As increasing numbers of women become hooked on internet porn, the question arises: have the advances in gender equality made since the sixties served to boost the incomes of sex therapists? Have gender politics screwed with hardwired, biological mechanisms of desire? Ogi Ogas, author of A Billion Wicked Thoughts, seems to think so. A neuroscientist, Ogas appears to believe that a too-heavy diet of Simone de Beauvoir and Naomi Wolf can conflict with a woman's preference for sexual submission as controlled by the unconscious, subcortical part of her brain.
Ogas, of course, points to rat studies, and how a part of the hypothalamus in male rats acts as a kind of conning tower for that dominant, caveman behavior in men. With a recent study suggesting possible liberal/conservative differences in brain structure, new kinds of philosophical questions will be asked. Will some scientist be branded a misogynist for suggesting that women are drawn to romance novels for their popular submission themes? And is there a connection between the increasing female consumption of porn, and the cultural evolution of male "wussification," as rebelled against by the drum beating of Iron John's Robert Bly?
According to erotic-romance author Angela Knight:
"Women like bad boys. I suspect that's because our inner cavewoman knows Doormat Man would become Sabertooth Tiger lunch in short order. In fact, this may be one reason why EroRom is gaining popularity so fast — writers feel free to write dominant heroes with more of an edge."
Ogas points out that both men and women's brains are wired with neural circuitry for dominance and submission, but nature apparently links only one of the circuits to the arousal system. And many men are born with active submissive circuitry themselves, evidenced by such genres as transformation fiction and femdom porn. So is Ogas right, is feminism partly responsible for bedroom dissatisfaction, or is this all nerdy nonsense?
