I have to say, this is a subject that has always perplexed me. I know it's a cliché to say that men are simple and women are complicated, but everything I read about this seems to reinforce the idea that women are just all over the map when it comes to sexual desire and how they respond to male attention. Sophie Gilbert from the Atlantic wrote about this same controversy in British schools and had the exact opposite perspective.

When I first heard of the concept of "objectification", I was confused. Why wouldn't someone want attention from the opposite sex? I often hear women talk about getting breasts and curves as a traumatic experience due to all the sudden attention from boys that it brings. Some women, it seems, feel that this is a good thing, and others lament the lack of attention they receive because they're "flat" or remain with narrow hips.

Needless to say, this is a stark contrast to males. When (straight) men are going through puberty, there is no ambiguity - our minds become consumed with lust, and there is no such thing as bad attention from girls. Any obvious "adult" features we obtain (facial hair, deepening voice, etc.) that we think might make us more desirable to females are greeted as unqualified goods. Talk to virtually any man and they'll confirm this (I assume the same applies to gay men, though they usually have denial to work through which complicates things). We really are that uniformly simple on this issue.

Don't get me wrong - as we grow older it becomes harder to ignore that women are judged far more strictly on their physical appearance than men, so you can understand where they're coming from on the general issue of "objectification". But there is a difference between objectification creating unreasonable standards for female attractiveness and objectification making women feel "too attractive" to the opposite sex.

The article that Zoe links to here about the "omnivorous" female sex drive seems to unequivocally confirm the relative complexity of female desire compared to that of men. It talks of women's minds being separate from their genitalia in terms of what stimuli they respond to. About women being aroused by being desired rather than just from desiring their partner. About how women want a chivalrous man who will also throw them up against a wall and "take" them. Even the researchers seem to acknowledge the difficulty in drawing conclusions from the mass of confusing and sometimes contradictory seeming data on what turns women on.

Ultimately, it seems this is something that varies greatly from woman to woman, and depends a lot on self-image, strength of libido, previous experience with males, and personal values. I'm just glad to be reminded that women like Zoe exist, and that there are still those that don't consider my natural sexual desires to be a force of oppression.