There’s a social norm supporting female “purity” that’s still lingering after a couple hundred years. There is a lot of guilt (particularly of the religious variety) directed towards sexuality, and particularly female sexuality since, (A) the church was run and funded by men and (B) women can get pregnant. Conversely, standards of masculinity developed for men that were rather explicitly pro-sexual, starting at least in the early 1900′s and remaining quite prevalent today.
Society continues to have very different standards for appropriate sexual behaviour for men and women. The anecdotal and cultural evidence (e.g. there’s no female James Bond, at least not in terms of promiscuity) that supports substantially different cultural pressures is overwhelming and too extensive to enumerate here. It’s my understanding that a lot of women (obviously not all, but probably a much larger proportion than men) may have fantasies that are more romantic than actively sexual as a result of developing their sexuality under existing social pressure.
Also, if you believe love is necessary to be comfortable with sex, sexual fantasies about non-partners seem much less likely, and based on substantial anecdotal experience, as well as rather clear cultural norms, men are less likely to believe love is a prerequisite for sex.
There are also plenty of ev-psych reasons why it would be more adaptive for men to be deeply interested in sex and women to be less interested in it / more interested in romance. I don’t put much weight in this view, given the complex history of how men and women’s sexuality has been viewed and expressed, but there it is.
I certainly agree with the usefulness of a breakdown by question, though.
There’s a social norm supporting female “purity” that’s still lingering after a couple hundred years. There is a lot of guilt (particularly of the religious variety) directed towards sexuality, and particularly female sexuality since, (A) the church was run and funded by men and (B) women can get pregnant. Conversely, standards of masculinity developed for men that were rather explicitly pro-sexual, starting at least in the early 1900′s and remaining quite prevalent today.
Society continues to have very different standards for appropriate sexual behaviour for men and women. The anecdotal and cultural evidence (e.g. there’s no female James Bond, at least not in terms of promiscuity) that supports substantially different cultural pressures is overwhelming and too extensive to enumerate here. It’s my understanding that a lot of women (obviously not all, but probably a much larger proportion than men) may have fantasies that are more romantic than actively sexual as a result of developing their sexuality under existing social pressure.
Also, if you believe love is necessary to be comfortable with sex, sexual fantasies about non-partners seem much less likely, and based on substantial anecdotal experience, as well as rather clear cultural norms, men are less likely to believe love is a prerequisite for sex.
There are also plenty of ev-psych reasons why it would be more adaptive for men to be deeply interested in sex and women to be less interested in it / more interested in romance. I don’t put much weight in this view, given the complex history of how men and women’s sexuality has been viewed and expressed, but there it is.
I certainly agree with the usefulness of a breakdown by question, though.