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Sex and Desire: Modern Information on Old Desires

Sex and Desire: Modern Information on Old Desires. Chandran Kalyanam, MD. Goals. •1. Learn at least 1 way that data from the Internet has promoted our understanding of sexual desires.

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Sex and Desire: Modern Information on Old Desires

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  1. Sex and Desire: Modern Information on Old Desires Chandran Kalyanam, MD

  2. Goals •1. Learn at least 1 way that data from the Internet has promoted our understanding of sexual desires. •2. Identify at least 2 differences in male and female arousal. (Hint Elmer Fudd vs. Ms. Marple or Male vs. Female Viagra). •3. Learn 1 neurological difference between men & women processing erotic images.  

  3. Ogi Ogas & Sai Gaddam • Cognitive neuroscience

  4. Krafft-Ebing (1886)

  5. Alfred Kinsey • Gall wasps • 521-item questionnaire with 18,000 subjects

  6. Over history, what the medical profession has found objectionable • Masturbation • Fellatio • Cunnilingus • Homosexuality & bisexuality • Anal intercourse • Premarital sex • Extramarital sex

  7. Kinsey Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) & Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1953) • Previous notions debunked. • Increased prevalence (e.g. homosexuality, premarital sex, affairs, oral sex) • Aftermath

  8. Limitations in such research Direct observation Funding sources Truthful responses?

  9. Gergen (1973) “What do people do under conditions of extreme anonymity?” 5 male & 5 female strangers. Pitch dark.

  10. Gergen’s results 90% touched another on purpose. 80% felt sexual arousal. > 50% hugged. 33% kissed Anonymity as precursor to consideration of sex and desire.

  11. History In 1991, World Wide Web goes online & <90 adult magazines. In 1997, 900 adult Websites. Now, CYBERsitter blocks 2.5 million adult Websites.

  12. Rule 34 • “If it exists, there is porn of it.” • See also Rule 35: “If no such porn exists, it will be made.”

  13. Comedian Richard Jeni “The Web brings people together. No matter what kind of twisted sexual mutant you happen to be, you’ve got a million pals out there. Type in ‘Find people who have sex with goats that are on fire, and the computer will say, ‘Specify type of goat.’”

  14. Ogas & Gaddam (2011) 400 million searches entered into Dogpile www.dogpile.com from 7/2009 to 7/2010. SearchSpy www.searchspy.com displaying in real time actual searches. Of 400 million searches, 55 million (13%) had erotic content. Thus, desires of 2 million people. Desires then categorized.

  15. Ogas & Gaddam (2011) disclaimers Focus on text of search, not if search led to success. Text of search may or may not be erotic.

  16. AOL (2006) Released data set of 657,426 people, including their search histories over March to May 2006.

  17. Popularity (Ogas & Gaddam 2011)

  18. Diversity? 20 different sexual interests account for 80% of all searches. 35 top interests account for 90% of all searches.

  19. Men (Ogas & Gaddam 2011)

  20. Women (Ogas & Gaddam 2011)

  21. Preferences (Ogas & Gaddam 2011)

  22. Salmon & Symons(2001) Men: “porntopia” Women: “romantopic”

  23. Frequency of age-related sexual searches

  24. Alexa Of 42,337 Websites, 4% were adult. 2,462 youth-related. 313 were “granny” Websites.

  25. Men’s cues Across species, specific anatomy leads to arousal (e.g. roosters & turkeys). Visual cues more powerful. Men watching pornography had greater activation in the hypothalamus. Pathways for sexual motivation more closely linked to reward systems.

  26. Ormanentation (Symons 1979) In evolution, ornamentation indicates current & future fertility. “Mixed mating strategies” explain the appeal of young & old women.

  27. Elmer Fudd • Always hunting wabbits. • Solitary • Trigger happy • Easily fooled • If fails, reloads & retries.

  28. Hatfield & Clark (1989)

  29. 5 cyclic GMP-specific phosphodiesterase inhibitor Tx angina Effects on male research subjects

  30. Viagra

  31. Pursuing “Pink Viagra” Vivus company investigated its vasodilator on women. Viagra on >700 women Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP)

  32. Chivers (2004) Erotic images shown to female subjects 1. Psychological arousal measured. 2. Physical arousal by plethymosograph measuring blood flow to vaginal wall.

  33. Erotic images Exercising men Exercising women Heterosexual sex Gay sex Lesbian sex Monkey sex

  34. Results All images produced physical arousal. Psychological arousal: 1. Heterosexual sex 2. Lesbian sex 3. Exercising 4. Monkey sex  0

  35. Chivers metaanalysis 1969 to 2007 132 lab studies. Men have a strong correlation between physical & psychological arousal. Women did not.

  36. Miss Marple Detective Agency • Metaphor for female neural system. • Sex leading to a greater commitment for a woman. • Emotional detective. • Social detective. • Cultural detective. • Physical detective.

  37. Emotional detective More than men, women: recall emotional memories more quickly, superior autobiographical memory, more emotionally expressive & better able contain facial emotional expressions. Appraising emotions, 2 cortical structures: anterior cingulate (to inhibit emotion) & insula with hippocampus (storing & retrieving emotional memories). All larger in women than men.

  38. Social detective Girls develop verbal skills earlier than boys Increased use of social media in women than men. More “friends”. Greater volume in prefrontal cortex devoted to language & greater connections to subcortical reward systems.

  39. Homosexual attraction Gay men are attracted to masculinity. Images of cowboys, firemen, police officers, & military.

  40. Categories of gay searches

  41. Lippa (2009) • > 250,000 participants in 41 countries. All men preferred appearance & visual attractiveness in partners. • Scans during pornographic videos demonstrated activation in frontal cortex, visual cortex, & subcortex. • Similar emphasis on searches for specific anatomic parts. Extrastriate Body Area (EBA)

  42. Homosexual vs. Heterosexual Men • Watch more pornography. • Have larger collections of pornography. • Search for more pornography online. • Subscribe to such sites more often, maintain & renew subscriptions.

  43. Female Visual Cues • Extended sexuality willingness to have sex during nonfertile phase. • Female chimpanzees have visual cues for 12 days, but fertile only 3.

  44. Short-term vs. long-term interests • During ovulatory phases, more likely to find masculine faces, voices, scents more attractive, more social, & greater interest in affairs. • $355 (ovulating) > $260 (nonovulating) > $185 (menstruating) dancers. • Greater interest in conventional sex with alpha males.

  45. Testosterone • Level of testosterone unreliable in predicting reproductive potential. • However, correlated with dominance. • Testosterone correlated with masculine features (e.g., voice, facial features, height). However less focus on specific anatomic cues. • Typical trajectory of romance books

  46. Conclusions • Reflecting a fundamental drive, sex is a part of human nature. • The Internet has allowed a vast study of sexual desires. • The Internet neither creates nor destroys a sexual interest if there is none. • Specific interests in sex reflect wide differences between men and women.

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