Since time immemorial the world has been grappling with the question regarding the different behaviors exhibited by men and women respectively. This has been a much-debated issue in both the print and digital media. The Telegraph for instance carried an article on 14th September 2013 regarding this issue. The article titled Are Men Really From Mars? tried to address this age old question in the most captivating way. The author, Debbie Magids, offered a different dimension regarding the battle of sexes debate by asserting that men are not from Mars as many have been made to believe. The author further argues men and women re not so different. According to the article, men and women may be differently in terms of biology and socialization but the difference resoundingly ends there. The author bases her argument on her professional experience as a counsellor (Magids, 2013). Her interactions with different men in her psychological sessions has helped come to a conclusion that men and women have many common elements.
Debbie Magids advises, her target audience, women, on how men react and perceive various intimacy issues. She cites that men hurt, feel insecure, and fear rejection and love to be appreciated the same as women do (Magids, 2013). She further highlights that men feel the need to be sexually desired, like to be complimented and are much worried about their sexual adequacy just as the fair gender does to. All these assertions by her article point to one thing that indeed deep down men and women are similar. To accentuate this she cites” both planets-although different on the outside-are really the same at the core, where it really counts!” (Magids, 2013).
The article to a non-layman is somewhat shallow and less factual. It does in no way incorporate comprehensive data from various psychological authorities. It’s simple yet flowery language, and intriguing title is what makes it ideal for publication. The author though a Psychologist as a professional has steered away from scientific jargons which would have done her article more harm than good given her target audience. She manages to break down her thesis in the most understandable way making her article somewhat appear as a reassurance to those still grappling with the Mars v. Venus question and have no up to date access to scientific information regarding the issue (Magids, 2013).
The science of psychology has much to say about the differences between men and women. Science offers credible information on the sociological construction of women and men, biological and emotional disparities in the two genders. Letitia Anne Peplau in her article Human Sexuality: How Do Men and Women Differ? in the Current Directions In Psychological Science address these issues. The author incorporates a number of scientific works into their article focusing on four issues regarding the differences in the two genders. The first element dwelled on is sexual desire levels exhibited by both genders where men are perceived to have greater sexual desire as compared to women. The second issue is the level of commitment in relationships by both men and women as a context of sexuality. Thirdly, the article focusses on aggression being related more to sexuality for men than for women. The fourth element studied by the author delves in the fact that women’s sexuality is more likely to be dynamic and malleable as compared to their male counterparts.
Sexual desire in the Peplau’s context is seen as the “subjective experience of being interested in sexual objects or activities or wishing to engage in sexual activities” (Peplau, 2003). Men are said to exhibit a higher sexual desire as compared to women. Men tend to be interested in visual stimuli and also report of more frequent sexual desire feelings. The author further establishes that in heterosexual relationships, men are perceived to demand sex more than the women do (Peplau, 2003). The authors use masturbation as a sexual desire index since it is not constrained or limited to the availability of a partner. The article notes in a review of over 177 studies established large male-female disparities in the incidence of masturbation. The meta-analytic effect size² (d) for masturbation was 0.96, a smaller physical difference in the height (2.0). This, the author reckons is much larger than most psychological sex differences, like the performance difference on standardized math tests (0.20).
Commitment in relationships in the article is established to be in high degrees in women than men. The article furthers cites that this is cemented by the interpretation of relationships in male and female contexts. Women were perceived to romanticize sexual desire while men’s perception is more than often inclined to focus permissively on casual premarital sex and towards extramarital sex. Narrowing this premise to casual premarital sex, the empirical studies point to large gender differences with (d) =0.81 (Peplau, 2003). As for male and female sexual fantasies, men were said to have more sexual fantasies with strangers or multiple partners and to focus on specific sexual organs or specific sex acts. The women, on the other hand, tend to have sexual fantasies with familiar patterns inclusive of commitment and affection.
Sexuality and aggression, as the basis of men-women disparities, is well captured by the article in how sex is initiated and perceived by both genders.
The male sexual self-concepts are characterized in an aggression dimension. Men saw themselves as being powerful, domineering, experienced and individualistic (Peplau, 2003). The author cites that there are no equivalent aggression dimensions to female sexual self-concepts. Men have also been reported to initiate sex in early dating stages. In relationships, the men were said to initiate sex twice as much as their female counterparts. The authors conclude that physically coercive sex is primarily a male activity. Many men are said to sexually assault their female counterparts due their aggressive nature when it comes to sexuality.
The plasticity or sexual malleability of men and women is the last element dwelled on to espouse the human sexuality differences in men and women. Women were established by the author to have a sexual plasticity (Peplau, 2003). Women’s beliefs and perceptions on sex were more likely to be altered and shaped by social, cultural and situational factors. After breakups women were observed to have more variability when it came to sex as compared to men. The author further notes that women were more likely to change their sexual orientation over a period of time than men. More than 25 % 18-25 year old bisexual and lesbian female subjects in a 2003 study changed their sexual identities in a span of five years (Peplau, 2003). These changes are very uncommon on the men’s side.
In my opinion, Letitia Anne Peplau in her article Human Sexuality: How Do Men and Women Differ? has managed to establish the four important gender differences critically. She has isolated each case with supporting empirical data. All the four tenets of the study: sexual desire, commitment in sexual relationships, aggression and sexuality, and plasticity of sexuality are comprehensively defined (Peplau, 2003). She factors in thought, feelings, behavior and fantasies in her efforts to explain the disparities from various dimensions. Her studies however are somewhat not fully reliable in that all the subjects in the examination of all disparity elements are White Middle-Class American individuals. Secondly, studies of the disparities in relation to homosexuals is relatively limited. Thirdly the disparity studies in human sexuality are not absolute but rather based on different degrees.
The assertions are also notably situational-dependent meaning they can change in different case scenarios.
In conclusion, the two articles generally talk of the same issues but the factuality and dependability of the two literal works varies. The first article Are Men Really From Mars? by Debie Magids is more of a leisure article that as aforementioned targets general readers? The author, though, a psychologist fails to furnish the readers with enough information regarding the difference between male and female sexuality. She bases her arguments on her past experience with male patients. Letitia Anne Peplau’s Human Sexuality: How Do Men and Women Differ? article dwells on the comprehensive outlook on the male and female differences in sexuality. The article adopts empirical data in cementing key points in the human sexuality study.
References
Magids, D. (2013, October 4). Are Men Really From Mars? Huffington Post, 23(2). Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-debbie-magids/are-men-really-from-mars_b_3033404.html
Peplau, L. A. (2003). Human Sexuality: How Do Men and Women Differ? CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE, 12(3), 37-41. Retrieved from http://faculty.oxy.edu/clint/physio/article/humansexuality.pdf
