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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Are Men Sex Obsessed?

163 replies

Oldgumbiecat · 30/09/2011 15:32

Common experience tells us that most men certainly are. The unpalatable truth is that for men having sex is pretty much like going to the toilet: an urgent and immediate need that needs to be satisfied quickly, and with any woman who is ready and willing, or who can in turn gain something from it, imaginary or real. Men need to be possessed of real self control to remain monogamous: monogamy is not in the nature of your average man.

So why else do you suppose that the sex industry is in the ascendancy? And that?s to put it mildly. The sex industry generates billions for those smart enough to exploit it. All men are sex addicted to a greater or lesser degree. And anyone who thinks that women are not above taking advantage of them deludes her/himself.

This obsession combined with a tendency for so many men not to grow up emotionally beyond toddlerhood, though, can certainly result in legions of women getting a very raw deal indeed. Particularly when they are preoccupied with the responsibility of raising real children as well as an adult who never grew up. And men, too, are too often preoccupied with the notion that the grass is greener on the other side of the hill: the infatuation with the pretty girl with long legs at the office which they misconstrue as having found true love at last. Once again, it?s nothing more and nothing less than good old lust.

I do not include, of course, the many men who will squeal in protest when they read this, because of course you are all such good little boys really. And if you find these views offensive, then I regret that. But while they may not apply to you, I think it very probable that enough who read this won't readily deny the truth.
OP posts:
billysolloxx · 01/10/2011 20:51

i can only speak for myself of course but i absolutely love sex (obsessed? - yeah probly lol) more the better for me!! Grin

OldLadyKnowsNothing · 01/10/2011 21:17

Passionsrunhigh, how can you say that women are physically fitter these days, when so many people are overweight, and so many tasks that used to be hard work (eg, clothes washing) are now mechanised?

turquoisetumble · 01/10/2011 23:05

Yes Passion. I think we are singing from the same hymn sheet. I am so fucking pissed off being told about how low my sexuality/desire is by men, who measure it solely on their own criterion. Not to mention the assumption that all men and all women have a nicely packaged, homogenous 'sexuality' that we can compare.

How about we change the measurement? Let's measure sexual desire on the amount of sex toys bought? Or the duration of orgasm, or the length of the post coital satisfaction?

Billysolloxx - unless you are a man - that cannot be true. The population is divided sexually into two simple camps: men that love sex and women that don't. What are you, some kind of nympho? Close your legs and get back to the kitchen.

passionsrunhigh · 01/10/2011 23:37

OldLady, yes, lots of overweight PEOPLE which means lots of unfit men and women, but when did the gyms and fitmess classes were as full of women as they are today(plus joggers etc.)? It's at least 50-50. You are talking more from a social groups perspective, people who have any sortr of money tend to look after themselves better and eat healthier, whereas the overweight majority is in low income/fast food group, I'm not talking now about genetic health issues.
turquoise, yes OBSERVATION which is a favourite method for confidence is not reliable whatsoever, as women aer different in that they are not obvious, not in your face about sex, but it's there all right! Why not measure indeed by duration of orgasms, time spent thinking about it, watching internet erotica/reading erotic books for some, and actual number of AROUSED states per week whether she's with a patner or not. In a way women might have more time for all this if they are not in extremely serious business or hellish long hours like men work in the City - or hard manual jobs for that matter , which all depletes their energy. Obviously new mothers are an exception, but very often after childbirth, a year in, the sex drive rises a lot. A lot of women have to surpress their drive as they have families and can't just have sex with others because the marriage would be broken, and so are many men managing to control themselves when patner unavailable. We are not talking here about teenage single men who don't mind who they sleep with (even that doesn't apply to all).

OldLadyKnowsNothing · 01/10/2011 23:47

LOL, there was no need for special gyms or fitness classes when Real Life took a lot more hard work!

Sorry, am derailing thread, will shut up now. Blush

billysolloxx · 01/10/2011 23:59

turquoisetumble i am a man which is why i posted what i posted do keep up!

solidgoldbrass · 02/10/2011 02:37

The thing about porn for women is not that women, being pure romantic innocent little flowers, don't want it or don't like it. It's that patriarchal society makes it really quite difficult for them to get it. Just as in most other industries, the people with the bulk of the power are men, and when it comes to the production of erotic material that a lot of women might like, material that is produced by women for other women, the distribution companies are pretty bloody unhelpful. They say it won't sell, that women don't want it, that MY WIFE wouldn't like it, that there's no demand for it.... Filament magazine sells out every print run, and there are apparently back copies changing hands for anything up to £60 on ebay, yet the owners get told things like 'Oh, we woulnd't stock that, there's no demand for it. Had three or four women in this week, asking for it, but we told them there's no demand for it.'
When the mainstream, male-run publishing companies try to produce porn mags for women, the women running the titles tend to get crap from the men in the boardroom - 'My wife wouldn't look at that... this isn't what women want... put Madonna on the cover and more articles about shoes and make up along with this photoshoot you had to source cheaply from a gay magazine... oh and look, you've got feminism all over it, clean that up!'

moonferret · 02/10/2011 02:40

Ha! I'd give that an "F" at GCSE.

If men are sex obsessed, women are money obsessed. The 2 are virtually equivalent in my experience.

solidgoldbrass · 02/10/2011 02:45

Moonferret: Well, if you're ugly and crap at sex, then money is probably all you've got to offer.

moonferret · 02/10/2011 02:47

I didn't think it would be long before someone like that came along..it's very predictable!

solidgoldbrass · 02/10/2011 03:05

That was also always the deal, culturally. Women weren't allowed to own or earn money. They had to trade sex for it. If they got a good deal (ie one customer on a long-term contract, which was only gettable by providing domestic service too) they were praised, admired, accepted, and called 'Wives'. If they only got short term deals, they were called 'whores' and condemned by pretty much everyone.

CheerfulYank · 02/10/2011 03:17

What's "cottaging" ?

I am absolutely howling at the term "advancing penises." I'm picturing a 50's housewife in pearls and a pinny fending off an army of cocks. "But I've the roast to finish! Back! Back!"

My mind takes me to odd places sometimes. :o

CheerfulYank · 02/10/2011 03:18

Oh and I personally ADORE sex. I might be called obsessed...I will ask DH when he gets down from putting DS to bed. :)

solidgoldbrass · 02/10/2011 10:38

'Cottaging' is gay men hanging around in public loos looking for other gay men (or indeed allegedly straight ones) to have sex with. Not all gay men do this, obviously.

CheerfulYank · 02/10/2011 10:51

OHHHHHHHHHH!

That actually happened to DH once. He was brushing his teeth in the bathroom of the English building in college...an older man came in and said "I'll give you fifty bucks for it..."

Dh's response... "Uh...my toothbrush?"

:o

wamster · 02/10/2011 15:03

While it is just a matter of fact to me that men and women are sexual beings who -unless extremely unusual- both want sex in some shape or form, I honestly do not think that there is much of a market for Mayfair type magazines for women.
I'm thinking of Ann Summers here- surely a shop like that would have brought out such a magazine (which, I have to say, is mildly pornographic i.e. Mayfair shows naked young women in very provocative poses -legs apart etc, but no actual shots of men and women together or any sexual acts) i.e. young men posing in the buff, if there were?
In a world where handcuffs are seen on the same level as Carry on films, there is nothing really subversive in a women's magazine featuring naked men posing. Nobody is going to be offended by them.

How many women can you imagine offering :'I'll give you fifty bucks for it' ('it' being, I should imagine, CheerfulYank's dh's bottom. Sorry to be crude, but what else could he mean)?

I'm not going to pretend that men and women are turned on by the same things, because they are not. And no amount of politically correctness is going to change my mind.
Gender is important. Men and women do respond differently to sexual stimuli, and, as a general rule of thumb (obviously there are men who it takes a lot to get aroused, and there are women who are like Samantha in Sex and the City), gender can be relied upon as a guide as to what turns a person on.

Anybody know of any women who hang around toilets for sex? I don't. Know of a few men, though. But this is not because women are uninterested in sex, it's because different things turn them on.

rycooler · 02/10/2011 15:47

Sex in the City is a good example of gender differences actually - for all their sexual bravado all they really wanted was a man to love them. Woman want love from one special person. Love is a lot harder to get than sex.

solidgoldbrass · 02/10/2011 16:10

Wamster: Ann Summers did bring out a magazine for women. They made a howling mess of it and it only lasted a couple of issues. Producing a decent magazine of any kind is harder than it looks. The most successful of the lot in terms of initual sales was For Women in 1992, though that got torpedoed by the male executives in the company and though it lasted a long time, sales never recovered from their idiotic mistakes such as removing the willies and putting Madonna on the cover repeatedly.

carernotasaint · 02/10/2011 18:15

I used to buy Scarlet magazine which folded last year. I did notice though that their list of executives which they referred to as The Suits were male.
When Scarlet first started in the autumn of 2004 it was quite innovative but as the years moved on you could see the celebrity culture creeping in. They used to put unknown women on the cover (sometimes provocatively posed sometimes not) They even had a reader competition one year and the winner got to be on the cover.
But slowly they started to put celebs on the cover albeit talented ones like Adele and Duffy. When it folded last year they tried to say it wasnt selling because "women dont really want that sort of thing"
BOLLOCKS. Its obvious to me that "The Suits thought they knew better about what women wanted so they celebritied it up.
Then when it failed they tried to say it was because women didnt want that sort of thing rather than take responsibility for fucking it up.
Ultimately the mag became a little bit more mainstream and no longer really what its founders,Sarah Hedley and Emily Dubberley had envisaged.
Shame really. Im surprised The Suits let them keep Cliterature till the end!

LeBOF · 02/10/2011 18:28

I liked Scarlet at the beginning too.

rycooler · 02/10/2011 18:33

There's plenty of talented females working in media, if they thought there was a market for that sort of magazine they'd produce one - if you're saying there's an obvious gap in the market they'd be straight in ( pardon the pun )

solidgoldbrass · 02/10/2011 19:55

Rycooler: Look, sorry mate but I do actually know a lot about this. Scarlet is an excellent case in point - when Emily Dubberly and co started it, they had some good ideas (though it was a lot too consumerist for my taste right from the beginning) and then The Suits insisted on trying to get it sold in Tescos which meant more lipstick, more fashion, more slebs until it was basically just another version of Cosmo/Company etc with a bit of smutty fiction at the back. So naturally it bombed because the company owning it wasn't paying the sort of wages that the mainstream women's mags.

lostinafrica · 02/10/2011 20:10

Why did the women who started it let men control it, sgb?

solidgoldbrass · 02/10/2011 20:28

Money. And access to distribution. Magazine publishing is almost completely fucked now, but even 10 years ago it was problematic. Because no matter how good your magazine, you have to get it into shops so people can buy it, which means dealing with distribution companies, which often means selling your title to a publishing company, and finding out that you have lost editorial control. The men in suits will say that it's not selling enough, so you need to change it and they (being Men In Suits) know more about publishing than you do, and therefore you must do what they say. Or they will either sack you and get a more compliant editorial team in place, or just shut the magazine down.

These days, things are slightly better in that anyone who wants to can have a website and sell a magazine, book or DVD through it, but if it's magazines you want to do, you still have to pay the print bill, and even now, even with much more flexible print runs and POD, that costs.

confidence · 02/10/2011 21:56

passionsrunhigh - Maybe I didn't express myself, or maybe you misinterpreted me. In an earlier post I said similar to what you are saying - that it's not as simple as men just wanting "more sex" than women. The truth is that the nature of their desires and how they frame it, mentally, seems to be different.

What I did say and would maintain, is that men seem to be more open to quick, easy, casual sex - particularly with multiple or non-emotionally-intimate partners - than women are. Practical reasons such as avoiding rape and violence were raised as if they somehow disprove what I'm saying here, but they don't - in fact I said cited exactly the same reasons upthread. I don't think it's particularly important to the argument what the reasons are - the fact remains that men have a much freer attitude to this kind of sex than women.

Now it may well be true that women, while experiencing and framing their sexual fantasies much more often in terms of monogamy or at least emotional intimacy, longer timescale, more extended foreplay, more connectedness to other areas of fantasy etc, do actually spend just as much time as men thinking about sex. I have no idea whether this is the case but it may perfectly well be. I suppose we might then say that women are as sex-obsessed as men, although the quality of that obsession is different.