Sexual Desire and Gender by Pepper Schwartz and Virginia Rutter - Book Report/Review Example

However I wonder if today when peoples of the world migrate so seamlessly are culture and race really deciding factors in sexual preferences or as the authors so succinctly put it “many so-called sexual choices are not choices at all but are dictated by the body.” (Schwartz, page 188) One thing that is clearly evident from the data they present is that men and women approach sex and sexual desire differently and have different expectations from it. The institution of marriage is a result of a phenomenon where human beings are gendered as man and woman, and a man necessarily accepts a woman as his wife and vice versa.

Although I agree with the authors that today, when same-sex marriages are being accepted in many parts of the world, beliefs about the role of gender in marriage, are being challenged; even so this is only a minuscule proportion of human society and the majority still adheres to the age-old norms of gender.  The role of nature and nurture provide some clear explanations. Biological explanations point to the male and female hormones that dictate their sexual behavior. More recent research points to the theory of sociobiology and the intrinsic human impulse to achieve immortality by passing on their genes to future generations.

Sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists aver that reproductive strategies shape sexual desire, pointing to the fact that older men prefer younger women who are more fertile, while younger women pick older men for their ability to provide better for children of the union. However what is missing here I think is that in most societies in the world, a lot of importance has always been given to the woman’s virginity, and hence the younger she was the more chance there was of her being a virgin.

So sexual desire is “a complex mix of anatomy, hormones, and the brain” (Schwartz, page 192) and yet society and human biology dictate sexual possibilities. Romance and the expectations of the partners are crucial to sexual activity since in today’s context sex is not only a means to reproduction. The mental makeup and expectations of each partner I think are crucial to the pleasure and satisfaction that the union brings to each.