Topics you never hear at Church

[MikeWaters]

SIEQ, do you think males value "looks" more than females do, when it comes to choosing a mate?

I would argue yes.

I think what you are getting at is that this may be more culturally determined than biologically determined.

Or maybe you argue no on the first question.

[jay santos]

Originally Posted by Sleeping in EQ

#3 is not as true as many people want it to be. It fits nicely into Enlightenment biases, though. Women's pupils dialate to the same degree as men's do when they are presented with sexually attractive objects. Men and women process visual stimuli in different ways, but both have a strong visual response to sexual stimuli.

Ideas about visuality and masculinity are rooted in the assumption that males are more reasoned and rational, that they are, to use the enlightenment terms, more empirical and objective. This bias has been used to keep women from holding public power (the Victorians really took this to the extreme--Victorian women came down with the "vapors.") and to define activities associated with the feminine as frivolous, sensuous, and irrational. To the degree that this is true it is in large part because we have culturally made it so. We have naturalized ideology and treated it as objective fact.

Culturally speaking, this comes to a boil with a simple fact: the male gaze has a cultural acceptance that the female gaze does not. This derives from the fact that our culture is very much patriarchal and is the rationale behind such fascinating phenomena as both men's pornographic magazines and women's fashion magazines having hyper-sexualized women on their covers. Women's sexuality is being constructed on masculine terms. These covers tell men what to like and women to be what men like. The rise of "Men's Health" culture may reflect that women's gaze might be being rehabilitated. The jury is still out on this.

Another result of our patriarchal culture is that female sexuality is constructed with much greater specificity than is male sexuality. Sure, there are "hunky" guys, but women's expectations of male attractiveness have many exceptions and have greater variation. Female sexuality, on the other hand, is obsessively precise, is in some measure infantilizing (women are encouraged to shave legs and arm pits, to be pre-pubescently thin, are encouraged to look youthful, and should be "moist"--an obsession that has its roots in fertility and menstruation). So many women have come to construct their own femininity on masculine terms--welcome to hegemony. It should be no surprise, then, that both women and men have come to think of women as less visual. Our culture discourages women from exploring their visuality. It punishes them for doing so.

Study after study has demonstrated that human sexual behavior has great commonality with the sexual behavior of other primates. Female primates will stick out their chests and posteriors to attract mates. It is not a coincidence that this is the same posture that occurs when a woman wears high heels. Similarly, primate males will flex their arms and chests, and will display the food they have gathered to attract females. One need spend only about two minutes in a singles bar to see men doing this with their postures and wallets. These behaviors are in some sense inherited. Problems arise when the behaviors of one sex are used culturally to trivialize that sex, and when behaviors of attraction are compelled in otherwise neutral contexts. Men put on tuxedos for special occasions, but women put on their sexuality every day. If a man looks unkempt he will be given a pass in many situations--he may even be applauded. If a woman goes out without makeup and without her hair done and wearing sweat pants, many people will semi-consciously disapprove of her and some will wonder if she's having her period. Maleness is normative, femaleness is not. In a broader sense you have the "Cougars" and the "Lady Courgars."

So women's sexuality is used against them and visuality is no exception. Many women recognize this on some level and so are caught between resenting their own sexuality and embracing it at the risk of cultural disapproval. Symbolically, our culture still sends women to the edge of the village.

Historically speaking, the priveliging of sight over other senses that has arrived with the Enlightenment contributes to the porn problem. Sight is a distancing sense, a sense that always communicates our seperateness from others. In that sense (literally) porn is alienating. It is also a commodity and so is about the repetition of sameness. Sex, on the other hand, is about all of the senses and like natural reproduction, is about the repetition of difference. Check out my rated-R post (or I can board mail it to you), for more detail on this. I'm just summarizing here.

Theory is good, but I'll take empirical evidence. Male viewers of porn outnumber women 5:1 maybe more. It's a really tough sell to write this up to cultural acceptance.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

SIEQ, do you think males value "looks" more than females do, when it comes to choosing a mate?

I would argue yes.

I think what you are getting at is that this may be more culturally determined than biologically determined.

Or maybe you argue no on the first question.

If I read him correctly, he would argue that men have culturally been taught to value feminity through visual stimulus, but that it might seem to be somewhat genetic in relating it to primates. I became a little confused by that discussion.

However, sometimes cultural conditioning can be so prevalent as to confuse the roll of biology versus culture.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by jay santos

Theory is good, but I'll take empirical evidence. Male viewers of porn outnumber women 5:1 maybe more. It's a really tough sell to write this up to cultural acceptance.

Genetic effects take generations to overcome, as do cultural training. It is a fascinating discussion point he has brought up. I wouldn't be surprised if cultural training and adaptation played a greater roll that expected, but that genetics also prompted our acceptance of it.

OTH, that any women find it enjoyable seems to indicate it's not entirely genetic, don't you think?

[Sleeping in EQ]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

SIEQ, do you think males value "looks" more than females do, when it comes to choosing a mate?

I would argue yes.

I think what you are getting at is that this may be more culturally determined than biologically determined.

Or maybe you argue no on the first question.

Males often have a more particular look in mind than females do. Moreover, as males are less intensively judged by their looks, other considerations are more easily brought to the fore.

I'm getting at that while their are both cultural and biological factors at play, the cultural ones punish women in most contexts. (not, though, in all. Consider how two women can dance together or fall asleep together and no one immediately thinks they're lesbians).

[Sleeping in EQ]

Originally Posted by jay santos

Theory is good, but I'll take empirical evidence. Male viewers of porn outnumber women 5:1 maybe more. It's a really tough sell to write this up to cultural acceptance.

There are plenty of scientific studies out there on visuality. Advertisers, for one, have been testing pupil response for years. There's even been a very interesting study that showed that when women are ovulating they prefer pictures of males with particular features. Moreover, the "primate" centered non-verbal communication material reveals significant biological components.

Porn has long been marked as masculine and has catered to masculine tastes. I would even argue that it's current form may privelige male sexuality. It still has a strong cultural stigma, and an additional one for women. The fact that the number of women who view it has gone up astronomically in recent years suggests that the additional cultural stigma women experience may be waning. This could be an emergence of the greater acceptance of a female gaze (and by females too), or an intensification of their experience in the male gaze.

[jay santos]

Originally Posted by Archaea

Genetic effects take generations to overcome, as do cultural training. It is a fascinating discussion point he has brought up. I wouldn't be surprised if cultural training and adaptation played a greater roll that expected, but that genetics also prompted our acceptance of it.

OTH, that any women find it enjoyable seems to indicate it's not entirely genetic, don't you think?

Certainly cultural training and genetics are key to understanding porn/sexual addiction and the differences in men and women.

I don't see the cultural training as being that overwhelming to overcome genetics in the case of porn habits between men and women. Also there are plenty of genetic differences in men and women that would support the idea that porn is more attractive to men, i.e. orgasm, mechanics of masturbation, etc.

[Sleeping in EQ]

Originally Posted by Archaea

If I read him correctly, he would argue that men have culturally been taught to value feminity through visual stimulus, but that it might seem to be somewhat genetic in relating it to primates. I became a little confused by that discussion.

However, sometimes cultural conditioning can be so prevalent as to confuse the roll of biology versus culture.

You've got the gist of it. There is a biological component for both male and female visual attraction, but our culture rewards and encourages males in this regard and discourages females. There are some differences in how males and females process visual stimulus, and so this leaves the question of "are males more visual?" up for debate. An easier argument is probably that males and females are different in their visuality, but that it plays an important role in the sexual estimations of both.

[BarbaraGordon]

I just wanted to add my favorite quote on porn. From the office.

The boss (who loves porn) is trying to demonstrate the evils of porn in the office by searching google for porn:


Boss: Now look at this - "Dutch girls must be punished for having big boobs." Now you do not punish a girl, Dutch or otherwise, for having big boobs.
Gareth: No...If anything they should be rewarded.
Boss: Yes because women should be equal.
Gareth: Yes they're equal.

[RockyBalboa]

Originally Posted by DrumNFeather

To be fair, you have no clue what it is like to be the bishop of people who are single, alone, in their 30s and LDS.

This is true, what that exactly has to do with it, I'm not sure, but this is true. And I hope to never find out.

Though it appears we already have many experts here on the subject.