Monday, January 01, 2001

Rats! (Or, He Chases Her Until She Catches Him)

Rats!
"According to Ogas and Gaddam, we can learn some important lessons about female sexual behaviour from observing rats in the laboratory.

They insist that if you put a male and female rat in close proximity to one another, the female will start to come on to the male, performing actions associated with sexual interest — running and then stopping to encourage the male to chase her.

But after a bit of kiss-chase, the female rat stands still, adopting a submissive stance until the male takes action. They also claim that almost every quality of dominant males — from the way they smell to the way they walk and their deep voice — triggers arousal in the female brain, while ‘weaker’ men, who are not taller, have higher voices or lower incomes, excite us less.

What they seem to be suggesting is that the cavemen were right all along and that what women really want is to be dragged by the hair, all the while feigning reluctance, by macho men waving clubs."

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Of worthy note in regard to this study, from Wikipedia:

"...none of the research for the book was ever brought before an Institutional Review Board, which would have studied the ethics of the research protocol. The authors addressed this after publication, saying, "IRB oversight applies to human subjects research with federal funding, or that takes place at an institution with federal funding. We intentionally conducted our research outside of academia, without federal funding, in order to remain independent from the fierce tempest of ideological, social, and political pressures that besets the contemporary study of sexuality."

Hurrah!

Imagine! Real academitians! Concerned with the Truth rather than academia's bullshit political correctness! What a freakin' concept, eh?

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"I must now discuss the "uniting" impulse of women, for that plays the chief, if not the sole part in her sexuality. But it must not be supposed that this is greater in one sex than the other. Any such idea comes from a confusion between the desire for a thing and the stimulus towards the active part in securing what is desired. Throughout the animal and plant kingdom, the male reproductive cells are the motile, active agents, which move through space to seek out the passive female cells, and this physiological difference is sometimes confused with the actual wish for, or stimulus to, sexual union. And to add to the confusion, it happens, in the animal kingdom particularly, that the male, in addition to the directly sexual stimulus, has the instinct to pursue and bodily capture the female, whilst the latter has only the passive part to be taken possession of. These differences of habit must not be mistaken for real differences of desire." -- Otto Weininger, Sex and Character, Male and Female Sexuality

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Cary (1976) discovered that the woman, through eye contact, controlled the course of interaction with a male stranger, both in the laboratory and in singles' bars. Perper (1985) gave a detailed description of courtship, stressing an escalation-response process in which women play a key role in escalation or deescalation. The steps in this process are approach, turn, first touch, and steady development of body synchronization.

Although these reports are clearly valuable, most researchers addressed courtship very generally, and some failed to recognize the importance of the female role in the courtship process .What was needed was a more complete ethogram of women's nonverbal courtship signals. To compile such a catalog of flirting behavior exhibited by women involved in initial heterosexual interaction, more than 200 adults were observed (Moore, 1985) in field settings such as singles' bars, restaurants, and parties.

Research has shown, therefore, that the cultural myth that the man is always the sexual aggressor, pressing himself on a reluctant woman, is incorrect. -- Courtship Signaling and Adolescents: "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"? Monica M. Moore, Ph.D.Department of behavioral and Social Sciences, Webster University