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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

Ugh. I think this whole post starts with a flawed premise.

It may be true that heterosexual men want sex. But so do heterosexual women and homosexual men and women as well, as well as those who are somewhere in the vast spectrum between these identities. The question to consider then is why does male heterosexual lust get special consideration?

For example, consider the framing of calling the ability to reject male advances "power". Anyone can reject sexual advances from others for any reason, but it's rarely framed as a special position of "power" other than when applied to heterosexual male advances.

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Women definitely want sex, but it's not as urgent because they usually know that it's easily available for them.

I taught English overseas right after college with other people from the states and it was the first time I saw women sexually frustrated. The local guys were too shy to approach the female teachers and most of the male teachers were going after the foreign women. It was also the first time I had women actively approach me, which shows you a completely different side of women than if you're an average guy (and showed me how where you live can VASTLY change your value).

Were you in the JET program?

Yes

Even then it's different - I doubt the teachers you interacted with would have been satisfied with one-night stands. They're still expecting a long-term monogamous relationship, and are bound to be very upset if that doesn't happen.

Eh. It varies a lot. But my own experience interacting with these groups is that I think what they want is everything. They want a ONS but they also want someone who wants more with them. They want the option for more but then to reject it.

Basically, they want to feel desired for more than just a ONS but then reject it anyway. I think many people are like this but it’s very prevalent with women I’ve interacted with…

"It may be true that heterosexual men want sex. But so do heterosexual women and homosexual men and women as well, as well as those who are somewhere in the vast spectrum between these identities. The question to consider then is why does male heterosexual lust get special consideration?"

Who do you think has more sex: lesbians, or gay men?

OK so now that we've settled that men have 1000x more sexual lust than women, let's ask ourselves, are there more gay men or straight men? Straight.

"The question to consider then is why does male heterosexual lust get special consideration?" Probably because most sexual lust is male heterosexual lust.

Just because a lot of people are responding to you with what I can only call low key trolling, a look at the scientific evidence[0] says

  A large body of scientific research documents four important gender differences in sexuality. First, on a wide variety of measures, men show greater sexual desire than do women. Second, compared with men, women place greater emphasis on committed relationships as a context for sexuality. Third, aggression is more strongly linked to sexuality for men than for women. Fourth, women's sexuality tends to be more malleable and capable of change over time. These male-female differences are pervasive, affecting thoughts and feelings as well as behavior, and they characterize not only hetero-sexuals but lesbians and gay men as well. Implications of these patterns are considered.

I've got to question the good faith of people who pretend to think that gay men and lesbians have similar amounts of sex.

[0] https://www.jstor.org/stable/20182831

The effect size -- even if I let you cherry pick citations (in a field experiencing a reproducibility crisis, no less) -- is several orders of magnitude smaller than the parent poster asserts (1000x).

According to your own sources it's an effect that is literally closer to "women are bad at math" than "men are taller than women". Literally. The comparison of effect sizes for those three things is right there on the first page. And for a proxy that your own source chose.

Again, parent asserted 1000x. 1000x. And you post an article with an effect size that's absolute garbage data in any field outside of psychology and assert "Science!". To defend a post claiming 1000x.

Or, in your words: stop arguing in bad faith, troll ;-)

> Who do you think has more sex: lesbians, or gay men?

It depends the couple. Also depends on what you mean by "more" and what you mean by "sex". Is a once-a-week 4+ hour naked cuddle session with occasional touching/stimulation more or less sex than a multiple 10 minute BJs every day?

I would tend to say "obviously more". A longish session once a week is probably fairly common for lesbian couples and multiple short sessions -- but on the order of a few a week as opposed to a few a day -- is probably fairly common for gay men.

My genuine belief, having spent almost all of my life surrounded by lgbt folks, is that if you define "sex" in a way that isn't pathological, then lesbians probably spend more time on sex than gay men.

(I also STRONGLY suspect there's a heavy overlap between people who think "it's not sex unless my dick is wet the whole time" and people who have trouble finding consistent sexual partners.)

> OK so now that we've settled that men have 1000x

LOL where did we settle on that? I agree with OP. Women enjoy sex (gasp!).

If you call a massage a form of sex, who has more sex, gay men or lesbian women?

Gay men. A massage isn't sex, even if that's what you call it.

For what it's worth, I'm a bisexual man who's had multiple relationships with both men and women. I had more sex with the lowest-sex man than I did with the highest-sex woman, even when you do count cuddling as sex.

> A massage isn't sex

What is sex? What is lust? (The questions are rhetorical, but the point is that these terms tend to be defined in ways the exclude lots of queer foreplay.)

But, yes, a massage where both people understand the energy is building toward/from sexual stimulation is definitely part of sex. Foreplay is part of sex. I can't think of any definition of sex that excludes foreplay and that is, for the purposes of this conversation, useful.

If "women don't want sex", but we define sex as functionally equivalent to "someone's genitals are touching another person", well... idk. Maybe women just don't want really shitty no foreplay sex? Surprise, surprise, right?

> For what it's worth, I'm a bisexual man who's had multiple relationships with both men and women

Ditto and opposite experience. It's almost like people are different enough that gender-based generalizations are almost entirely unhelpful.

>> For what it's worth, I'm a bisexual man who's had multiple relationships with both men and women

> Ditto and opposite experience. It's almost like people are different enough that gender-based generalizations are almost entirely unhelpful.

Gonna call bullshit on that, considering you think the average gay man's sex life is a couple blowjobs per week.

My original post says a couple blowjobs "per day", not "per week". I'm confused. If anything, I'd expect you to call bullshit because that number is too high (it was meant to be hyperbolic).

But you also willfully misread my other comment, so shrugs.

> Who do you think has more sex: lesbians, or gay men?

> OK so now that we've settled that men have 1000x more sexual lust than women...

I must be missing something, because I have absolutely no idea where we settled anything in this space of two sentences.

Yeah you're missing a lot!

I don't think men want sex substantially more than women. What causes an imbalance, IMO, is that women value casual sex substantially less than men for a variety of cultural and biological reasons and women's value in the casual sex marketplace have a much flatter distribution and is also front-loaded when you look across the age spectrum. This means most women either can pretty much get casual sex whenever they want or at least have lived through a phase where they could. Meanwhile, most men will never live through a period where casual sex is as easy to get as it is for the median woman at her prime, which may permanently alter the perspective of many of them and cause them to consider casual sex more valuable, regardless of their actual level of sexual desire.

The problem is that the framing of male lust as a fixed constraint to be satisfied screens off a lot of hypotheses. For example:

* Maybe societal beauty standards are causing people to have unrealistically high expectations, thus shrinking the dating pool and making it harder to satisfy everyone.

* Maybe the average male lust has been artificially increased by something (porn? waifu gacha games?) and needs to be brought back down.

* Maybe female lust has been artificially suppressed by something (I’ll refrain from speculating on what), and matching will work out if it’s brought back up.

Or maybe literally every human experiences sexually frustration soemtimes but certain types of men have been so coddled that they blow up their smallest discomforts into Big Societal Problems That Must Be Solved.

> they blow up their smallest discomforts into Big Societal Problems That Must Be Solved

aka a micro-agression?

> Who do you think has more sex: lesbians, or gay men?

what is the answer to this question supposed to be? is there some stereotype that gay dudes have more sex than lesbians? i haven't found any clear trend here anecdotally.

There's no true equivalence, because the effect under discussion is a matter of magnitude. The simplest illustration I can think of is that there is a large market for average-looking call girls, but only a small market for any-looking gigolos. There is no symmetry either between the extent to which men and women are motivated to pursue sex, or the extent to which they're receptive to it. It isn't to say that there is no demand/desire in the other direction (or direction(s) in the case of queer individuals), just that the other direction isn't the one that has a big impact or causes the common problems.

Having something a lot of other people want with the ability to deny them is textbook power.

Male lust is higher than female lust. In the case of homosexual lust, on average people are matched: coarsely speaking, supply of sex equals demand of sex. Heterosexual lust introduces an assymetry: demand of sex outstrips supply of sex. This creates effective monopoly power.

In the gay space, it’s actually the opposite, receivers are disproportionately weaker, more men would like to be fucked than to fuck.

> It may be true that heterosexual men want sex.

No, not remotely equally. We have a literal measure of this. Think about it: Sex work would be impossible if what you're saying is true. The demand for having sex with women is astronomically higher than the demand for having sex with men.

It is possible there just a lot of men who vocally express their inability to deal with their unrequited lust and feel a sense of entitlement to have their urges satisfied. Women could want sex just as often and just as badly as men, but are culturally less prone to express and feel entitled to it than men.

I'll believe the market over these theories espoused with zero supporting data. If women wanted sex enough, they'd buy it at a higher rate than they do (which is essentially not at all) regardless of cultural norms.

According to the voting market, people love corruption, party politics, authoritarianism, and war.

Consider that there are a lot of factors that go into markets, and if they were simple to understand everyone would be making a killing day trading.

That market is different since people with billions decide who gets to be a politician, not voters. The consumers are the PACs, lobbyists, etc. not the voters. The voters are the product.

That's kinda my point really, you can't just point at the market and make simple conclusions because they are not simple systems.

We know who the buyers and sellers are and what the supply and demand is though. We can measure that all in that market.

And if understanding a market were that simple no one would ever need anything more than economics 101. That isn't reality.

Well, if there's more to it in this case, you're free to fill out the picture with additional data.

My point isn't to present a definitive explanation, my point is that you cannot assume an explanation based on the market price, which is the only evidence you have to fit your narrative.

I'm not assuming anything, I'm concluding what I must based on the evidence. You have some countervening evidence, then we change the conclusion. Otherwise, Occam's razor. Just because it could be more complicated doesn't mean we should believe it is without evidence.

A metastudy above concludes the same thing using unrelated data anyway [1]. Men masturbate much more than women and the effect size is greater than most all other psychological differences.

1. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20182831

> According to the voting market

There is no such thing as a "voting market". At the least, where is the skin-in-the-game? or itemised quid-pro-quo?

> if they were simple to understand

The rules of pool are simple to understand, that doesn't mean the game is easy to master.

Trading is a matter of predicting the market - that is not what is being described here; is is not being predicted that women pay less for sex, it is known from the market already.

Because most people are heterosexual. If this was an article on health problems for overweight people who make a significant amount in the west you could say they’re not giving enough exposure to underweight people who should be equal represented.

I agree that the whole article seems slimy.

Having said that - for a short time in a young woman's life she is highly desired by men of all age groups. How can you take 50 year age range of of men who think they can (and should) get 5 year age range of women?

But if a woman survives this 5 year period then relationships with men can be balanced and satisfying. Men still want women and women still want men, but it seems to be balanced.

I just realized what bothered me about the article. It assumes the entire relationship between men and women is purely transactional. It is not. I just reread the article and the woman is a stripper. It figures.

What 5 years is this? 13-18? 18-23? 25-30? 35-40?

From highly biased personal experience 17-22. I won't get into the details but you are only young once ;-).

Which country was this?

They have to sell it as power to keep in step with a prior worldview about sexual liberation

> The question to consider then is why does male heterosexual lust get special consideration

Male lust is given special consideration because it is the overwhelming majority of the lust expressed, leading to all the problems this article discussed. Perhaps it is a US-only thing.

That's a core issue. Lust not being expressed in some genders.

The other core issue is not respecting natural biological function need based on gender

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