We won’t find out by trying to separate biology from culture.
The cover asks “What is Female Desire?” and the story title, “What do Women Want?” seems to promise that scientists are getting closer to figuring out one of life’s great mysteries. Daniel Bergner, in fact, does not attempt to answer those two questions (and the small subtitles make it clear that he isn’t going to try) but rather he profiles the work of several scientists who are researching women’s sexual response, their subjective sense of arousal, and the ways those do or don’t line up.
It is a well-written article and a very interesting read. It takes on complex questions and, within its scope, attempts to address them without oversimplifying or sensationalizing (except for the first sentence of the article, in extra large and colorful print that reads “Meredith Chivers is a creator of bonobo pornography.”). I would encourage anybody to take a look. But prepare to be frustrated as well as intrigued. Some readers will be frustrated, as was Meredith Chivers (a psychology professor at Queens University, and one of the scientists whose work is the focus of the article) because the answers are not clear and meticulous research takes so long and is so difficult to do, and because, as she is quoted as saying early in the piece, “The horrible reality of psychological research is that you can’t pull apart the cultural from the biological.”
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Tags: Daniel Bergner, research, sex, sexuality, women
