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    What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire
    Unavailable
    What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire
    Unavailable
    What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire
    Ebook205 pages4 hours

    What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire

    By Daniel Bergner

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    In What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire, critically acclaimed journalist Daniel Bergne disseminates the latest scientific research and paints an unprecedented portrait of female lust: the triggers, the fantasies, the mind-body connection (and disconnection), the reasons behind the loss of libido, and, most revelatory, that this loss is not inevitable.

    Bergner asks: Are women actually the less monogamous gender? Do women really crave intimacy and emotional connection? Are women more disposed to sex with strangers and multiple pairings than either science or society have ever let on? And is “the fairer sex” actually more sexually aggressive and anarchic than men?

    While debunking the myths popularized by evolutionary psychology, Bergner also looks at the future of female sexuality. Pharmaceutical companies are pouring billions of dollars to develop a “Viagra” for women. But will it ever be released? Or are we not yet ready for a world in which women can become aroused at the simple popping of a pill?

    Insightful and illuminating, What Do Women Want? is a deeper exploration of Daniel Bergner's provocative New York Times Magazine cover story; it will spark dynamic debates and discussions for years to come.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJun 4, 2013
    ISBN9780062249081
    Author

    Daniel Bergner

    Daniel Bergner is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and the author of five previous books of award-winning nonfiction: the New York Times bestselling Sing for Your Life, What Do Women Want?, The Other Side of Desire, In the Land of Magic Soldiers, and God of the Rodeo. His writing has also appeared in the Atlantic, Granta, Harper’s Magazine, Mother Jones, Talk, and the New York Times Book Review.

    Read more from Daniel Bergner

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    Reviews for What Do Women Want?

    3.5/5

    51 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      3.5 stars because I enjoyed reading it, but not sure about the science.
    • 5/5
      An absolutely fascinating look at what women's sexuality means. From fantasy lives to the science of a possible female viagra to society's fear of women that are not sexually repressed. A recommended read for anyone interested in sexuality.
    • 4/5
      Relatively short book; the NYT feature has a lot of the highlights, though the details were also interesting. Bergner sets out to suggest that many Western ideas about women’s sexuality are mistaken—at least the official ones about women not wanting sex/sex outside of a monogamous relationship as much as men do. The unofficial ones, in which women are dangerously out of control unless heavily repressed, could be reinforced by the science he discusses, though there’s nothing here about “out of control.” Evolutionary stories of male promiscuity and female pickiness aren’t consistent with the evidence from our animal relations or from non-self-reported measures of female desire. At least when women aren’t afraid of male violence (a very very big when that he doesn’t spend much time on), women seem plenty lustful—at least when it comes to strangers/new relationships. It’s only in longterm exclusive relationships that women’s desire seems to flag, and Bergner spends a chunk of the book on pharmaceutical and psychotherapeutic attempts to fix this within monogamy. Long-term intimacy, he suggests, may kill desire for many women; drugs or specific behavioral interventions may sometimes bring the spice back. One of the most striking parts of the book comes when he discusses the fears expressed by pharmaceutical researchers that their drug would be too effective, making women wantonly/indiscriminately desire sex. It’s hilarious, except for how 44% of US parents won’t vaccinate their daughters against HPV.As others have noted, Bergner seems relatively untroubled by a project of associating women with greater/more “animal” desire than men, even though he repeatedly acknowledges the social stigma (and more) that women expressing sexual desire face. He also discusses research on women’s rape fantasies as fantasies and their relationship to the idea of desireability as central to women’s desire; researchers are very nervous about how to present this, and he has an extended discussion with one about the extent to which culture/misogyny affects the content of fantasies. I don’t know how much cross-cultural research there is on this, but comparative studies would seem to be relevant.Key pieces of research include: when faced with a variety of images of sex and nudity, including animals having sex, men who identify as straight react most strongly to the heterosexual/lesbian scenes and not much to the gay male scenes, and vice versa for gay men; by contrast, women who identify as straight and lesbian both reacted to everything with physical signs of arousal (genital engorgement). (Self-identified bisexuals apparently weren’t part of the study.) The exception: women weren’t turned on by a naked, physically fit man whose penis was visibly flaccid and thus not signalling desire. However, both men and women self-reported reactions consistent with their reported sexuality—so women said they were only turned on by a small number of the things they saw. Bergner notes but does not give much attention to the question of what this means. Are women disconnected from their own physical reactions? Or is desire something different than engorged genitals? Another study, on which Bergner ended the book, showed how a very simple manipulation could change what we often think is basic in male-female relationships—that men are less picky. Speed dating studies showed that heterosexual women were more selective than heterosexual men in choosing candidates for follow-up dates. But all the studies had a confounding variable: in all of them, women sat in place while the men rotated. When a researcher changed that setup, so the women rotated—and therefore had the chance to perceive themselves as the ones making the “move”—men were choosier and women were less selective. Given the weight of culture, that’s a pretty astonishing result from one intervention.
    • 3/5
      Excellent content. Not thrilled with the delivery. To be fair, it was written by a journalist, so I shouldn't have expected it to be written like other works of non-fiction. Highly recommend if you are a complete novice to the realm of female sexuality. I'd skip it if you are more familiar with the topic.