In the film ‘True Lies’ (1994) Jamie Lee Curtis, as the dowdy house­wife turned spy in the role of a pros­ti­tute, performs a sexy pole dance for her screen husband Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It seems so natural that a man’s arousal comes from admiring a woman’s body. Yet we never ques­tion why a man’s fore­play tech­niques do not include him using his body to provide a woman’s arousal. For example, a man’s fore­play tech­niques do not typic­ally include wearing exotic under­wear, clothing that accen­tu­ates his sexual attrib­utes or moving his body provocatively.

Throughout history, a woman’s priority has been to ensure that she had a man who could protect her (and her chil­dren) rather than help her orgasm during sex. So a man’s body is not a sexual commodity to women in the way that a woman’s body can be to men.

“The truth is that, just as women have spent centuries being selected by men for their desirab­ility as sex objects. Women have been eval­u­ating men as success objects. By this we mean that women eval­uate men both as successful protectors, partic­u­larly in violent times, and as successful providers.” (p34 Why Men don’t get enough Sex and Women don’t get enough Love 1994)

Women’s sexual arousal is not automatic

Unfor­tu­nately, there is nothing either easy or auto­matic about female orgasm, espe­cially during sex with a partner. Not only do we lack men’s spon­tan­eous sexual arousal, women are also not turned on by the sexual attrib­utes of a lover as men are. This explains why most women do not seek to enjoy the male body through porno­graphy, lap-dancing or pole-dancing.

Never­the­less, it is implied that female sexu­ality involves women achieving similar levels of sexual arousal as a man without the same natural advant­ages. A woman who describes herself as ‘turned on’ is more likely to indic­ating that she is amen­able to sex than that she is close to orgasm. Female sexu­ality is often defined in terms of a woman’s attract­ive­ness to men rather than her own true state of sexual arousal. It is easy to confuse women’s own sexual arousal with their ability to arouse men.

“Many men believe that if a woman excites them sexu­ally and looks sexy, she must be exper­i­en­cing sexual feel­ings – in other words, if she looks sexy she must feel sexy; if she’s exciting me, she must be excited, too. The man projects his own excite­ment onto the woman.” (p85 Why Men don’t get enough Sex and Women don’t get enough Love 1994)

Men’s sexual arousal is usually easy and, since men hope a lover will enhance their sexual arousal, women often have sex with men for reasons other than their own orgasm:

• In the shorter term, a woman can find sex fun and even exhil­ar­ating without orgasm if she appre­ci­ates being able to excite a man sexu­ally and if her ego is flattered by the sexual compliment;
• In the longer term, a woman may find other life prior­ities (such as chil­dren) but she still needs to offer a mate enough sex to stop him wandering off with someone more amenable.

It is vital to appre­ciate that men need a sexu­ally responsive partner to enjoy sex fully.

Sexu­ally exper­i­enced women, including those who engage in casual sex, learn that they can facil­itate a man’s orgasm by faking their own arousal and orgasm. This ‘respons­ive­ness’ as a lover does not neces­sarily indicate that a woman knows how to achieve her own orgasm by any means.

“Most … males do not realize that it is only a select group of females, and usually the more responsive females, who will accept pre-marital or extra-marital rela­tion­ships. Some … will fail to take into account the large number of females who… never become involved in the sort of non-marital rela­tion­ship from which these males have acquired most of their inform­a­tion about females.” (p538 Sexual beha­vior in the human female 1953)

Some women might hope for an adven­turous sex life (or even for sexual arousal and orgasm during sex) but, luckily for all of us, most women do not approach their rela­tion­ships with men demanding ‘success’ in their sex life. Since women have lower sexual desire they tend to settle for compan­ion­ship, love and affec­tion, which depend on knowing and liking a person.