Sex and the City Has a Lot to Answer For

Samantha Jones, Sex and the City

“He did something to me that was so perverse! Okay, I’m just going to say it. He tried to hold my hand.”

Samantha Jones

Samantha Jones is a fraud with an attachment disorder. Here’s a woman who thinks the perfect Saturday afternoon involves a three hour session alone in bed with her vibrator. She claims to have “hundreds of soulmates” and demands that her sexual partners leave “an hour after I climax.” She spends the entire series trying to decide whether a stable relationship is her thing, and in the movie we see her decide that it isn’t. She dumps Smith Jerrod, a gorgeous, sweet, adoring partner so that she can have a relationship “with herself.”  Okaaaaayyyy. Whatever floats your boat, honey.

However, Samantha’s pretending to be a liberated female who can have sex like a man is a lie. She’s a damaged female who is sexually omnivorous, and should probably be seeking treatment for sexual addiction. She proudly describes herself as trisexual, i.e. willing to try anything once. The problem arises when we romanticize Samantha. We call her an empowered woman who is not beholden to any man. She is smart, successful, and pulling lots of gorgeous male ass in her forties. 

How many girls in middle and high school watched Sex and the City from 1998-2004? Many, many girls. My daughter watched it religiously, and I watched it with her. It was well-written, fun, entertaining. It contained priceless moments that have entered the popular culture. Who can forget Berger’s dumping Carrie on a Post-it note? Or Miranda’s, er, sloppy kisses with the guy from Weight Watchers? We both enjoyed Sex and the City, and I was glad my daughter was willing to watch it with me. It was mother-daughter time. It was definitely a stretch for her age, and I plead guilty to poor judgment on that front. 

Now, though, I can see how warped it was. Sex and the City was a great show about friendship, but it was a crappy show about sex. Research shows conclusively that women and men experience sex differently. Very differently. They imagine it differently, crave it differently, experience it differently and value it differently. They have different hormones surging before, during and after sex. And why should that surprise us? It’s as plain as the nose on Carrie Bradshaw’s face. 

Many young women bought into the myth of Samantha. Now that they’re sexually active, they believe they should be able to have sex like a man, and they feel guilty when they can’t maintain emotional distance. Samantha was viewed as a role model for the sexually liberated woman, but I wouldn’t wish her life on anyone. Women should not be judged for having sex with whomever they please, but let’s not pretend women have sex like men. Because they don’t, and that’s a good thing. We should celebrate the way we have sex, because we’re happiest when we are true to our natures.  

Study after study illustrates that men’s sex drives are not only stronger than women’s, but much more straightforward. The sources of women’s libidos, by contrast, are much more difficult to pin down. It’s common wisdom that women place more value on emotional connection as a spark of sexual desire. But women also appear to be heavily influenced by social and cultural factors as well.

You can read the full article at WebMD: Sex Drive: How Do Men and Women Compare? (See end of article for Sources.)

Here are seven patterns of men’s and women’s sex drives that researchers have found:

1. Men think more about sex.

• The majority of adult men under 60 think about sex at least once a day. 
• Only about one-quarter of women report this level of frequency. 
• As men and women age, each fantasize less, but men still fantasize about twice as often.
• Men reported more spontaneous sexual arousal and have more frequent and varied fantasies.

2. Men seek sex more avidly.

• Men want sex more often than women at the start of a relationship, in the middle of it, and after many years of it.
• This isn’t just true of heterosexuals; gay men also have higher frequency of sex than lesbians at all stages of the relationship. 
• Men say they want more sex partners in their lifetime.
• Men are more interested in casual sex.
• Men are more likely to seek sex even when it is frowned upon or even outlawed: Prostitution is still mostly a phenomenon of men seeking sex with women, rather than the other way around.
• More men masturbate, and they do so more frequently.

3. Women’s sexual inclinations are more complicated than men’s.

What turns women on? Not even women always seem to know. Northwestern University researcher Meredith Chivers and colleagues showed erotic films to gay and straight men and women. They asked them about their level of sexual arousal, and also measured their actual level of arousal through devices attached to their genitals.

• For men, the results were predictable. 
  • Straight men said they were more turned on by depictions of male-female sex and female-female sex, and the measuring devices backed up their claims. 
  • Gay men said they were turned on by male-male sex, and again the devices backed them up. 
• For women, the results were more surprising.
  • Straight women said they were more turned on by male-female sex. But genitally they showed about the same reaction to male-female, male-male, and female-female sex.
• Men are very rigid and specific about who they become aroused by, who they want to have sex with, who they fall in love with.
• By contrast, women may be more open to same-sex relationships thanks to their less-directed sex drives. They won’t necessarily do it, but they have the capacity.
  • Studies showing that homosexuality is a more fluid state among women than men. Women are more likely than men to call themselves bisexual, and to report their sexual orientation as a matter of choice.

4. Women’s sex drives are more influenced by social and cultural factors.

• Women’s attitudes towards (and willingness to perform) various sexual practices are more likely than men’s to change over time.
• Women are more influenced by the attitudes of their peer group in their decisions about sex.
• Women with higher education levels were more likely to have performed a wider variety of sexual practices (such as oral sex); education made less of a difference with men.
• Women were more likely than men to show inconsistency between their expressed values about sexual activities such as premarital sex and their actual behavior.

5. Women take a less direct route to sexual satisfaction.

• For women, desire originates much more between the ears than between the legs. There is a need for a plot — hence the romance novel. It is more about the anticipation, how you get there; it is the longing that is the fuel for desire.
• Women’s desire is more contextual, more subjective, more layered on a lattice of emotions. Sex is simpler and more straightforward for men. Men seek intimacy, love, and connection in a relationship, just as women do, but view the role of sex differently. 
  • Women want to talk first, connect first, then have sex. 
  • For men, sex is the connection. Sex is the language men use to express their tender loving vulnerable side. It is their language of intimacy.

6. Women experience orgasms differently than men.

• Men, on average, take four minutes from the point of entry until ejaculation, according to Laumann. 
• Women usually take around 10 to 11 minutes to reach orgasm — if they do.
• Among men who are part of a couple, 75% report that they always have an orgasm, as opposed to 26% of the women. 

7. Women’s libidos seem to be less amenable to drugs.

• Men have embraced drugs as a cure not only for erectile dysfunction but also for a shrinking libido. 
• With women, however, the search for a drug to boost sex drive has proved more elusive.
• Testosterone works much faster in men with low libidos than women
•  The treatments are not as effective in women as in men. 
• In a large survey published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology last year, 40% of women reported some sort of sexual problem — most commonly low sexual desire — but only 12% report feeling distressed about it. 

Embrace the differences. They keep life interesting. Do you agree?

SOURCES:
Edward O. Laumann, PhD, professor of sociology, University of Chicago.
J. Michael Bailey, PhD, professor of psychology, Northwestern University.
Glenn Braunstein, chair, department of medicine, Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles.
Esther Perel, couples and family therapist, New York City; author, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic.
Baumeister, R. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2001; vol 5: pp 242-273.
Baumeister, Psychological Bulletin, 2000, vol. 126, pp. 347-374.
Shifren, J. Obstetrics and Gynecology, November 2008; vol 112: pp 970-978
Laumann, E. The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States, 1994, University of Chicago Press.

Tags: Carrie Bradshaw, casual sex, fantasy, gender differences, masturbation, orgasm, Samantha Jones, sex, Sex and the City, sex differences, sex drive