22
Even though our fantasies often resemble what might be “best” for us, at least from an evolutionary perspective, modern society also has the capacity to make our fantasies maladaptive. The modern media, with their high-tech sophistication and super-realistic images, may make our fantasies more real and powerful than our brains could ever conjure. Thus, along with ingraining sexual scripts, modern media probably raise our expectations and, at times, make us too unrealistic about what to expect in real-life sexual encounters. Thus, these fantasies may be somewhat maladaptive in modern society, even if they would have been adaptive in in our evolutionary past. After all, realistically, we can’t all mate with Brad Pitt!
23
This is not to imply that when (sexual) adolescents engage in masturbation with fantasies, they do so with the conscious intent of building sexual scripts into their psyches. Rather, this is done unconsciously; it just happens, especially after the fantasy/script is paired with (often repeatedly!) rewarding sexual pleasure and orgasm. If unconscious, one could argue that asexual people still retain the ancient mechanisms of masturbation (even an incentive to masturbate), which would have served this rehearsal function in our evolutionary past, but which is a somewhat useless byproduct for them now. However, as we will see later in this chapter, asexual people may be less likely to build sexual scripts into their psyches, because (perhaps not surprisingly) their masturbation is often without fantasy.
24
People often make a “causal inference” between a person’s exposure to pornography and his or her sexual attractions. So people may assume that exposure to pornography causes attraction to this material. For example, it is often assumed that an adolescent boy or a young man’s exposure to child pornography causes a sexual interest in children. Theoretically, this is possible, but most sex researchers are cautious about making such causal inferences, as they know that when two events co-occur—a correlation—this is not evidence of causation. When a correlation of this kind occurs, especially repeatedly (e.g., a man with a large stash of child porn collected over many different years), this may merely be good evidence that an attraction to this material occurs, and that we need to be alerted to that fact.
25
Note that biological and environmental/social explanations are not necessarily incompatible. As suggested in chapter 13, these two kinds of explanations can coexist because they offer different levels of analysis: micro (biological) versus macro (environment/social). Thus, they may represent different points along a causal stream or pathway. For example, a specific biological predisposition may make someone particularly sensitive to a certain environment, which ultimately has a large impact on this person, whereas a different biological predisposition may make another person especially sensitive to a completely different environment, which may also have a large (but different) impact on him or her.
26
We are currently collecting data on the coming-out process in lesbians and bisexual women, and it will be interesting to see if we can replicate these findings in women. In our first study (Bogaert and Hafer, 2009), there was not a sufficiently large sample to test this issue in women.
27
As mentioned, I have a thing for golf; thus, golfing examples clearly have a special resonance for me.
28
Yes, I am taking liberties with John Steinbeck’s famous book title.
29
This section on Tiger Woods reopened a wound for me and was a bit difficult to write. Ever since I turned forty, I have been obsessed with golf, a game I played in my childhood, let slide in my twenties and thirties, and then recently returned to. So, since midlife, I have played a lot of golf and watched a ton of it on TV. My obsession reflects, perhaps, a bit of the energy of a midlife crisis channeled into this (harmless?) indulgence. Thus, I think I have used golf as an escape from my regular work life as a sexologist, which, of course, was filled with sex. Basically, I needed an escape, and golf was a good one, as it was totally removed from sex. Is there anything less sexy than golf? (Maybe a few things, but not many.) However, after the Tiger Woods sex scandal, my two worlds— sex and golf—collided, and now I can’t play golf, or watch it on TV, in the same way. Alas.
30
The paragraph above is not meant to imply that I believe such a public apology was necessary, either from a therapeutic perspective or because it was morally right to do so given his behavior. It is also not meant to imply that I believe that Tiger Woods has an “addiction,” which, by the way, many sexologists believe is not an appropriate name for sexual problems. I am also not necessarily implying he had a “sexual problem.” (Given his cover-up of his affairs to his wife and her reaction to them when they were revealed, however, it is clear to me that he had a relationship problem.) Rather, this story is merely meant to give a context for why this event occurred.
31
