do not enjoy sex (whatever acts their male partner wishes to perform or have performed on him) that it's a)her fault for being too up tight or b) that's just how things are for women, especially if they aren't very experienced, are in peri-menopause or are post menopausal or premenstrual or ovulating or menstruating or during pregnancy or after pregnancy or during breastfeeding or....whatever. Not his problem.

Yes. That is true, but it is not the reason why ED has many more clinical trials, and it is primarily women who socialize women to feel and think this way.

Read almost any magazine directed at a female audience and there will be multiple articles about how she can please her man. In and out of bed. Not so many about how she can enhance her sex life and virtually none about how HE can enhance her sex life.

I think that there is no longer a print edition of Playboy(?) but back in the day when I used to read it during babysitting gigs after the kids were asleep, there were plenty of articles about how women could help men enjoy sex, what women could do and how much women liked whatever it was that a man was doing. Very little about actually pleasing a woman.

Absolutely nothing in any of the other male oriented magazines I used to read (Field and Stream, etc.) even acknowledged that women exist. Or exist beyond preparing whatever mean the man brought home for his dinner.

That is and easily testable theory. If true, than a google search for "please your man" should have many more hits than "please your woman". Guess what? The truth is the exact opposite. There are 5 times as many hits for "please your woman" (almost half a billion). And no, they are not focused on about having a bigger penis through ED drugs or other means. In fact none of the hits on the first page mention that.

This coheres with the results of a massive and comprehensive analysis of internet porn that systematically assessed numerous features of online pornography. The #1 predictor of how popular a piece of porn was the level of sexual gratification the females in the video displayed, and how realistic the displays appear also mattered.
IOW, female pleasure during sex is a major part of sexual discourse in the culture, something that males are highly interested in both conceptually and in relation to their own sexual arousal.

 

[Toni]

Your not getting the basic scientific and economic facts that easily explain why ED treatments have more clinical trials. I already explained them, but here is another (likely futile) attempt at getting you to think beyond your dogma.
Drug companies research medical problems they can profit off of, which requires a new drug they can patent. ED is a specific biological problem that, no matter its underlying cause, can usually be treated with a pill. That is big profit potential.

Dyspareunia and other forms of pain related to intercourse is not specific problem with a specific diagnosis, but a collection of many different possible issues with completely different types of treatments, with very few that involve a prescription drug developed for Dyspareunia itself. Thus low profit potential or need to test the safety of the drug (aka clinical trials). These realities alone would mean more trials for ED drugs, even in a world with zero sexism and with equal regard for female sexual pleasure. That doesn't mean such sexism doesn't exist, just that it has little to do with the greater prevalence of ED research.

Products are aimed at men because most researchers, most business people, are male. It's not necessarily a deliberate effort to serve only men and ignore serious needs on the part of women as it is severe myopia.

There are plenty of products designed to make women more appealing to men--marketed towards women. Very few products beyond deodorant and shampoo designed to make men more appealing to women.

And that has little to do with the sexism of the researchers or companies that make the products. They are trying to make profit, not send ideological messages. It is due to what products people will buy. Do you seriously think that companies would not try to take more of men's $ by selling them "beauty" products? Of course they would and try to, but it fails because men are not interested in using those products.

Why? Well for one, men do not pressure other men into buying such products, but women constantly pressure each other to do so. Part of that is due to what seems to matter in mate attraction and sex differences in sexual arousal, which a good deal of research shows is far more tied to visual cues for males than females. And contrary to your dogma, this is not simply a product of culture, but of basic biology. Numerous experiments show that manipulated testosterone levels (in both men and women) directly cause greater response to visual sexual stimuli. Those responses are not only to reported subjective arousal, but even to levels of activation in the occipital lobe that receives the basic visual information, plus there are actually sex hormone receptors in the eye cornea itself, which means sex hormones can impact information is even getting to the brain.

Women are socialized to please other people, especially men. They are socialized to be nice, to be pretty, to compromise,to be compliant--and to accept men's urgent need to have sex on demand as just how men are, with very little thought to what the women want, need, feel about any aspect of their lives.

Men are taught to win.

Using that to explain the prevalence of ED research is myopic ideological blather. Millions of women are massively harmed by erectile dysfunction. It directly prevents them from having intercourse with their male partner. Believe it not, there are women who like men and want to have sex with them. And when ED occurs, it is easily known to both parties. Combined with the fact that it directly prevents both of them from having intercourse at all, this means that both parties will be motivated to seek a medical treatment for it. This is unlike dyspareunia which is typically not sever enough to prevent the woman from having or even wanting intercourse, which means that many such women would be less motivated to find a treatment for it than they would to find a treatment for their partner's ED. And the male's motivation to find a treatment for their female partner's pain often does not come into play because they male has no direct knowledge of the problem or its severity (unlike ED), unless the woman tells him, which they often do not.

Vaginal pain is not the only pain that women may experience during intercourse. Cysts and fibroids can produce significant pain in the abdomen and in the pelvic floor, for starters. There's more.

Exactly! Now if you'd just bother to apply the slightest reasoning to these facts, you might realize that these facts are part of why there is less clinical trials for female pain during intercourse. If you need help, I already explained it twice.

For the most part, women are conditioned to believe that if they do not enjoy sex (whatever acts their male partner wishes to perform or have performed on him) that it's a)her fault for being too up tight or b) that's just how things are for women, especially if they aren't very experienced, are in peri-menopause or are post menopausal or premenstrual or ovulating or menstruating or during pregnancy or after pregnancy or during breastfeeding or....whatever. Not his problem.

Yes. That is true, but it is not the reason why ED has many more clinical trials, and it is primarily women who socialize women to feel and think this way.

Read almost any magazine directed at a female audience and there will be multiple articles about how she can please her man. In and out of bed. Not so many about how she can enhance her sex life and virtually none about how HE can enhance her sex life.

I think that there is no longer a print edition of Playboy(?) but back in the day when I used to read it during babysitting gigs after the kids were asleep, there were plenty of articles about how women could help men enjoy sex, what women could do and how much women liked whatever it was that a man was doing. Very little about actually pleasing a woman.

Absolutely nothing in any of the other male oriented magazines I used to read (Field and Stream, etc.) even acknowledged that women exist. Or exist beyond preparing whatever mean the man brought home for his dinner.

That is and easily testable theory. If true, than a google search for "please your man" should have many more hits than "please your woman". Guess what? The truth is the exact opposite. There are 5 times as many hits for "please your woman" (almost half a billion). And no, they are not focused on about having a bigger penis through ED drugs or other means. In fact none of the hits on the first page mention that.

This coheres with the results of a massive and comprehensive analysis of internet porn that systematically assessed numerous features of online pornography. The #1 predictor of how popular a piece of porn was the level of sexual gratification the females in the video displayed, and how realistic the displays appear also mattered.
IOW, female pleasure during sex is a major part of sexual discourse in the culture, something that males are highly interested in both conceptually and in relation to their own sexual arousal.

Wow. Just wow.

 

[ronburgundy]

Just to make a point about erectile dysfunction and Viagra and its related drugs, yes, it's true that a lot of research money has gone into their development, probably much more than into similar female related problems.

For every Viagra prescription, there is a man who wants a woman to have pleasure. No man ever spent $20 on a pill so he could have a more satisfying masturbatory experience.

There's a flaw in your reasoning. You're assuming that every man who gets a Viagra prescription is making efforts to ensure that his partner is satisfied, rather than ensuring that he himself experiences satisfaction. You're presenting a false dichotomy wherein sex is either mutually pleasurable and satisfying for both parties or there is single-person masturbation.

I've had sex where my partner just wanted to reach orgasm and didn't really give a crap about whether I did as well.

But the OP, Toni, and others are making the false dichotomy that anything that increases male sexual satisfaction has nothing to do with female satisfaction. The reality is that ED drugs have significant positive impact on female sexual pleasure too. Many EDs are prescribed to treat the problem that a couple cannot have intercourse with each other. No, not in every instance but enough that it shatters the bogus argument in the OP article that commercial appeal of ED drugs reflect nothing other than an obsession with male sexual gratification.

- - - Updated - - -

Your not getting the basic scientific and economic facts that easily explain why ED treatments have more clinical trials. I already explained them, but here is another (likely futile) attempt at getting you to think beyond your dogma.
Drug companies research medical problems they can profit off of, which requires a new drug they can patent. ED is a specific biological problem that, no matter its underlying cause, can usually be treated with a pill. That is big profit potential.

Dyspareunia and other forms of pain related to intercourse is not specific problem with a specific diagnosis, but a collection of many different possible issues with completely different types of treatments, with very few that involve a prescription drug developed for Dyspareunia itself. Thus low profit potential or need to test the safety of the drug (aka clinical trials). These realities alone would mean more trials for ED drugs, even in a world with zero sexism and with equal regard for female sexual pleasure. That doesn't mean such sexism doesn't exist, just that it has little to do with the greater prevalence of ED research.



And that has little to do with the sexism of the researchers or companies that make the products. They are trying to make profit, not send ideological messages. It is due to what products people will buy. Do you seriously think that companies would not try to take more of men's $ by selling them "beauty" products? Of course they would and try to, but it fails because men are not interested in using those products.

Why? Well for one, men do not pressure other men into buying such products, but women constantly pressure each other to do so. Part of that is due to what seems to matter in mate attraction and sex differences in sexual arousal, which a good deal of research shows is far more tied to visual cues for males than females. And contrary to your dogma, this is not simply a product of culture, but of basic biology. Numerous experiments show that manipulated testosterone levels (in both men and women) directly cause greater response to visual sexual stimuli. Those responses are not only to reported subjective arousal, but even to levels of activation in the occipital lobe that receives the basic visual information, plus there are actually sex hormone receptors in the eye cornea itself, which means sex hormones can impact information is even getting to the brain.



Using that to explain the prevalence of ED research is myopic ideological blather. Millions of women are massively harmed by erectile dysfunction. It directly prevents them from having intercourse with their male partner. Believe it not, there are women who like men and want to have sex with them. And when ED occurs, it is easily known to both parties. Combined with the fact that it directly prevents both of them from having intercourse at all, this means that both parties will be motivated to seek a medical treatment for it. This is unlike dyspareunia which is typically not sever enough to prevent the woman from having or even wanting intercourse, which means that many such women would be less motivated to find a treatment for it than they would to find a treatment for their partner's ED. And the male's motivation to find a treatment for their female partner's pain often does not come into play because they male has no direct knowledge of the problem or its severity (unlike ED), unless the woman tells him, which they often do not.

Vaginal pain is not the only pain that women may experience during intercourse. Cysts and fibroids can produce significant pain in the abdomen and in the pelvic floor, for starters. There's more.

Exactly! Now if you'd just bother to apply the slightest reasoning to these facts, you might realize that these facts are part of why there is less clinical trials for female pain during intercourse. If you need help, I already explained it twice.

For the most part, women are conditioned to believe that if they do not enjoy sex (whatever acts their male partner wishes to perform or have performed on him) that it's a)her fault for being too up tight or b) that's just how things are for women, especially if they aren't very experienced, are in peri-menopause or are post menopausal or premenstrual or ovulating or menstruating or during pregnancy or after pregnancy or during breastfeeding or....whatever. Not his problem.

Yes. That is true, but it is not the reason why ED has many more clinical trials, and it is primarily women who socialize women to feel and think this way.

Read almost any magazine directed at a female audience and there will be multiple articles about how she can please her man. In and out of bed. Not so many about how she can enhance her sex life and virtually none about how HE can enhance her sex life.

I think that there is no longer a print edition of Playboy(?) but back in the day when I used to read it during babysitting gigs after the kids were asleep, there were plenty of articles about how women could help men enjoy sex, what women could do and how much women liked whatever it was that a man was doing. Very little about actually pleasing a woman.

Absolutely nothing in any of the other male oriented magazines I used to read (Field and Stream, etc.) even acknowledged that women exist. Or exist beyond preparing whatever mean the man brought home for his dinner.

That is and easily testable theory. If true, than a google search for "please your man" should have many more hits than "please your woman". Guess what? The truth is the exact opposite. There are 5 times as many hits for "please your woman" (almost half a billion). And no, they are not focused on about having a bigger penis through ED drugs or other means. In fact none of the hits on the first page mention that.

This coheres with the results of a massive and comprehensive analysis of internet porn that systematically assessed numerous features of online pornography. The #1 predictor of how popular a piece of porn was the level of sexual gratification the females in the video displayed, and how realistic the displays appear also mattered.
IOW, female pleasure during sex is a major part of sexual discourse in the culture, something that males are highly interested in both conceptually and in relation to their own sexual arousal.

Wow. Just wow.

I know, right? Actually seeing what a rational argument looks like can be startling for a rabid dogmatist.

 

[Toni]

But the OP, Toni, and others are making the false dichotomy that anything that increases male sexual satisfaction has nothing to do with female satisfaction. The reality is that ED drugs have significant positive impact on female sexual pleasure too. Many EDs are prescribed to treat the problem that a couple cannot have intercourse with each other. No, not in every instance but enough that it shatters the bogus argument in the OP article that commercial appeal of ED drugs reflect nothing other than an obsession with male sexual gratification.

- - - Updated - - -

Your not getting the basic scientific and economic facts that easily explain why ED treatments have more clinical trials. I already explained them, but here is another (likely futile) attempt at getting you to think beyond your dogma.
Drug companies research medical problems they can profit off of, which requires a new drug they can patent. ED is a specific biological problem that, no matter its underlying cause, can usually be treated with a pill. That is big profit potential.

Dyspareunia and other forms of pain related to intercourse is not specific problem with a specific diagnosis, but a collection of many different possible issues with completely different types of treatments, with very few that involve a prescription drug developed for Dyspareunia itself. Thus low profit potential or need to test the safety of the drug (aka clinical trials). These realities alone would mean more trials for ED drugs, even in a world with zero sexism and with equal regard for female sexual pleasure. That doesn't mean such sexism doesn't exist, just that it has little to do with the greater prevalence of ED research.



And that has little to do with the sexism of the researchers or companies that make the products. They are trying to make profit, not send ideological messages. It is due to what products people will buy. Do you seriously think that companies would not try to take more of men's $ by selling them "beauty" products? Of course they would and try to, but it fails because men are not interested in using those products.

Why? Well for one, men do not pressure other men into buying such products, but women constantly pressure each other to do so. Part of that is due to what seems to matter in mate attraction and sex differences in sexual arousal, which a good deal of research shows is far more tied to visual cues for males than females. And contrary to your dogma, this is not simply a product of culture, but of basic biology. Numerous experiments show that manipulated testosterone levels (in both men and women) directly cause greater response to visual sexual stimuli. Those responses are not only to reported subjective arousal, but even to levels of activation in the occipital lobe that receives the basic visual information, plus there are actually sex hormone receptors in the eye cornea itself, which means sex hormones can impact information is even getting to the brain.



Using that to explain the prevalence of ED research is myopic ideological blather. Millions of women are massively harmed by erectile dysfunction. It directly prevents them from having intercourse with their male partner. Believe it not, there are women who like men and want to have sex with them. And when ED occurs, it is easily known to both parties. Combined with the fact that it directly prevents both of them from having intercourse at all, this means that both parties will be motivated to seek a medical treatment for it. This is unlike dyspareunia which is typically not sever enough to prevent the woman from having or even wanting intercourse, which means that many such women would be less motivated to find a treatment for it than they would to find a treatment for their partner's ED. And the male's motivation to find a treatment for their female partner's pain often does not come into play because they male has no direct knowledge of the problem or its severity (unlike ED), unless the woman tells him, which they often do not.

Vaginal pain is not the only pain that women may experience during intercourse. Cysts and fibroids can produce significant pain in the abdomen and in the pelvic floor, for starters. There's more.

Exactly! Now if you'd just bother to apply the slightest reasoning to these facts, you might realize that these facts are part of why there is less clinical trials for female pain during intercourse. If you need help, I already explained it twice.

For the most part, women are conditioned to believe that if they do not enjoy sex (whatever acts their male partner wishes to perform or have performed on him) that it's a)her fault for being too up tight or b) that's just how things are for women, especially if they aren't very experienced, are in peri-menopause or are post menopausal or premenstrual or ovulating or menstruating or during pregnancy or after pregnancy or during breastfeeding or....whatever. Not his problem.

Yes. That is true, but it is not the reason why ED has many more clinical trials, and it is primarily women who socialize women to feel and think this way.

Read almost any magazine directed at a female audience and there will be multiple articles about how she can please her man. In and out of bed. Not so many about how she can enhance her sex life and virtually none about how HE can enhance her sex life.

I think that there is no longer a print edition of Playboy(?) but back in the day when I used to read it during babysitting gigs after the kids were asleep, there were plenty of articles about how women could help men enjoy sex, what women could do and how much women liked whatever it was that a man was doing. Very little about actually pleasing a woman.

Absolutely nothing in any of the other male oriented magazines I used to read (Field and Stream, etc.) even acknowledged that women exist. Or exist beyond preparing whatever mean the man brought home for his dinner.

That is and easily testable theory. If true, than a google search for "please your man" should have many more hits than "please your woman". Guess what? The truth is the exact opposite. There are 5 times as many hits for "please your woman" (almost half a billion). And no, they are not focused on about having a bigger penis through ED drugs or other means. In fact none of the hits on the first page mention that.

This coheres with the results of a massive and comprehensive analysis of internet porn that systematically assessed numerous features of online pornography. The #1 predictor of how popular a piece of porn was the level of sexual gratification the females in the video displayed, and how realistic the displays appear also mattered.
IOW, female pleasure during sex is a major part of sexual discourse in the culture, something that males are highly interested in both conceptually and in relation to their own sexual arousal.

Wow. Just wow.

I know, right? Actually seeing what a rational argument looks like can be startling for a rabid dogmatist.

Oh, I do agree that there is a distinct difference in rationality and validity of our arguments. We disagree about which of us is making a rational argument.

For instance, I am sure you are aware but perhaps forgot that Google searches are tailored to your search history. For instance, if you and I each googled Chinese Restaurants, we’d get vastly different and vastly different numbers of sites in our search results. For one thing.

Here is a free hint if anyone is truly interested in how to please his or her sex partner:

1. Ask her/him
2. Listen to the answer
3. Pay attention to response, especially non-verbal response
4. Leave your ego out of it
5. Google isn’t the best source of info about what turns your girlfriend on.

 

[Emily Lake]

This coheres with the results of a massive and comprehensive analysis of internet porn that systematically assessed numerous features of online pornography. The #1 predictor of how popular a piece of porn was the level of sexual gratification the females in the video displayed, and how realistic the displays appear also mattered.
IOW, female pleasure during sex is a major part of sexual discourse in the culture, something that males are highly interested in both conceptually and in relation to their own sexual arousal.

I don't think you understand the psychology of porn.

The female in porn looking like she's totally enjoying the vicious and aggressive pounding from the male partner isn't a reflection of men's sincere desire to please their partner and bring her to orgasm. It's a reflection of men's desire to dominate their partner and make the woman feel helpless to control herself around him.

Because seriously - how many of those top rated porn videos of the woman enjoying herself involve digital stimulation, lots of foreplay, and cunnilingus... as opposed to a right proper pounding at a rapid pace?

 

[TSwizzle]

I don't think you understand the psychology of porn.

The female in porn looking like she's totally enjoying the vicious and aggressive pounding from the male partner isn't a reflection of men's sincere desire to please their partner and bring her to orgasm. It's a reflection of men's desire to dominate their partner and make the woman feel helpless to control herself around him.

Because seriously - how many of those top rated porn videos of the woman enjoying herself involve digital stimulation, lots of foreplay, and cunnilingus... as opposed to a right proper pounding at a rapid pace?

Indeed, but isn't that what the OP is about, "a discussion of the "biology" of sex by gender" ? That men have different erm, desires to women when it comes to sex.

 

[ronburgundy]

But the OP, Toni, and others are making the false dichotomy that anything that increases male sexual satisfaction has nothing to do with female satisfaction. The reality is that ED drugs have significant positive impact on female sexual pleasure too. Many EDs are prescribed to treat the problem that a couple cannot have intercourse with each other. No, not in every instance but enough that it shatters the bogus argument in the OP article that commercial appeal of ED drugs reflect nothing other than an obsession with male sexual gratification.

- - - Updated - - -

Your not getting the basic scientific and economic facts that easily explain why ED treatments have more clinical trials. I already explained them, but here is another (likely futile) attempt at getting you to think beyond your dogma.
Drug companies research medical problems they can profit off of, which requires a new drug they can patent. ED is a specific biological problem that, no matter its underlying cause, can usually be treated with a pill. That is big profit potential.

Dyspareunia and other forms of pain related to intercourse is not specific problem with a specific diagnosis, but a collection of many different possible issues with completely different types of treatments, with very few that involve a prescription drug developed for Dyspareunia itself. Thus low profit potential or need to test the safety of the drug (aka clinical trials). These realities alone would mean more trials for ED drugs, even in a world with zero sexism and with equal regard for female sexual pleasure. That doesn't mean such sexism doesn't exist, just that it has little to do with the greater prevalence of ED research.



And that has little to do with the sexism of the researchers or companies that make the products. They are trying to make profit, not send ideological messages. It is due to what products people will buy. Do you seriously think that companies would not try to take more of men's $ by selling them "beauty" products? Of course they would and try to, but it fails because men are not interested in using those products.

Why? Well for one, men do not pressure other men into buying such products, but women constantly pressure each other to do so. Part of that is due to what seems to matter in mate attraction and sex differences in sexual arousal, which a good deal of research shows is far more tied to visual cues for males than females. And contrary to your dogma, this is not simply a product of culture, but of basic biology. Numerous experiments show that manipulated testosterone levels (in both men and women) directly cause greater response to visual sexual stimuli. Those responses are not only to reported subjective arousal, but even to levels of activation in the occipital lobe that receives the basic visual information, plus there are actually sex hormone receptors in the eye cornea itself, which means sex hormones can impact information is even getting to the brain.



Using that to explain the prevalence of ED research is myopic ideological blather. Millions of women are massively harmed by erectile dysfunction. It directly prevents them from having intercourse with their male partner. Believe it not, there are women who like men and want to have sex with them. And when ED occurs, it is easily known to both parties. Combined with the fact that it directly prevents both of them from having intercourse at all, this means that both parties will be motivated to seek a medical treatment for it. This is unlike dyspareunia which is typically not sever enough to prevent the woman from having or even wanting intercourse, which means that many such women would be less motivated to find a treatment for it than they would to find a treatment for their partner's ED. And the male's motivation to find a treatment for their female partner's pain often does not come into play because they male has no direct knowledge of the problem or its severity (unlike ED), unless the woman tells him, which they often do not.



Exactly! Now if you'd just bother to apply the slightest reasoning to these facts, you might realize that these facts are part of why there is less clinical trials for female pain during intercourse. If you need help, I already explained it twice.

For the most part, women are conditioned to believe that if they do not enjoy sex (whatever acts their male partner wishes to perform or have performed on him) that it's a)her fault for being too up tight or b) that's just how things are for women, especially if they aren't very experienced, are in peri-menopause or are post menopausal or premenstrual or ovulating or menstruating or during pregnancy or after pregnancy or during breastfeeding or....whatever. Not his problem.

Yes. That is true, but it is not the reason why ED has many more clinical trials, and it is primarily women who socialize women to feel and think this way.

Read almost any magazine directed at a female audience and there will be multiple articles about how she can please her man. In and out of bed. Not so many about how she can enhance her sex life and virtually none about how HE can enhance her sex life.

I think that there is no longer a print edition of Playboy(?) but back in the day when I used to read it during babysitting gigs after the kids were asleep, there were plenty of articles about how women could help men enjoy sex, what women could do and how much women liked whatever it was that a man was doing. Very little about actually pleasing a woman.

Absolutely nothing in any of the other male oriented magazines I used to read (Field and Stream, etc.) even acknowledged that women exist. Or exist beyond preparing whatever mean the man brought home for his dinner.

That is and easily testable theory. If true, than a google search for "please your man" should have many more hits than "please your woman". Guess what? The truth is the exact opposite. There are 5 times as many hits for "please your woman" (almost half a billion). And no, they are not focused on about having a bigger penis through ED drugs or other means. In fact none of the hits on the first page mention that.

This coheres with the results of a massive and comprehensive analysis of internet porn that systematically assessed numerous features of online pornography. The #1 predictor of how popular a piece of porn was the level of sexual gratification the females in the video displayed, and how realistic the displays appear also mattered.
IOW, female pleasure during sex is a major part of sexual discourse in the culture, something that males are highly interested in both conceptually and in relation to their own sexual arousal.

Wow. Just wow.

I know, right? Actually seeing what a rational argument looks like can be startling for a rabid dogmatist.

Oh, I do agree that there is a distinct difference in rationality and validity of our arguments. We disagree about which of us is making a rational argument.

To you it means making ideological assertions that ignore all relevant medical and economic facts.

For instance, I am sure you are aware but perhaps forgot that Google searches are tailored to your search history. For instance, if you and I each googled Chinese Restaurants, we’d get vastly different and vastly different numbers of sites in our search results. For one thing.

Nonsense. I just did the same search on my wife's computer, my cell phone, and a browser I never used and has zero search history.
They all return hundreds of millions of hits for "please your woman". And when you use variable phrases like "please your wife" versus "please your husband", or "satisfy" instead of "pleasure" you get similar results with as many or more hits for ways to increase female pleasure than male pleasure.

The exact ratio isn't even relevant, what matters is you are absolutely wrong that pop-culture articles have "very little" or "absolutely nothing" about what men can do to please their female sexual partners.

Here is a free hint if anyone is truly interested in how to please his or her sex partner:

1. Ask her/him
2. Listen to the answer
3. Pay attention to response, especially non-verbal response
4. Leave your ego out of it
5. Google isn’t the best source of info about what turns your girlfriend on.

Not only does Google give some the same advice you just did, but it isn't even relevant to the discussion whether that it is the best advice. The advice mags give woman about men is also often bullshit, yet you brought it up as though it proves that only women care about the pleasure of their sexual partner.

You referred to pop mags and playboy as sources of info about how women could please their man and claimed that no such information is offered on how men could please their women. No matter the quality of advice on google, it proves you definitively wrong. OF course, you know that the quality of the advice is irrelevant to the point being made, but intellectually dishonest red-herrings are the favorite device of those with no capacity for reasoned argument.

And that is only the minor and least important part of the discussion dealing with your claim about pop-culture discourse. You conveniently ignored the fact that I exposed your absurd assumption (shared by the author of the OP article) that ED drugs have nothing to do with female pleasure, or that greater ED research is inherent to the basic medical facts related to it and how they allow for highly profitable drugs that need clinical trials.

 

[J842P]

Because seriously - how many of those top rated porn videos of the woman enjoying herself involve digital stimulation, lots of foreplay, and cunnilingus... as opposed to a right proper pounding at a rapid pace?

Seriously? Tons of it. There's entire genres of porn called "face sitting". It's not even that niche.

 

[rousseau]

Per Sullivan's request, I'm talking about biology. I'm speaking, specifically, about the physical sensations most women are socialized to ignore in their pursuit of sexual pleasure.

The bolded is my main gripe with the article. The article hinges on the point that women are 'socialized' to ignore their pain, but where's the evidence? Where's the data? Besides a number of nice sound-bytes I don't see anything substantive in the article to actually back up this point. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the author, but if you're going to make a claim like that, show me why it's true rather than just making emotional appeals. If you're making claims that you can't verify as true, then you're not adding to the conversation.

On the other hand, it's easy to look past this and recognise that the process of socialisation is a real thing, and that when it comes to gender issues it's really the only tool we have, so in that sense I'm on board with the author's message. As someone with a science background, though, I do believe that this socialisation is fighting millions of years of evolution. It's important, but it's an up-hill battle.

[/fin]

 

[Toni]

But the OP, Toni, and others are making the false dichotomy that anything that increases male sexual satisfaction has nothing to do with female satisfaction. The reality is that ED drugs have significant positive impact on female sexual pleasure too. Many EDs are prescribed to treat the problem that a couple cannot have intercourse with each other. No, not in every instance but enough that it shatters the bogus argument in the OP article that commercial appeal of ED drugs reflect nothing other than an obsession with male sexual gratification.

- - - Updated - - -

Your not getting the basic scientific and economic facts that easily explain why ED treatments have more clinical trials. I already explained them, but here is another (likely futile) attempt at getting you to think beyond your dogma.
Drug companies research medical problems they can profit off of, which requires a new drug they can patent. ED is a specific biological problem that, no matter its underlying cause, can usually be treated with a pill. That is big profit potential.

Dyspareunia and other forms of pain related to intercourse is not specific problem with a specific diagnosis, but a collection of many different possible issues with completely different types of treatments, with very few that involve a prescription drug developed for Dyspareunia itself. Thus low profit potential or need to test the safety of the drug (aka clinical trials). These realities alone would mean more trials for ED drugs, even in a world with zero sexism and with equal regard for female sexual pleasure. That doesn't mean such sexism doesn't exist, just that it has little to do with the greater prevalence of ED research.



And that has little to do with the sexism of the researchers or companies that make the products. They are trying to make profit, not send ideological messages. It is due to what products people will buy. Do you seriously think that companies would not try to take more of men's $ by selling them "beauty" products? Of course they would and try to, but it fails because men are not interested in using those products.

Why? Well for one, men do not pressure other men into buying such products, but women constantly pressure each other to do so. Part of that is due to what seems to matter in mate attraction and sex differences in sexual arousal, which a good deal of research shows is far more tied to visual cues for males than females. And contrary to your dogma, this is not simply a product of culture, but of basic biology. Numerous experiments show that manipulated testosterone levels (in both men and women) directly cause greater response to visual sexual stimuli. Those responses are not only to reported subjective arousal, but even to levels of activation in the occipital lobe that receives the basic visual information, plus there are actually sex hormone receptors in the eye cornea itself, which means sex hormones can impact information is even getting to the brain.



Using that to explain the prevalence of ED research is myopic ideological blather. Millions of women are massively harmed by erectile dysfunction. It directly prevents them from having intercourse with their male partner. Believe it not, there are women who like men and want to have sex with them. And when ED occurs, it is easily known to both parties. Combined with the fact that it directly prevents both of them from having intercourse at all, this means that both parties will be motivated to seek a medical treatment for it. This is unlike dyspareunia which is typically not sever enough to prevent the woman from having or even wanting intercourse, which means that many such women would be less motivated to find a treatment for it than they would to find a treatment for their partner's ED. And the male's motivation to find a treatment for their female partner's pain often does not come into play because they male has no direct knowledge of the problem or its severity (unlike ED), unless the woman tells him, which they often do not.



Exactly! Now if you'd just bother to apply the slightest reasoning to these facts, you might realize that these facts are part of why there is less clinical trials for female pain during intercourse. If you need help, I already explained it twice.

For the most part, women are conditioned to believe that if they do not enjoy sex (whatever acts their male partner wishes to perform or have performed on him) that it's a)her fault for being too up tight or b) that's just how things are for women, especially if they aren't very experienced, are in peri-menopause or are post menopausal or premenstrual or ovulating or menstruating or during pregnancy or after pregnancy or during breastfeeding or....whatever. Not his problem.

Yes. That is true, but it is not the reason why ED has many more clinical trials, and it is primarily women who socialize women to feel and think this way.

Read almost any magazine directed at a female audience and there will be multiple articles about how she can please her man. In and out of bed. Not so many about how she can enhance her sex life and virtually none about how HE can enhance her sex life.

I think that there is no longer a print edition of Playboy(?) but back in the day when I used to read it during babysitting gigs after the kids were asleep, there were plenty of articles about how women could help men enjoy sex, what women could do and how much women liked whatever it was that a man was doing. Very little about actually pleasing a woman.

Absolutely nothing in any of the other male oriented magazines I used to read (Field and Stream, etc.) even acknowledged that women exist. Or exist beyond preparing whatever mean the man brought home for his dinner.

That is and easily testable theory. If true, than a google search for "please your man" should have many more hits than "please your woman". Guess what? The truth is the exact opposite. There are 5 times as many hits for "please your woman" (almost half a billion). And no, they are not focused on about having a bigger penis through ED drugs or other means. In fact none of the hits on the first page mention that.

This coheres with the results of a massive and comprehensive analysis of internet porn that systematically assessed numerous features of online pornography. The #1 predictor of how popular a piece of porn was the level of sexual gratification the females in the video displayed, and how realistic the displays appear also mattered.
IOW, female pleasure during sex is a major part of sexual discourse in the culture, something that males are highly interested in both conceptually and in relation to their own sexual arousal.

Wow. Just wow.

I know, right? Actually seeing what a rational argument looks like can be startling for a rabid dogmatist.

Oh, I do agree that there is a distinct difference in rationality and validity of our arguments. We disagree about which of us is making a rational argument.

To you it means making ideological assertions that ignore all relevant medical and economic facts.

For instance, I am sure you are aware but perhaps forgot that Google searches are tailored to your search history. For instance, if you and I each googled Chinese Restaurants, we’d get vastly different and vastly different numbers of sites in our search results. For one thing.

Nonsense. I just did the same search on my wife's computer, my cell phone, and a browser I never used and has zero search history.
They all return hundreds of millions of hits for "please your woman". And when you use variable phrases like "please your wife" versus "please your husband", or "satisfy" instead of "pleasure" you get similar results with as many or more hits for ways to increase female pleasure than male pleasure.

The exact ratio isn't even relevant, what matters is you are absolutely wrong that pop-culture articles have "very little" or "absolutely nothing" about what men can do to please their female sexual partners.

Here is a free hint if anyone is truly interested in how to please his or her sex partner:

1. Ask her/him
2. Listen to the answer
3. Pay attention to response, especially non-verbal response
4. Leave your ego out of it
5. Google isn’t the best source of info about what turns your girlfriend on.

Not only does Google give some the same advice you just did, but it isn't even relevant to the discussion whether that it is the best advice. The advice mags give woman about men is also often bullshit, yet you brought it up as though it proves that only women care about the pleasure of their sexual partner.

You referred to pop mags and playboy as sources of info about how women could please their man and claimed that no such information is offered on how men could please their women. No matter the quality of advice on google, it proves you definitively wrong. OF course, you know that the quality of the advice is irrelevant to the point being made, but intellectually dishonest red-herrings are the favorite device of those with no capacity for reasoned argument.

And that is only the minor and least important part of the discussion dealing with your claim about pop-culture discourse. You conveniently ignored the fact that I exposed your absurd assumption (shared by the author of the OP article) that ED drugs have nothing to do with female pleasure, or that greater ED research is inherent to the basic medical facts related to it and how they allow for highly profitable drugs that need clinical trials.

We’re having two different conversations here. I specifically cited pop magazine articles as opposed to online pieces.

If you are unaware or unwilling to acknowledge that there is strong gender bias in medical research and in marketing, therein lies a big problem in your part of this discussion. Both are extremely well documented.

Hundreds of millions of results???? OK. Sure.

If your belief is that women require a penis to experience sexual pleasure or orgasm, you are quite mistaken. If you believe that all female partners are eager for their male partners to use ED drugs, you are sadly mistaken. Quite a few women would be happy to dispense with intercourse altogether.

 

[TSwizzle]

I don't subscribe to male orientated magazines like Guns and Ammo or Golf etc but I do checkout "Men's Health" from time to time. If you check out the "Sex" section, the first three articles are about how to give a woman orgasms, one titled "7 ways to give her an orgasm she will never forget".

 

[ronburgundy]

This coheres with the results of a massive and comprehensive analysis of internet porn that systematically assessed numerous features of online pornography. The #1 predictor of how popular a piece of porn was the level of sexual gratification the females in the video displayed, and how realistic the displays appear also mattered.
IOW, female pleasure during sex is a major part of sexual discourse in the culture, something that males are highly interested in both conceptually and in relation to their own sexual arousal.

I don't think you understand the psychology of porn.

The female in porn looking like she's totally enjoying the vicious and aggressive pounding from the male partner isn't a reflection of men's sincere desire to please their partner and bring her to orgasm. It's a reflection of men's desire to dominate their partner and make the woman feel helpless to control herself around him.

Because seriously - how many of those top rated porn videos of the woman enjoying herself involve digital stimulation, lots of foreplay, and cunnilingus... as opposed to a right proper pounding at a rapid pace?

The research measured all those variables, and women displaying pleasure was the most powerful predictor above, beyond and independent of those other factors, including images of woman having orgasms while masturbating. How many women watch porn of men masturbating?
Well, again to internet marketplace gives us good relevant info. Go to one of the biggest porn sites where anyone can upload and has both pro and amateur videos. A search on Pornhub of "man masturbating" gives you 775 videos but only 1 or 2 are actually of a man masturbating. Almost all are of a woman masturbating in front of a man or a women giving a man a handjob. A search of "woman masturbating" gives you 330,000 video almost all being just a woman alone masturbating.

To any reasonable person that would count as evidence that men actually derive more satisfaction in female sexual pleasure in itself than woman do from male satisfaction. But I have no doubt you can mash together some pseudo-feminist nonsense that somehow makes men the bad guys for enjoying female masturbation porn.

BTW, as for the aggressive woman being dominated type of porn, woman viewers are also partly responsible for that. While men view porn notably more often, stats collected by major porn sites show that female viewers are actually twice as likely as male viewers to search for "gangbang", "threesome", "bondage", "extreme hardcore", "rough sex" and "double penetration". (to reiterate, those are frequencies relative to the number of total searches by each gender, not raw frequencies).

 

[ronburgundy]

We’re having two different conversations here. I specifically cited pop magazine articles as opposed to online pieces.

No, we were both discussing your hypothesis that the current culture has no regard for female pleasure, but we each presented different types of evidence. You cited decades old porn magazines and mags directed at a subset of women that men don't read at all. IOW, largely irrelevant, non-representative information. In contrast, I referred to current information sources via a medium used by almost all men and women in our culture to seek all types of information. My evidence gave quantitative stats that reflect the interest in this information within the general culture. Thus, it is far more valid evidence related to your hypothesis.

f you are unaware or unwilling to acknowledge that there is strong gender bias in medical research and in marketing, therein lies a big problem in your part of this discussion. Both are extremely well documented.

Whether there are generally some biases in medicine and marketing is irrelevant to what the cause is of ED research being more prevalent than research about female pain during intercourse (the entire point of my first post from which this whole exchange stems).
The fact that people sometimes die of cancer doesn't mean that every dead person you find died of cancer.

Plus, what is not at all well documented is your assumption that gender differences in medical research and marketing stem from sexist disregard for women in general and their sexual pleasure in particular. It is your particular dogmatic assumption about the underlying causes that is in question. And in this instance, that assumption is refuted by a reasoned analysis of the relevant facts which predict more ED research even in an ideal world such sexism was non-existent.

If your belief is that women require a penis to experience sexual pleasure or orgasm, you are quite mistaken. If you believe that all female partners are eager for their male partners to use ED drugs, you are sadly mistaken. Quite a few women would be happy to dispense with intercourse altogether.

Nothing I said implies that women require a penis to experience sexual pleasure. Rather what you said assumes that no women derive sexual pleasure via intercourse with their male partner. Only such an absurd assumption supports your claim that the prevalence of ED research is simply due to society only caring about male sexual pleasure. Recognizing that assumption is clearly false would make it obvious why your entire response to my original post is invalid, as is the argument in the OP I was responding to.

 

[Toni]

No, we were both discussing your hypothesis that the current culture has no regard for female pleasure, but we each presented different types of evidence.

I don't think you understand what the word 'hypothesis' means or what I was suggesting.

You cited decades old porn magazines and mags directed at a subset of women that men don't read at all. IOW, largely irrelevant, non-representative information. In contrast, I referred to current information sources via a medium used by almost all men and women in our culture to seek all types of information. My evidence gave quantitative stats that reflect the interest in this information within the general culture. Thus, it is far more valid evidence related to your hypothesis.

Did you bother to actually evaluate even a tiny portion of the 'hundreds of millions' of responses to your google searches? I mean, seriously. I thought you were serious here.

As far as I can tell, Playboy was never directed towards a female readership. Did you notice the magazine featured in the link in the OP? Did you know that it still appears in newsstands right at this very minute?

You have zero evidence. The number of hits a google search brings (hundreds of millions?? Lolololololol) is indicative of exactly not a damn thing, except in this case, perhaps the prevalence of internet porn. I mean seriously, did you even attempt to filter out actual porn? Did you make any attempt at all to number only unique search results? Seriously. I thought you were some kind of grad student. This is something that wouldn't even be taken seriously in a freshman English class.

Whether there are generally some biases in medicine and marketing is irrelevant to what the cause is of ED research being more prevalent than research about female pain during intercourse (the entire point of my first post from which this whole exchange stems).

In a nutshell, you are absolutely wrong.

Plus, what is not at all well documented is your assumption that gender differences in medical research and marketing stem from sexist disregard for women in general and their sexual pleasure in particular. It is your particular dogmatic assumption about the underlying causes that is in question. And in this instance, that assumption is refuted by a reasoned analysis of the relevant facts which predict more ED research even in an ideal world such sexism was non-existent.

The bias against women in terms of medical research is well documented. The bias for white males is well documented. I have no idea what 'reasoned analysis' you think was presented, but you are mistaken entirely.

Nothing I said implies that women require a penis to experience sexual pleasure. Rather what you said assumes that no women derive sexual pleasure via intercourse with their male partner. Only such an absurd assumption supports your claim that the prevalence of ED research is simply due to society only caring about male sexual pleasure. Recognizing that assumption is clearly false would make it obvious why your entire response to my original post is invalid, as is the argument in the OP I was responding to.

I made no assumption that no women derive sexual pleasure via intercourse with their male partner. If you inferred such, that says a great deal more about your powers of reason than mine.

 

[Bronzeage]

I don't subscribe to male orientated magazines like Guns and Ammo or Golf etc but I do checkout "Men's Health" from time to time. If you check out the "Sex" section, the first three articles are about how to give a woman orgasms, one titled "7 ways to give her an orgasm she will never forget".

You'll find much the same advice in Guns and Ammo, or Golf.

Cosmopolitan, a magazine marketed to young working women, always contains a article title "22 sex tricks he wishes you knew." Since 1975, Cosmo has published a total 11,352 sex trick he wishes you knew, and there are many more to come. This is strange, because there are actually only seven.

 

[Toni]

I don't subscribe to male orientated magazines like Guns and Ammo or Golf etc but I do checkout "Men's Health" from time to time. If you check out the "Sex" section, the first three articles are about how to give a woman orgasms, one titled "7 ways to give her an orgasm she will never forget".

You'll find much the same advice in Guns and Ammo, or Golf.

Cosmopolitan, a magazine marketed to young working women, always contains a article title "22 sex tricks he wishes you knew." Since 1975, Cosmo has published a total 11,352 sex trick he wishes you knew, and there are many more to come. This is strange, because there are actually only seven.

Since before 1975. Don’t ask me how I know.

 

[ruby sparks]

I don't subscribe to male orientated magazines like Guns and Ammo or Golf etc but I do checkout "Men's Health" from time to time. If you check out the "Sex" section, the first three articles are about how to give a woman orgasms, one titled "7 ways to give her an orgasm she will never forget".

You'll find much the same advice in Guns and Ammo, or Golf.

Cosmopolitan, a magazine marketed to young working women, always contains a article title "22 sex tricks he wishes you knew." Since 1975, Cosmo has published a total 11,352 sex trick he wishes you knew, and there are many more to come. This is strange, because there are actually only seven.

Since before 1975. Don’t ask me how I know.

Ok so it seems 'womens' magazines contain articles on how to please your man and 'mens' magazines contain articles on how to please your woman (and most straight men apparently favour watching porn where the woman reaches or appears to reach 7th heaven) and yet somehow.......it's all not working out as it should.

Something needs to be sorted.

 

[Bronzeage]

Since before 1975. Don’t ask me how I know.

Ok so it seems 'womens' magazines contain articles on how to please your man and 'mens' magazines contain articles on how to please your woman (and most straight men apparently favour watching porn where the woman reaches or appears to reach 7th heaven) and yet somehow.......it's all not working out as it should.

Something needs to be sorted.

Our age of sexual enlightenment started about 100 years ago, with the appearance of the "marriage manual." Until around 1919, it was actually illegal to send any kind of sexual or birth control information through the US mail. The State and Federal laws on such things were unevenly enforced. Once they began to crumble, all sexual information was carefully framed as a way to promote a happy and healthy marriage.

The main point of these manuals was to insure a woman's sexual pleasure, in order to retain her interest in having sex. This was the origin of the idea of the "simultaneous orgasm." This was preached as the absolute pinnacle of sexual pleasure for both partners. Since a man's orgasm was seen to be an irresistible force of nature, which couldn't be delayed once set in motion, foreplay was invented. Foreplay was supposed to bring the woman up to speed, so both finished at the same time. Even though Simultaneous Orgasm was the standard teaching well into the 1960's, in practice, it leads to poor results and frustration, as if anybody needs something else to worry about, while having sex.

Around that time, a new idea appeared. This was the novel concept that a man was in control of his orgasm and it could be delayed as long(within reason) as he desired. For all the sins of Hugh Hefner, we can thank Playboy magazine for spreading this idea. It was as if no one had ever thought of this before, give or take a few thousand years. Suddenly, it was possible for a woman to have not just one orgasm, but maybe more. Now, instead of simultaneous orgasms, it was her turn/his turn, with her having a few more turns than him, but no one was complaining.

When this was combined with the availability of the birth control pill, things were looking pretty good, at least into the 70's. The next development was not a good one for sexuality. Up to this point, any person's early sexual education was generally based on hearsay and experimentation. This worked well enough, until they could find reliable sources of information, such as Playboy and Cosmo. Then, came the VHS tape. Now, a young man or young woman could see someone having sex before it was a possibility for themselves. This was not good. Just as the simultaneous orgasm was a path to frustration, using porn sex as a teaching aid, led to great frustration. This only got worse when VHS gave way to the internet. A professionally produced VHS tape guaranteed that the content would have enough general appeal to at least pay for the tape. That restriction does not apply to internet porn.

We now have a generation which possibly learned everything they know about sex from 3 minute video clips. The future looks bleak.

 

[ruby sparks]

Thanks Brozeage. That was an interesting read and seemed to contain several plausible and accurate points and was a neat synopsis.

I don't think I ever read all the way through "The Joy of Sex" (1st published in 1972 when I was 12) but it appeared to me to be both extremely popular and very gender egalitarian. There are ways in which I think of the 1970's as halcyon days for sex and gender issues, though that is probably me just wearing rose coloured spectacles. But I think that looking back it was a decade of change and opportunity (as were the 60's). In reality, gender issues had a long way to go then. Certain 'green shoots' opportunities were not, it seems to me, taken, and thus became missed opportunities.

My view now, as I said before, is that in some ways there has been progress since, and in some ways things have got worse, so I tend to think of things today as just a different sort of mixed picture than it was then.

I am sometimes minded to put at least some of the slippage down to what I am going to call 'problems with Feminism' (or at least how it was perceived) which arguably went too radical at that time. It's not as popular as it used to be, as far as I am aware (and I stand to be corrected on that) at least in terms of numbers of formal subscribers, but it could have become even more popular than it was then, and it could have drawn many more men (and women) on board, but I think it (perhaps somewhat undeservedly) gained a bad reputation, specifically in terms of being gender divisive or appearing to be anti-men, though of course the extent of this may have been exaggerated in the ears and minds of the male audience, just as it often is today, for a variety of reasons. And stressing that it wasn't individual men that were the problem, but men as a general, privileged group, or even that patriarchy was the problem, didn't help much, because there were still claims by prominent Feminists that all marriage was rape and suchlike.

What I have just said may sound controversial or unwelcome to some self-identifying feminists today. I get that. It probably needs to be elaborated on. For instance, I simultaneously believe that Feminism had to become more radical, because being nicey nicey was not going to work either, and still wouldn't today. Some men just won't buy into gender egalitarianism unless they're challenged or coerced. Others are more willing but are put off if there's too much coercion, criticism, or a lack of willingness to take into account and understand mens' valid issues (of which there are and historically have been many) as part of the package. It's a delicate problem. How much stick and how much carrot works best? How much Is either 'side' (unfortunate word but there you go) prepared to compromise and accommodate the other?

I am also on record as having said that imo the main obstacle to progress has been (and I'm generalising here) men's reluctances to fully embrace change, and that I still think it is mostly up to men to do something about this, so my feelings about the shortcomings of Feminism (with a capital F) need to be seen in this light.

Finally, I don't share your apparent pessimism about the future. Maybe be I'm just being falsely optimistic, but I think things are more likely to improve from here forward.

 

[ronburgundy]

Did you bother to actually evaluate even a tiny portion of the 'hundreds of millions' of responses to your google searches? I mean, seriously. I thought you were serious here.

Yes, I looked at the first several pages full of links, and in direct refutation of you faith-based assertion, not a single one was pornography. They were all articles about what men can do to give females more sexual pleasure, including things like "communication", "empathy", "patience", and "cunnilingus". They were not only of similar content to the types of women's mag articles you anecdotally offered as evidence, but several were from some of the most widely read periodical and mags in the US including Cosmo, Men's Health, Men's fitness, and the NY Post.

I mean seriously, did you even attempt to filter out actual porn?

Again, not a single porn link in any of the first several pages or when jumped to the 10, 20, and 30th page of links. Links continued to include sources like HuffPo and Psychology Today.

Did you make any attempt at all to number only unique search results?

None of the hundreds of links on the pages I looked at were duplicates, and whether some hits are duplicates or porn doesn't matter anyway because that applies equally to searches for both pleasing woman and pleasing men. All that matters for testing your baseless claim is using the same sampling method for both search terms, because it is the relative number of observations for both that matter not the absolute number. Plus, even if 95% were duplicates, it would still amount sample of unique observations that was millions of times larger than your personal anecdotes about mags you've seen.

Your proven ignorance of basic research methods make it unsurprising that you'd offer up such an irrelevant red herrings.

Seriously. I thought you were some kind of grad student.

My academic credentials related to social-science research would make you look like you failed out of pre-school.

This is something that wouldn't even be taken seriously in a freshman English class.

What grotesque hypocrisy. This is an informal discussion board. You made the claim that current culture constantly focuses on how women should please men but never on how men could better please women. Your only evidence you offered was personal anecdotes about a couple of magazines you've seen years ago. Making not effort to examine the quality of this info, whether the articles were unique, but suddenly think these are critical issues when talking about google links. While imperfect, my sampling method is infinitely superior to yours in every way and offers more than enough evidence to show that your claim is false. It is a far more random sample of what is available to people, far more representative of the information that most people today are actually exposed to, a far larger sample, and uses the same method to sample both types of information that are central to your claim (info about pleasing men versus pleasing women).

Whether there are generally some biases in medicine and marketing is irrelevant to what the cause is of ED research being more prevalent than research about female pain during intercourse (the entire point of my first post from which this whole exchange stems).

In a nutshell, you are absolutely wrong.

No, in a nutshell, this like virtually all your arguments is a fallacious red herring having no relevance to the discussion. Since you clearly have no concept what logical relevance means, it means that nothing you said can possibly show I am wrong because it has no implications for what I said. This is predictable since you are not capable of offering any counter-argument, so instead you are offering arguments against irrelevant strawmen and hoping no one notices the difference.

Plus, what is not at all well documented is your assumption that gender differences in medical research and marketing stem from sexist disregard for women in general and their sexual pleasure in particular. It is your particular dogmatic assumption about the underlying causes that is in question. And in this instance, that assumption is refuted by a reasoned analysis of the relevant facts which predict more ED research even in an ideal world such sexism was non-existent.

The bias against women in terms of medical research is well documented. The bias for white males is well documented. I have no idea what 'reasoned analysis' you think was presented, but you are mistaken entirely.

You have no idea what a reasoned analysis even refers to. You have deliberately evaded the two most central facts that directly refute your assumption, which are that ED drugs have higher profitability for drug companies and that profitability is the primary factor in how much attention the medical industry gives to various ailments. Those fact alone prove you are wrong, and you haven't even attempted to refute them, you've just ignored them and offered fallacious red herrings about secondary issues.

Nothing I said implies that women require a penis to experience sexual pleasure. Rather what you said assumes that no women derive sexual pleasure via intercourse with their male partner. Only such an absurd assumption supports your claim that the prevalence of ED research is simply due to society only caring about male sexual pleasure. Recognizing that assumption is clearly false would make it obvious why your entire response to my original post is invalid, as is the argument in the OP I was responding to.

I made no assumption that no women derive sexual pleasure via intercourse with their male partner. If you inferred such, that says a great deal more about your powers of reason than mine.

Your entire response to me was based on such an assumption. The fact that you have no idea what assumptions your dogmatic claims are making is unsurprising and totally on you. You agreed with the OP article that the prevalence of ED clinical trials is simply due to a cultural bias that only cares about male sexual pleasure. That claim requires assuming that failed intercourse has no negative impact on women,and thus ED drugs that allow otherwise failed intercourse has no positive impact on women.