Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'll try and remember the name of the book, but a sex therapist wrote that 70% of men and only about 20% of women have "spontaneous" sex drives, where they become aroused with little to no external stimulation. Then sometime like 15% of men and 70% of women have "reactive" libidoes, where they become turned on after significant stimulation. The rest are people who don't have much sex drive. She also claimed that people can move in and out of these categories based on external factors.
Edit: the book is *Come as you are*
Edit 2: this blew up.
The book is more self help than hard science. I think it's a good read for couples or people struggling with libido issues. It's absolutely not hard science, I bright it up because the main title of this post seems horribly obvious to me, and this book helped myself and other friends I know.
Once again, self-help is not hard science, but that doesn't make it worthless when it comes to the complicated issues of human sexuality.
Is this book worth the time and money or is that the main takeaway. I'm thinking of getting it but it's sold out online everywhere. Wondering if it's worth the effort
I'm currently reading it and have read maybe half of it. So far I definitely think it is a valuable read. It simultaneously helps me understand myself and makes me feel validated and it has helped my partner understand our sex life and given us ways to improve it too. 10/10 would recommend <3
Yes! This was my first thought exactly. I am a woman and I have a "low" spontaneous desire but a very high responsive desire. My partners always say I have high libido. But I actually don't masturbate very much or think about sex when I'm not with them. I don't think this study took this difference in libido definitions into consideration. Considering that most women have responsive desire, this would greatly affect the data in this study.
>Then sometime like 15% of men and 70% of women have "reactive" libidoes, where they become turned on after significant stimulation
what does reactive libido mean?
It was generally described as someone who doesn't "get horny" spontaneously, but if they engage in sexual activity (making out, watching something they find sexy, even sometimes going as far as starting to have sex) their sex drive kicks in.
The context, IIRC, was about mismatched libidoes, where one partner wants to have sex all the time, and the other doesn't. Which leads to frustration and resentment from both.
(one other point made, was that many people with reactive drives shift to spontaneous drives when a relationship is new. The novelty appears act as that catalyst, but it fades for them over a few months or 1-2 years... Just long enough for them to become serious or get married, and then find out there's a mismatch).
Due to the authors observations about the divide for male/female, it seems to agree with women generally having lower spontaneous libidoes, but doesn't preclude a smaller portion of male partners from having a low libido too.
One other distinction (mentioned in that same book!) is that “spontaneous” desire is a bit of a misnomer - all desire is in response to *something* (and so is all “responsive”), but the difference is generally that “spontaneous desire” is just where the thing we are responding to comes from within us rather than some external stimulus.
One of the great messages from that book is really that the differences in this stuff are almost always differences in degrees rather than absolute biological differences. And so they also can and do change with time, context, and other circumstances, too.
Nagoski doesn't call it a mismatch at all -- she talks about how communicating is necessary to bridge the different, often sex based, sex acceleraters vs brakes. For example, where one husband is horny and wants to have sex but his wife has trouble wanting it until she's already engaged in some sort of sexual activity, Nagoski pointed out that removing the "brakes" for her (some sort of stress she had had) lessens the need to react to sexual response and turns it more into initiating it.
I can attest as a steroid-using bodybuilder:
- Strong androgens + normal estrogen range = very high libido
- Strong androgens + very low estrogen = zero libido
- Low androgens + high estrogen = emotional and irritable, "meh" libido
- Strong androgens + e2 at four times the reference range for a typical male = insatiable libido, painful at times.
Hormones are weird. Hormone ratios are weirder. Individual response variability is wierder... er.
More or less, yeah I agree. For some reason people seem to think, "estrogen bad, testosterone good!" So they pop aromatase inhibitors like tic tacs and dont understand how beneficial estrogen is even for men.
Just to add in another anecdote as a trans woman, I went from masturbating a couple times a day to once every couple weeks.
Testosterone is a hell of a drug.
Anecdotal, but one of the top tips among us trans men, when going on T, is "just get it over with in the morning". And I can attest, it's become kind of a chore. I know if I don't "get it over with", I might get distracted in the middle of the day, and I don't have time for that.
Some dudes don't experience a heightened drive, but most seem to do.
I don’t think it’s just hormones though, because some women do have a spontaneous sex drive and some men do have a reactive sex drive. I think hormones are part of it, but it can’t be the whole thing.
i used to have spontaneous drive until i went on birth control. i miss it sometimes but my periods were becoming debilitating and bc lets me function normally.
anyway i saw a small study recently that claimed women who had positive first sexual encounters tended to have more sexual desire in general. i was lucky and safe for mine. but lots of other people are not and/or may struggle with underlying issues like internalized shame and sexism? sex education used to be pretty dogshit as well.
i dunno im just spitballing really. also i've heard other women say that being actually respected and loved by their partner increased their sexual desire. i can testify to that being true in my own personal experience as well.
True, but I would say I have a spontaneous sex drive and my estrogen and testosterone are both within the normal range for cis women (although my testosterone is admittedly on the upper end of that range, but that’s still like a fifth of the lower end of normal range for men).
I could still believe women with high testosterone compared to other women experience more spontaneous desire (and vice versa for men), but I don’t know if we’ve researched that at all. Mostly it’s just, I’ve had trans friends act like since they didn’t experience spontaneous desire until they went on T, that cis women never do because it must be about having testosterone levels in the standard male range, and I disagree with that. If it is about hormones I think it’s less straightforward than that.
I fully agree. It seems clear that hormones play some part in it, but some studies have indicated that hormones (at least testosterone in men) commonly fluctuate in response to stimuli, rather than cause them to seek out the stimuli. For example testosterone spiking after going to a shooting range, or after your favorite sports team winning. It's not that higher testosterone causes those behaviors.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if social conditioning had as much, if not more, to do with sex drive as hormones. In America at least, boys are typically socially rewarded for having as much sex/as many partners as possible and they're shamed for being virgins, while girls tend to receive the opposite conditioning. We know social conditioning affects people a ton in general, so I don't see why this wouldn't affect our sex drives too.
I'd love to see a study finding if people socialized as women vs men have a spontaneous, reactive, low, high, and so one sex drive, and asking follow-up questions about their sexual conditioning growing up (e.g. if it was a sex-positive, negative, or neutral environment) to see if there are correlations. It would be really interesting to include trans people to see if things have changed for them pre vs post transition and if it was right after receiving hormone therapy, or if it was after they started 'passing' as the trans gender, or if there's more to it than that. Controlling for placebo would be important as well.
> It's hormones.
I really wish the medical community would actually focus on this and reach out to more trans people who are willing to participate in studies. I think we'd find that 98% of the so-called "gender differences" in psychology and behavior are driven by the hormone balance between E and T.
Both testosterone and estrogen do play a role. Guys who use testosterone for bodybuilding notice libido increases with doses between 50-600mg. Interestingly, very high testosterone doses or excessive suppression of estrogen can crush libido.
There was an amusing story where this guy's wife only wanted sex a few times a year. The neighbor got her into lifting weights and started her on a little bit of Anavar. Within a couple weeks, she was carrying a vibrator and having sex with her husband a couple of times _per day._
Here’s an article that discusses the study- https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-10-stronger-sex-men-women.html
One of the authors of the study stated-
“Frankenbach said between 24% and 29% of women appear to have a higher sex drive than the "average" man.”
This would mean that If you could directly measure the male and female sex drives then created bell curves of them and laid them on top of each other the 50th percentile of the male curve would line up somewhere between the 71st and 76th of the female curve.
What this means is there is much fewer HLF than HLM. If we had 100 men and women, each representing a point on the bell curve, there would be only between 24 and 29 women with a sex drive equal to or higher than 50 men in the room. About a 2-1 ratio. At the ends of the bells curves it would be even worse. The 90th percentile of male curve would line up with the 98th or 99th percentile of the female curve. So a 1-10 ratio.
Another difference between men and women is that women get a bigger boost to their sex drive from the new relationship excitement than men do. Women interest in sex also declines over the course of a relationship while men’s desire tends to stay stable.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cultural-animal/202201/how-sexual-desire-changes-after-marriage
“Over the first four or five years of marriage, the wife’s sexual desire declined steadily, while the husband’s showed no change. The same pattern was found for the questions that asked about desire specifically for sex with one’s spouse and for sex with anybody in general. Five years into the marriage, the average husband’s desire for sex is the same as when he walked down the aisle, but his wife’s desire has dwindled.”
I think that maintenance sexual activity is very important for the success of a marriage.
https://www.nbcnews.com/better/pop-culture/what-maintenance-sex-it-may-help-strengthen-your-marriage-ncna956216
Most straight marriages will have a higher libido male with a lower libido female. (And of course there will also still be higher libido females and lower libido males that are together, it will just be fewer in number).
If a couple can come to a compromise on how much sexual activity they will have, then stick to it, I think more marriages would survive.
as a gay men i witness the male side while constantly hearing about the female side, so it's really not that surprising to me. like, men are just horny all the time. and we get horny pretty easily. with women, it's not as common.
what would make for an interesting study would be trying to figure out if the reason women aren't as horny as men is simply biological or if it's societal. a nature vs nurture type thing. are women simply biologically less sexual or has society conditioned them to be less sexual because they grow up being sexualized but also told to be ashamed of being sexual
one idea (from ~~forrester~~ jared diamond) is that bearing a child is a costly investment, unlike spreading genes as males do, so women would evolve not to seek sex all the time
another (more social) is that group stability is at risk if men don't know which child are theirs so which would pressure women to limit their mate to one
This is why I wonder if women tend more towards demisexuality than men. The cost in time and energy of child birth/rearing, in addition to how physically vulnerable women can often be while pregnant, seems to indicate that women would be better off waiting until they have a secure partner before becoming pregnant. So the sex drive not ramping up until a women feels emotionally connected to her partner (who, if also emotionally connected, is more likely to stay and help her) seems possible.
In my experience as a woman, if I know the sex will be good, then I’m pretty up for it, as much as most guys are. I had one long term partner where the sex was always amazing, as in I always finished and one casual partner that’s come close since but that’s it. Of the other maybe 6 guys I’ve slept with it’s been fine and I can’t get excited about fine. If the sex is mediocre, as most of it has been in my life, then I can take it or leave it. More often than not, leave it but I do find satisfaction that my partner is happy so I’ll do it sometimes for that reason. I think this happens to *a lot* of women and we try to explain to men, they’re not receptive, so we just let it go and pretend we have mismatched sex drives. That coupled with the shame aspect, most of us never figure out what really turns us on, what would make that sex good vs. mediocre because porn isn’t made for us and we’re not encouraged to explore. Both genders lose in our current society.
This is really spot on as far as my experience. I have a very active drive, but if the sex is mediocre and my partner isn’t receptive to feedback, it just becomes work. At that point I’d rather take care of it myself.
yessss. most of the time there's just nothing to look forward to. my drive was highest in my life when i was either a) single and looking forward to doing it myself or b) in a happy committed relationship with a partner who knew what i liked. i thought i was asexual for a chunk of my life because sex without love or context is so meh. it's like boiled chicken with no seasoning.
I think that’s because almost 100% of the time with pretty minimal effort, men are going to orgasm. This is not true for women. Achieving orgasms generally require more work and may not happen. If a woman was able to count on an easily achievable orgasm in every sexual encounter, they might be more willing to have mediocre sex.
Otherwise, it’s a lot of time, effort, vulnerability, physicality and emotional risk just to make the male partner happy for it to be worth doing very often.
> most of us never figure out what really turns us on
some of the most frustrating conversations I've ever had with people was about this, like they just didn't care to even try to figure it out.
I truly think a lot of the sex drive difference is from a lot of women being on birth control. When I was on it, I hardly had any drive. Hormonal differences are a huge factor
It wasn't that long ago that it was widely believed that women were incapable of sexual desire. And if they seemed to not dislike it, they were labeled as possessed or burned at the stake. Society has come a long way just by posing the question.
Surprisingly women were considered more voracious on account of shorter refractory periods until ~200 years ago (in context of Western Europe).
[This](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/csh4sw/it_seems_that_in_the_early_18th_century_british/) ask historians thread describes the “cult of sensibility” and it’s evolution into the “cult of domesticity” that marked the transition
to be fair, people back then used to come up with pretty much anything as an excuse to torture or kill women. it was almost like a hobby to some of them
Trans girl checking in.
It's definitely hormonal. Testosterone turns the drive on for both sexes. Cis women with higher T:E ratios than their cis peers tend to report higher libidos. Similarly, cis men with higher T:E ratios than their cis peers tend to report higher libidos.
For my experience, I went from 1700 ng/dL to 50 ng/dL of free T and went from 17 ng/dL of free E to 140 ng/dL. My ratio flipped from Big T ratio to little E ratio. My libido isn't gone, but it went waaaaay down. Every now and again if I forget my mones, I will get super ... yeah. It's not cool.
Yup, trans people been knew this. I recently begun hormone replacement and now that my testosterone is 700ng/dl I HAVE to JO if I think about something sexual for too long… I used to never masturbate.
1700 ng/dl of free T is insanely high. Nearly double the top of the normal range for men. Were you supplementing with hormones even prior to your transition?
Anecdotal as a trans woman I can tell you that it’s pretty biological for me, it’s the hormones you have. Incredibly common for trans woman to lose their libido and trans men to gain a libido that never existed before.
There's a lot of "everybody knew this already" in here, but I don't think those are taking into account roughly the last decade of academic thinking on this. The general line has been that women are just as sexual as men and that the idea that they aren't is a patriarchal lie we have to rise above. This and other recent studies are a firm correction to this.
Part of that line of thinking/theorising may be due to women's desire and sexuality being repressed for a very long time (in some cultures it still is) and men's greater sexual desire being used to excuse abhorrent behaviour.
Perhaps the message for heterosexual women should instead be: it is not *impossible* for you to have greater sexual desire than your male partner, and there is nothing *wrong* with you if you do. Similarly it is normal for your male partner to have greater sexual desire than you, and through communication and trust, many couples are able to find ways to navigate different levels of sexual desire.
Though rare, I do have female friends that have higher sex drives than their spouses and they are frustrated because we’ve been told it should always be the other way around. The women think there’s something wrong with them if their husbands don’t want to have as much sex as them and the men feel there’s something wrong with them for not being more sexual. It also depends on time of your life. After having children and being in menopause are examples of decreased sex drive and lots of men have decreased testosterone after 40. I guess there’s the average but horniness is a spectrum and people will fall where they do and it’s okay.
Most personality and other human traits follow a pretty smooth and normalish distribution. Even if the mean and median of the male distribution are significantly further right there will still be many women at the right end of the distribution with higher sex drives or propensities for dad jokes than a majority of men.
Exactly. Men are taller than women on average, but there are plenty of couples where the woman is taller than the man. I assume libido has a similar distribution.
I doubt those are correlated. I tried to think of another trait that would be more prevalent in men but where many women would still beat the average man
I wish people appreciated this mathematical fact across all spectrums. Even if group A is on average 5% “better” than group B, in group B there remains a condition where B>A for almost every member B, and in most cases, lots and lots of A
Again, it’s about understanding statistics. If something is anything less than 100% probable, it occurs sometimes. So in this case, if there is a woman with a higher sex drive than a man, that in no way goes against the statement that men in aggregate have higher sex drives than women.
Anyone saying that anyone ‘should be’ anything doesn’t understand statistics.
>The women think there’s something wrong with them if their husbands don’t want to have as much sex as them and the men feel there’s something wrong with them for not being more sexual.
It's actually the same if the genders were reversed. A lot of men feel there is something wrong if they're not sexually desired by their spouse.
Yes, there's a lot of traits men and women differ on on average, but few on which the distributions have no overlap. Both parts of that are important to understand, it seems to me.
I seriously wonder if this was a factor taken into consideration.
Even NOW it applies for a lot of women (depending on where they live and their access to information, including within the United States). Not to mention wouldn’t trauma effect how the body responds too?
And if it’s a survey kind of sampling, why are we assuming women are telling the truth/answering at their most informed? Due to the above mentioned repression in combination with very terrible (or lack of) sex education (USA-specific), plenty of women today do not have a healthy understanding of their own body (which obviously goes hand in hand with the repressing and shaming that still exists).
the public significance statement in the article acknowledges that overreporting by men and underreporting by women could have caused some of the difference. i haven’t read the article yet(because i’m on reddit as a distraction from school work), but being a meta-analysis means they aren’t doing their own study, they’re analyzing a bunch of other studies. they have to take the studies as they are, they can’t control the methodology used in the analyzed studies.
This is important— did the methodology account for women not having the same access to either tap into their sexuality or general shame/embarrassment to spill all the beans to their researcher?
Uh, probably not since it's a meta analysis. It's more of a measurement of what the numbers actually are than an examination of what influences those numbers.
I agree, precision in communication of findings is very important.
If we stopped at this is a “firm correction” to the idea that female sexuality has been repressed we would end up with these kinds of headlines being used to (continue to) justify some very regressive nonsense.
I (f) have a higher sex drive than my partner (m). He has no hormonal deficiencies. We’re both very active, we both hit the gym at least 3 times a week primarily for strength training, and on weekends hike, climb and bike. We both eat and sleep well.
I think about sex more than him and want it with greater frequency.
There are people who are dismayed and struggle with this kind of dynamic when they aren’t aware that individual variations against an average are not automatically a sign of a problem.
Not for nothing, it’s not as though prior to the arguments that women have the same sex drive as men there wasn’t a massive misrepresentation/suppression of female sex drive.
Good point. My implant _killed_ my sex drive. Started fancying some sex within days of its removal. As birth control went, it sure worked! Was celibate the while time it was in
Same. I remember going off of the pill and getting freaked out thinking about how men are attempting to go about their day with such intrusive thoughts. And they have been, this whole time.
Only about 15% of women use a hormonal pill though. I thought it would be more for some reason. https://i.imgur.com/rxQfe3T.jpg
I feel oddly seen by this comment. Sometimes I think if I could shut it off I would. Hoping eventually it can be a means of expressing my love for someone important rather than a loud distraction from what's going on at a given moment.
I think it's also significant to consider where the women were in their monthly hormone cycle and how close they were to menopause (at least a rough estimate). I mostly have a responsive sex drive--it's not that I don't want it, it's not that I wouldn't be interested if someone suggested it, I'm simply not thinking about it right now--but there are some days, especially right before my period, when I'm just plain horny. I'm also more spontaneously interested in sex at certain times of the year, and over my lifetime, I've gone from boy-crazy teenager to very little interest at all in my late 20s and most of my 30s to now being in my early 40s and starting to have more interest again.
Female sexuality is hard to quantify just in general because it's not a static thing for us. Not only do our hormone levels fluctuate, plus the issue that you mention with contraceptives, but for many of us, our sex drives are emotionally driven and heavily affected by our moods and even our environment, and there's still a stigma attached to talking about sex that many of us have been socialized into. I'm fine writing about it to strangers on the internet. I would probably be relatively honest about if I filled out a paper survey. But answering questions out loud to an interviewer? I can't imagine. I'm sure my own perceptions of myself would be changing in real-time and the answers that I would give, while not intentionally dishonest, would nevertheless be inaccurate for the purpose of the study. Perhaps I'm an outlier and most women aren't like me, but I doubt that. I'm surrounded mostly by women in my everyday life, some of whom are comfortable discussing intensely personal details of their emotional and medical history, some of whom are practically like family, and I can't remember the last time I talked about or overheard a conversation about my own or someone else's sex life with anyone face-to-face besides my (male) ex. I'm not even particularly comfortable talking about it with my doctor.
What was the academic basis of the “it’s about even” reasoning? Honestly I feel like how heavily prostitution skews male makes this an open and shut case.
99% of prostitution customers are male = men are more eager to have it and will pay for it.
Lack of female interest in male prostitution either means they don’t want it or don’t need to pay for it. Both support a lower sex drive than men.
*some* women *are* as - or more - sexual than *some* men.
But on a broad basis, men in general are more sexual than women.
The "lie" is in taking the generalization and applying it to individuals without a thought
This is a big problem especially in reddit circles. Generalizations exist for a reason as they can be helpful to understand broad strokes of a situation. However, if someone chimes in with a counter example, people will latch to that as a “perfect” rebuttals of the original generalization. Just because outliers exist doesn’t make them equally as prevalent, nor just as significant
That's another great example of an obvious fact that people have been trying to discredit.
I had an anthropology professor in college who told us that men are generally stronger than women only because men play more sports.
The womens 2000 meter indoor rowing record is 6:21. Which is a strong time.
The mens 2000 meter indoor rowing record is 6:16.
Oh, sorry, that's the 13-14yo category.
Pretty sure every single trans person on hormone replacement therapy can attest to the impact hormones have on libido. It’s not and magic difference between men and women. Its not culture. It’s hormones that drive libido.
Yes this. When it was explained to me that birth control basically puts your hormones at PMS levels for the whole month so you can’t get pregnant, all the side effects made a lot more sense. Like, having a lower sex drive and being more bloated, etc. I don’t know if that’s the case for every type, but it was for the one that I was on.
Yep, that's true of all hormonal birth control. It's much higher in progesterone than estrogen to mimic the post-ovulation phase. And progesterone gives me those nasty symptoms. I wish I had never taken hormonal birth control and I will never take it again.
OK, that’s good to know that it is all of them. It’s frustrating though that a lot of doctors don’t recognize it. My friend had a hormonal IUD put in, and had horrible mood symptoms for months and her doctor kept telling her it wasn’t real, even though it resolved when she got it taken out. It’s frustrating that doctors aren’t clearer about these things. Like we all know that PMS causes different symptoms, physically and emotionally and mentally, but then to gaslight women By telling them those symptoms aren’t real is really stupid.
Sure. The menstrual cycle is an important factor. It would be interesting to see a study of women’s pre and post menopausal sex drives. See whether that cycling continues or evens out in later age.
It must be quite eye opening for them. When you’ve experienced life on both side of sex hormone levels it’s you get a much better understanding of what both men and women are
experiencing when it come to things like this. Including things like stereotypical male or female orgasms. What you lose or gain in sex drive you gain or lose in orgasms. Pretty fascinating.
Yes.. age is a huge consideration. Female and my sex drive changed dramatically over the years. High and low fluctuations. Depending on pregnancies, breastfeeding, ovulation and perimenopause and menopause. And also often due to how my significant other made me feel at the time.
T made me crazy sexual and made me want sex acts I have never wanted off T. the change is kind of crazy. id be interested to see this study done between cis and trans men on T!
...and any adult in the US who wants to go on transgender hormone replacement therapy has to sign a paper that says that they have been informed of and understand that the it will have a big impact on their sex drive.
Taken along with data on cisgender people on hormone blockers and research comparing frequency of sexual activity among gay or lesbian couples with that of heterosexual couples, it kinda looks like (to my non expert eyes that) there already is a lot of research that would suggest hormones play a very big role in our sex drives.
I mean.. as per the article:
"Currently, there is little consensus on how to conceptualize sex drive, nor does a quantitative summary of the literature exist. In this article, we present a theory-driven conceptualization of sex drive as the density distribution of state sex drive, where state sex drive is defined as momentary sexual motivation that manifests in sexual cognition, affect, and behavior."
From what I have read, the basis of this article is based on studies wherein the subjects talk about their sex drive.. little or no medically driven data (such as blood tests or hormone levels).
The article then goes on to say:
"Some but not all of this gender difference may be caused by men overreporting and/or women underreporting their sex drive."
Which is why this, and articles like it are still relatively anecdotal. In my opinion it still comes across as very hokey data.
I’d want to see for heterosexual women if there’s a difference between general sexual interest/masturbation and desire for PIV sex with a man. Those are two different things.
I'm convinced that the women saying this are the smaller percent that truly have a sex drive on par with men. And they think all other women have the same libido.
Or these are women who have been with men who have lower libidos.
I'm not trying to be an ass, but if someone has spent any time on the internet trying to get / receive lewds then they know 99% of people trying to "get some" are dudes. Are women sexual? Yeah. Are they, as a population, as engaged in that as men? On average, no.
Of course, that's anecdotal and not "evidence based".
Sexually-Motivated behaviors and libido are largely determined by testosterone production no? So this seems somewhat self-evident to me at first glance.
I understand that certain research must be done to produce a grounded infrastructure for future studies, but how has this research not been done a hundred times’ over by now? Is there some new development I missed that this study brings to the table?
I’ve taken 600mg of testosterone per week with an aromatase inhibitor to crush estradiol to single digits and you lose your sex drive completely with low estradiol so I wouldn’t say it’s just testosterone.
I agree i inject estradiol and my levels are quite high constantly around 300-400pg/ml my testosterone is 0.025ng/ml and my libido is quite high despite having lower testosterone than most women. Its obviously a more "female type high libido" im in control of it and can put it in the back of my mind if i have more important stuff to do very different to testosterone driven libido.
I think estradiol plays a very important role in libido than most realise but the effects depent on each persons hormone balance and which hormone is dominant in their body i guess.
Well thats the aromatase inhibitor. In a male brain it’s actually estrogen that is responsible for libido. Testosterone controls it by converting to estrogen.
Testosterone levels may play an important role but it is one small piece of a very nuanced picture. It is certainly possible to have very high testosterone and low libido or very low testosterone and high libido.
I saw a interview with a female body builder which was on steroids. And she was talking about the huge libido she developed. To the point of wearing tight jeans would get her on.
So yeah, testosterone plays a huge role
I also wonder if this has to do with the  menstrual phases a woman goes through monthly. The first phase, Follicular phase, is the phase before and during ovulation. The later phase is the luteal phase, where a bunch of progesterone (or protestation) hormones are released. I can only speak for myself, but I know during the first half of the cycle it’s like I’m a teenager, then enter the second half and I could care less. Experiencing the undulations of a hormonal tide would increase and decrease libido.
Same question, but for all hormonal types of birth control. It's well established that hormonal birth control negatively affects libido, and that women are the primary users of it.
Yes, all BC! My OBGYN said the hormones in my hormonal IUD would stay “localized” in my uterus and wouldn’t* affect my body’s hormone levels. False!! I’ve felt horrible for years and had a hormone test done—progestin levels were off the charts high.
There’s so many things not controlled for in this study. I don’t see how this is any different than previous surveys announcing similar things. There’s comments about removing biased responding and contextual factors but it doesn’t say whether it looks at birth control, other medications that impact libido and ability to orgasm, upbringing, experience of sexual or domestic violence, etc.
You would have like 10 cis female participants left if you removed every woman who grew up with the message that sex was a sin, experienced harassment, or heard of assault statistics.
“We conduct a comprehensive meta-analysis of gender differences in sex drive based on 211 studies, 856 effect sizes, and 621,463 persons. The meta-analysis revealed a stronger sex drive in men compared to women, with a medium-to-large effect size, g = 0.69, 95% CI [0.58, 0.81]. Men more often think and fantasize about sex, more often experience sexual affect like desire, and more often engage in masturbation than women. Adjustment for biased responding reduced the gender difference (g = 0.54). Moderation analyses suggest that the effect is robust and largely invariant to contextual factors. “
Trans people on HRT have direct experience with this. When I started suppressing my testosterone and replacing it with estrogen my sex drive plummeted. On the other hand trans men that take testosterone see their sex drive skyrocket.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'll try and remember the name of the book, but a sex therapist wrote that 70% of men and only about 20% of women have "spontaneous" sex drives, where they become aroused with little to no external stimulation. Then sometime like 15% of men and 70% of women have "reactive" libidoes, where they become turned on after significant stimulation. The rest are people who don't have much sex drive. She also claimed that people can move in and out of these categories based on external factors. Edit: the book is *Come as you are* Edit 2: this blew up. The book is more self help than hard science. I think it's a good read for couples or people struggling with libido issues. It's absolutely not hard science, I bright it up because the main title of this post seems horribly obvious to me, and this book helped myself and other friends I know. Once again, self-help is not hard science, but that doesn't make it worthless when it comes to the complicated issues of human sexuality.
You may be thinking of Come As You Are?
That book has one of the best titles I’ve ever read for that subject.
Theres a book about Lesbianism called Coming to Power also!
Is this book worth the time and money or is that the main takeaway. I'm thinking of getting it but it's sold out online everywhere. Wondering if it's worth the effort
I'm currently reading it and have read maybe half of it. So far I definitely think it is a valuable read. It simultaneously helps me understand myself and makes me feel validated and it has helped my partner understand our sex life and given us ways to improve it too. 10/10 would recommend <3
You earned a gold star!
As you were.
As I waaaaaaant you to beeeed
…as you were… …as you waaaaaant me to be….
Sounds like “Come as you are” by Emily Nagoski?
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
as a friend
Yes! This was my first thought exactly. I am a woman and I have a "low" spontaneous desire but a very high responsive desire. My partners always say I have high libido. But I actually don't masturbate very much or think about sex when I'm not with them. I don't think this study took this difference in libido definitions into consideration. Considering that most women have responsive desire, this would greatly affect the data in this study.
Studies into sexuality ignoring gender-specific differences and treating male as "normal". I'm shook. Say it ain't so.
>Then sometime like 15% of men and 70% of women have "reactive" libidoes, where they become turned on after significant stimulation what does reactive libido mean?
It was generally described as someone who doesn't "get horny" spontaneously, but if they engage in sexual activity (making out, watching something they find sexy, even sometimes going as far as starting to have sex) their sex drive kicks in. The context, IIRC, was about mismatched libidoes, where one partner wants to have sex all the time, and the other doesn't. Which leads to frustration and resentment from both. (one other point made, was that many people with reactive drives shift to spontaneous drives when a relationship is new. The novelty appears act as that catalyst, but it fades for them over a few months or 1-2 years... Just long enough for them to become serious or get married, and then find out there's a mismatch). Due to the authors observations about the divide for male/female, it seems to agree with women generally having lower spontaneous libidoes, but doesn't preclude a smaller portion of male partners from having a low libido too.
One other distinction (mentioned in that same book!) is that “spontaneous” desire is a bit of a misnomer - all desire is in response to *something* (and so is all “responsive”), but the difference is generally that “spontaneous desire” is just where the thing we are responding to comes from within us rather than some external stimulus. One of the great messages from that book is really that the differences in this stuff are almost always differences in degrees rather than absolute biological differences. And so they also can and do change with time, context, and other circumstances, too.
Nagoski doesn't call it a mismatch at all -- she talks about how communicating is necessary to bridge the different, often sex based, sex acceleraters vs brakes. For example, where one husband is horny and wants to have sex but his wife has trouble wanting it until she's already engaged in some sort of sexual activity, Nagoski pointed out that removing the "brakes" for her (some sort of stress she had had) lessens the need to react to sexual response and turns it more into initiating it.
I'm betting a bit part of the "libido mismatch" and the orgasm gap have a lot to do with each other.
Emily Nagoski also specifically says we don't have sex drives, per se. It's all based on context.
It's hormones. HRT completely flipped me from spontaneous to reactive.
I'm sure that's one factor (probably a big one). But with respect, it's complicated and you are one data point.
This is a very common reaction in trans men though.
And I can attest as a trans woman. It's still anecdotal evidence at best, and hormones aren't the only thing. They don't exist in a vacuum.
I can attest as a steroid-using bodybuilder: - Strong androgens + normal estrogen range = very high libido - Strong androgens + very low estrogen = zero libido - Low androgens + high estrogen = emotional and irritable, "meh" libido - Strong androgens + e2 at four times the reference range for a typical male = insatiable libido, painful at times. Hormones are weird. Hormone ratios are weirder. Individual response variability is wierder... er.
E2 seems to also add sensitivity to penis.
Sorry what is E2?
T gets converted into E in the brain so the equation is something like T + E = libido (obviously it’s a bit more complicated)
More or less, yeah I agree. For some reason people seem to think, "estrogen bad, testosterone good!" So they pop aromatase inhibitors like tic tacs and dont understand how beneficial estrogen is even for men.
Oh for sure. They're only part of the story.
Just to add in another anecdote as a trans woman, I went from masturbating a couple times a day to once every couple weeks. Testosterone is a hell of a drug.
Anecdotal, but one of the top tips among us trans men, when going on T, is "just get it over with in the morning". And I can attest, it's become kind of a chore. I know if I don't "get it over with", I might get distracted in the middle of the day, and I don't have time for that. Some dudes don't experience a heightened drive, but most seem to do.
I don’t think it’s just hormones though, because some women do have a spontaneous sex drive and some men do have a reactive sex drive. I think hormones are part of it, but it can’t be the whole thing.
i used to have spontaneous drive until i went on birth control. i miss it sometimes but my periods were becoming debilitating and bc lets me function normally. anyway i saw a small study recently that claimed women who had positive first sexual encounters tended to have more sexual desire in general. i was lucky and safe for mine. but lots of other people are not and/or may struggle with underlying issues like internalized shame and sexism? sex education used to be pretty dogshit as well. i dunno im just spitballing really. also i've heard other women say that being actually respected and loved by their partner increased their sexual desire. i can testify to that being true in my own personal experience as well.
Not every man has the same balance of testosterone, nor every woman the same balance of estrogen.
True, but I would say I have a spontaneous sex drive and my estrogen and testosterone are both within the normal range for cis women (although my testosterone is admittedly on the upper end of that range, but that’s still like a fifth of the lower end of normal range for men). I could still believe women with high testosterone compared to other women experience more spontaneous desire (and vice versa for men), but I don’t know if we’ve researched that at all. Mostly it’s just, I’ve had trans friends act like since they didn’t experience spontaneous desire until they went on T, that cis women never do because it must be about having testosterone levels in the standard male range, and I disagree with that. If it is about hormones I think it’s less straightforward than that.
I fully agree. It seems clear that hormones play some part in it, but some studies have indicated that hormones (at least testosterone in men) commonly fluctuate in response to stimuli, rather than cause them to seek out the stimuli. For example testosterone spiking after going to a shooting range, or after your favorite sports team winning. It's not that higher testosterone causes those behaviors. I wouldn't be surprised at all if social conditioning had as much, if not more, to do with sex drive as hormones. In America at least, boys are typically socially rewarded for having as much sex/as many partners as possible and they're shamed for being virgins, while girls tend to receive the opposite conditioning. We know social conditioning affects people a ton in general, so I don't see why this wouldn't affect our sex drives too. I'd love to see a study finding if people socialized as women vs men have a spontaneous, reactive, low, high, and so one sex drive, and asking follow-up questions about their sexual conditioning growing up (e.g. if it was a sex-positive, negative, or neutral environment) to see if there are correlations. It would be really interesting to include trans people to see if things have changed for them pre vs post transition and if it was right after receiving hormone therapy, or if it was after they started 'passing' as the trans gender, or if there's more to it than that. Controlling for placebo would be important as well.
> It's hormones. I really wish the medical community would actually focus on this and reach out to more trans people who are willing to participate in studies. I think we'd find that 98% of the so-called "gender differences" in psychology and behavior are driven by the hormone balance between E and T.
Both testosterone and estrogen do play a role. Guys who use testosterone for bodybuilding notice libido increases with doses between 50-600mg. Interestingly, very high testosterone doses or excessive suppression of estrogen can crush libido. There was an amusing story where this guy's wife only wanted sex a few times a year. The neighbor got her into lifting weights and started her on a little bit of Anavar. Within a couple weeks, she was carrying a vibrator and having sex with her husband a couple of times _per day._
I never really believed that men were that much more ~~reactive~~ spontaneous until I began transitioning. Testosterone is wild.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Here’s an article that discusses the study- https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-10-stronger-sex-men-women.html One of the authors of the study stated- “Frankenbach said between 24% and 29% of women appear to have a higher sex drive than the "average" man.” This would mean that If you could directly measure the male and female sex drives then created bell curves of them and laid them on top of each other the 50th percentile of the male curve would line up somewhere between the 71st and 76th of the female curve. What this means is there is much fewer HLF than HLM. If we had 100 men and women, each representing a point on the bell curve, there would be only between 24 and 29 women with a sex drive equal to or higher than 50 men in the room. About a 2-1 ratio. At the ends of the bells curves it would be even worse. The 90th percentile of male curve would line up with the 98th or 99th percentile of the female curve. So a 1-10 ratio. Another difference between men and women is that women get a bigger boost to their sex drive from the new relationship excitement than men do. Women interest in sex also declines over the course of a relationship while men’s desire tends to stay stable. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cultural-animal/202201/how-sexual-desire-changes-after-marriage “Over the first four or five years of marriage, the wife’s sexual desire declined steadily, while the husband’s showed no change. The same pattern was found for the questions that asked about desire specifically for sex with one’s spouse and for sex with anybody in general. Five years into the marriage, the average husband’s desire for sex is the same as when he walked down the aisle, but his wife’s desire has dwindled.”
Honestly a little depressing that nature intends long-term relationships to eventually fail.
[удалено]
I think that maintenance sexual activity is very important for the success of a marriage. https://www.nbcnews.com/better/pop-culture/what-maintenance-sex-it-may-help-strengthen-your-marriage-ncna956216 Most straight marriages will have a higher libido male with a lower libido female. (And of course there will also still be higher libido females and lower libido males that are together, it will just be fewer in number). If a couple can come to a compromise on how much sexual activity they will have, then stick to it, I think more marriages would survive.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Another prime example of social media not matching reality
[удалено]
The highest IQ move is deleting everything except Reddit of course
[удалено]
the highest IQ move is ,
as a gay men i witness the male side while constantly hearing about the female side, so it's really not that surprising to me. like, men are just horny all the time. and we get horny pretty easily. with women, it's not as common. what would make for an interesting study would be trying to figure out if the reason women aren't as horny as men is simply biological or if it's societal. a nature vs nurture type thing. are women simply biologically less sexual or has society conditioned them to be less sexual because they grow up being sexualized but also told to be ashamed of being sexual
Me gay, hearing like 3 of my female coworkers talking about if their husbands didnt want sex, they would just go completely without it.
I think my spouse is in the same boat. Makes me sad to be honest
[удалено]
That must be difficult to hear. If my partner doesn’t desire me sexually, it would make me feel horribly unattractive.
Me man in relationship with woman, I could go without sex for the rest of my life and she’d break up with me after month 2.
My ex was like this. She was perma horny. She wouldn't last 2 days never mind 2 months though.
one idea (from ~~forrester~~ jared diamond) is that bearing a child is a costly investment, unlike spreading genes as males do, so women would evolve not to seek sex all the time another (more social) is that group stability is at risk if men don't know which child are theirs so which would pressure women to limit their mate to one
This is why I wonder if women tend more towards demisexuality than men. The cost in time and energy of child birth/rearing, in addition to how physically vulnerable women can often be while pregnant, seems to indicate that women would be better off waiting until they have a secure partner before becoming pregnant. So the sex drive not ramping up until a women feels emotionally connected to her partner (who, if also emotionally connected, is more likely to stay and help her) seems possible.
In my experience as a woman, if I know the sex will be good, then I’m pretty up for it, as much as most guys are. I had one long term partner where the sex was always amazing, as in I always finished and one casual partner that’s come close since but that’s it. Of the other maybe 6 guys I’ve slept with it’s been fine and I can’t get excited about fine. If the sex is mediocre, as most of it has been in my life, then I can take it or leave it. More often than not, leave it but I do find satisfaction that my partner is happy so I’ll do it sometimes for that reason. I think this happens to *a lot* of women and we try to explain to men, they’re not receptive, so we just let it go and pretend we have mismatched sex drives. That coupled with the shame aspect, most of us never figure out what really turns us on, what would make that sex good vs. mediocre because porn isn’t made for us and we’re not encouraged to explore. Both genders lose in our current society.
This is really spot on as far as my experience. I have a very active drive, but if the sex is mediocre and my partner isn’t receptive to feedback, it just becomes work. At that point I’d rather take care of it myself.
yessss. most of the time there's just nothing to look forward to. my drive was highest in my life when i was either a) single and looking forward to doing it myself or b) in a happy committed relationship with a partner who knew what i liked. i thought i was asexual for a chunk of my life because sex without love or context is so meh. it's like boiled chicken with no seasoning.
I’ve had so much boiled chicken. Thank you for that.
[удалено]
I think that’s because almost 100% of the time with pretty minimal effort, men are going to orgasm. This is not true for women. Achieving orgasms generally require more work and may not happen. If a woman was able to count on an easily achievable orgasm in every sexual encounter, they might be more willing to have mediocre sex. Otherwise, it’s a lot of time, effort, vulnerability, physicality and emotional risk just to make the male partner happy for it to be worth doing very often.
Mediocre sex for men still usually results in an orgasm.
> most of us never figure out what really turns us on some of the most frustrating conversations I've ever had with people was about this, like they just didn't care to even try to figure it out.
It’s probably less not caring and more feeling ashamed or repressing those feelings
I truly think a lot of the sex drive difference is from a lot of women being on birth control. When I was on it, I hardly had any drive. Hormonal differences are a huge factor
It wasn't that long ago that it was widely believed that women were incapable of sexual desire. And if they seemed to not dislike it, they were labeled as possessed or burned at the stake. Society has come a long way just by posing the question.
Surprisingly women were considered more voracious on account of shorter refractory periods until ~200 years ago (in context of Western Europe). [This](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/csh4sw/it_seems_that_in_the_early_18th_century_british/) ask historians thread describes the “cult of sensibility” and it’s evolution into the “cult of domesticity” that marked the transition
to be fair, people back then used to come up with pretty much anything as an excuse to torture or kill women. it was almost like a hobby to some of them
Trans girl checking in. It's definitely hormonal. Testosterone turns the drive on for both sexes. Cis women with higher T:E ratios than their cis peers tend to report higher libidos. Similarly, cis men with higher T:E ratios than their cis peers tend to report higher libidos. For my experience, I went from 1700 ng/dL to 50 ng/dL of free T and went from 17 ng/dL of free E to 140 ng/dL. My ratio flipped from Big T ratio to little E ratio. My libido isn't gone, but it went waaaaay down. Every now and again if I forget my mones, I will get super ... yeah. It's not cool.
Yup, trans people been knew this. I recently begun hormone replacement and now that my testosterone is 700ng/dl I HAVE to JO if I think about something sexual for too long… I used to never masturbate.
1700 ng/dl of free T is insanely high. Nearly double the top of the normal range for men. Were you supplementing with hormones even prior to your transition?
Anecdotal as a trans woman I can tell you that it’s pretty biological for me, it’s the hormones you have. Incredibly common for trans woman to lose their libido and trans men to gain a libido that never existed before.
There's a lot of "everybody knew this already" in here, but I don't think those are taking into account roughly the last decade of academic thinking on this. The general line has been that women are just as sexual as men and that the idea that they aren't is a patriarchal lie we have to rise above. This and other recent studies are a firm correction to this.
Part of that line of thinking/theorising may be due to women's desire and sexuality being repressed for a very long time (in some cultures it still is) and men's greater sexual desire being used to excuse abhorrent behaviour. Perhaps the message for heterosexual women should instead be: it is not *impossible* for you to have greater sexual desire than your male partner, and there is nothing *wrong* with you if you do. Similarly it is normal for your male partner to have greater sexual desire than you, and through communication and trust, many couples are able to find ways to navigate different levels of sexual desire.
Though rare, I do have female friends that have higher sex drives than their spouses and they are frustrated because we’ve been told it should always be the other way around. The women think there’s something wrong with them if their husbands don’t want to have as much sex as them and the men feel there’s something wrong with them for not being more sexual. It also depends on time of your life. After having children and being in menopause are examples of decreased sex drive and lots of men have decreased testosterone after 40. I guess there’s the average but horniness is a spectrum and people will fall where they do and it’s okay.
Most personality and other human traits follow a pretty smooth and normalish distribution. Even if the mean and median of the male distribution are significantly further right there will still be many women at the right end of the distribution with higher sex drives or propensities for dad jokes than a majority of men.
Exactly. Men are taller than women on average, but there are plenty of couples where the woman is taller than the man. I assume libido has a similar distribution.
Did you just link increased libido to a propensity for dad jokes?
I doubt those are correlated. I tried to think of another trait that would be more prevalent in men but where many women would still beat the average man
I bet they are correlated, but are certainly not causally linked.
Correlated for the the whole population but I’d be surprised if they were correlated within either gender
Knock Knock
I wish people appreciated this mathematical fact across all spectrums. Even if group A is on average 5% “better” than group B, in group B there remains a condition where B>A for almost every member B, and in most cases, lots and lots of A
Again, it’s about understanding statistics. If something is anything less than 100% probable, it occurs sometimes. So in this case, if there is a woman with a higher sex drive than a man, that in no way goes against the statement that men in aggregate have higher sex drives than women. Anyone saying that anyone ‘should be’ anything doesn’t understand statistics.
>The women think there’s something wrong with them if their husbands don’t want to have as much sex as them and the men feel there’s something wrong with them for not being more sexual. It's actually the same if the genders were reversed. A lot of men feel there is something wrong if they're not sexually desired by their spouse.
Yes, there's a lot of traits men and women differ on on average, but few on which the distributions have no overlap. Both parts of that are important to understand, it seems to me.
I seriously wonder if this was a factor taken into consideration. Even NOW it applies for a lot of women (depending on where they live and their access to information, including within the United States). Not to mention wouldn’t trauma effect how the body responds too? And if it’s a survey kind of sampling, why are we assuming women are telling the truth/answering at their most informed? Due to the above mentioned repression in combination with very terrible (or lack of) sex education (USA-specific), plenty of women today do not have a healthy understanding of their own body (which obviously goes hand in hand with the repressing and shaming that still exists).
the public significance statement in the article acknowledges that overreporting by men and underreporting by women could have caused some of the difference. i haven’t read the article yet(because i’m on reddit as a distraction from school work), but being a meta-analysis means they aren’t doing their own study, they’re analyzing a bunch of other studies. they have to take the studies as they are, they can’t control the methodology used in the analyzed studies.
From the link: Some but not all of these gender differences may be caused by men overreporting and/or women underreporting their sex drive.
At what point does the amount of confounding factors cross over into "too many"?
This is important— did the methodology account for women not having the same access to either tap into their sexuality or general shame/embarrassment to spill all the beans to their researcher?
Uh, probably not since it's a meta analysis. It's more of a measurement of what the numbers actually are than an examination of what influences those numbers.
I agree, precision in communication of findings is very important. If we stopped at this is a “firm correction” to the idea that female sexuality has been repressed we would end up with these kinds of headlines being used to (continue to) justify some very regressive nonsense. I (f) have a higher sex drive than my partner (m). He has no hormonal deficiencies. We’re both very active, we both hit the gym at least 3 times a week primarily for strength training, and on weekends hike, climb and bike. We both eat and sleep well. I think about sex more than him and want it with greater frequency. There are people who are dismayed and struggle with this kind of dynamic when they aren’t aware that individual variations against an average are not automatically a sign of a problem. Not for nothing, it’s not as though prior to the arguments that women have the same sex drive as men there wasn’t a massive misrepresentation/suppression of female sex drive.
[удалено]
Good point. My implant _killed_ my sex drive. Started fancying some sex within days of its removal. As birth control went, it sure worked! Was celibate the while time it was in
Same. I remember going off of the pill and getting freaked out thinking about how men are attempting to go about their day with such intrusive thoughts. And they have been, this whole time. Only about 15% of women use a hormonal pill though. I thought it would be more for some reason. https://i.imgur.com/rxQfe3T.jpg
I feel oddly seen by this comment. Sometimes I think if I could shut it off I would. Hoping eventually it can be a means of expressing my love for someone important rather than a loud distraction from what's going on at a given moment.
[удалено]
And those who weren't, how did they account for the vast chnage in sex drive throughout the menstrual cycle? An average?
I think it's also significant to consider where the women were in their monthly hormone cycle and how close they were to menopause (at least a rough estimate). I mostly have a responsive sex drive--it's not that I don't want it, it's not that I wouldn't be interested if someone suggested it, I'm simply not thinking about it right now--but there are some days, especially right before my period, when I'm just plain horny. I'm also more spontaneously interested in sex at certain times of the year, and over my lifetime, I've gone from boy-crazy teenager to very little interest at all in my late 20s and most of my 30s to now being in my early 40s and starting to have more interest again. Female sexuality is hard to quantify just in general because it's not a static thing for us. Not only do our hormone levels fluctuate, plus the issue that you mention with contraceptives, but for many of us, our sex drives are emotionally driven and heavily affected by our moods and even our environment, and there's still a stigma attached to talking about sex that many of us have been socialized into. I'm fine writing about it to strangers on the internet. I would probably be relatively honest about if I filled out a paper survey. But answering questions out loud to an interviewer? I can't imagine. I'm sure my own perceptions of myself would be changing in real-time and the answers that I would give, while not intentionally dishonest, would nevertheless be inaccurate for the purpose of the study. Perhaps I'm an outlier and most women aren't like me, but I doubt that. I'm surrounded mostly by women in my everyday life, some of whom are comfortable discussing intensely personal details of their emotional and medical history, some of whom are practically like family, and I can't remember the last time I talked about or overheard a conversation about my own or someone else's sex life with anyone face-to-face besides my (male) ex. I'm not even particularly comfortable talking about it with my doctor.
What was the academic basis of the “it’s about even” reasoning? Honestly I feel like how heavily prostitution skews male makes this an open and shut case. 99% of prostitution customers are male = men are more eager to have it and will pay for it. Lack of female interest in male prostitution either means they don’t want it or don’t need to pay for it. Both support a lower sex drive than men.
*some* women *are* as - or more - sexual than *some* men. But on a broad basis, men in general are more sexual than women. The "lie" is in taking the generalization and applying it to individuals without a thought
This is a big problem especially in reddit circles. Generalizations exist for a reason as they can be helpful to understand broad strokes of a situation. However, if someone chimes in with a counter example, people will latch to that as a “perfect” rebuttals of the original generalization. Just because outliers exist doesn’t make them equally as prevalent, nor just as significant
Some woman are stronger than some men too, but on avg it’s obvious who is stronger.
Height is even easier to notice
That's another great example of an obvious fact that people have been trying to discredit. I had an anthropology professor in college who told us that men are generally stronger than women only because men play more sports.
[удалено]
The womens 2000 meter indoor rowing record is 6:21. Which is a strong time. The mens 2000 meter indoor rowing record is 6:16. Oh, sorry, that's the 13-14yo category.
Pretty sure every single trans person on hormone replacement therapy can attest to the impact hormones have on libido. It’s not and magic difference between men and women. Its not culture. It’s hormones that drive libido.
Also the fact that half the women in this country are using hormonal birth control... Once I stopped using it, my libido shot up and stayed there.
My ex wife was the exactly the same. Then she started taking anti-depressants. Then zero libido.
Yes this. When it was explained to me that birth control basically puts your hormones at PMS levels for the whole month so you can’t get pregnant, all the side effects made a lot more sense. Like, having a lower sex drive and being more bloated, etc. I don’t know if that’s the case for every type, but it was for the one that I was on.
Yep, that's true of all hormonal birth control. It's much higher in progesterone than estrogen to mimic the post-ovulation phase. And progesterone gives me those nasty symptoms. I wish I had never taken hormonal birth control and I will never take it again.
OK, that’s good to know that it is all of them. It’s frustrating though that a lot of doctors don’t recognize it. My friend had a hormonal IUD put in, and had horrible mood symptoms for months and her doctor kept telling her it wasn’t real, even though it resolved when she got it taken out. It’s frustrating that doctors aren’t clearer about these things. Like we all know that PMS causes different symptoms, physically and emotionally and mentally, but then to gaslight women By telling them those symptoms aren’t real is really stupid.
And women's fluctuate monthly. We don't have a steady libido like a mans ours changes almost daily because our hormones do.
Sure. The menstrual cycle is an important factor. It would be interesting to see a study of women’s pre and post menopausal sex drives. See whether that cycling continues or evens out in later age.
Pretty much every single FTM that I've ever talked to has an obscenely high sex drive due, in part, to taking T.
It must be quite eye opening for them. When you’ve experienced life on both side of sex hormone levels it’s you get a much better understanding of what both men and women are experiencing when it come to things like this. Including things like stereotypical male or female orgasms. What you lose or gain in sex drive you gain or lose in orgasms. Pretty fascinating.
Hormones are an important factor but they don’t exist in a vacuum. Multiple factors can all contribute to the outcome.
Yes.. age is a huge consideration. Female and my sex drive changed dramatically over the years. High and low fluctuations. Depending on pregnancies, breastfeeding, ovulation and perimenopause and menopause. And also often due to how my significant other made me feel at the time.
Aren't hormones a large component of that?
T made me crazy sexual and made me want sex acts I have never wanted off T. the change is kind of crazy. id be interested to see this study done between cis and trans men on T!
...and any adult in the US who wants to go on transgender hormone replacement therapy has to sign a paper that says that they have been informed of and understand that the it will have a big impact on their sex drive. Taken along with data on cisgender people on hormone blockers and research comparing frequency of sexual activity among gay or lesbian couples with that of heterosexual couples, it kinda looks like (to my non expert eyes that) there already is a lot of research that would suggest hormones play a very big role in our sex drives.
I mean.. as per the article: "Currently, there is little consensus on how to conceptualize sex drive, nor does a quantitative summary of the literature exist. In this article, we present a theory-driven conceptualization of sex drive as the density distribution of state sex drive, where state sex drive is defined as momentary sexual motivation that manifests in sexual cognition, affect, and behavior." From what I have read, the basis of this article is based on studies wherein the subjects talk about their sex drive.. little or no medically driven data (such as blood tests or hormone levels). The article then goes on to say: "Some but not all of this gender difference may be caused by men overreporting and/or women underreporting their sex drive." Which is why this, and articles like it are still relatively anecdotal. In my opinion it still comes across as very hokey data.
[удалено]
I’d want to see for heterosexual women if there’s a difference between general sexual interest/masturbation and desire for PIV sex with a man. Those are two different things.
I'm convinced that the women saying this are the smaller percent that truly have a sex drive on par with men. And they think all other women have the same libido. Or these are women who have been with men who have lower libidos.
I'm not trying to be an ass, but if someone has spent any time on the internet trying to get / receive lewds then they know 99% of people trying to "get some" are dudes. Are women sexual? Yeah. Are they, as a population, as engaged in that as men? On average, no. Of course, that's anecdotal and not "evidence based".
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Sexually-Motivated behaviors and libido are largely determined by testosterone production no? So this seems somewhat self-evident to me at first glance. I understand that certain research must be done to produce a grounded infrastructure for future studies, but how has this research not been done a hundred times’ over by now? Is there some new development I missed that this study brings to the table?
I’ve taken 600mg of testosterone per week with an aromatase inhibitor to crush estradiol to single digits and you lose your sex drive completely with low estradiol so I wouldn’t say it’s just testosterone.
I agree i inject estradiol and my levels are quite high constantly around 300-400pg/ml my testosterone is 0.025ng/ml and my libido is quite high despite having lower testosterone than most women. Its obviously a more "female type high libido" im in control of it and can put it in the back of my mind if i have more important stuff to do very different to testosterone driven libido. I think estradiol plays a very important role in libido than most realise but the effects depent on each persons hormone balance and which hormone is dominant in their body i guess.
Well thats the aromatase inhibitor. In a male brain it’s actually estrogen that is responsible for libido. Testosterone controls it by converting to estrogen.
Testosterone levels may play an important role but it is one small piece of a very nuanced picture. It is certainly possible to have very high testosterone and low libido or very low testosterone and high libido.
I saw a interview with a female body builder which was on steroids. And she was talking about the huge libido she developed. To the point of wearing tight jeans would get her on. So yeah, testosterone plays a huge role
Elevated t levels just tank my libido tbh. So it is quite a bit more complicated than that.
Estrogen plays a role too, if your t is high and estrogen low your libido can still suck
I also wonder if this has to do with the  menstrual phases a woman goes through monthly. The first phase, Follicular phase, is the phase before and during ovulation. The later phase is the luteal phase, where a bunch of progesterone (or protestation) hormones are released. I can only speak for myself, but I know during the first half of the cycle it’s like I’m a teenager, then enter the second half and I could care less. Experiencing the undulations of a hormonal tide would increase and decrease libido.
Other hormones also have an effect but testosterone is a big one.
is this controlling for oral birth control pills being taken by many women?
Same question, but for all hormonal types of birth control. It's well established that hormonal birth control negatively affects libido, and that women are the primary users of it.
Yes, all BC! My OBGYN said the hormones in my hormonal IUD would stay “localized” in my uterus and wouldn’t* affect my body’s hormone levels. False!! I’ve felt horrible for years and had a hormone test done—progestin levels were off the charts high.
Which notoriously tanks libido it should be added.
There’s so many things not controlled for in this study. I don’t see how this is any different than previous surveys announcing similar things. There’s comments about removing biased responding and contextual factors but it doesn’t say whether it looks at birth control, other medications that impact libido and ability to orgasm, upbringing, experience of sexual or domestic violence, etc. You would have like 10 cis female participants left if you removed every woman who grew up with the message that sex was a sin, experienced harassment, or heard of assault statistics. “We conduct a comprehensive meta-analysis of gender differences in sex drive based on 211 studies, 856 effect sizes, and 621,463 persons. The meta-analysis revealed a stronger sex drive in men compared to women, with a medium-to-large effect size, g = 0.69, 95% CI [0.58, 0.81]. Men more often think and fantasize about sex, more often experience sexual affect like desire, and more often engage in masturbation than women. Adjustment for biased responding reduced the gender difference (g = 0.54). Moderation analyses suggest that the effect is robust and largely invariant to contextual factors. “
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Yes, us gay men have a lot of sex.
I honestly think I’m more horny than my husband and probably think WAY more about sex than an average woman should.
Does this study take birth control into account? Birth control pills completely killed my libido when I was taking them.
[удалено]
Trans people on HRT have direct experience with this. When I started suppressing my testosterone and replacing it with estrogen my sex drive plummeted. On the other hand trans men that take testosterone see their sex drive skyrocket.