Where Does the Libido Gap Myth Come From?

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1:02audio content that may be graphic and potentially triggering for some listeners this content may include descriptions or sounds that some may find disturbing listener discretion is strongly advised this is the last show with David Cooper four years we've been told men are just naturally more interested in intimacy than women that there's a libido gap men just want more sex but what if that isn't biologically true at all what if it's the result of some pretty bad lessons that people are taught at an early age well let's talk about it here with someone who's done research in this area she's a psychology and brain science researcher and instructor at the University of Toronto her name is Diana Paragene Diana welcome to the program happy to be here thanks so much for having it the for decades this myth of men having high libidos and women not this not biologically true at all like how big

2:03of a myth are we talking about here and why do people still pretend that this is true right I mean well we're really talking about when it comes to this gap in particular I think the myth is really centered on again where it comes from then really the size of the gap right you know this libido gap between gender is it's been a you know a staple of punchlines headlines party conversations for decades right we're talking about gender gap that's you know it's pretty large about as large as the gender difference in weight and one that's you know pretty reliable it's been replicated across you know 500 or more studies in the past 24 years 25 years alone and across that you know long and sort of girthy body of research three or four women do report less interest in sex than men the question is or I think the controversy is more about where that gap is coming from right is it a natural one or is it something that you know we acquire over time aha is it learned or is it just somehow innate in you know we're born with it in the for whatever reason I guess the question so is it learned is my question

3:06right I mean that's a it is a good question I mean the traditional of the sort of classical view right has kind of been that you know this is something that we can chalk up to biological differences that are kind of programmed before birth like hormonal ones for example right or you know some have actually more recently kind of chalked it up to experiential differences or learn differences that we acquire as adults you know I mean gender differences in sexual enjoyment are among the largest documented in psychology right and the orgasm gap is actually increasingly discussed as you know one of the possible explanations for women's lower interest in sex but you know what we we don't discuss quite as much or or even acknowledge really is the largest orgasm gap or the largest sexual enjoyment gap on record which is the one between adolescents actually the one that lands the very start of sexual life and actually may land during a critical period for learning about sex when and whether sex is worth aspiring when I learned about sex as a young kid like in school it was about

4:09pregnancy and STIs and consent and like human body parts we didn't really focus on pleasure is that lack of conversation for kids who are learning about sex like is that where this stems from I would say that's definitely a part of it I mean but I think a common misconception as well as that pleasure is missing from the curriculum entirely it's actually you know something that is included and even the most you know conservative curricula but only for a privileged few right I mean you know lessons on puberty those touch on wet dreams or actions ejaculations for boys but for girls they center on menstruation like wise lessons on procreation those necessarily include the rule of the male sexual pleasure organ in orgasm but instead of the female one they spotlight the birth canal right so I should really be all that surprising that young people you know prioritize vaginas versus vulvas during sex when sex educators do the same during lessons right how about young people ask about pleasure you know maybe learn a question it's absence if they you know never learn about its importance for female people or that you know

5:14it's lack precludes healthy sex right is the premise here that if we change the way we talked about sex and learned about sex that there wouldn't be this kind of like desire gap showing up in older ages is that kind of what we're getting at here I think so definitely I mean we have to consider to when it comes to education about sex you know certainly there's formal education but there's also sort of the lived sexual experiences that young people are having which teach them a lot about whether sex is going to be enjoyable whether it's going to be equitable and whether it's worth desiring right in addition to this kind of miss missing curriculum of sexual pleasure in the classroom for girls for young women there's also this sort of hidden curriculum in their real lives of sort of sexual frustration of you know disappointing sex when it doesn't you know devolve into being something that's downright painful or scary that you know might guide them away or sort of train them away from sexual desire at a very early age when these lessons are maybe likely to last I was in high school in the 90s you know I I was around when like the narratives

6:18weren't great for like they were very different for each gender and maybe that is the problem maybe like how could we intervene to make sure that like people are enjoying sex into their adulthood men and women equally right I think that the that's a great question and I think that to kind of get at the answer to that we kind of maybe have to break down you know how different sex is for you know young people you know relative across genders and you know across sort of life stages relatively speaking right I mean you know when we say a lot that women we tend to say the women get worse sex than men right and maybe there's some contribution this makes to that libido gap but you know they actually get the worst sex to start with right as I mentioned the orgasm gap at women's first exposure to sex that's about it's the largest one sort of documented it's about five times larger than the orgasm gap between adults that makes headlines right and that pleasure gap at first intercourse that's remained stable over three decades even as women's adult sort of sexual experiences have improved right and that gender gap has narrowed in pleasure at

7:21that time in life um also gender gap and stimulation of the you know primary sexual pleasure organ that pinot glands from an clitorial glands for women that pleasure gap sure it's large during heterosexual sex and adulthood but it's twice as large at those first sexual experiences that women have um painful sex rough sex for sex those are all more likely to occur the younger women are whereas that trend doesn't really hold for younger men um women also tend to lose friendships as they gain sexual experience whereas men don't suffer similar losses in fact quite the reverse and obviously top all of that off with um greater odds or greater risk of unplanned pregnancy sexually transmitted infections of street obstetric complications for women at those younger ages that don't carry over the younger men that you know really make um the cost and benefits of sex really probably the most unembalanced um across the well entire lifespan for young women uh during this period of time so there's like all this social stuff there's the

8:26education stuff uh there's i guess like body self-consciousness stuff that where i think young women experience more than men it it sounds like a confluence of all these things like a perfect storm i think you call it uh existing and and what it ends up being is a pleasure gap at young age that just extends into old age how do we fix it like uh i have a good understanding of the problem now how do we fix it right i mean uh i also do want to stress though too before we get into fixing it sort of how important it is to target uh these experiences at this particular window of time right i mean you know interest in sex at first comes online in adolescence it's a hallmark of adolescence sexual experimentation it's you know normative from a sort of demographic standpoint it's expected from an evolutionary one that will you know behave sexually at this time um in the same way that you know it's it's expected almost in the same way that the infant brain is expected it expects to be exposed to language to attachment figures and might be primed to learn from them right but um most importantly our adolescent sexual experiences and this where we get to the

9:31brain side of the equation actually tend to coincide with this really interesting window of brain development where the reward circuits that underpin emotion motivation uh were those circuits mature faster than the sort of cognitive control circuits that inhibit them um and this you know this imbalance indows positive emotional experiences with you know special salience uh special persistence in memory i mean you know the films the books the movies that we the events that we like the best that we remember the best as adults um they're often the ones that we discover in adolescence and early adulthood um so if this reminitions bump or this memory bump um extends to other sources of pleasure like our our very first experiences with sex uh they may be the most memorable ones that we ever have and might actually pattern our interest in sex as adults sounds like we got to change our culture entirely is basically what we're getting at here well Diana that's all the time we have thanks so much for being on the show and sharing your research with me thanks so much Diana Paragene is a psychology and brain science researcher and instructor at the University of

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