Sextrieb bei Männern und Frauen

Eine Studie zum Sextrieb von Männern und Frauen:

The sex drive refers to the strength of sexual motivation. Across many different studies and measures, men have been shown to have more frequent and more intense sexual desires than women, as reflected in spontaneous thoughts about sex, frequency and variety of sexual fantasies, desired frequency of intercourse, desired number of partners, masturbation, liking for various sexual practices, willingness to forego sex, initiating versus refusing sex, making sacrifices for sex, and other measures. No contrary findings (indicating stronger sexual motivation among women) were found.Hence we conclude that the male sex drive is stronger than the female sex drive. The gender difference in sex drive should not be generalized to other constructs such as sexual or orgasmic capacity, enjoyment of sex, or extrinsically motivated sex

Quelle: Is There a Gender Difference in Strength of Sex Drive? Theoretical Views, Conceptual Distinctions, and a Review of Relevant Evidence (PDF)

Aus der Studie:

Eysenck (1971) found that men reported more frequent thoughts about sex than women. Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, and Michaels (1994) found that men think about sex more often than women. Over half the men in their national sample reported thinking about sex every day, whereas only one fifth of the women reported thinking about sex that often. Recent studies on uncontrolled and unwanted sexual thoughts underscore the conclusion that the male sex drive evokes more sexual thinking even if the person does not wish to have those thoughts. Byers, Purdon, and Clark (1998) found that male college students reported more intrusive, unwanted, and even personally unacceptable thoughts about sex than did college women (7.5 vs. 5.6 out of 20 possible sexually intrusive thoughts listed). Vanwesenbeeck, Bekker, and van Lenning (1998) developed a sexual compulsion scale with items such as “I think about sex more than I would like” and “I must fight to keep my sexual thoughts and behavior under control.” Men scored higher than women on this scale, indicating a greater sense of being sexually driven. Data on spontaneous sexual arousal and desire reveal one way in which men seem to have a higher sex drive. Beck, Bozman, and Qualtrough (1991) found that men report more frequent sexual desire than women. Nearly all the men (91%) but only half the women (52%) experienced sexual desire several times a week or more. Their study also helped rule out the alternative explanation that women find it more difficult than men to recognize sexual desire, because men and women endorsed essentially the same indicators of desire. Likewise, a study by Knoth, Boyd, and Singer (1988) concluded that the modal young man experiences spontaneous sexual arousal several times per day, whereas the modal young women experiences it only a couple times per week. Eysenck (1971) likewise found that men reported more frequent sexual desire and more easily stimulated desire than women. Jones and Barlow (1990) had a sample of young heterosexual adults monitor their sexual feelings for 7 days, and the men had more than twice as many sexual urges per day as the women (4.75 vs. 2.00, respectively). The difference in internally generated fantasies was not significant, but men had significantly more sexual fantasies during masturbation than women.(…)

A review and meta-analysis by Leitenberg and Henning (1995) concluded that men have more frequent and more varied fantasies than women. That is, men’s fantasies occur more often than women’s, include more different partners than women’s, and extend to a broader variety of sex acts than women’s (on an individual rather than a population basis—probably there is at least one woman who has had any given fantasy). These differences in fantasy suggest greater sex drive in men. The variety in sex partners was the focus of a study by Ellis and Symons (1990). They asked people whether they had had sex with over a thousand different partners in their imagination. Given the relatively young age of their sample (college students), a very active and highly motivated imagination would presumably be necessary to achieve that high a tally. They found that men were four times more likely than women to report having imagined a thousand or more sex partners. Thus, as compared with women, men think about sex more often, report more frequent arousal, and have more frequent and variable fantasies. These findings would be most consistent with a view that men have a higher sex drive. (…)

Ard (1977) reported a survey of couples who had been married for over 20 years. He found that “husbands continued to prefer intercourse more frequently than wives” (p. 274). In fact, wives consistently reported that they were quite satisfied with the amount of sex they had in their marriages, but men on average wished for about a 50% increase. M. Brown and Auerback (1981) likewise found that a majority of husbands (60%) but only a minority of wives (32%) said they would prefer to have sex more often. A more recent study by Julien, Bouchard, Gagnon, and Pomerleau (1992) found that husbands and wives agreed that the men were more sexually active and frisky. Even more relevant, Julien et al. (1992) found that men were more likely than women to report having less sex in marriage than they wanted. With a sample of couples ages 51 to 61, Johannes and Avis (1997) found that women were more likely than men to wish for less frequent sex than they were having, whereas husbands were more likely to wish for more frequent sex than they were having. A study of elderly couples in Sweden likewise found that men wanted more frequent sex than women (Bergström-Walan & Nielsen, 1990). Indeed, the authors of that study concluded that “men are significantly more sexual than women, in all ages and in all respects” (p. 289). Those findings refer to mature couples who are well into long-term relationships. One might expect that men and women would be more similar early in relationships. Yet data show that at the start of a relationship, men desire sex more than women. Abundant evidence confirms that men are ready for sex earlier in a relationship than women. In a large Australian sample, McCabe (1987) found that the category of people who were in a committed relationship, who wanted to have sex, but who were not having sex, consisted almost entirely of men. For example, among 25-year-olds, 28% of men but only 2% of women were in this category of “reluctant virgins.” Sprecher and Regan (1996) found that men were more likely than women to cite partner unwillingness as the reason they were not having sex. Driscoll and Davis (1971) found that men were more likely than women to list as a reasons for not having sex the fact that they could not talk their partner into doing so and that the decision was not theirs. Women are willing to wait longer within a dating relationship, measured either in terms of clock and calendar time or in terms of number of dates, before having sex (Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Cohen & Shotland, 1996; Sprecher, Barbee, & Schwartz, 1995). For example, Cohen and Shotland found that men expected sex after about 8 dates, whereas women expected it after about 12. Thus, within heterosexual relationships, men want sex more than women at the start of a relationship, in the middle of it, and after many years of it. Consistent with that sweeping conclusion, McCabe (1987) found that men in relationships (across the full sample and all 246 BAUMEISTER, CATANESE, & VOHSlevels of relationship longevity) showed significantly more desire for intercourse than they were having, whereas women had about what they wanted. (…)

They found that gay men had higher frequencies of sex than lesbians at all stages of relationships. Within the first 2 years of a relationship, for example, two thirds of the gay men but only one third of the lesbians were in the maximum category of having sex three or more times per week (the highest frequency category). After 10 years together, 11% of the gay men but only 1% of the lesbians were still in that category of highly frequent sex. At the other extreme, after 10 years nearly half the lesbians,  but only a third of the gay men, were having sex less than once a month. Even that difference may be a substantial underestimate of the discrepancy in sexual activity: Blumstein and Schwartz reported that the gay men who had largely ceased having sex after 10 years together were often having sex with other partners, whereas the lesbians who had ceased having sex together had generally not compensated for this deficit by finding other sexual outlets. A lack of sexual desire and activity in women is reflected in the phrase “lesbian bed death,” (e.g., Iasenza, 2000) which has been coined to describe the low levels of sexual activity among lesbians in long-term relationships. Similar conclusions emerged from an earlier study by Bell and Weinberg (1978), which did not limit its sample to people in committed relationships and is thus a useful complement to the Blumstein and Schwartz (1983) study. White homosexual men were more likely than lesbians (47% vs. 32%) to report having sex more than once per week. A similar difference was found among gay Blacks (65% vs. 56%) (…)

Over the course of a lifetime, men wanted around 18, whereas women desired 4 or 5. Miller and Fishkin (1997) asked a sample of college students how many sex partners they would like to have over the entire rest of their lives if they were not constrained by any factors such as disease or laws. The mean response by the women was that they would ideally like to have 2.7 sex partners, whereas the men’s mean response was 64. (…)

The subculture of gay men did briefly establish bathhouses and other institutions that allowed men to have sex with half a dozen or more partners in a single evening. Even though lesbians are better able than gay men to engage in such promiscuity (because of the lack of refractory period), lesbian communities do not seem to have created any market for such institutionalized orgiastic behavior. (…)

Blumstein and Schwartz (1983) found that, among people in committed relationships, gay men were far more likely than lesbians to have sex with someone other than their regular partner (82% vs. 28%). Among those who did experience sex with someone other than the partner, lesbians tended to have only 1 outside partner (53%), unlike gay men (7%). The proportion of gay men who reported having had over 20 outside partners during the relationship was substantial (43%), but among lesbians it was negligible (1%). Even in the moderately promiscuous category of having had between 6 and 20 partners, gay men outnumbered lesbians (30% vs. 4%). Again we look to Bell and Weinberg (1978) for converging evidence with a sample that was not restricted to people in committed relationships. In a sample of several hundred respondents, far more gay White men (43%) than White lesbians (0%) reported having had over 500 sex partners. Meanwhile, 58% of White lesbians, but only 3% of gay White men, said their lifetime homosexual experience had included 9 or fewer partners. (…)

45% of men but only 15% of women reported masturbating at least once per week. Meanwhile, nearly half the women in their sample (47%) but only 16% of the men said they had never masturbated. Arafat and Cotton (1974) found women and girls were almost four times more likely than men and boys to say they never masturbated (39% vs. 11%). In a survey of German teenagers ages 16 to 17, Sigusch and Schmidt (1973) found that 80% of the boys, but only 25% of the girls, were engaged in masturbation during the past year, and boys averaged five times per month as opposed to once per month for the girls. (…)

Women start having sex at a later age than men (Asayama, 1975; Laumann et al., 1994; Lewis, 1973; Wilson, 1975). For example, Asayama’s interviews with Japanese students during the late 1940s and 1950s found that half the boys had become quite interested in sex by age 15 and 90% had by age 19, whereas only 30% to 40% of the girls had become interested by age 18. Over a third of the boys had masturbated by age 15 and over 80% had done so by age 21, whereas by age 21 only 12% of the women had masturbated. Asayama concluded that the development of sexual interest “among females is rather slow while for males it is quite rapid” (p. 95). With an American sample, Lewis (1973) found that half (52%) the boys but only 16% of the girls reported having sex by the age of 17. (…)

Women initiate sex less often than men. A diary study by O’Sullivan and Byers (1992) found that men initiated sex about twice as often as women, although there was no significant difference in considering initiating sex. M. Brown and Auerback (1981) found that men initiated it three times as often as women during the 1st year of marriage, although the difference dwindled in later years. Byers and Heinlein (1989) found that over a 1-week period, men initiated sex about twice as often as women. Differences in sexual initiative may help explain the differential rates of sex in gay male versus lesbian relationships (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983). (…)

Probably the best data were provided by Clark and Hatfield (1989), who used an experimental procedure to investigate responses to sexual offers. Both men and women were approached by a moderately attractive, opposite-sex confederate and invited to have sexual intercourse that evening. Women’s refusal rate was 100% across two studies, whereas only 25% of the men refused.

Und zu den Ursachen:

Our review of the literature indicated that role of androgens (e.g., testosterone) was crucial in producing sex drive. We focused on the androgens for several reasons. First, scientists’ interest in the effects of testosterone have yielded a wealth of data on its effects. Second, testosterone is one of the primary organizational and activational hormones that differentiates men and women. Although both women and men have natural supplies of testosterone in their bloodstream, the amount of testosterone varies significantly between the genders. On average, men’s blood testosterone levels are 1,000 nanograms per deciliter, whereas women’s blood testosterone levels are only one seventh or one eighth of this amount (see Dabbs, 2000; Mazur & Booth, 1998). Postmenopausal women have especially low levels of testosterone (regardless of whether menopause occurs naturally or as a result of surgical procedures). Most commonly, surgically induced menopause is the result of an oophorectomy (i.e., removal of the ovaries and adrenals) or hysterectomy (i.e., removal of the uterus). Third and perhaps most germane to this analysis, evidence from the animal and human literatures suggests that androgens are responsible for active initiation of sexual activity (i.e., proceptivity), whereas estrogens are responsible for passive acceptance of sexual activity (i.e., receptivity; Beach, 1976; De Jonge & Van de Poll, 1984; Sherwin, 1988).

Zum Schluss verweise ich noch einmal auf meinen Artikel zum gleichen Thema und meine Ausführungen dort. Ich hatte darauf verwiesen, dass Testosteron zwar die reine animalische Lust anheizt, aber dies nicht die einzige Komponente ist, die Leute Sex haben lässt:

Aber die animalische Lust, die Testosteron herbeiführt, ist natürlich nicht das einzige, was Sex interessant macht. Es spielen viele Faktoren hinein, die aber auch zu einer anderen Motivation für Sex und damit auch für eine andere Betrachtungsweise des Sexes sprechen.

Es heißt auch nicht, dass Frauen nicht auch genauso viel Sex wollen, aber für sie sind dabei vielleicht nicht so stark die Befriedigungen der animalischen Lust im Vordergrund sondern sie genießen eher die Ausschüttung von Hormonen wie dem „Kuschelhormon“ Oxytocin, sowie einer Reihe von Endorphinen wie Serotonin und Dopamin. Daraus entstehen dann ganz andere Erwartungen an Sex, die sich in den jeweiligen Wünschen niederschlagen. Die meisten Frauen davon zu überzeugen, Sex nach den Vorstellungen der Männer zu haben, macht wenig Sinn, weil für sie der biologische Reiz am puren Sex dabei, nämlich die Stillung animalischer Lust, wesentlich geringer ist. Natürlich könnten sich Frauen frei dafür entscheiden, die Chance ist aber höher dass die meisten Frauen diesen Lebensweg nicht wählen sondern sich für einen anderen, zB Sex in einer Partnerschaft entscheiden, weil dieser ihnen aufgrund ihres körperlichen Unterschiede „logischer“ erscheint.

Das Sexualverhalten der Männer und Frauen ist, soviel zeigt die Studie oben, vollkommen unterschiedlich. Es spricht vieles dafür, dass ein Zusammenhang mit Testosteron besteht.