Eroticism

Men and women live in different worlds when it comes to attitudes to eroticism. I suggested that most women today must know how to pleasure a man but a British sex expert (male) disagreed, “They haven’t a clue, and even if they knew, most wouldn’t do it.”
A joke illustrates the point: “What is the difference between a job and a wife?” Answer “After ten years a job still sucks!”.
Unfortunately many people still believe in sheltering young women from eroticism and so girls are told the basic reproductive facts but nothing of sexual pleasure. We are confident about telling girls about sexual intercourse because it is the means of producing children. It also happens to be one of the easiest ways for a woman to provide a man with sexual release. Putting it crudely, masturbation by hand or mouth not only involves more work but is also more explicitly sexual.
Young women often don’t know how to orgasm and so they have little appreciation of their own sexual pleasure. This explains why women are often easily shocked by sex (in the context of sex play rather than trying for a baby) because they are not necessarily hoping for sexual release (orgasm) from sex. Men definitely are; and so eroticism and sex play, including activities other than intercourse, are more important to men.
A man’s arousal and orgasm are pretty much a given during sex. But a woman can take part in sexual activity without ever becoming aroused or reaching orgasm. So even women who have sex for years do not necessarily know how to orgasm. In order to qualify as ’sexually experienced’, it is quality (breadth of experience) not quantity (years or partners) that counts.
As a minimum, a sexually experienced woman should (1) be able to masturbate to orgasm alone, (2) have explored clitoral stimulation with a partner via mutual masturbation and oral sex and (3) have attempted a variety of positions for sexual intercourse. In order to discover how her arousal works, a woman needs to be positive enough about eroticism to be willing to explore her sexual fantasies. Unfortunately, the average woman (and this includes many ’sex experts’) lacks this experience.
Even in 2009, a major UK bookseller told me they remove the women’s erotic fiction before a head office audit. Presumably stories such as those in the ‘Black Lace’ range offend someone and yet for me they are so mildly erotic that I can rarely use them for orgasm. The same store happily sells pornographic magazines for men but women are supposed to be content with Mills & Boon romantic novels. I go to London for erotic literature with any bite (e.g. book stores along the Charing Cross Road).
Women do not get the same sexual pleasure
It is difficult for women to understand the strength of a man’s passion for sexual pleasure since we have no direct parallel. The film ‘Indecent Proposal’ might be a little far-fetched… nevertheless we are happy to believe that a man would pay as much as one million dollars just to have sex with an attractive woman.
Men experience a purely physical reaction to seeing a woman’s body that has nothing to do with personal relationships. So, men engage lap dancers, visit go-go bars and watch topless reviews because they enjoy the sensations of sexual arousal that come from the physical proximity of a semi-naked woman.
Conversely, women do not tend to pay even for this relatively mild physical gratification because the female mind and body simply do not respond as a man’s mind and body do. Women’s sexual arousal and orgasm is not automatic and so women have to learn about their sexual arousal. Women certainly do experience lust (or the desire to get laid) but it is worth noting that women often need to be enticed into sex whereas men rarely need any encouragement.
“ – men wish that women’s sexuality was like theirs, which it isn’t. Male sexual response is far brisker and more automatic: it is triggered easily by things, like putting a quarter in a vending machine. Consequently, at a certain level and for all men, girls and parts of girls are, at this stimulus level unpeople. That isn’t incompatible with their being people too. Your clothes, breasts, odour, etc. aren’t what he loves instead of you – simply the things he needs in order to set sex in motion to express love. Women seem to find this hard to understand.” (p34 The Joy of Sex – 1972)