to be more ubiquitous, frequent, visual, specifically sexual, promiscuous, and active: Female sexual fantasies tend to be more contextual, emotive, intimate, and passive.'' Nor need we rely on such surveys alone.
Two industries relentlessly exploit the sexual fantasizing of men and women: pornography and the publishing of romance novels: Pornography is aimed almost entirely at men. It varies little from a standard formula all over the world: 'Soft porn ' consists of pictures of naked or seminaked women in provocative positions: Such pictures are arousing to men, whereas pictures of naked (anonymous) men are not especially arousing to women: 'A propensity to be aroused merely by the sight of males would promote random matings from which a female would have nothing to gain reproductively and a great deal to lose. ' '
' Hard porn, ' which depicts actual acts of sex, is almost invariably about the gratification of male lust by willing, easily aroused, varied, multiple, and physically attractive women (or men, in the case of gay porn): It is virtually devoid of context, plot, flirtation, courtship, and even much foreplay. There are no encumbering relationships, and the coupling duo are usually depicted as strangers: When two scientists showed heterosexual students pornographic films and measured their arousal by them, they found a consistent pattern of the kind common sense would suggest. First, men were more aroused than women. Second, men were aroused more by depictions of group sex than by films of a SEXING THE MIND
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heterosexual couple, whereas for women it was the other way around. Third, women and men were both aroused by lesbian scenes, but neither was aroused by male homosexual sex.
(Remember, all these students were heterosexual:) When watching pornography, men and women are both interested in the women actors. But porn is designed for, marketed to, and sought out by men, not women:'
The romance novel, by contrast, is aimed entirely at a female market. It, too, depicts a fictional world that has changed remarkably little except in adapting to female career ambitions and to a less inhibited attitude toward the description of sex. Authors adhere strictly to a formula provided by the publishers. Sexual acts play a small part in these novels; the bulk of each book is about love, commitment, domesticity, nurturing, and the formation of relationships. There is little promiscuity or sexual variety, and what sex there is, is described mainly through the heroine 's emotional reaction CO what is done to her—particularly the tactile things—
and not to any detailed description of the man 's body. His character is often discussed in detail but not his body: Ellis and Symons claim that the romance novel and pornography represent the respective utopian fantasies of the two sexes.
Their data on the sexual fantasies of California students would seem to support this contention: So does the repeated failure of magazines that try to repackage the male-porn formula for women (much
'
As Ellis and Symons put it,
The data on sexual fantasy reported here, the scientific literature on sexual fantasy, . : : the consumer-driven selective forces of a free market (which have shaped the historically stable contrasts between male-oriented pornography and female-oriented romance novels), the ethnographic record on human sexuality, and the ineluctable implications of an evolutionary perspective on our species, taken together, imply the existence of a profound sex difference in sexual psychology:'
This is a far more enlightened view than the peculiarly uncharitable assumption among the politically correct that the reason women are not more turned on by nudity and pornography is that they are repressed:
CHOOSY MEN
A paradox looms: Men are promiscuous opportunists at heart and in their fantasies: Truly promiscuous opportunists would not be too choosy, one would think: And yet men care about women 's looks more than women care about men ' s looks. A sports car and an expense account can turn a frog into a prince for women, but even a rich woman cannot afford to be ugly (although in these times of cosmetic surgery, she can sometimes afford the means not to be ugly): Advertisements for 'escorts' emphasize looks. A man contemplating an affair should not restrict himself to what he considers a good-looking woman, yet he usually does. This is rather unusual: A male gorilla or sage grouse does not refuse to mate with a female because of her appearance: He takes every opportunity on offer regardless of looks. Polygamous despots of ancient times may have been promiscuous, but they were still choosy; their harems were always recruited from among the young, the virginal, and the beautiful.
The paradox is soluble. The degree to which an animal of either sex is choosy correlates exactly with the degree to which it SEXING THE MIND
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invests in parental care. A black grouse, investing no more than sperm, is prepared to copulate with anything that even resembles a female: A stuffed bird or a model will do:'° A male albatross, who will put all his best efforts into raising one female 's young, is elaborately suspicious and selective, striving for the best female on offer. So man's choosiness reflects once more the fact that man does indeed form a pair bond and invest in his young, unlike some of his undiscriminating ape cousins: It is a legacy of his past monogamy: Choose well, for it may be the only chance you will get.
Indeed, the overwhelming fascination of men with female youth argues that pair bonds have lasted lifetimes. In this we are quite unlike any other mammal: Chimpanzees find old females just as attractive as young ones as long as both are in estrus. The fact that men do prefer twenty-year-olds adds one piece of evidence to the theory that a Pleistocene man, like a rpodern man, married for life.
Anthropologist Helen Fisher has argued that there is a natural term to marriage, which is why divorce rates peak after four years of marriage. Four years is long enough to rear a single child beyond utter dependence, and Fisher believes that when each child reached four, Pleistocene women sought a fresh husband for the next child. She argues that therefore divorce is natural. But there are several problems with her case: The four-year peak is merely what statisticians call a mode and not a very prominent one at that: Divorce rates are bound to peak in one of the years after marriage.
