I decided to go back through this video and make a list of all the reasons given by the women for why they have sex. In most cases, I’ve kept the exact wording, used by the various interviewees, but have had to paraphrase in a few instances. Those reasons are as follows:
• “Because I want to”
• “Why not?”
• “Because he paid for dinner”
• “Because it’s fun…pleasure”
• “For an orgasm, ideally”
• “I knew it was the only way I was going to get to go to sleep”
• “To shut him up”
• “If you care about someone, to make him happy”
• “Sometimes you don’t want to do it but you do it anyway because you don’t want to disappoint him”
• “Not for duty alone”
• “A physical way of connecting, of connecting on a totally different level”
• “The togetherness”
• “Because I love him, and I am passionate about him, and I want to”
• “I think it’s something very spiritual”
• “To please my partner…because it’s important to her.”
• “Exercise…it’s a good workout”
• “It helps to reduce stress…it is a great release”
• “Sometimes, if I’m like hung over, I want to have sex because it will, like, help”
• “It always boils down to the same thing, at the end of the day, you’ve had your fun”
I was immediately struck by how varied the responses were. They range from “it’s something very spiritual” to “because it’s fun,” with everything in between.
I also noted that women tended to give answers that were quite “selfless” when they were being questioned while in the presence of their lovers/spouses. Unaccompanied women, on the other hand, answered in ways that could be interpreted as more “selfish” (or self-centered).
I am willing to bet that if CNN put this same question to men they would receive very similar answers.
There is a widely held belief, though, that women have sex because they think doing so will help them achieve “intimacy” with their partners. In contrast, men have sex for the purely physical aspects of “getting off.”
This sort of simplistic thinking reduces women and men to mere caricatures. The value of this video, then, is that it challenges all sorts of conventional wisdom.
Plus, it’s just plain old fun to watch.
Tags: Women's Issues
