A couple of years ago, during the prime of my teens, I was experiencing all these strange emotions when I looked at my once spotty, greasy-haired male friend. I would get butterflies and my ‘nether regions’ would start tingling and it felt nice.
Few years down the line, I fully accepted the tingling and realised how much it sucks that women can’t be as open as men about sex even when we think about it fairly often. Being at university, all I ever see and hear around me some days is sex, sex and sex. We have even had SHAG week (very clever, I know) promoting safe sex and the need for consent, but most, if not all, of the awareness campaigns were aimed at men which raises the question – do women really have a lower sex drive than men?
WebMD (where everyone goes to medical advice online) argues that men not only have a “stronger sex drive but [are also] much more straightforward”. It is also reported that “the majority of adult men under 60 think about sex at least twice a day” (Laumann), compared to the one-quarter of women who say they think about sex often. The study further suggests that it is an innate quality in all men, including homosexual men who have sex more than their lesbian counterparts.
On the flip side, friends over at connections.mic shattered all the misconception we have about the female libido. They carried out an extensive and long-term survey in which they found that out of 500 women, 53.2% want more sex than they currently get and 75% reported that they are would like to “fool around” more than three times a week.
British publication Psychologies found that there were seven times more studies carried out on sexual desire in women than men to really challenge the idea that we don’t want sex as much as men.
Men aren’t horny 24×7, neither are women iffy about sex. We want sex just as much as men but we just crave it in highs and lows and sexual desire for women is more fluid and climaxes at during the peaks of the month (much like what orgasms feel like for us).
For grown men and women, unlike raging teenage hormones, there are many factors that contribute to a high or low libido; there is nothing like the pressure of balancing the social, economic and romantic aspects of your life to put a damper on sexy time!
So do men want sex more than women? The answer is still debatable; some say yes and some say no but the important thing to remember is – nothing should make you feel like you shouldn’t want sex or should want a specific amount. So go on, and bring out your sexy side.
Sreeja Karanam is an intern with Youth Ki Awaaz for the February-March 2017 batch.