In Honor of the Late Desmond Morris
Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape, died in April of this year. He was a zoologist and ethologist, which is someone who explains human or animal behavior from a biological perspective
I probably read The Naked Ape in my teens. He made a compelling argument that humans are hypersexual compared to most animals.
Most other animals typically copulate solely for reproductive purposes, when the female is "in heat" and capable of conceiving. It's extremely unusual for any animal to be sexually receptive 365 days a year and to engage in sex for non-reproductive purposes, like emotional bonding.
Contrary to screechy feminist objections to the sexualization of human breasts, most primates only have full breasts when lactating and the human breast is so full, it actively interferes with feeding infants. He argued that it intentionally replicated the shape of the buttocks and likely evolved as people began having sex face-to-face.
He argued that the heart shape makes no sense as a reference to the human heart. It looks nothing like it.
What it does look like is a woman's buttocks and vaginal opening from a rear entry position, which was likely more common at one time than so-called missionary position.
Contrary to what a lot of human literature argues, he didn't suggest men are horny bastards. He suggested the human race is hypersexual compared to most animals.
The brunette dyed her hair blonde. The blonde dyed her hair red. They both began dressing completely differently. Neither gave him an ultimatum about "It's her or me. Either she goes or I go."
I dress for women. I undress for men.-- Angie Dickenson
He found the whole thing funny and just kept seeing both of them. He zipped his lip and watched their amusing reactions.
I'm guessing he was a guy with a sex drive and two women got him enough sex without either woman going "Not tonight honey. I have a headache." or growing to resent his constant demands like I've read expressed sometimes in articles by married women with a husband with a high sex drive.
One married woman in something I read was cringing at the idea of articles promoting showering together as a great way to get sexy together. Her take was "God, no. Showering is the only time he leaves me alone. I don't want people suggesting that to him AT ALL."
Helen Gurley Brown said something in one of her books trying to distinguish physical sex drive from the zillion other reasons people have sex, like feeling lonely. She talked about a farmer who had sex with his wife every morning and every evening for forty years and said "Now THAT is a SEX drive."
Of course, her framing of it suggests he had a sex drive and that's likely how it was framed in whatever she read. But if the wife stayed for forty years and put out twice a day everyday, presumably she wasn't exactly a frigid man-hating bitch.
I used to read a lot of astrology books. Astrologers of old were typically a kind of counselor.
In one book, the author talked about consulting with a woman in the aftermath of her husband's death. She also consulted with the grieving Other Woman, his longtime secretary.
The deceased man had been very wealthy. The wife was beautifully put together at all times and very well dressed. The secretary intentionally dressed down to try to actively avoid looking like a sex object and try to hide the affair.
The couple had some ugly falling out and never had sex again, but remained married and kept up appearances for the sake of PR. It helped keep them both materially comfortable. The affair with the secretary began after the wife decided "You're never touching me again."
If a man is married to a woman or otherwise making public appearances together, he may care how she dresses for purposes of public reputation. But men mostly don't seem to get hot and bothered based on looks or clothes.
Historically, we more clearly accepted that a wife and a lover aren't the same role. Yet in spite of so much evidence that superficial looks aren't per se why men hit on women, women continue to behave like they think looks matter more than they actually seem to matter.
I suspect that the idea that men are generally more sexual than women is largely about women being second class citizens and sex meaning completely different things for most men than it means for most women.
For most women, sex isn't really about her pleasure. It's about his pleasure.
She's often doing it basically to pay her bills and not really excited by that fact because even if you get the good deal where he marries you and etc., it's well known men have hobby rooms or craft rooms and women are consigned to the kitchen.
Expensive Christmas gifts for men are things like stereos. Expensive Christmas gifts for women are typically things like a new refrigerator.
And in a shocking plot twist no one could have predicted, contrary to popular memes, studies find that married men and married women report having sex at nearly identical frequencies.
Even if they do like sex, women have compelling reason to not advertise they like sex.
Being married is societal permission to get jiggy and then pretend the wife never puts out and you sleep on the couch half the time.
My long-standing suspicion is most people who marry young and spend most of their time married are people who like a steady supply of sex and don't want there to be talk about it.
Years ago, I saw some woman on a talk show tell the host something like "Me and my husband like sex." And I don't think it effectively made the point she wanted to make.
She was married to a professional football player and she was commenting on the fact that some single football player got talked about non-stop because of his dating life. But her point fell flat.
He got talked about because he went out with a lot of women. Reality: Married professional athletes probably have a healthy sex drive and get to skip the part where everyone gossips about it because the hot chick he's married to us officially "the old ball and chain" no matter what she looks like.
So people imagine she's in curlers at an ironing board and he's yelling "Woman, get me a beer!" and not thinking maybe childless young hot shots with hard bodies and money are doing it like rabbits.
Or, you know, hypersexual humans