No one has EVER accused me of being manly. Even in my days of exclusive girl-kissing, my outward aspect has always been consumately gender-identified and overtly girly. Why then, every time I run across a study that even vaguely broaches the topic of human sexuality, do I find myself checking everything down the list of typical male patterns, thought processes and behaviors and leaving nary a mark down the analogous female list?
Case in point: this article about a study on sex dreams across genders. First off, I noted a bunch of problems with this study-- not the least among them that they only surveyed 173 people, with nearly twice as many women as men. Second, the study only went on for less than a month! How many people can conjure up enough sex dreams in a month for them to have any substantive tales to tell?
But then, the (slightly suspect) statistics they derive from this study are pretty divergent from my own idiosyncratic experience. Women, supposedly, dream about celebrities or past and present lovers--familiar faces, in other words-- while men dream about strangers, in multiplicity and in public. I can't remember the last time I dreamt about someone familiar... in fact, sometimes the folks in my dreams are barely even human. These dreamscape denizens of mine are often possessing somewhat amorphous genders of their own or are strange hybrids of varying sorts. And FREQUENTLY, the venue is both public and including more than one other somebody hanging around.
And then this part, well...:
And finally, when it came to erotic dreams that dealt with sexual disappointments, the genders had very different tales to tell.
The women recounted scenarios where they were turned off by something that happened or the pace of proceedings. For the men, it was more often a case of their virtual partners refusing to engage in certain activities, or their sexcapade plans falling through for some reason.
I would venture to say that being rejected and/or left hanging in one of my dreams is more the rule than the exception... and I can't remember even one instance of my being the one to lose interest. (I know, I know, this probably bespeaks something or other about a great and long series of my own petty insecurities. Shut up. I don't wanna talk about it.)
And so, I find studies like this to be intensely frustrating-- and only partly because they reinforce so many tired and outmoded ideas about the ways women define their own sexuality. The lion's share of my frustration about these stems from the fact that they make me feel so blasted abnormal. You know all those studies that say that men think about sex between 30 and 70 times a day while women only think about it between 2 and 10 times a day? Anyone who reads this blog, or has met me, or has seen me walk down a street could probably guess that sex is, like, the default setting in my brain. And while, yes, male and female friends alike like to accuse me of being the dirtiest-minded girl they know, I honestly don't think I'm alone amongst my gender in my fixation.
The end of that article atributes the readiness to discuss sexual matters among female participants (in comparison to participants of older studies of this topic) to our living in a post-sexual-revolution era. And I'll allow that our timeframe for this study could contribute to their openness-- but I don't think women actually THINK about sex more or less now that we're so "liberated." And I find the notion that the 1960s would be responsible for having any notable effect on the female libido at all to be entirely patronizing.
And what about the factors that the study doesn't address? Which of the women surveyed were on The Pill at the time of questioning? I know that, during the tiny epoch in which I experimented with hormone therapy, my own sex drive bottomed out. I know, people! It was horrible!!! But what other outside factors could effect brain chemistry in such a way as to quell or exacerbate certain dream motifs? Surely there are plenty. Ugh! This study was just so shoddily conducted, I can't stand it!
So, well, fine. I'm a freak. Or my testosterone levels are too high. Or I really am nothing but a consistent exception to the rules of gendered studies.
But don't worry, fair readers. I won't go a-changin'!
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