A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire

by Ogi Ogas

  Tops were the most straight-acting and did not present any behaviors associated with the Detective Agency—and they anecdotally reported to us that, in their opinion, bottoms had the largest penises. Bottoms generally exhibited behaviors associated with the Detective Agency (such as heightened emotional sensitivity, extended social networking, and a focus on determining how other men “really felt”), yet in most bottoms this Detective Agency did not appear to govern their sexual desire as it does in women—these bottoms sought out anonymous, emotionless sexual encounters. In other words, this gay Detective Agency was not hooked up to his sexual circuits.

  However, a minority of bottoms were extremely femaleacting, and these men seemed to possess a Detective Agency that governed sexual desire as it does in women. They needed to get to know the personality of a man before hooking up with him, they were not especially attracted to straight men, they believed that whether someone was a bottom or top was entirely socially determined, and they questioned the very existence of the top/ bottom binary—even though they themselves were quite clearly power bottoms. Perhaps future research might determine whether this group of gay men possesses the largest penises of all.

  But despite these dramatic alterations, it appears that excessive androgens leave most of the male brain unchanged. Boys will be boys. Even when they like other boys.

  CHAPTER 8

  A Tall Man with a Nice Tush

  Female Visual Cues

  I think I might like that.

  —Mrs. Alfred Kinsey, upon being asked if she would like to have sex with her husband’s graduate student in the film Kinsey

  In the early 1970s, nightclub owner Douglas Lambert had a pioneering idea. He observed that even though there was a flood of men’s magazines featuring nude models, like Penthouse, Hustler, and Playboy, there wasn’t a single nude magazine for women. Moreover, Cosmopolitan magazine was flying off the shelves. He saw an opportunity to combine Cosmo and Playboy into a single package. So he founded Playgirl.

  Sounding somewhat like a gender activist instead of the owner of three strip clubs, he proclaimed: “Women have been suppressed sexually for too long. It’s healthy for people to view a male body.” Lambert hired Marin Scott Milam, a self-described “moderate feminist,” to serve as editor in chief. Milam believed that the absence of nude magazines for women reflected the false assumption that only men enjoyed visual stimulation. “Women want to see more male nudes. They love it,” she reported enthusiastically, though adding, “I think it’s true that women do not accept male nudity in magazines with alacrity. It’s a learning process and women are reacting against years of conditioning.”

  Playgirl was the mirror image of Playboy, complete with graphic, high-quality pictures of naked men (though there were no penises in the very first issue, and no erect penises for several years) and a centerfold—the 1973 preview issue featured the Hager twins, Jim and John, from the country variety show Hee Haw. Since all the models were selected by women for women, one might have confidently predicted that the magazine would have appealed to female sexual tastes. But things turned out a little differently.

  At first, the number of subscriptions to Playgirl was a small fraction of subscriptions to Playboy, despite the fact that Playboy occupied a crowded field of competitors whereas Playgirl had a near-monopoly. In fact, the “Magazine for Women” might have gone out of business in its first year, if not for an unexpected set of customers. Here’s the AOL search history of one such customer, user #4416126:gay frat stories

  gay drunk college

  gay college

  nude photos of men

  heath ledger nude—playgirl

  playgirl magazine

  teen male twinks

  shower room guys

  straight guys

  justin timberlake

  signs of homosexuality

  Though gay men had their own pornographic magazines, like Mandate and David, Playgirl was easier to buy and featured the kind of models gay men prefer—straight guys. In 1999, former Playgirl editor in chief Claire Harth admitted the truth:Ever since Playgirl’s launch in the early ’70s, its full-frontal male nudes and steamy copy have attracted an avid gay following. During my time at the magazine, I was constantly aware of the dual nature of Playgirl’s sex appeal and the delicate balancing act involved in maintaining its reputation as “Entertainment for Women.” The Playgirl staff was well aware that we owed much of our 400,000 circulation to gay men. And while we tailored the magazine to a supposedly heterosexual sensibility, we made certain to keep an eye on our loyal male readers.

  Though Playgirl.com doesn’t feature homosexual acts, its advertising consists primarily of gay sites and penis pumps. Few enterprises have attempted to duplicate Playgirl’s business model of nude men for women’s pleasure. Titmowse, an adult industry veteran who runs her own resource site for adult webmasters known as Cozy Frog, asserts, “In my 11 years in this business I could count on one hand the number of successful porn for women paysites and after counting I would have three fingers left.”

  Men often wonder if women prefer soft-core or hard-core porn, or if they prefer girl-on-girl scenes to girl-on-guy scenes. Men ask other men for tips on which porn sites will get their girlfriends hot and bothered. The psychology-focused Detective Agency and Playgirl’s failed tryst with women seem to suggest that these questions may be fundamentally misguided.

  “Porn is incredibly DULL DULL DULL,” laments Isabel, a middle-age woman commenting on Salon.com. “I watched porn made by women, and it was still DULL DULL DULL.” Many women find porn unarousing. Others, however, find it downright offensive. “Pornography is the theory, rape the practice,” the feminist Robin Morgan famously wrote in 1974, the same year as Playgirl’s first full year in print. More than three decades later, sentiments have softened only slightly. In 2010, porn star Ron Jeremy debated antiporn feminist activist Susan Cole at the University of Nebraska. Cole argued that pornography is “not only bad for the people who make it but damaging to society as a whole” and “corrupting of individual sexuality.” Also in 2010, Apple banned porn applications from its iPhone. Apple explained, “It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable.”

  So can one safely say that women do not become aroused by graphic sex? Not necessarily. The magazine Today’s Christian Woman conducted a survey of its readers, and found that a third of them seek out Internet porn. Chief technology officer for PornHub, Perry Stathopoulos, estimates that about a third of its visitors are women. In order to cater to its female audience, PornHub has recently changed its tagline from “It Makes Your Dick Bigger” to the more equal-opportunity “It Makes Your Dick Bigger and Your Pussy Wet.” PornHub also initiated the new category, female friendly, for videos designed to appeal to women. The selection process for inclusion in this category isn’t very scientific, however. A group of women who work in the Montreal office sit together and democratically decide which content merits the pink Venus symbol. The fact is, the tastes of the minority of women who enjoy porn are very hard to pin down.

  Here is the abbreviated three-month AOL search history for a female fan of porn, Ms. Juicy:porn for women

  drunk galleries

  explicit erotica pictures

  juicy gals

  explicit movie sex scenes

  fucking pictures

  erotica for women

  drunk springbreak sex

  erotic fine art photography

  explicit movie stills

  x-rated fine art

  erotic photography

  explicit movie sex scene pictures

  pictures of lust

  springbreak fuck adventures

  washing machine ratings

  This searcher avoids using the word “porn” except when qualified by “for women,” but clearly does not shy away from seeking out explicit material. Nevertheless, her sexual searches contain the word “erotic” far more often
than the sexual searches of a typical male, and she also focuses on erotic “fine art” and “photography.” Intriguingly, she even looks for images of desire—“pictures of lust.” But these soft-core searches are interspersed with more edgy desires—“drunk galleries” and “springbreak fuck adventures.”

  Why do some women enjoy visual porn, while most do not, even though most women respond to visual cues? To answer this question, we’ll start by exploring a unique component of women’s desire software that is even more basic than the Miss Marple Detective Agency.

  LADY JEKYLL AND MS. HYDE

  Women can only conceive during five days of their ovulatory cycle. Yet women are unique among female mammals in their willingness to have sex every day of their cycle, including all nonfertile days. Biologists call a willingness to have sex during nonfertile periods extended sexuality.

  Among many species, extended sexuality is favored by natural selection because it allows females to trade sex for resources from men. For example, female chimpanzees exhibit a red sexual swelling on their rump for about twelve days during each ovulatory cycle. However, they can only conceive during three days. During the nine days when they have no chance of getting pregnant, female chimps actively solicit sex from males. In fact, though males solicit sex during the entire time a female has a sexual swelling, the female chimps actually initiate more sex and are less resistant to male solicitations on days of low fertility. They’re more sexually active when they can’t get pregnant, in other words. What do the females get in return for this promiscuity? Food, protection, and perhaps most important, a reduction in the males’ aggression toward the females’ offspring.

  For many years, it was believed that the sexual swellings and bright red butts of female primates signaled fertility (ovulation) to males. But contemporary scientists realized that males need no special prompting to initiate sex. As comedian Mitch Fatel put it, “When it comes to sex, men have the secret ingredient. But unlike any other secret ingredient, we’ll give it to anyone who asks.” Instead, female ornamentation—such as chimps’ bright butts and women’s round breasts—evolved to benefit females. Female ornamentation garners attention and resources from males.

  Extended sexuality generates a fascinating pattern of behavior in females. Women and their cross-species sisters have two distinct “modes” of sexual interests during their ovulatory cycle. Each mode favors a different set of erotic cues: short-term interests during ovulation and long-term interests when not ovulating. Most of the time, Miss Marple behaves like a long-term portfolio manager, looking for clues indicating the probable return on investment for investing in a man. When a woman is not ovulating, she prefers men who are willing and able to provide nongenetic benefits, such as food, protection, and child support.

  But during ovulation, Miss Marple can become a day trader. Now she gives special preference to males with superior genes, in the form of good looks and social dominance. In women, the sexual cues emphasized during each mode reflect this dual sexuality: visual and physical cues during ovulation, and the Detective Agency’s psychological cues when not ovulating.

  Female marmosets, Tasmanian devils, and kangaroos all prefer males with superior genes when fertile, but mate less selectively during infertile phases. Though female chimps are highly promiscuous and mate with relatively subordinate males when they can’t conceive, they mate much more selectively and strongly favor socially dominant males when they can conceive. Macaques also repeat this pattern: female rhesus macaques who are ovulating prefer males whose faces have been experimentally manipulated to reveal exaggerated red coloration, a testosterone-facilitated male sexual ornament that signals social dominance.

  Ovulating women demonstrate a stronger preference for men with masculine faces, masculine voices, and masculine scents, and who display conspicuous signals of social dominance. They also tend to flirt more, dress more provocatively, and express greater interest in going out to bars, clubs, and socializing. One study even found that ovulating women tend to move around more, as if maximizing exposure to new opportunities. Ovulating women express a greater awareness of personal safety and are more likely to avoid risky places. They also exhibit a greater aversion to squicky sex, such as bestiality and incest. Put simply, ovulating women seek out conventional sex with alpha males.

  One intriguing study examined the effects of ovulation on the tips that professional lap dancers received while working in gentlemen’s clubs. Women with normal ovulatory cycles earned about $185 when they were menstruating, $260 when they were not menstruating nor ovulating, and $335 when they were ovulating. Perhaps the increase in tips was because the dancers unconsciously behaved differently.

  When women are not ovulating, they prefer men with more feminized faces. Female steroid hormones such as progesterone appear to drive this shift in attraction: women who are pregnant or using hormonal contraception share the same sexual interests as nonovulating women. It’s important to note that nonovulating women do not ignore indicators of good genes, but rather the Detective Agency balances physical attraction with many other psychological cues relevant to long-term prospects. Women are always attracted to a physically sexy man, in other words, but they’re more likely to actually have sex with him when they might get pregnant. The rest of the time, the Detective Agency decides whether it’s worth it to hold out for a hot guy who’s also sweet.

  Women’s dual sexuality is indirectly captured in the comments of one woman on Salon.com, who offered, “George Clooney and Sean Connery are sex symbols, but Bill Gates (younger, richer, and more powerful than either of them) is not. Our chances are abysmal for marrying any of the above men. That being the case, of course we’re going to fantasize about the good-looking ones, because all we’re thinking about is sex. If we were contemplating who to marry and had a choice from among them, that would change things considerably.”

  Research has found that when ovulating, women in long-term relationships are also more likely to express an interest in an affair. It’s not that a woman’s attraction to her primary partner goes up and down across the cycle; it appears to be fairly steady. Instead, when a woman is ovulating, her attraction to other men goes up. One British study asked women to keep diaries of their sexual activity. Married women were significantly more likely to have sex with an outside partner during ovulation. When cheating on a primary partner, women expressed the desire that their lover possess sexiness, sensuality, physical attractiveness, and that he be highly desired by other women. In addition, women focused on sexual gratification—especially orgasms.

  If women are more likely to seek affairs when ovulating, have men developed an evolutionary countermeasure? Yes. Studies have shown that men are more protective and guard their mates more during ovulation. But women have evolved counter-countermeasures to combat men’s heightened surveillance. When ovulating, women more frequently resist men’s efforts to track their activities. All of these ovulation-related behaviors—such as dressing more provocatively and resisting men’s surveillance—may occur without a woman’s conscious awareness. The unconscious shifts in desire may be designed to prevent her from accidentally betraying her intentions to her long-term partner. Similarly, most women lack conscious awareness of their ovulations, another countermeasure designed to prevent men from discerning when a woman is truly fertile.

  The Detective Agency operates most of the time in the female brain to evaluate prospective long-term mates using both psychological and visual cues, giving preference to psychological cues. During ovulation, the Detective Agency still functions, but it appears to increase its valuation of visual cues. In fact, studies have shown that women show a greater interest in visual sexual material if they were first exposed to the material when they were ovulating.

  So what visual cues arouse the female brain?

  SSSH!

  Sssh.com (pronounced “shoosh” to rhyme with “push”) is one of only two commercial porn sites that have been able to turn a profit while targeting heterosexua
l women. One could even argue it’s the only successful porn Web site to exclusively target heterosexual women, since its main competitor, For the Girls, does attract some gay men, though in much smaller numbers than Playgirl.

  Sssh was founded by Angie Rowntree in 1995, when 9600 baud modems were the norm and America Online charged an hourly fee for Internet access. Angie, who could pass for a lively, lovable aunt from an Enid Blyton novel, was initially motivated by the same impulse as Playgirl’s Marin Scott Milam. “Why do the guys get all the fun? Women like sex, too. I knew there had to be a market for an erotic site for women.” But though she shared the same vision as Milam, Angie took Sssh in a different direction. “I used mainstream women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and Elle as my model, rather than Playboy or anything else. I wanted to create Cosmo with balls.”

  Unlike Playgirl magazine, Sssh is filled with articles on health, diet, and sexual how-to’s. It includes a very active forum where women can chat with one another. There is a stable of men, ranging in age from their twenties to their fifties, who answer subscribers’ questions about male sexuality. Sssh contains horoscopes, beauty tips, video tutorials on topics such as how to do a striptease, and erotic stories. It also features pornographic videos.

  “We’ve listened to what women wanted to see, and over time we’ve gotten pretty good at it,” says Angie proudly, commenting on her fifteen years of experience. “Women want to see foreplay, a lot of kissing, a lot of talking before the action gets going. They like to see women with a little more weight on them, a little older, not skinny young girls. The guys have to be clean, well-dressed, and well-kept. They hate men that are sloppily dressed.”