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  Women's Sexuality: A Guest Post

  Posted Monday, January 26, 2009 12:06 PM | By Rachael Larimore
  Fellow XX Factor contributors and readers, we're not the only ones intrigued by Daniel Bergner's article in the New York Times Magazine on female sexuality. Slate's own William Saletan has written about it as his "Human Nature" blog.

  Will writes:

  May I join the conversation? I was struck in Bergner's article by the same idea Meghan flagged: that perhaps "there's something reactive about female sexuality." (I have another take on the idea here.)

  To me, what's really provocative about this theory is that its logic doesn't seem confined to sexuality. Bergner quotes Meredith Chivers as speculating:

  [O]ne possibility is that instead of it being a go-out-there-and-get-it kind of sexuality, it's more of a reactive process. If you have this dyad, and one part is pumped full of testosterone, is more interested in risk taking, is probably more aggressive, you've got a very strong motivational force. It wouldn't make sense to have another similar force. You need something complementary.

  If the dyad theory is correct, why wouldn't it extend to other realms of life, with one sex initiating and the other reacting? It certainly resonates with broad sex-differential patterns of aggression, responsiveness, and social editing.

  Filed under: New York Times Magazine, Female sexuality, Dan Bergner

About Rachael Larimore

• Rachael Larimore is Slate's copy chief.

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