Stop Pretending Sex is the Same for Men and Women

It's good to discuss sex differently with your sons and daughters

By Connie Morgan

Biological differences between men and women matter. Because of these differences, men tend to be bigger and stronger, while women tend to be smaller and more flexible. Women tend to be more focused on people, whereas men tend to be more focused on “things.” Men generally prefer solving finite problems, while women often enjoy artistic challenges. This isn’t my opinion; these are facts based on evolutionary and biological research. As I’ve said many times, men and women are different, and that’s a beautiful thing.

It’s concerning that modern culture (starting in the 60s but really becoming a mainstream train of thought in the 90s) doesn’t recognize this when it comes to sex. TV shows, movies, books, blogs, and magazines all tell us that sex is exactly the same for men and women. What I mean is that promiscuity, one-night stands, and casual sex were once thought to be more sought after by men. Now we’re told that women should celebrate their participation in any of the above as well. Instead of teaching men that maybe they should be a little more like women when it comes to sexual activity, we teach women they should be more like men. At the same time, we’re told men are pigs! If that’s the case, then why is the response for women to act more like men when it comes to sex?

In a perfect world, we would all live morally perfect sexual lives. In such a world, you could have the same conversation about sex with your son as you would with your daughter. But it’s not a perfect world, and people certainly aren’t perfect. Sex is different for men and women, and there’s plenty of research to back up this statement.

Pregnancy
The most obvious difference between the sexes is that women can become pregnant. Condoms don’t always work, and hormonal birth control doesn’t always work either; I know of women who have gotten pregnant while using both of these contraceptives. The only way to ensure you don’t get pregnant is to not have sex. The maternal death rate in the United States is around 32.9 deaths per 100,000 births, and pregnancy also has other life-changing complications. Pregnancy takes a toll on a woman’s body and is not something to be taken lightly, even when planned.

If a woman conceives, she can’t keep it a secret for long, unlike a man, who cannot conceive. Even if a woman decides to have an abortion, there are potential side effects, including the risk of death in some cases. If a mother wants to give the baby up for adoption, the act of carrying a life and giving birth adds an emotional complexity that sometimes leads a mother to change her mind after initially agreeing to the adoption. Pregnancies—especially unplanned ones—can lead to emotional consequences that women endure but men can often avoid.

For this reason my dad’s advice to my brother and I was “don’t have sex with anyone you couldn’t do business with.” I say he told this to my brother but I actually don’t know if he did but he certainly said it to me on more than one occasion. Why me and not my brother? Because it is more relevant to me. If I get pregnant and I keep the baby, I am 1) forever connected to the baby’s father even if we are not in a relationship and 2) more locked into the responsibility than he is.  From conception, the mother is literally and therefore emotionally more connected to the baby, making it harder for her to run away from the responsibility.

For this reason, my dad’s advice to my brother and me was, “Don’t have sex with anyone you couldn’t do business with.” I say he told this to my brother, but I actually don’t know if he did; he certainly said it to me on more than one occasion. Why me and not my brother? Because it is more relevant to me. If I get pregnant I am 1) forever connected to the baby’s father, even if we are not in a relationship, and 2) more locked into the responsibility than he is. From conception, the mother is literally and emotionally more connected to the baby, making it harder for her to run away from that responsibility.

I do know that my father told my brother, “If you get a girl pregnant, you’re pregnant too” (metaphorically). But in reality, we all know that especially in the baby’s early years, from breastfeeding to dirty diapers, the mother does much of the heavy lifting.

Injuries
Believe it or not, sex-related injuries are a fairly common occurrence. Did you know that 30% of women report having pain or discomfort the last time they had sex, compared to only 5% of men? The pain could be due to a variety of factors, including vaginal tearing, yeast infections, and urinary tract infections. The main injury men experience from sex that women don’t is a broken penis. It sounds serious, but it is extremely uncommon. To give you some perspective, in 13 years of analyzing medical records in a region with over 3 million people, researchers found only 42 patients with confirmed penile fractures. Yeast infections alone affect over 75% of women in their lifetime.

Forget pregnancy, sex is just more likely to cause overall discomfort for women.

Sexual Standards
While everyone who has interacted with men and women knows this, for some reason, it’s controversial to say that men and women are different emotionally when it comes to sex. There are countless studies to back this up. The median number of sexual partners for a woman in America is three, while it’s five for a man. Let’s be real here: when it comes to gender, which one has an easier time finding someone willing to go to bed with them? I know very few women who couldn’t come home with a guy every Friday night if they wanted to. In contrast, I know men who try to come home with a woman every Friday night and fail most of the time. The standard for the average woman is higher than the standard for the average man. Most women report that they do not marry the man who gave them “the best sex of their life,” but instead look for a loving, multi-dimensional relationship.

This theory has been tested in other experiments where a male and female walk around asking complete strangers if they would have sex with them. Seventy-five percent of males agreed to have sex with a complete stranger, while 0% of women agreed. This was the biggest gender difference ever discovered in psychological science. In a less scientific but still fun version of this experiment, some YouTubers repeated it, finding that less than 1% of women agreed to have sex with a stranger compared to 30% of men. Clearly, men are a little more eager to engage in casual sex than women, but why is that?

Emotional Differences
You may think women aren’t as into casual sex because of safety concerns, fear of pregnancy, or fear of being discovered, but studies have also found that even when men and women are surveyed under the premise that none of these concerns would be an issue, women are still far less interested in casual sex than men. Still think patriarchy is to blame? Researchers have found that in the most egalitarian societies, the difference in the desire for promiscuity between genders actually grows larger. Furthermore, across all societies on Earth, even the least patriarchal, women consistently show less interest in casual sex.

Researchers have also found that men are far more interested in a two-women, one-man threesome than women are in any threesome combination. Men are also more likely to have fantasies about short-term sexual relationships and imagine having sex with more partners than women do. Additionally, men spend more on prostitutes, strippers, and porn. Need I go on? This seems like common sense to me, but I have to cover my bases.

So why do women crave longer-term relationships? Why do women yearn for romance over cheap lust? Why is it that 84% of romance novel readers are women and romantic comedies are aptly nicknamed “chick flicks”? Because men and women process emotions differently.

Studies using brain imaging and blood tests have found that men are less reactive to negative emotions because negative signals spend more time in the part of their brains associated with reasoning. A study from the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal and the University of Montreal examined the amygdala (the brain’s threat detector) and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (the brain’s regulator of perception, reasoning, and emotional regulation) and found that these two areas interacted more with men when they viewed negative images compared to women.

Coauthor Stéphane Potvin, an associate professor in the University of Montreal’s Department of Psychiatry, said in a press release:

“A stronger connection between these areas in men suggests they have a more analytical than emotional approach when dealing with negative emotions. It is possible that women tend to focus more on the feelings generated by these stimuli, while men remain somewhat ‘passive’ toward negative emotions, trying to analyze the stimuli and their impact.”

Okay, so that explains why women may tend to be more feelings-focused (not a bad thing, by the way). But why does sex make us—especially women—get all emotional? While I have my own spiritual theories, the science isn’t conclusive. However, sex does appear to have a much longer-lasting emotional effect on women.

A study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that as a woman’s number of sexual partners increased before marriage, so did her likelihood of divorce. Women with over ten sexual partners are most likely to divorce, while the odds of divorce are lowest among those with one or zero premarital sex partners. The same is not true for men, meaning marital success doesn’t seem to correlate with the number of partners a man has had before marriage. However, both men and women report greater satisfaction with their sex lives the fewer sexual partners they’ve had.

We all know intuitively that sex affects men and women differently, both physically and mentally. Why do so many pretend we have the same attitude? And if we’re choosing to promote one attitude over the other, why are we pushing the male attitude toward sex onto women instead of the other way around? Virtually all data shows that the fewer sexual partners you have, the more fulfilling your relationships will be.

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If someone gives different advice to a female regarding sex compared to a male, don’t call them sexist; perhaps they are simply acknowledging that sex has different consequences for men and women, which isn’t sexist at all. They may be aware that a woman has more to lose every time she engages in sexual activity.

One should be picky about whom you sleep with. (I’ll be teaching my kids to wait until marriage.) Not only should it be a privilege for someone to share a bed with you, but it should also contribute to a romantic connection that you and your partner are both equally interested in pursuing and maintaining.

Connie Morgan is a Christian, wife, and mother located in the Pacific Northwest. She has a background in economics and public relations and has worked in higher ed and marketing. She served five years in the United States military as a military intelligence officer. Her main research and writing interests are the family, education, and personal liberty generally. Connie is a founding member of Free Black Thought. She is the regular host of the Free Black Thought Podcast. She tweets here.