differenceblog, posts by tag: sexual intent - LiveJournal

Quantifying sex drive and desire is a complicated process. The Handbook of Sexuality-Related Measures (Davis et al, 2004) lists and evaluates over 200 tools for measuring sexual factors. Toledano and Pfaus's (2006) Sexual Arousal and Desire Inventory (SADI) is one attempt to put the complicated construct of desire into usable numbers. Toledano and Pfaus did not find gender differences on "physiological and motivational factors" but found that women were more likely to find the descriptors used "aversive". Spector et al (1996) document the difficulty in pinning down factors with any kind of reliability. Spector et al's Sexual Desire Inventory (SDI) hypothesizes two factors of desire: "dyadic" and "solitary." No gender differences are reported. Rosen et al (2000) suggest that separate male and female scales are necessary in their development of the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI).

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There are obviously social/cultural factors at work in the sexuality of both men and women. One thing that made adjustment for me very difficult when I was trying to be a "normal" woman (before I made the decision to transition from female to male) was my complete lack of understanding of the social double standard about men's and women's sexuality. I didn't understand why my behavior, which didn't seem to me to be any different than that of the men I spent time with, made me a bit of a pariah in certain circles. The social distinction between "slut" and "stud" was lost on me. I still don't really understand it, personally, but at least now I am aware that it exists.

Abbey and Melby (1986) found that males perceived more sexual intent than females in both ambiguous and nonambiguous nonverbal situations. Levesque et al (2006) also found that men attributed more sexual interest after brief interaction than women, but that women tended to generalize attraction to positive personality characteristics more than men. Levesque et al also found that masculine women tended to sexualize opposite-sex interactions more than feminine women, but there were no differences between "masculine" and "feminine" men (rated using the BSRI).

Levesque et al did not provide the ages or recruitment methods of their participants, nor was I able to find this information about Abbey and Melby's experiments, although later studies by Abbey (e.g. 1987, 1995) use college student samples. Also, no studies seem to have been done to assess the level of sexual intent inferred by gay men and lesbians in same or opposite sex pairings.

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In my experience, men assume no one is hitting on them, and women assume everyone is hitting on them. Obviously, this is an oversimplification. I've known and dated guys who were supremely arrogant and women who were painfully self-conscious. However, I still found that the arrogance in men tended to translate to thinking they would get a positive response to flirtation, and the self-deprecating women assumed that the flirtation was non-serious, or sexual only. It's a self-fulfilling observation in my case. I tend to assume that no one is flirting with me because they see me as male, and wonder if they're seeing me as something else if they make their intentions known.