Sex: The Mississippi River of Gender Divides?

Sex as a Weapon - Pat Benatar (mp3)
Skin Trade - Bob Mould (mp3)
Mr. Roboto (live) - Dennis DeYoung (mp3)

Two stories recently caught my eye. That they caught my eye says plenty about me, but they also, when set next to one another, say quite a bit about men and women and that timeless beautiful word, SEX.

The first story I found at The Frisky. (It's like sneaking a peek at Cosmo except without the guilt or shame of other adults watching you do so while you're sitting in a Barnes & Noble or something. Thank God for the Internet!) Apparently a German company by the name of First Androids have created a life-sized and somewhat realistic sex doll android. At a cost of almost $4,000, the company claims to have received four MILLION backorders of this creation. Yes, four million men -- or maybe three million men and a million more bigamist wannabes who just can't stand the idea of screwing just one android sex doll for the rest of their lives -- believe it's totally worth a $4 grand to have the replica of a female at their eternal sexual beck and call, so long as they have enough D batteries (or should I say "Double D batteries"?).

The second story surrounds the new book, "Why Women Have Sex," written by a pair of researchers who identified 237 reasons why women have sex, with most of them having absolutely nothing to do with romance or physical gratification. TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SEVEN REASONS!!! The researcher even rattles off, just right off the top of her noggin, a huge list of great female motivators for having sex:

"...promotion, money, drugs, bartering, for revenge, to get back at a partner who has cheated on them. To make themselves feel good. To make their partners feel bad." Women, she says, "can use sex at every stage of the relationship, from luring a man into the relationship, to try and keep a man so he is fulfilled and doesn't stray. Duty. Using sex to get rid of him or to make him jealous."

Meanwhile, according to Dr. Moi, men pretty much have sex for one of about five reasons:

1. Because we like a woman, and this connection turns us on.
2. Because we think a woman is irresistibly hot, and this connection turns us on.
3. Because a woman makes us think we're hot or irresistible or adorable or (insert ego-boosting adjective here).
4. Because we're horny and needed a nut, and we hardly even care who assists us.
5. _________________ (This space left open just in case I've left some really compelling reason out... which is unlikely. I just figured I should give men five reasons because that's how many fingers they have on one hand... oh never mind.)

Don't worry, men and women aren't really THAT far apart. The Almighty Orgasm is the number one reason women have sex, and LOVE is a safe #2. The difference is that, for men, it pretty much starts and ends right there, but with women, there's this whole string of additional possible motives, littering the floor  like bullets from a scene in Black Hawk Down, that could motivate their sexual decisions from one minute to the next.

Another great quote:

"The degree to which economics plays out in sexual motivations," Buss says, "surprised me. Not just prostitution. Sex economics plays out even in regular relationships. Women have sex so that the guy would mow the lawn or take out the garbage. You exchange sex for dinner." He quotes some students from the University of Michigan. It is an affluent university, but 9% of students said they had "initiated an attempt to trade sex for some tangible benefit".

Women use sex for economic benefit; men buy $4,000 androids so they can get their rocks off without the burden of an (unspoken) economic transaction. They use fiscal economics to avoid the dangers of sexual economics, knowing how easily abused they can be in that world.

OK, it's not all men. OK, I don't think men actually want sex androids to avoid anything. OK, I think men are just really really really horny and don't even think about anything all that deep that involve both words "sex" and "transaction."

Is four million orders surprising because it's too many from that tunnel-visioned half of the gender divide... or not enough?

Are 237 reasons to have sex too many, or is five too few?


* -- For those of you under the age of 30, back in the '80s and farther in the past, you had to buy these printed things called "dirty magazines" to see boobies, and that's all most of the magazines showed, was pictures of boobies and sometimes other parts covered in patches of hair. Nowadays you can, with two clicks and Google, witness just about any sexual act the mind could invent in even its most demented states. But trust me, it used to require careful planning and cunning tact (huh huh).