Yes, Women Are Having Sex. But They’re Having It With Attractive Men.
Changing sexual dynamics signal cultural progress. It’s up to us to adapt.
In one of the most famous quotes in cinematic history, Tony Montana said, in Scarface, “First you get the money. Then you get the power. Then you get the women.” In the 39 years since Scarface was released, generations of men have taken this quote to heart as gospel.
It was a line that foreshadowed the manosphere, a scene that painted women as money-hungry and incapable of affection outside of a transactional dynamic.
But, it was the movies. And the movies aren’t real.
Besides, even if it was true to life, taking romantic advice from drug-addicted kingpins (with miserable wives) who lived a life of crime isn’t a great idea.
Movies portray fictional characters compellingly. The goal is to entertain, not inform.
The money-power-respect line is so far removed from the thoughts and feelings of everyday women, and it’s sad that countless men don’t realize it.
They walk around, oblivious and frustrated.
They think that figures like Tony Montana and other gurus in the manosphere have the answers to their deepest questions about women.
They talk about how women don’t want “nice guys” and how they want complete jerks. Why the binary? Are there really only two options?
Something is amiss here…
What Do Women Want?
Fifty-eight years before Scarface was released, Sigmund Freud said that after over thirty years of studying women, the one thing he couldn’t figure out was what women want.
It’s a line that’s gone down in history, one that’s quipped with shameless abandon.
He also said, in his characteristically sexist fashion, that women “oppose change, receive passively, and add nothing of their own,” so let’s not go taking advice from him, either.
It’s absurd how bad men are at understanding women while insisting that women don’t understand themselves. Sounds like projection, if you ask me.
Since Freud, men all over the map have claimed to have found the secret to women’s minds. This included the writers of Scarface.
The view has always been tragically reductionist and patently male.
Men have hoisted what they want women to be like onto women themselves as a characteristic, a map, a guide, so they could better understand them. It’s why humans invented a plethora of gods responsible for various events — to feel a sense of control over the unknown and desirable.
Thankfully, science is starting to uncover what women actually want.
Even better, thanks to the progress we’ve made over the last few centuries, women themselves can tell us what they want (and, importantly, what they feel).
What women want is surprisingly simple. It’s nowhere near as simple as senseless mumblings about money, power, and respect, but still, it’s pretty simple.
We’re Not That Different After All
Mostly, women want the same things men want.
Sure, those things might take on different characteristics for men and women. They might unfold differently.
It might seem like we’re living in separate worlds, Venus and Mars, and the seemingly constant state of conflict we find ourselves in is us trying to reconcile these differences.
Or, as Melvin Konner, M.D. put it in his incredible book, Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy, “If men are from Mars, women are from Earth.”
Men and women have far more similarities than differences, and men viewing women as this foreign, exotic thing to be understood, mastered, and controlled is textbook sexism (unless it’s consensual, and she’s into that sort of thing).
We all fall in love, an experience that changes us on the genetic level. We all want security, money, friendships, close family bonds, and to be well-adjusted to our environments. Also, we all want sex.
Women don’t “trade” sex for money any more than men do.
Even if you asked both men and women to list their sexual fantasies, the commonest fantasy in both sexes turns out to be the same —a deep, romantic connection.
Much ado has been made about women’s declining interest in sex across the board. Women are less interested in sex than they used to be, even though rates of women’s sexual dysfunction have gone down.
This has left us with a bipolar view of casual sex. On the one hand, alarmist news headlines tell us it’s a scourge that’s on the rise. On the other hand, alarmist news headlines tell us we aren’t having enough sex!
But what if this is just a shift in cultural ability, a regression to the mean?
In other words, what if women are being choosier with their partners than they once were now that they’re unburdened by the old societal pressures that forced them into unhappy marriages where they were economically dependent on their husbands?
A recent study published in Evolutionary Psychological Science found that women are open to both short-term and long-term relationships, depending on their partners — just like men.
While men boastfully divide women into “hoes” and “housewives,” women quietly sum up the men they encounter into different groups, like “boyfriend material” and “casual sex material.”
This confirms an abundance of research suggesting the same.
Attractiveness Matters to Women
A 2006 study titled Sex Similarities and Differences in Preferences for Short-Term Mates: What, Whether, and Why asked people to perform some interesting exercises.
They gave people “mate budgets” like they were handing out XP in a video game and asked participants to build their perfect partner by buying traits on a budget.
Participants spent “budgets” on things like physical attractiveness, social status, creativity, kindness, and liveliness. When the results were tallied, women and men were closely aligned— especially regarding what they wanted from a short-term partner.
From long-term to short-term relationships, both men and women were willing to skimp on kindness, social status, and creativity to find a short-term partner who was more physically attractive.
Both sexes favored physical attraction when looking for a short-term partner, but they “bought” more depth and a wider variety of traits when looking for a long-term partner.
Yes, women like casual sex, too. But they want it with men they find attractive.
Surprisingly, both men and women were about half as interested in physical attractiveness when it came to long-term partners. Both sexes emphasize attractiveness (you think of it as chemistry) in their casual flings.
Only when asked about what they wanted in a long-term partner were things like social status and creativity given more priority.
A New Relationship Framework
The study also gave us a new framework that can be really helpful in how we view our relationships. During the course of the study, researchers highlighted three questions people asked themselves before getting into a relationship with someone, called the three Ws:
What?
Whether?
Why?
You can apply this to your relationships and learn a lot about yourself.
What do you prioritize in a partner? What are the necessities you can’t live without, and what lofty luxuries would you like to live with? What kind of future do you envision? What traits make someone compatible with you? What’s necessary for a fulfilling short-term relationship? What’s necessary for a fulfilling long-term relationship?
It’s crucial to ask yourself whether you’re open to a short-term relationship, a long-term one, or both. This can help you avoid uncomfortable situations with someone where you’re on a completely different page than they are.
Last, it’s important to ask why. Why are you looking for a relationship? What beliefs influence your “why” regarding relationships? Are you out for exhilarating sex, to cure boredom, to feel emotionally fulfilled, to not feel unattractive, or what? Do you want excitement? Do you want security?
If you follow these questions far enough, they’ll lead you down a rabbit hole that ends with the things that are most significant to you.
This framework is more in-line with how we think, even if unconsciously.
Sex is about much more than simple reproduction; it’s about feeling sweet, extraordinary sentiments inundate us, connecting with someone else spiritually and emotionally, and experiencing pleasure.
Sex is about relationships.
The nuances and meanings of those relationships are up to us.
All in all, women didn’t suddenly become sexless overnight. The relationship dynamics have changed. Now women have the freedom to make better choices, and they’re exercising that freedom.
Sorry, Tony Montana, in a society with sexual equality, you can’t just buy women with money, power, and respect.