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Sex and the Brain

When it comes to sexuality, men and women to some extent are differently tuned. For men, arousal and desire are often intertwined, while for women, the two are frequently distinct....

For example, male arousal, studies find, is strongly visual, and when men engage in sexual activity or even anticipate it, brain structures once thought to have little connection to sex spring into action. 

The same brain regions, however, remain relatively quiet when women are aroused.

At the core of the sexual divide, some researchers say, is the amygdala, an almond-shaped nugget embedded in the limbic system, the brain's seat of emotions. ...

[Researcher] Dr. Stephan Hamann.. pointed out that the amygdala is known to have intricate connections to primates' visual systems. 

One reason for the powerful response to visual stimuli in men, he said, could be cultural. Men tend to be inundated with sexual imagery and, possibly, are more likely to seek it out.

Evolution may also have a role. ...

"For millions of years, men have had to size up a woman's reproductive capacity by looking for signs of youth and health that would enable them to carry a healthy baby," said Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at the Center for Human Evolutionary Studies at Rutgers, and the author of a recently published book, "Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love." ...

"Men, despite what most people think, fall in love faster than women do, probably because they're so visual," Dr. Fisher said. ...

Yet to play down the role of visual stimulation for women would be unwise, researchers say, and female admirers of Brad Pitt or George Clooney would probably agree. 

In research last year at Northwestern, Dr. Meredith Chivers, demonstrated that women could sometimes have more powerful responses to visual stimuli than men, although in different ways.

In her study, which ignited a small firestorm, Dr. Chivers used a device to measure genital arousal in subjects as they looked at pornography. 

Heterosexual men, she found, were aroused by footage of men and women having sex. 

Gay men reacted to two men having sex. Women, regardless of sexual orientation, responded to everything. 

In some cases, she said, women reported no sexual arousal, though the device said otherwise.

"One of the fascinating things was that the female responses to sexual images were fast and automatic," said Dr. Chivers... 

"The fact that they were not always aware speaks to there being other factors involved like emotion and psychological influences."

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Because bodies are seen as finished once they exhibit adult sexual drives, the rigidity of the term pervert is affirmed upon intervention from other discourses: medicine, psychoanalysis, genetics. 

Theorising the body as existing not purely as a spatial subject, but in time as a series of open reconfigurations and constant change suggests other ways of understanding the self and the subject as being in permanent flux.

For this reason all subjects are open to the potential of perverting themselves and each other through act, the force of relation, and affect, but none are pervert in an ontologically static sense. 

To actively seek to pervert the predictable pattern of subjective enactment, here beginning with the paradigm of sexuality, is to challenge the enactment of subjectivity as necessarily a re-enactment, but a possible place for transgression.

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....Aroused : A Collection of Erotic Writing - 
by Karen Finley

While posing for Playboy magazine, freelance Bill of Rights defender Karen Finley was told, while chocolate dripped down her nipples, that her smirk wasn't "Playboy sexy."

When writing for nerve.com, the so-called erotic on line magazine, she was told she would need to replace the word "cock" with something.. less objectionable.

Aroused is an anthology of erotica, sexual culture, passionate texts, sensual encounters and essays on gender bending, neurotic erotic lust, school girl antics, coming of age, and first times, ranging from personal gratification to denying gratification, control, submission, possession, and jealousy, with race, age, and economics thrown in for a more heightened emotional response.

Aroused defies our now familiar compartmentalization of sexuality and the erotic hit list of specialties: the best of lesbian erotica, the best of the new erotica, the best of old man and the sea erotica, famous person tattoo erotica, eclectic, esoteric erotica....   [publisher summary]

image from book: A Different Kind of Intimacy : The Collected Writings of Karen Finley

Leonard Shlain, author the bestselling Art & Physics and The Alphabet Versus the Goddess argues that profound alterations in female sexuality hold the key to this mystery. 

Long ago, due to the narrowness of her bipedal pelvis and the increasing size of her infants' heads, the human female began to experience high childbirth death rates, precipitating a crisis for the species. 

Natural selection adapted her to this unique environmental stress by drastically reconfiguring her hormonal reproductive cycle. 

Her estrus disappeared and menses mysteriously entrained with the periodicity of the moon. 

Women formulated the concept of a month, which in turn allowed them to make the connection between sex and pregnancy. 

Upon learning the majestic secret of time these ancestral females then gained the power to refuse sex when they were ovulating. Men were forced to confront women who possessed a mind of their own.

Women taught men about time and the men used this knowledge to become the planet's most fearsome predator. Unfortunately, they also discovered that they were mortal. 

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The possibility of achieving a kind of immortality through heirs drove men to construct patriarchal cultures whose purpose was to control women’s reproductive choices.

Leonard Shlain explores how these archaic insights about sex, time and power dramatically altered all subsequent human cultures, from the nature of courtship to the institution of marriage to the evolution of language.

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excerpt from The Place Beyond Opposites by William A. Henkin -

A Review of The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine 
by Nancy Qualls-Corbett 
and Phallos: Sacred Image of the Masculine by Eugene Monick

In The Sacred Prostitute, Nancy Qualls-Corbett seeks "to bring to conscious awareness aspects of feminine nature which have been misunderstood, devalued or lost to the unconscious," and to "examine the interrelatedness of sexuality and spirituality and ... how each may bring life to the other." 

She fulfills her mission by examining the ancient tradition of the maiden who ritually welcomes a passing stranger-man to her bower and dedicates their love-making to the goddess she worships. 

Because of the spiritual nature of the rite, the couple's consummation awakens the feminine aspects of both partners, and enables them to carry the power of their transformation into the world at large as spiritual and sexual beings.

Both authors recognize that sexuality and spirituality have been twisted in the popular mind by centuries of misrepresentation, and that as a consequence readers may be made uncomfortable with the fact that they are linked in these books. 

But as Monick writes, "The union of sexuality and religion is like an electrical connection. Wrong joining leads to disaster. No joining produces no energy. Proper joining holds promise." 

At several points in her study of the relationship between female sexuality and spirituality, Qualls-Corbett distinguishes between Logos, the masculine principle of rational reasoning easily represented by what is logical, and Eros, the feminine principle of relatedness represented by the erotic. 

As Monick also does in his study of the relationship between spirituality and male sexuality, she further separates the principles from gender.

"Masculine" does not mean "man," and "feminine" does not mean "woman." 

Not only may women express themselves logically and men express themselves erotically, she writes; it is even necessary for each to embrace the other's strength before transformation can take place and the two principles become united, coequals in consciousness.

As the first Native American porn star, I show you how this line of work is seen in the eyes of my people and I share some of the healing ceremonies I have experienced. Why would a sexually abused and abandoned young woman decide to get into such a business? Many women say it is empowering. What kind of lives did these women have before entering the world of X? Why do they say it increases their self-esteem. Why have so many, including the Godmother of my children, committed suicide?

*book:**The Secret Lives of Hyapatia Lee by Hyapatia Lee

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But in a more celebratory mood, I would say it was because of my most elementary passions -- sex, reading, and writing -- and because my passion for those things became a mission.

Erotic writing today is not only the best work of its kind that we've ever seen in the English language, it also has had an indelible effect on all of American literature. The flinching factor is gone -- the former stigma and prejudice against erotic writing have been exposed for the embarrassing ignorance that they represented. 

If I've acted as a goddess in that stream of events, I've been glad to be part of the faith.**Susie Bright

*How to Write a Dirty Story : Reading, Writing & Publishing Erotica

photo of Susie Bright by by Della Grace from susiebright.com

I think that sex is an exposure and a revealing of our wounds, our underbellies and our frailties. I think of sex as a very honest form of communication. And through it, we can see the core of a person.... 

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A big part of the way I write is to combine humor with sex. It's not salacious. It can be fun. "Secretary" doesn't politicize the sexuality or the relationship. It doesn't insist on taking sides.

Also, it doesn't seek to solve problems. The secretary does not seek to get over her masochism as if it were a deviant problem. 

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And he in turn gets afraid. She owns her submissive quality. ... I was brought up as a feminist. Maybe the movie represents a wave of feminism that hasn't been named.  ... [LA Times, Sep 27 2002]

I think so. I think it could be something very interesting because she's modeled in some ways after a geisha. ... They say that geishas are keepers of tradition, and Inara has a very old-fashioned feel to her. She went to a companion academy, a training school, as a child, where she learned different languages and different instruments. Very cultured. 

It seems like she's a keeper of an older tradition in a world where everything is so fast and about survival, and it's more about indulging the senses and the arts. It's so fun. ... 

I've been fascinated with geishas for a long time. I read that book Memoirs of a Geisha, and I really loved it, and there's another book called Geisha: The Life, the Voices, the Art with beautiful pictures of geishas today in Japan.

I'm reading a book right now about legalizing prostitution. I'm very curious about that because I'm not sure how I feel either way. There are pros and cons to it. There are very strange and interesting arguments. The argument is that it might clean up its association with drug dealing if it were legal. For example, places like the Mustang Ranch seem like a very controlled environment. But also, it's bizarre because it seems to me the women there don't really live like regular people. They're confined to that space and they're objects. .....Morena Baccarin... [playboy.com interview]

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From Imperia of fifteenth-century Rome; Mme. de Pompadour... to Sarah Bernhardt, who, following in her mother's footsteps, supported herself in her early career with a second profession. ... 

They were strongwilled, autonomous, and plucky. An open secret, their presence can be felt throughout our culture. The muses who enflamed the hearts and imaginations of out most celebrated artists, they were also artists in their own right.

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They helped to influence and shape the sensibility of modern literature, painting, and fashion.