I do think that looking at same-sex relationships can be more illustrative of desire than hetero ones. As someone said earlier, heterosexual encounters are (almost always) influenced by birth control, there’s also the difference in physical size (and potential for assault), and I’d add – a lifetime of conditioning about relationships and how they’re supposed to work. All of those factors can stifle desire long before a gal gets her knickers off.

What?

Has she ever, like, studied any animals?

Anyone who begins a statement “No animal…” and doesn’t end it with something like “… can do photosynthesis” should have copies of very heavy introductory animal biology textbooks thrown at them. You’d have to be bloody blind to not notice that many, many animals — hell, even some insects, if I’m not mistaken, so not even just complicated “human-like” ones — do, in fact, forge complicated and committed relationships before they get down and dirty.

As for love and orgasms, I will say that while I’m not personally a huge fan of uncomplicated/uncommitted sexual encounters these days, I’ve had plenty of orgasms within them. Enjoyed ‘em fine, too, even if they’re not my cup of tea right now.

I won’t even step far into what I find to be our ridiculous mythology about men and their completely insatiable and unemotional sexual appetites — one that screws with them like crazy, if my little collection of very honest friends is any guide, anyway.

A fence encloses my yard, and vines grow on the gates. Earlier this year for a month or so I had to take my car in or out one gate because a pair of cardinals had built a nest amidst the vines on the other gate and they had eggs in that nest. Those two birds had a more committed relationship that three-quarters of the members of Congress.

There are many bird species which mate for life, or at lesat for the life of both parties. i.e. If one bird dies, the survivor will take a new mate. My guess would be because baby birds eat like gangbusters and in many species, if you don’t have two parents working outside the home, you can’t catch/find enough food to keep the babies from starving. So much for the fundie notion that two-parent nuclear families ought to involve Dad bringing home the bacon and Mom staying home to cook it.

Did you hear about the peregrine falcons in Jersey City a few years back? The male was badly injured (wing severed when he flew through a live power line) and had to be taken to a wildlife refuge with no possibility of rehabilitation and release (owing to birds sort of needing two wings to fly). That left the female with a nest full of eyases and only one parent to feed them. So NJ Wildlife officers were dropping off freshly killed quail to supplement what the female could catch, in hopes that they wouldn’t lose all the eyases. They figured the female would find another mate by the following breeding season, but this year’s batch probably wouldn’t make it (and what with them being an endangered species, one can see the concern).

Then a solo male peregrine starts hanging around (maybe he read a Craigslist ad?) and the wildlife officers are getting really worried that he’ll either drive the female off the nest, in which case the eyases will starve, or kill them outright to mate with her. Instead, the new guy starts bringing the female his kills to take to her babies, and helping her defend her territory against other birds of prey. Guess he was auditioning for the new husband role and wanted to show he was a good provider. By the end of the nesting season he was bringing home half the food, supervising flying lessons, and generally being a model stepfather. He and the female returned to the nest the following spring and had a clutch of their own. Wildlife officers decided he must’ve been taking the long view regarding a desirable female and the desirable real estate she controlled.

That is just one of the perks of idolatry in our pop culture.

This is really, really dumb. Lynn Sherry needs to turn off the teevee, shut down the peecee, get up off her ass and go outside. I’m not much of a naturalist, you know, but I’ve got two eyes and there are birds that live in my yard – yo Lynn Sherr, you’re wrong!.

A fence encloses my yard, and vines grow on the gates. Earlier this year for a month or so I had to take my car in or out one gate because a pair of cardinals had built a nest amidst the vines on the other gate and they had eggs in that nest. Those two birds had a more committed relationship that three-quarters of the members of Congress.

Seriously, though, women don’t need to be loved to orgasm, but some of us need to be loved to find sexual intercourse worth risking pregnancy for. Even with birth control, “what would I do if the birth control failed and I got pregnant” was a big shaper of my own sexual choices. That’s one reason I can’t agree with choice two of the survey (where “women” in general could be expected to detach emotionally, if only they weren’t so silly about listening to social convention). The other being what KnifeGhost pointed out about how “men” don’t all detach emotionally either.

On the other hand, that first choice of theirs? Who, really, thinks too much to enjoy sex, once they’ve made up their mind to have it? Maybe some people of both sexes, but certainly not women more than men.