What Women Want

Last month my surfing led me to several discussions centred around the book What Do Women Want: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire by Daniel Bergner. Now I want to be quite clear up front that all I know of the book itself is what I pieced together from half a dozen reviews. What really fascinated me were the discussions that these pieces generated, both in their respective comment sections and in my online friend groups.
According to Zoe Williams in The Guardian, the book posits that “female sexuality is as raw and bestial as male sexuality. But, unlike men, our animal urges are stoutly denied, by society and by ourselves, so that when they surface, it is not as a manageable stream, but as a rushing torrent that will sweep up everything it passes”.
While this sounds like an agreeable fantasy from a lad magazine, all the conversations I have ever had on the subject with women above 30 suggests that the repression or denial of this essential part of themselves inevitably leads to a more widespread communication breakdown in a relationship, especially in marriage.
I have in fact yet to talk to a woman who has consistently, over a decade, felt that she was getting enough, or indeed, too much sex. It is more common to find that my friends, who come from varied backgrounds and are of ages ranging from the teens to their fifties, wish that sex were not always contingent on when their male partners were in the mood.
Emma Brockes, who reviewed the book for The Guardian wryly notes, “[Now] it sounds like yet another obligation. Along with everything else on your to-do list, you are required to show off your inherent range and innate power like a lab rat on a dopamine surge.”
One could suppose that if Indian women complain of not getting enough sex then the idea of more sex is clearly not an issue.
And yet, a significant number of female friends have been frank about their low libidos. The usual factors (worry, stress, exhaustion, new baby) are commonly evident in these cases but every so often, it is less about the libido of these women than about the quality of sex that they do get.
Without precisely complaining of bad sex, mostly these women have spoken of sex that did not take into account what they wanted.
This contradiction of not enough versus far too much (of the wrong kind) makes sense if we consider these discussions as conversations not purely about female desire, but also of a sense of powerlessness.
If very basic human needs like food and sex are more likely to be decided based on the preference of the male partner in a relationship, as it all too often is in Indian marriages, then the average, modern, educated woman of independent thought is bound to reach a degree of frustration with the situation. Any woman would, really.
The answer is pure common sense, but extremely difficult to execute. The only way one human being can ever really understand what another human being wants from them in bed and elsewhere is for the desire to be articulated, somehow expressed.
If showing isn’t working, we have to learn to speak up and find ways in which we can communicate what makes us happy. Yet we are conditioned as children, long before we grow into men and women, to not discuss sex. One can perform the deed but discussing it or even dissecting it is somehow in poor taste.
I am convinced that a lot of men and women would be happier by far if we learnt to talk about sex the way we discuss what we want to cook for breakfast.
Melissa of the Feminist Texican Reads noted the slim bibliography of this book and that it relies greatly on the findings from its case studies – which makes it rather limiting, in my opinion. Environments, tastes and circumstances differ so largely across the world that it seems pretty presumptuous to study a few focus groups and conclude that this is what women want.
As a woman, I ask: do you know what women really, really want? To not be asked that question. Like every other person out there in the world our wants change and no, I don’t think anybody, man or woman, is ever entirely sure that they want this, just this, and no other options, thank you.
This applies to the bedroom as much as it does in pretty much every other sphere of our lives. You know the best way to find out what the women in your life or in your world want? Ask nicely. You’ll probably get some very helpful answers. And no, they won’t all be the same.