Cindy Buston and David Buss have authored a new book entitled "Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between)" that claims to do exactly what it suggests. It researches and explores the many reasons why women have sex. And according to the authors, it's not just because they like having sex.
It could be to help a headache, keep the peace in a relationship, exact revenge, even relieve boredom. A review in FitGloss reports that "84 percent admitting to having sex just to ensure a conflict-free relationship or to bargain for household chores." One in ten women in one of the authors' studies said they had had sex for presents. Furthermore - and this almost had me choking on my morning orange juice - having sex to fulfill romance and passion is low on the list of women's reasons.
I don't object to the content of the book - I haven't read it and I think reviewing the many and complicated reasons why women have sex. But the results also shed light on something a little less than wonderful. So many of the reasons why women are engaging in sex with men is to gain control or power over their relationship. Women have sex to get men to help with chores or as a tool for maintaining a peaceful relationship. Apparently many women have learned that it's their only way to get certain kinds of messages understood or even their desires (outside the bedroom) implemented. If he won't listen? Have sex with him.
Perhaps you're familiar with the Old Greek Comedy, Lysistrata. The play is named after the heroine, who convinces the women of Greece to withhold sex from their husbands in order to force them into negotiating a peaceful end to The Peloponnesian War. Though the play doesn't necessarily portray women in a feminist light, I feel like this ridiculous premise for encouraging reconciliation is in fact something that many women today are, through media and other outlets of socialization, encouraged to replicate.
I hope that there's a way in which we can encourage women - be it our daughters or friends or family members - to take time to have sex for themselves. This will only be possible through a lot of shifting in the ways in which relationships function and learning to discuss openly the dynamics that may be at work between a man and woman. I'm not opposed to the many ways women have sex - after all, it's our right to sleep with whomever for whatever reason! - but I think pleasure and desire and having the right to exploring those feelings matters and is often overlooked because there are so many other issues getting in the way.