If you’re a human being on God’s internet, you most certainly have come across a man complaining about how “my wife is never in the mood ” or perhaps across a woman asking some sex guru why she doesn’t enjoy sex as much as her husband.

Additionally, why is there a common conception that women, by nature, are blessed with a lower sexual appetite than their male partners? The stories we hear everyday additionally seem to prove this.

Rarely do we hear about men who complain that they cannot keep up with their woman’s sexual appetite; conversely, we definitely cannot say the same about women. Closely linked to this happenstance is the general societal belief that women (who are often portrayed as paradigms of morality and the moral upholders of the next generation), ought to guard their sexuality jealously. This belief is manifested through instilled gender roles and unsaid societal expectations.

What is the Stereotype of the Less-Sexual Female?

Stereotypes derive their power by first creating a general notion (otherwise known as a thought). The notion doesn’t have to be rooted in any empirical truth and may even be the product of certain temporal and communal experiences.

When this notion gains popularity, people gradually begin to question it less and accept it more, and when that happens, it surreptitiously slips into the communal belief system. When a notion slips into a community’s set of beliefs, they unconsciously begin to act in ways that reinforce it, therefore, the belief creates the reality and the reality created further strengthens the belief. Society then points to the constructed reality as evidence of the stereotype’s truth.

For example, if there is a general notion in a community that members of a certain family are “inferior” and of lower caste, children born into that family will be treated as such and thus are quite likely to become exactly what they are projected to be. Society will then point at the reality that is the result of a belief system in action and say: “See? We told you they are inferior.”

Louis Tyson puts it better in her book Critical Theory Today when she says:

” Patriarchy continually exerts forces that undermine women’s self-confidence and assertiveness; a good example of which is the suppression of her libido. It then points to the absence of these qualities as proof that women are naturally, and therefore correctly self-effacing and submissive.”

 Wow.

This changes everything.

It means that the idea we have of the less sexual female is nothing more than that: an idea. And it has only become reality because the majority of people believe it, thereby reinforcing it.  

Below are four concrete reasons why women appear to be less sexual than men.

1. Gendered Socialization

It is a common misconception that sex is the same as gender. Sex is the biological body form an individual or organism is born with, while gender is the learned behaviors associated with that sex, often resulting from concepts of what masculinity and femininity are in whatever culture and time they are born into.

Studies reveal that by the age of three, children have already learned to differentiate and exhibit the qualities that society has tagged peculiar to their gender. What this means is that a 3-year-old girl is more likely to want a doll than a toy gun; thus, society will point to this and say that girls are naturally nurturing. This cannot be further from the truth, as she does not make that choice because she was born that way, but rather because she has learned to be that way.

But how?

According to The American Psychology Association, gender studies reveal that children are most likely to copy people who they observe are the same gender as them (known as ‘same gender models’). Thus, your niece is choosing a doll baby over a gun because she has observed mommy tending to her little sibling, or because she has witnessed countless women do the same on TV, at church, the grocery store, and practically every other place she’s been. Your nephew, on the other hand, is choosing a water gun because he has watched Spiderman and because he has observed the countless number of male law enforcement officers (and the fewer female ones) on the streets and in the motion pictures.

By gendered socialization, girls are groomed to be less sexually expressive than boys are (sit “properly,” cover your legs, lower your eyes), and even though boys may not be outrightly encouraged to express their sexuality, they are not outrightly discouraged from it they way girls are. This act of repressing one child’s sexuality while encouraging the other creates a double standard, leading to a biased reality.

2. Society’s Impossible Beauty Standards

You must have perky tits, shave your eyebrows off and then draw them back on, and walk in excruciating 6 inch-tall heels.

One of the major causes of a low libido in females is the obnoxious standards of bodily perfection that society has made us believe we have to aspire to.

Let me be the first to tell you: sex sells, and the female body is the most sexualized image used in modern advertising. The competitive and male-dominated world of advertising and consumerism promotes increasingly unrealistic images of female beauty and sex appeal. Such images are either heavily photoshopped, a mental construct born in the minds of hyper-sexual males, or an advertisement agenda fueled by an appeal to an irrational male sexual fantasy.

A guaranteed way to reduce women’s inhibitions in bed would be to teach them to embrace and enjoy their bodies, while simultaneously dumping society’s bodily standards where they belong: in the trash. 

3. The Virginity Trend

Can we really call this a trend anymore since it has been around for a couple of thousand years?🤔🤔🤔

Well, the virginity trend teaches us that “good girls” (which in society’s definition means girls who abstain from sex) will be rewarded with marriage to a man who loves and respects them. “Bad girls,” on the other hand, will end up sad, alone, depleted; and abandoned.

How many times did we consciously or subconsciously have this message reinforced to us?

I remember taking a virginity oath in church before I was 10 and what puzzles me now when I look back is why it was only us little girls that were called up to the altar. No single boy took a ‘virginity oath’ that day and I wonder why.

The saddest part is how happy we were. We were excited because we were made to believe that it was an honor to be “giving our bodies to God.”

The virginity trend (and the good girl – bad girl ideology it ensures) reduces a woman’s perceived value in society to the state of affairs between her thighs, making her subconsciously act in ways that are less sexually expressive in order to be considered more valuable. (comment “YES” on this post on Instagram if you would like me to do a post about the origin of the virginity trend).

This curbs a woman’s sexuality in unimaginable ways and is one of the reasons why women are thought to be less sexual than men.

4. Environment and Mainstream Media

The environment has a huge role to play in a child’s psychosexual development. The world is a highly gendered place, and children are likely to aspire to what they observe most people of the same sex do.

For example, if a girl observes that most of the same gender models around her love to wear lipstick and eyeshadow, she too is likely to grow up yearning for lipstick and eyeshadow. Thus, if girls grow up observing that the females around them have a lot of shame around sexuality, they too are most likely to grow up sexually misaligned.

 In addition to the environment of upbringing, media and the culture of fairytales do nothing to encourage female agency.

In a nutshell…

It is my desire that this piece has shed some light on why you or someone you know may have problems with sexual agency.

The next time someone brings up the “women are less sexual than men” bullshit, shut them up by pulling up this article (I’m not kidding, bookmark it specially for this purpose), and by letting them know that women are the only female creatures on Earth blessed with year-round sexual arousal, a teeny little organ dedicated to their sexual pleasure (drop a wink emoji on this Instagram post if you know what I’m talking about), and with the ability to orgasm again and again and again in just one round of sex.

I come in peace.

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