My (mostly BS) take with some (more or less questionable) science on why women demonize men's sexual desire

TL;DR: Physical attraction disparity. Women enjoy sex when their partner is physically attractive. Most men are not attractive to most women. This is neither men's nor women's fault; it just is. Most women end up with men they are not physically attractive, which makes sex a chore to them and a favor they do to men, so they'd rather have less of it if they can help it. One way to do it is to vilify men's sexual desires to prime them for less sex. Apologies for the incoming rant. I imagine much of what I'm going to write isn't anything new or groundbreaking, so treat it mostly as a mind dump.

A while ago, u/DJack276 here made a great post reminding us that we aren't monsters for desiring sex, which is what inspired this post. It got me thinking about why society is so hellbent on vilifying men's sexual urges, particularly those of heterosexual men. As the author of that post pointed out, gay men saying they want sex with men are praised whereas straight men saying they want sex with women are seen as entitled assholes at best and predators at worst. This would seem like kind of a strange attitude in an age of sexual liberation. I mean, first we had women saying they would absolutely love to have wild, unbridled sex if only they weren't shamed into being prudes by the big bad patriarchy (because men obviously want their partners to be restrained in the bedroom, right? /s). This has been done away with for quite some time, though.

Then, there's all sorts of research showing the so-called orgasm gap. How men orgasm about 95% of the time compared to women's 65%, how most women need clitoral stimulation to cum and only about 20% can climax from PIV sex alone (here's the source summarizing results from other sources, so while I can't vouch for their accuracy, they do seem to line up with figures often thrown around when the topic is discussed). Women now say that they would be far more into wild, unbridled casual sex if they would cum more often, but then they say how it all comes down to technique, emotional connection and shit. Now, this sheds a bit more light on why men's sexual desires are seen as selfish and exploitative, but it's still not enough. Technique can be learned, communicated and mastered, so this shouldn't be a problem, right? All it would take would be to tell the men they're with what they like in bed, right? Why would there be an orgasm gap, even within couples? Sex drive differences would be the first culprit that comes to mind, but this doesn't square up with women's claims that they don't have more sex because of shaming or men's poor technique in making them cum.

And besides all that, I guess we've all heard of cases where the very same women who claim they need to develop a deep emotional connection in order to fully enjoy sex and claim men are selfish for wanting sex sooner have fucked guys within hours of meeting them. We've probably all heard of cases where the very same woman who fucks her husband once a month at most, calling him inconsiderate for wanting more sex without thinking how overwhelmed she is by the stress of everyday life, is having an affair where she fucks another guy several times a week. Heck, I've read cases where a guy in a sexless marriage started working out and getting attention from other women, and all of a sudden his wife remembers how to fuck. Thing is, those women are typically defended for their sexual desires or lack thereof and society bends over backwards to excuse their sexual desires even when it leads to infidelity, but men's sexual desires - even with his own partner - are seen as inconsiderate and vile. It can't all be because of difference in sex drives and it can't be all due to bad technique.

My own research has led me to believe that yes, women absolutely would enjoy wild, unfettered sex in copious amounts....with a very limited category of men. The short and bitter of it is that women would absolutely love to end up with a guy she enjoys having sex with, and sexual pleasure depends largely on the guy's attractiveness. The problem is that, while the average woman is attractive enough for most men, the average man is unattractive for most women. This makes most men simply unpalatable for most women to have sex with. Men being unable to please their women is already a time-honored trope in comedy. There's entire running gags in sitcoms and standup routines focusing on men's ineptitude in bed. The internet and media is full of advice for men on how to please their women (of course, there's a distinct lack of articles for women on how to please their men - "never for his pleasure" as the feminists would have it). Men are already expected, for instance, to eat women out (without, of course, having any right to expect her to return the favor and blow him - vanilla sex is more than you deserve, peon!). There are countless articles on how women need long foreplay to get off and enjoy sex, but then a lot of those women have hooked up with hot dudes and had mind-blowing quickies without needing all that foreplay.

When a woman cannot end up with one of those few men she deems hot because he's either unwilling to commit or has better options, she ends up with a man she chooses for the other traits she says she cherishes (sense of humor, reliability, intelligence, kindness etc.). Those traits can make a person tolerable to deal with, but they neither trigger sexual attraction nor cause sexual pleasure, so women feel like they're sacrificing their right to a fulfilling sex life for the sake of being with men whom they offer intense sexual pleasure but who cannot offer them the same in return. That's why most women feel like they're doing their partners a favor by being with them instead of holding out for men who can give them the satisfaction they crave and feel they deserve. As far as the average woman is concerned, her spouse should be happy with what he gets, so when he wants more of it, or is unhappy with what he gets, to her it sounds like he's demanding more of something he cannot reciprocate and isn't entitled to. It's insulting to her dignity, so he's seen as a presumptuous, manipulative, exploitative, entitled prick.

Sex is therefore just the price that women feel they have to pay for having a relationship with men. That's why sex lives often go down the crapper after marriage or having kids, when separation is very difficult for men. It's seen as more or less a chore they have to do, not unlike washing the dishes or taking the trash out. It's only logical that they would seek to do as little of it as they can. One way to accomplish that is to treat men's sexual desire as this vile, disgusting thing. Women already see it as such for the reasons stated above, so by treating men as entitled swine for craving intimacy with their partners, for wanting to receive the same sexual desire that they feel for their wives and girlfriends, this lowers men's expectations of sex during the relationships. Not only that, but it makes the sex a woman offers him far more valuable to him, so something that he has to try his best to earn by trying his best in all other areas of the relationship in order to "justify" his sexual desires. A woman's needs are seen as obligations for the man she's with. A man's needs are seen as optional and that he should be thankful she deigns to tend to them. It's not by mistake or misunderstanding that men's desire for sex and intimacy is vilified - it's by design.

This is the gist of it. As the author of the original post rightly pointed out, gay men don't get the same flak when they express their desire for sex. This is because two gay men having sex is seen as an equal exchange of sexual pleasure. On the other hand, since most straight men cannot offer women the same mind-blowing sex women would want, they are seen as exploiting women for their pleasure. That's why women are seen as the givers and gatekeepers of sex. It's not because sexual pleasure is something they don't care about or that there's something wrong with us. It's because sexual pleasure of the magnitude that we can experience with an average Jane is something women can only get to experience with a very small subset of men, so they end up prioritizing other qualities for the sake of fulfilling their other needs (unless, of course, they find a hot guy - then, physical attraction matters to them as much as it does to us). Below are some research papers I've managed to fish out that can provide some backing for my point of view.

Exhibit A: Women do enjoy sex when their partner is physically and / or sexually attractive

This is from this paper published in 2000, replicating findings from research dating back to 1995, with similar results reported in another paper in 2015, fifteen years apart. The main finding is that women paired with attractive men (attractiveness being defined as a composite of physical and sexual attractiveness) are more likely to have orgasms during sex. While the authors of the 2000 paper were cautious enough to state that the causal effect of attractiveness on the likelihood of orgasms (i.e. maybe men who make women cum are seen as more attractive), they did mention that, taken altogether, it seems that female orgasm is an adaptation to retain the sperm of favored males. The 2015 paper somewhat addressed this limitation by having woman assess how attractive other women would rate their husbands, and they found that women cum more often if their men is attractive not just to them, but for other women as well, so this adds more support to the theory that a man's physical / sexual attractiveness has a causal effect on a woman's ability to climax. Bonus: here's a 2012 paper finding that, "Women reported more frequent orgasm during or after male ejaculation when mated to attractive men—those with high scores on a principal component characterized by high observer-rated and self-rated attractiveness" and, "Overall, these results appear to support a role for female orgasm in sire choice."

This is further supported by...

Exhibit B: When women are horny during period but don't find their partners physically desirable, they are crankier to them

Link to paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23085495/

This was an interesting find; one of the authors of the paper where this was reported had also previously authored the paper showing that, during their fertile period, women crave men with more masculine traits, while outside their period, they look men with nicer personalities. In the linked paper, the bottom line is that, during ovulation when women are hornier, if they rate their partners as less sexually desirable, they criticize them more and are more distant from them compared to women paired with men they find hot (the researchers also collected data on how women believed other women would rate their partners). Although this did not affect fidelity, the authors believe it adds weight to the dual-mating hypothesis. I believe it sheds insight on the effect on the importance of men's physical attractiveness on a woman's sexual pleasure. During the horniest time of the month for her, if he's not sexually attractive to her, no matter how good his technique or how decent his personality, her sexual needs remain unfulfilled, hence why her attitude sours so much towards her partner. She criticized him because her sexual needs are stronger than ever and, on a subconscious level, she knows he cannot satisfy this need of hers and she is reminded on a primal level that she is stuck with his less than ideal genes, so she lashes out at him.

So thus far, we've established that, the hotter the man, the better the sex for women, right? Well, now let's move on to the bitter part.

Exhibit C: Most men are simply unattractive to women

There was some time ago this viral chart from a dating website showing that, while men rate women's attractiveness on a bell curve, women's rating of men's attractiveness was much harsher. If you consider anything from the middle bin and above in the graph as attractive, this shows that, to men, about 60% of women would be considered attractive to men, while about 80% are rated as unattractive to women. Similarly, there was another study which showed that, while men matched with over 60% of women on average, women matched with only 4.5% of men on average. The most oft-cited counterargument is that that, since data was collected from dating websites, the men there represent only a small subset of the male population, hence the results don't reflect how women feel towards most men. But the same could be said about the women who were rated on those dating websites. They also represent a small, particular sample of the female population, so why would they be rated on a bell curve instead of being just as harshly judged by men as men were by women? Even admitting these objections, there is a 2023 paper where data was collected on university students based on voluntary participation, so you'd expect some kind of self-selection bias i.e. more attractive people to be more confident about participating, right? Well, if you look at the graph, even with the participation bias you'll find that both men and women rated themselves more attractive than others did, but while men and women both rate women's facial attractiveness on a bell curve, men's facial attractiveness is rated very harshly, corroborating the data from the dating websites. The colors in the graph are greyed out, but if you do a google image search by the title of the paper, you'll find a clearer version of it.

On top of that, all you need to do is look at social media and how much traction is gained by posts from women who openly belittle average men as unattractive and bemoan the attractive men's lack of commitment. You can argue that social media may have screwed with women's expectations, but you don't see women complaining about loneliness because all men only want 10/10 models; when they complain about loneliness, it's that the men they find attractive don't pay attention to them. The fact of the matter is that women can be far more honest about what they prefer from men now, and most men simply don't qualify. It's neither good, nor bad; it just is. If attractiveness matters for sexual satisfaction as an evolutionary adaptation for women, and most men are not attractive to most women, but most women are in relationships, then that means that most women end up with men they don't find attractive, which means that most women don't find their sex as enjoyable and intense as their men do.

Now, we can say that women don't prioritize physical attractiveness as much as men do, and it's true - that is, until they do.

Exhibit D: Women prioritize other traits than physical attractiveness until they are turned on

Here's a very recent paper tackling this very issue. In short: men prioritize physical attractiveness in long-term partners; nothing new here (here is a psypost article with more details). Women don't prioritize it as much as men do until they experience high sexual desire, at which point they prioritize physical attractiveness as much as men do. The paper also says that "experimentally reducing the relevance of sexual desire in people's mate preferences decreased prioritization of attractiveness in both males and females" which I find interesting. Although the methodology feels a bit weird to be honest, the paper overall suggests that, when women get horny, they seek out physically attractive men, which corroborates the other sources linked in the previous sections. Here's from the psypost article:

As expected, men were more likely than women to prioritize physical attractiveness in a long-term partner. But importantly, the researchers found that much of this sex difference could be explained by differences in sexual desire. Men reported higher levels of sexual desire than women on average, and those with stronger sexual desire—regardless of gender—tended to assign more value to physical attractiveness. This pattern held even after controlling for sociosexuality and relationship status, suggesting that sexual desire plays a central role in shaping people’s partner preferences.

Of course, the problem here is causality - does physical attractiveness in itself cause desire, or is it just that desire simply causes more attention to physical attractiveness? Well, as men we all know that looks do turn us on. As for women, if all those traits they claim to find sexy in men - kindness, intelligence, humor, empathy etc. - triggered sexual desire, their sexual desire and satisfaction would be at an all-time high (they can pick whatever men they want or opt to remain single), but that's not the case. Men's sexual desire wouldn't be vilified anymore. Again, if you look at what's gaining prominence on social media, you'll find how friendly women tend to be when approached by physically attractive men compared to average, physically unattractive men (even when the guy just says hi). Hell, there are death row inmates sentenced to death for violent murders yet have thousands of women fawning over them and sending them love letters. This would make sense if desire was also triggered by physical attractiveness. Again, one can argue that it's just social media creating a distorted view, but if the last few years are any indication, social media trends tend to eventually become mainstream.

Concluding thoughts

To me, though I'm aware I may be pulling at straws here, it all seems to add up: the fact that only 20% of women can cum from PIV, the fact that physical attractiveness and masculinity tend to be associated with women climaxing more, the fact that only 20% of men are considered attractive by women, and that PIV orgasms are linked to partner attractiveness. Sure, we can say that women who are predisposed to climaxing may seek out men who are physically attractive, but the research examined thus far show more of a causal role of partner's physical attractiveness on women's enjoyment of sex. Then, it's women themselves who say that being turned on is what ensures sex is fun, so if their partner is hot and turns them on, well, it only leads to the conclusion that a woman is more likely to have mind-blowing sex with a man she finds physically attractive than an average-looking man with the nice personality they claim to prize.

Guys, it's not us. It's not our fault women don't like sex that much except with a few men. It's not their fault either. It's nobody's fault that, on average, men desire women more than women desire most men. It just is and, just as they cannot be blamed that they don't feel the same level of sexual attraction towards men that mot men feel towards women, neither can we be blamed for craving sex and intimacy. It doesn't make you a monster for wanting the one person you love above all else to desire you that way as well, so don't feel like you're some self-centered, inconsiderate asshole for having very natural, human needs.