
What Do Women Want? - echair
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
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electromagnetic
I'm married, and I still have no clue what women want. I have no real clue how
anything happened, just like 4 years later I'm married and the 15 year old
that still controls my consciousness is stunned and amazed.

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xenophanes
Women, like men, want Hacker News to stay on topic.

~~~
pg
The story is on topic. On topic = interesting to the intellectually curious.
Whereas this comment is not merely a facile witticism, but of a type the site
guidelines explicitly ask users not to make.

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

~~~
dreish
It is -- it's a thoughtful and thorough investigation of a perfectly
legitimate area of scientific study -- but it also smells like the sort of
thing the hormone-drunk adolescents that rule Reddit go nuts for, so surely
some people can be forgiven for dismissing it out-of-hand, especially given
recent history here.

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scw
If we want a community of intelligent, civil posters, asking its citizens to
look beyond titles and examine the articles themselves seems like a reasonable
expectation.

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dhimes
_Kurt Freund ... replied: “Who am I to study women, when I am a man?”_

What a lame quote from a "researcher." Are astronomers stars? Are geologists
dirt? Are we to take this stuff seriously?

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tjic
This isn't a regular researcher.

This is a researcher in the "social sciences".

...wherein the word "social" works to invalidate the word "science".

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nazgulnarsil
The scientifically un-rigorous interpretation on my part is that women
instinctively lie about sex much more than men. This is quite understandable
as a woman's survival in the ancestral environment was most often about how
effectively she capitalized on her sex appeal. This would involve pretending
to be more aroused in situations where she was expected to be aroused (i.e. an
alpha male _wants_ her to be aroused) and not showing signs of arousal in
situations where she shouldn't (don't let the alpha male see you lusting after
a different male).

Now the fact that women responded to a broader range of pictures than men I
have no ideas about. Perhaps it is not an adaptation but merely a side effect
of women being more empathetic. Do women have more/more highly reactive mirror
neurons? Have any studies been done on this?

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likpok
May I ask why you don't believe the alternative evolutionary explanation?
Forced (to some extent) penetration has been with humanity for a long time,
and will likely be with humanity for a long time. It was not until relatively
recently that it is generally accepted as a bad thing, and even in our
"enlightened" age, there is a great deal of misinformation.

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motherwell
Exactly!

Removing the moral implications, rape is really bad PHYSICALLY unless the act
is lubricated (the point the article makes). So a woman needs to be PHYSICALLY
ready for sex, even if not EMOTIONALLY or MENTALLY willing.

That leads to a decoupling of mental and sexual desire from physical response.

Call me unPC, but that seems to fit the evidence they present!

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markessien
It's also mentioned in the article.

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physcab
Great article, although a little depressing at times. For example, I really
didn't know there was a lack of understanding about where desire comes from in
women. There was even a paragraph in there that mentioned that even with good
relationships, desire is sometimes not guaranteed. As a male, I'd like to
think otherwise...but science is science I guess.

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tdavis
I just ask them. That seems to work out alright.

~~~
byrneseyeview
A lovely theory that keeps getting roughed up by the facts. People in a
relationship are much too interested in signaling to honestly answer that
question.

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tdavis
That's why you figure the other person out before you get into the real
"relationship", at which point you should know enough to be able to tell
_them_ what they're thinking, whether it's in bed or at the grocery store. I
have never met a woman too complicated to figure out, given enough time and
effort.

It's like a puzzle. A puzzle with contradictory pieces at times, sure. That
just makes it more entertaining. This is precisely why I love women, though;
the more difficult the puzzle the more fun it is. I'm still searching for the
one who can routinely surprise me, preferably in a good way.

~~~
byrneseyeview
Problems with that: people are even _more_ interested in signaling when
they're trying to get into a relationship. Once you have a large sunk cost
(e.g. announcing that you're together, moving in with each other) it's
possible for each side to get away with a little more honesty.

People are very hard to model thoroughly. I hope you're exaggerating in the
last sentence of your first paragraph.

~~~
tdavis
I don't _think_ I'm exaggerating, although since I'm just basing it off of
what I've been told by previous partners I suppose it's possible they've all
been compulsive liars even when I don't ask a question, but this seems to
contradict Occam's Razor.

There's never 100% coverage. There are times when women act a certain way and
I'll have no clue why or will do something I see as so illogical and
completely contradictory to every form of reason that I just flat never see it
coming.

As for signaling, my solution has been to just refuse to play the game. I'll
flirt because it's fun, but I make no attempts to actually figure out if
they're interested. This is probably why I am abysmal at actually _picking up_
women in the first place and why I never seem to notice they're interested
until they're suddenly making out with me.

Once that hurdle has been overcome, it's pretty easy though. Just because
they're more interested in bullshit signaling doesn't mean they're going to
refuse to answer questions or _lie_. Particularly, I've never met a women who
wouldn't honestly answer questions regarding optimization of their pleasure.
To do otherwise would be kinda silly.

Also, I think this awesome quote is worthy of this thread:

    
    
      Receptionist: How do you write women so well? 
      Melvin Udall: I think of a man, and I take away 
      reason and accountability.

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Tichy
Summary? The description of the experiment in the beginning sounded
interesting, but then the article got carried away a lot. I guess the author
wanted to milk the subject for all he (or she?) could.

Only guessing, but I expect that the conclusion of the article is "no idea"...

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Herring
A chocolate penis that ejaculates money.

~~~
abalashov
LOL.

I almost cried my eyes out laughing...

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bbuffone
I would ask my wife but she is not talking to me. Too much time coding.

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known
What Woman Do Not Want?

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Allocator2008
Seems the research fell into two camps:

1) Women desire emotional intimacy 2) Women desire to be desired on more of an
instinctual level

Seems that these two forces, seemingly contradictory are just the ego vs. id.
The ego desires intimacy, an emotional connection etc., and that leads to
sexual desire. However the id, on the more narcissist side, wants to be wanted
or "sought after" on more of a primal note. I don't think this is a
contradiction at all. The id controls desire throughout much of our evolution,
however, because long-term partnering has selective advantages by being better
for the survival of the offspring, the ego side develops also which wants more
of that emotional connection. This is not really that hard. The woman's ego
wants emotional connection, the woman's id wants a primal connection of being
desired. In short, the woman wants Richard Gere. :-) (Speaking as a gay man
anyway so maybe I'm projecting my own psychology into it, lol!)

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albertcardona
Don't miss Elisabeth Cashdan's paper on "Women's mating strategies",
Evolutionary Anthropology, 1997.

<http://www.anthro.utah.edu/PDFs/ec_evolanth.pdf>

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TweedHeads
Some want diamonds

Some want love

Some none of the above

