Saturday, June 28, 2008

The Latest Research (by Phila)

The Telegraph gives us a vibrant account of what it calls "the latest research":
According to the latest research women have negative feelings after a fling and remain unhappy with fleeting sexual encounters.

Researchers said the permissive society sparked during the Sixties was supposed to free women to enjoy casual sex just like men but it had failed.
That's what researchers say, and who are we to gainsay them? They have statistics on their side, for one thing. Eighty percent of men claimed to feel sexually satisfied after a one-night stand, compared to 54 percent of women. Men are more likely to boast to their friends about their "conquests," too.

Could this have anything to do with what has come to constitute "appropriate" behavior for men and women in this situation...exacerbated, perhaps, by certain small but important differences in physiology?

Fuck no. Women have simply failed to adapt to the world as it was, is, and shall ever be, despite the best efforts of "the permissive society":
The study concluded women "have not adapted" to meaningless sex because it did not suit them at this stage in evolution.
I submit that casual sexual encounters in which one's role is essentially to give a man something to ejaculate into, and something to brag about to his friends the next day, are not "meaningless" at all. And their meaning, I'd say, is probably what causes a good deal of the dissatisfaction and remorse these women are feeling, the eternal and all-compelling call of marriage and childbirth notwithstanding. "Permission" to engage in behavior that a pretty large portion of society still regards as "slutty" is not necessarily permission to enjoy sex as an equal partner. And the idea that as long as men are happy with a situation, a woman's dissatisfaction can only represent a failure to adapt is chilling even by the glacial standards of evolutionary psychology.

Obligatory notes on methodology:
A total of 1,743 men and women who had experienced a one-night stand were asked to rate both their positive and negative feelings the following morning, in an internet survey.