Sex at Dawn

If you aren’t confused already, consider that research psychiatrist Andrey Anokhin and his colleagues found that erotic images elicit significantly quicker and stronger response in women’s brains than either pleasant or frightening images without erotic content. They showed 264 women a randomly ordered collection of images ranging from snarling dogs to water skiers to semi-naked couples getting hot and heavy. The women’s brains responded about 20 percent faster to the erotic images than to any others. With men this eager responsiveness was expected, but the results among the supposedly less visual, less libidinous women surprised the researchers.⁵

The female erotic brain is full of such surprises. Dutch researchers used positron emission tomography (PET) to scan the brains of thirteen women and eleven men in the throes of orgasm. While the brevity of the male orgasm made reliable readings difficult to get, the heightened activity they found in the secondary somatosensory cortex (associated with genital sensation) was what they’d expected. But the women’s brains left the researchers befuddled. It seems the female brain goes into standby mode at orgasm. What little increase in cerebral activity the ladies’ brains exhibited was in the primary somatosensory cortex, which registers the presence of sensation, but not much excitement about it. “In women the primary feeling is there,” one of the researchers said, “but not the marker that this is seen as a big deal. For males, the touch itself is all-important. For females, it is not so important.”⁶

Every woman knows her menstrual cycle can have profound effects on her eroticism. Spanish researchers confirmed that women experience greater feelings of attractiveness and desire around ovulation, while others have reported that women find classically masculine faces more attractive around ovulation, opting for less chiseled-looking guys when not fertile. Since the birth control pill affects the menstrual cycle, it’s not surprising that it may affect a woman’s patterns of attraction as well. Scottish researcher Tony Little found women’s assessment of men as potential husband material shifted if they were on the pill. Little thinks the social consequences of his finding may be immense: “Where a woman chooses her partner while she is on the Pill, and then comes off it to have a child, her hormone-driven preferences have changed and she may find she is married to the wrong kind of man.”⁸