Male and Female Differences in Sexual Psychology & Response: Overview and Domains of Difference

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Man and woman in bedroom, woman lying face up on bed and man face down, nose to nose from opposite directions
  • Men and women have evolved different objectives and strategies that influence sexual psychology and response – strategies related to choosing a mate, reproduction, and parental investment.
  • Men and women differ in visual orientation for physical attraction and the traits preferred in a mate.
  • Women have their own unique sexuality, like a fingerprint, and vary more than men in anatomy, sexual response, sexual mechanisms, and the way their bodies respond to the sexual world. Women vary more widely from each other and change more substantially over their lifetime than do men.
  • Women are less likely to have alignment (“concordance”) between their genital response and their subjective arousal; this causes confusion and misunderstanding for women and their male partners. (See blog: Sexual Nonconcordance: Recipe for Relationship Confusion.)
  • All sex happens in context. Women are more context sensitive than men and all external circumstances of everyday life influence the context surrounding a woman’s arousal, desire, and orgasm.
  • Women’s sexual functioning is more influenced by their internal brain state — how they think and feel about sex. Judgment, shame, stress, mood, trust, body image, and past trauma are more influential on a woman’s sexual well-being.
  • Men and women have significantly different hormones and some variations in brain structure. The differences caused by the amount of testosterone cannot be overstated.
  • Men sell (mostly) and women buy (mostly) in the mating economy; this is the predominant evolutionary dynamic. The psychology of the sexual initiator and pursuer is vastly different from the psychology of the one pursued, from the one who chooses among her pursuers. Women operate primarily from “response desire” and men operate from “spontaneous desire.” (See blog: Spontaneous Desire – the Underbelly of Heterosexual Mating.)
  • The psychology of male intra-sexual competition is quite different than the psychology of female intersexual selection (preferential mate choice.) Also, women’s intra-sexual competition (women competing against each other) for male attention is a different behavioral phenomenon than male-on-male competition.

The following is a list of twenty-two “domains of difference” between male and female sexual response and sexual psychology, with an emphasis on a heterosexual orientation. There is overlap and synergy between the domains but the underlying distinctions are clarifying. These differences are based on statistical aggregates of all men and women from authoritative research studies and cannot predict the unique sexuality of a particular man or woman. These domains are described in detail in the upcoming document: Differences in Sexual Response and Sexual Psychology between Cisgender Heterosexual Men and Women.*

Domains of Gender Difference in Sexual Psychology

  1. Behavioral dynamics in the mating economy
  2. Long-term vs. short-term mating strategies
  3. Trait preferences and priorities for mate selection
  4. Physical attraction and perceptions of beauty
  5. Concordance between physiological response and psychological desire
  6. Spontaneous desire vs. response desire
  7. Sex and love-making that fuels desire
  8. Accelerator vs. brake: sexual excitation and inhibition systems
  9. Brain structures: sexual pursuit and visual stimuli
  10. Hormonal differences
  11. Variety and novelty
  12. Sexual mentation and “sex drive”
  13. Influence of context
  14. Female competing intentions and imposed double binds
  15. Sexual preference fluidity and response variability
  16. Orgasm – purpose and characteristics
  17. Meta emotions
  18. Romance and desire, together and apart
  19. Psychology of monogamy
  20. Infidelity – reasons and response
  21. Jealousy – triggers, tactics, and consequences
  22. Sexual fantasies

 

*Detailed information about each domain relies primarily on the research and writings of Emily Nagoski, Louanne Brizendine, Marianne Legato, David Buss, Meredith Chivers, Roy Baumeister, Justin Lehmiller, Helen Fisher, Esther Perel, and many other sex educators and evolutionary psychologists. Specific references are provided in the document.