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A review by lpm100
Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations--From Adventure to Revenge by David M. Buss, Cindy M. Meston
2.0
Book Review
"Why Women Have Sex"
2/5 stars
"If you staple together enough trivial anecdotes, they can turn into a book. I'm probably way too old and jaded to take much out of this"
*******
Of the book:
β318 references
β1.2 per page
11 chapters@β23.7/perβ261 pps of prose.
I'll start out by saying that I don't recommend this book, and that is because:
1. A great deal of this is recapitulation of the first book by this author which was "The Evolution of Desire." And this is something that you find quite frequently in humanities / soft science books: they're pretty efficient at taking a fairly small/ weak data set and expanding it into two or three books. (A lot of times if you can't get your papers published, the best way is to just write a book.)
2. It doesn't tell anybody who has been in the dating game for more than a couple of years anything that they don't already know.
Yes, 80% of women are after 20% of men (who regularly have "stables of hoes") and everybody else gets what's left over.
Yes, money is an aphrodisiac. Too, for power.
Yes, people get what they can settle for. (Males and females both.)
Yes, women need a reason to have sex and men just need a place.
Yes, it's really hard to draw the line between a woman selecting a man for his assets and frank prostitution.
Yes, with 80% of women being after 20% of men, some men are going to have to use some deceptive strategies in order to get Every Man's Concern. (Kleptogamy. Coercion. Pretending to be gay.)
3. I'm just not sure about the quality of the research, given that the authors say that they took it by survey.
a. The first thing that you learn in Statistics class (if not the second) is that surveys are usually unreliable because of self-selection bias.
b. (xix). Women had a list of 237 reasons that they could have had sex. This survey was done online, but if the reasons were not randomized then what they would likely find is that: the most frequent reasons would be at the top of the list probably because..... Who is going to scroll through a list of 237 reasons and think about every single one of them?
Ain't nobody got time for that.
c. Sample size is too small. 1006 people, but it's so small that people were not represented from: 4 out of 50 US states; 2 out of 10 Canadian provinces; 24 out of 27 countries in the European Union.
4. Lots of weakness that is endemic to books on Evolutionary Psychology:
a. Everything is extremely speculative. "According to this view" (p.49) or "Early theorists hypothesized that" (p.47) or "Other researchers have failed to find a link between ..."(p.38) or "for this reason, some researchers believe... (p.77).
b. But without any genetic mechanism of action;
c. I think that there are exactly zero molecular genetic data in this book, and if it was understood at that level of detail this would at least be somewhere in the appendices.
*******
In spite of the general weakness of the book, there are a few things that we learn:
1. Psychological and physiological arousal are two different things. In men they are inextricably linked, but in women they are not necessarily the same thing. It's a nice coincidence if they can be, but it's often not the case.
2. The cervix is a sexual organ for some women, but not for others. Not. At. All. (So, for them, being slammed into like a crash test dummy is not going to get them there.)
The largest number of nerve endings are actually right at the vaginal opening, but that runs into diminishing returns quickly.
3. There are 2 major types of orgasms: Vaginal and clitoral. (Gspot and mons pubis are minor ones.) But the bad news is that roughly half of women do not have a g-spot (or at least not enough nerve density to support a vaginal orgasm). And 71% of women can't have an orgasm with a partner.
3. There are three components of "love." (I put this word in quotes because it is extremely unclear what it means.)
Components are: Intimacy / compassion/commitment. Ideally you can have all three, but one might be enough.
4. (p.12) Somehow, both sexes (when heterosexual) mistake the things that the same sex is likely to notice for what the opposite sex actually wants. That would explain why so many women spend so much time on waxing/plucking their eyebrows (and NO straight man anywhere cares about a woman's eyebrows so long as there are two of them); it also explains why guys want to lift weight until they don't have any neck (but in reality, women prefer lean/slash V-shaped men.
5. Some psychologists are of the opinion that a good cure for headache is an orgasm. (p.238)
Second order thoughts:
1. I think that this is a good book for fathers to give their sons to read. (I have a lot of sons whom I would like to spread their DNA as far as possible).
2. Yes, reproduction is a Hobbesian war and it's just like we already know: there are a lot of losers in this game and nothing anywhere can make it fair. But, forewarned is forearmed: the majority of more aggressive men have their DNA go far, and the weaker ones have theirs go nowhere. Betas end up taking care of the children of alphas when they marry the women that they have left behind.
3. I really do believe that the Orthodox Jewish/Indian way to form marriages is neater and more organized: a lot of times it's easy to get overwhelmed with choice such that it's difficult to make the calculation more clearly. Other times, people get so overwhelmed with emotional anguish that they don't realize that they really do have a substandard partner with whom to have children.
Sometimes it works out better for both parties in the marriage (as well as any children involved) that one doesn't do this by the rush of blood, and to talk rationally beforehand about what each party can bring to the table / wants to take away from the relationship. (It is truly amazing how few people think about this before they get married and then waste too many reproductive years tethered to an idiot/bum.)
4. As much as people talk about the nebulous concept of "love," there is a lot more calculation than one would suppose in pursuing / accepting someone.
a. Guys see a woman and think that:"She is about a 7, I think maybe I could get her. But an 8 is probably way out of My League"
b. Or maybe some guy would like to have 4 or 5 women in rotation/variety, and so he consciously focuses on bottom line britches.
c. Overweight white ladies (with enough body mass to create too many crevices for a mid-range white guy to keep up with/be interested in) choose black guys one tier up so often that it becomes a sociological cliche. That is a special case of the general trend of people consciously dipping lower in the dating pool because of higher availability there.
5. In some ways, I wonder what this has to do with me.
As in, what practical significance is there? Knowing the dynamics of sexual encounters does not necessarily mean that I can make a dream come true. (Nice looking Ashkenazi Girl/Southern Italian girl with wavy black hair/dense bush: "I like you. Let's go out somewhere and explore one another's moist regions regularly with no strings attached until you get bored of me. Then you can swap me out with one of my similar-in-appearance friends.")
6. Some stuff here that the book talks about is irredeemably gross, and I can't imagine how anybody could find anything interesting about it. Period sex (p.240).
New vocabulary
vaginal photoplethysmography
osculation
veliid water strider
ghotul (Hindi)
Sunnah (clitoral good removal)
clitoridectomy
infibulation (ouch!)
fraternal polyandry
Bratz doll
chlorosis
triptans
Quote:
(p.4) Proximity can kill sex faster than fainting.
(p.133) I love my husband, but when you've been married for a while, let's face it - - sex just isn't that exciting anymore. It's also predictable. Even when we tried to be "spontaneous," it's almost comical because I can predict this every move. I have sex because I feel I "owe" it to him as his wife, and also because I love him and want to keep him happy. The truth is, though, most of the time I just lie there and make lists in my head. I grunt once in awhile so he knows I'm awake, and then I tell him how great it was when it's over. It seems to be working. We're happily married
Verdict: Not recommended.
"Why Women Have Sex"
2/5 stars
"If you staple together enough trivial anecdotes, they can turn into a book. I'm probably way too old and jaded to take much out of this"
*******
Of the book:
β318 references
β1.2 per page
11 chapters@β23.7/perβ261 pps of prose.
I'll start out by saying that I don't recommend this book, and that is because:
1. A great deal of this is recapitulation of the first book by this author which was "The Evolution of Desire." And this is something that you find quite frequently in humanities / soft science books: they're pretty efficient at taking a fairly small/ weak data set and expanding it into two or three books. (A lot of times if you can't get your papers published, the best way is to just write a book.)
2. It doesn't tell anybody who has been in the dating game for more than a couple of years anything that they don't already know.
Yes, 80% of women are after 20% of men (who regularly have "stables of hoes") and everybody else gets what's left over.
Yes, money is an aphrodisiac. Too, for power.
Yes, people get what they can settle for. (Males and females both.)
Yes, women need a reason to have sex and men just need a place.
Yes, it's really hard to draw the line between a woman selecting a man for his assets and frank prostitution.
Yes, with 80% of women being after 20% of men, some men are going to have to use some deceptive strategies in order to get Every Man's Concern. (Kleptogamy. Coercion. Pretending to be gay.)
3. I'm just not sure about the quality of the research, given that the authors say that they took it by survey.
a. The first thing that you learn in Statistics class (if not the second) is that surveys are usually unreliable because of self-selection bias.
b. (xix). Women had a list of 237 reasons that they could have had sex. This survey was done online, but if the reasons were not randomized then what they would likely find is that: the most frequent reasons would be at the top of the list probably because..... Who is going to scroll through a list of 237 reasons and think about every single one of them?
Ain't nobody got time for that.
c. Sample size is too small. 1006 people, but it's so small that people were not represented from: 4 out of 50 US states; 2 out of 10 Canadian provinces; 24 out of 27 countries in the European Union.
4. Lots of weakness that is endemic to books on Evolutionary Psychology:
a. Everything is extremely speculative. "According to this view" (p.49) or "Early theorists hypothesized that" (p.47) or "Other researchers have failed to find a link between ..."(p.38) or "for this reason, some researchers believe... (p.77).
b. But without any genetic mechanism of action;
c. I think that there are exactly zero molecular genetic data in this book, and if it was understood at that level of detail this would at least be somewhere in the appendices.
*******
In spite of the general weakness of the book, there are a few things that we learn:
1. Psychological and physiological arousal are two different things. In men they are inextricably linked, but in women they are not necessarily the same thing. It's a nice coincidence if they can be, but it's often not the case.
2. The cervix is a sexual organ for some women, but not for others. Not. At. All. (So, for them, being slammed into like a crash test dummy is not going to get them there.)
The largest number of nerve endings are actually right at the vaginal opening, but that runs into diminishing returns quickly.
3. There are 2 major types of orgasms: Vaginal and clitoral. (Gspot and mons pubis are minor ones.) But the bad news is that roughly half of women do not have a g-spot (or at least not enough nerve density to support a vaginal orgasm). And 71% of women can't have an orgasm with a partner.
3. There are three components of "love." (I put this word in quotes because it is extremely unclear what it means.)
Components are: Intimacy / compassion/commitment. Ideally you can have all three, but one might be enough.
4. (p.12) Somehow, both sexes (when heterosexual) mistake the things that the same sex is likely to notice for what the opposite sex actually wants. That would explain why so many women spend so much time on waxing/plucking their eyebrows (and NO straight man anywhere cares about a woman's eyebrows so long as there are two of them); it also explains why guys want to lift weight until they don't have any neck (but in reality, women prefer lean/slash V-shaped men.
5. Some psychologists are of the opinion that a good cure for headache is an orgasm. (p.238)
Second order thoughts:
1. I think that this is a good book for fathers to give their sons to read. (I have a lot of sons whom I would like to spread their DNA as far as possible).
2. Yes, reproduction is a Hobbesian war and it's just like we already know: there are a lot of losers in this game and nothing anywhere can make it fair. But, forewarned is forearmed: the majority of more aggressive men have their DNA go far, and the weaker ones have theirs go nowhere. Betas end up taking care of the children of alphas when they marry the women that they have left behind.
3. I really do believe that the Orthodox Jewish/Indian way to form marriages is neater and more organized: a lot of times it's easy to get overwhelmed with choice such that it's difficult to make the calculation more clearly. Other times, people get so overwhelmed with emotional anguish that they don't realize that they really do have a substandard partner with whom to have children.
Sometimes it works out better for both parties in the marriage (as well as any children involved) that one doesn't do this by the rush of blood, and to talk rationally beforehand about what each party can bring to the table / wants to take away from the relationship. (It is truly amazing how few people think about this before they get married and then waste too many reproductive years tethered to an idiot/bum.)
4. As much as people talk about the nebulous concept of "love," there is a lot more calculation than one would suppose in pursuing / accepting someone.
a. Guys see a woman and think that:"She is about a 7, I think maybe I could get her. But an 8 is probably way out of My League"
b. Or maybe some guy would like to have 4 or 5 women in rotation/variety, and so he consciously focuses on bottom line britches.
c. Overweight white ladies (with enough body mass to create too many crevices for a mid-range white guy to keep up with/be interested in) choose black guys one tier up so often that it becomes a sociological cliche. That is a special case of the general trend of people consciously dipping lower in the dating pool because of higher availability there.
5. In some ways, I wonder what this has to do with me.
As in, what practical significance is there? Knowing the dynamics of sexual encounters does not necessarily mean that I can make a dream come true. (Nice looking Ashkenazi Girl/Southern Italian girl with wavy black hair/dense bush: "I like you. Let's go out somewhere and explore one another's moist regions regularly with no strings attached until you get bored of me. Then you can swap me out with one of my similar-in-appearance friends.")
6. Some stuff here that the book talks about is irredeemably gross, and I can't imagine how anybody could find anything interesting about it. Period sex (p.240).
New vocabulary
vaginal photoplethysmography
osculation
veliid water strider
ghotul (Hindi)
Sunnah (clitoral good removal)
clitoridectomy
infibulation (ouch!)
fraternal polyandry
Bratz doll
chlorosis
triptans
Quote:
(p.4) Proximity can kill sex faster than fainting.
(p.133) I love my husband, but when you've been married for a while, let's face it - - sex just isn't that exciting anymore. It's also predictable. Even when we tried to be "spontaneous," it's almost comical because I can predict this every move. I have sex because I feel I "owe" it to him as his wife, and also because I love him and want to keep him happy. The truth is, though, most of the time I just lie there and make lists in my head. I grunt once in awhile so he knows I'm awake, and then I tell him how great it was when it's over. It seems to be working. We're happily married
Verdict: Not recommended.