Seductress (47 page)

Men dread the thought of castration as well. Because women lack penises, men subconsciously fear retaliation in kind. Men employ a wide assortment of counterphobic strategies, such as Madonna cults and grandiose claims about male sexuality, but they really
are
the weaker sex in eros, beset with apprehensions and insecurities, especially in the case of those unsure of their manhood. Wolfgang Lederer, M.D.,
The Fear of Women
(New York: Grune & Stratton, 1968), 220. For more on this male sexual fear of women, see Camille Paglia,
Sexual Personae
(New York: Vintage, 1990), passim; Karen Horney, M.D., “The Dread of Women,”
Feminine Psychology,
ed. Harold Kelman, M.D. (New York: Norton, 1967), 133-46; Sigmund Freud,
Sexuality and the Psychology of Love,
intro. Philip Rieff (New York: Collier, 1963); Karl Stern,
The Flight from Women
(New York: Paragon House, 1965); H. R. Hays,
The Dangerous Sex: The Myth of Feminine Evil
(New York: Putnam’s, 1964); and Carl Jung, “Man and Woman,”
The Feminine Image in Literature,
ed. Barbara Warren (Rochelle Park, N.J.: Hayden, 1973), 250-60.

3
Thirty to 50 percent . . . :
Samuel S. Janus, M.D., and Cynthia L. Janus, M.D.,
The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior
(New York: John Wiley, 1993), 27 and 162. They claim that despite the increase in sexual activity, only 15 percent always have orgasms during lovemaking, 18. See also Susan Quilliam,
Women on Sex
(New York: Barricade Books, 1994), 221. Double the number of women as men today have problems with sexual pleasure: “There are 50 million women with sexual dysfunction—an inability to experience sexual pleasure or to achieve orgasm.” Myron Murdock, M.D., quoted in Mary Ann Marshall, “A Dose of Desire,”
Mademoiselle
(November 1998), 90.

In another study, 50 to 60 percent reach orgasm always or most of the time. Cited in
Modern Maturity
(September-October, 1999), 57. The
New York Times,
May 17, 1998, reports that women are gravitating to Viagra because it can take them as long as one and a half hours to climax. A landmark study in the
Journal of the American Medical Association
281 (February 10, 1999), 537-44, found that 43 percent of women (contrasted with 31 percent of men) “aren’t interested in sex, fail to lubricate, can’t reach orgasm, or experience pain.” Cited in Stephen Rae, “RX: Desire,”
Modern Maturity
(March-April 2001), 89. Gynecologist Dr. Jennie Freiman confirmed the high prevalence of anorgasmic dysfunction among her successful, educated clientele in New York City.

3
“Seduction,” says philosopher . . . :
Baudrillard,
Seduction,
7.

3
Unless “subverted by . . .”:
Mary Batten,
Sexual Strategies: How Females Chose Their Mates
(New York: Putnam’s, 1992), 97.

3
Sexier by a . . . :
The half-male, half-female Tireseas of Greek myth was struck blind because he said that women got ten times more pleasure in sex than men. The myth, despite the legends of a lower female sex drive, has recently been scientifically validated.

The clitoris has eight thousand nerve fibers, twice the number of the penis. Women’s climaxes last twice as long as men’s, yield stronger spasms (because of more vasocongestion and larger surface area), and become increasingly intense with repetition.

If continuously stimulated, they can achieve up to fifty an hour—the number limited only by muscle fatigue—throughout their reproductive lives and beyond. Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey believes that women’s souped-up sexuality predisposed them early on to polyandry and cat-prowling peregrinations beyond the home that prompted the male crackdown still in evidence today.

See Mary Jane Sherfey, M.D.,
The Nature and Evolution of Female Sexuality
(New York: Vintage, 1966); William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson,
Human Sexual Response
(New York: Bantam, 1966); Sarah Blaffer Hrdy,
The Woman That Never Evolved
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981); Natalie Angier,
Woman: An Intimate Geography
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999); and Helen Fisher,
The First Sex
(New York: Random House, 1999), 208-10. Throughout human history, almost every culture, until quite recently, has recognized women’s hypersexuality and insatiability.

4
As the construction . . . :
“The primordial image,” says Erich Neumann, is “the self-portrait of the instinct,” and governs erotic behavior like a “magnetic field.” He adds: “Male sexuality is influenced by the archetypal figure of the Feminine which is active in the unconscious.”
The Great Mother,
trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 6 and 97.

Also see Joseph Campbell: “There can be no doubt that in the very earliest ages of human history the magical force and wonder of the female was [
sic
] no less a marvel than the universe itself; and this gave to woman a prodigious power. . . .” Campbell agrees with many other students of myth that this powerful female archetype is rooted deep in the male subpsyche. Quoted in Jamake Highwater,
Myth and Sexuality
(New York: Meridan, 1991), 36-37.

4
In one Neolithic . . . :
See fig. 6.6, Timothy Taylor,
The Prehistory of Sex
(New York: Bantam, 1996), 160.

5
We hear the . . . :
Quoted in Havelock Ellis,
Studies in the Psychology of Sex
(New York: Random House, 1906), vol. 1, 138 and 136.

5
Many seductresses of course . . . :
April Fitzlyon,
The Price of Genius: A Life of Pauline Viardot
(London: John Calder, 1979), 70.

5
“Hit on a . . .”:
Jeremy Johnson, “Dating the Elderly,”
Abercrombie and Fitch
(Spring 2001), 62.

6
Feminists as diverse . . . :
See de Beauvoir,
The Second Sex,
who says that the temptress, by definition, “denies her brain,” 645. Susan Brownmiller continues this line of thought: “Knowledge is power and the lack of it is charmingly feminine; between the bluestocking and the dumb broad, there is no doubt who lies closer to a natural feminine state,”
Femininity
(New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1984), 110. Germaine Greer copped out of the whole game because she was “sick of belying [her] own intelligence.”
The Female Eunuch
(New York: Bantam Books, 1970), 58.

7
Great leaders, claim . . . :
The article that advances this view is considered canonical in studies of human sexuality: David Givens, “The Nonverbal Basis of Attraction,”
Psychiatry
41 (November 1978), 346-59.

7
With classic calumny . . . :
Quoted in Robert Browning,
Justinian and Theodora
(New York: Praeger, 1971), 259, and quoted in Sabrina Mervin and Carol Prunhuber,
Women Around the World and Through the Ages
(Wilmington, Del.: Atomium, 1990), 197. Charles Diehl,
Byzantine Empresses
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963), 48.

7
The
Machtweiber
(German . . .:
See Virginia Allen, who defines the
Machtweib
as a “woman of power,” a “devastatingly beautiful, seductive” femme fatale who aspires to wealth, power, and Imperial favor.” Goethe’s Countess Adelheid and Lady Macbeth are two examples of these seductresses of political ambition and power.
The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon
(Troy, N.Y.: Whitston Publishing, 1983), 16.

8
Biobehaviorist Richard Wright . . . :
Quoted and discussed in Angier,
Woman: An Intimate Geography,
343-45.

8
Intelligent women everywhere . . . :
Ingrid Bengis,
Combat in the Erogenous Zone
(New York: Bantam, 1972), 42. This notion, propagated by the second-wave feminists of the seventies and eighties, sounds passé now, but it was the unanimous, party line. “To admit the necessity of seduction,” they believed, was “to admit that one [had] not the strength to command.” Sally Kempton,
Esquire
(October 1979), 254 and 472.

9
“It takes a . . .”:
Quoted in Edgar H. Cohen,
Mademoiselle Libertine: A Portrait of Ninon de Lenclos
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), 92.

9
The art of . . . :
Paul Friedrich,
The Meaning of Aphrodite
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 144. Although the art of love has been debased in recent decades into sexual cookbooks and flirtation manuals, it has a respected history. Havelock Ellis says it dates back at least as far as “the ancient Greek erotic writings” by women that have been lost. “Art of Love,”
Studies in the Psychology of Sex,
vol. 2, 507-75. Summarizing the art, Ellis says it recognized that love was not “a mere animal instinct or a mere pledged duty, but . . . a complex, humane, and refined relationship which demanded cultivation,” 514.

Among the key texts are Ovid,
Art of Love;
Andreas Capellanus,
The Art of Courtly Love,
ed. Frederick W. Locke and trans. John Jay Parry (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1957); Montaigne, “That Our Desire Is Increased by Difficulty,” and “On Some Verses of Virgil,”
The Complete Essays of Montaigne,
trans. Donald M. Frame, vols. 2 and 3, 1585-88 (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1960), 57-122; Robert Burton,
The Anatomy of Melancholy,
ed. Floyd Dell and Paul Jordan-Smith (New York: Tudor, 1927), 611-866; Stendhal,
Love,
trans. Gilvert and Suzanne Sale (Harmondswood, U.K.: Penguin, 1957); and Honoré de Balzac,
The Physiology of Marriage,
ed. J. Walker McSpadden (Philadelphia: Avil, 1901).

See also Bertrand Russell,
Marriage and Morals
(New York: Bantam, 1929); José Ortega y Gasset,
On Love,
trans. Toby Talbot (New York: NAL, 1957); Ellen Key,
Love and Ethics
(New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1911); André Maurois, “The Art of Loving,”
The Art of Living,
trans. James Whitall (Bombay: D. P. Tapaporevala, 1940); Theodor Henrik van de Velde, M.D.,
Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1965) and Octavio Paz,
The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism
, trans. Helen Lane (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993). Theodor Reik,
Psychology of Sex Relations
(New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1945).

More recently, Ethel Person and Helen Fisher have written brilliantly in this tradition. See
Dreams of Love and Fateful Encounters
(New York: Penguin, 1988) and
Anatomy of Love: The Mysteries of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray
(New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1992). Though less focused and comprehensive, Diane Ackerman’s
Natural History of Love
belongs to the genre (New York: Random House, 1994).

9
They want to see . . . :
Love’s first quality, said Stendhal, is “impact,” a blowout where men see stars, and feel the divine power to their boots. Stendhal,
Love,
250.

9
But seductresses and . . . :
Fashion has been the bête noire of feminists. “Serious women,” they proclaim, “have a difficult time with clothes,” and accuse the fashion industry of inflicting mutilization, subservience, commodification, and caricatured femininity. Brownmiller,
Femininity,
110.

10
Many plain sirens . . . :
Bernard Rudofsky,
The Unfashionable Human Body
(Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1974), 62.

10
“He who is . . .”:
Quoted in Baudrillard,
Seduction,
90.

11
“Every woman,” say . . . :
Maurois, “The Art of Loving,” 26.

11
The house of . . . :
See Gaston Bachelard,
The Poetics of Space,
trans. Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon, 1964), 3.

11
Music is depth . . . :
See F. Gonzalez-Crussi,
The Five Senses
(New York: Vintage, 1989), 37. “The power of music over the human mind,” he writes, “cannot be overestimated.” For a more complete account, see Robert Jourdain,
Music, the Brain and Ecstasy
(New York: Avon, 1997).

11
After Ivan Turgenev . . . :
Quoted in Fitzlyon,
Price of Genius,
150.

12
From the
Kama Sutra . . . :
Ovid,
Art of Love,
Book 3, 163.

12
“’Twas surely the . . .”:
Thomas Fuller, quoted in Burton Stevenson,
The Home Book of Quotations
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1956), 362.

12
As study after . . . :
For this see Shere Hite,
The Hite Report on Male Sexuality
(New York: Ballantine, 1981), which finds that men yearn for multiorgasmic women and feel angry with anorgasmic ones, 616-73. Other studies confirm this: Anthony Pietropinto and Jacqueline Simenauer,
Beyond the Male Myth
(New York: NAL, 1977), 33-34, and Willard Gaylin, M.D., who writes, “The more orgasms he provokes in a woman, the greater his power.”
The Male Ego
(New York: Viking, 1992), 132.

Poet William Blake put it best two hundred years ago: “What is it in women that men require?/ The lineaments of satisfied desire.” Theodor Reik speculates that this stems from male performance anxiety, an unconscious identification with the other, and the contagious effects of sexual excitement.
Psychology of Sex Relations,
237-39.

13
“Plow my vulva . . .”:
Quoted in Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer,
Inanna Queen of Heaven and Earth
(New York: Harper & Row, 1983), 37, 48, and 39.

13
Feminists used to . . . :
Eva Figes, quoted in Irene Franck and David Brownstone,
The Women’s Desk Reference
(New York: Viking, 1993), 665.

13
It’s a “continuous . . .”:
Ellis,
Psychology of Sex Relations,
vol. 2, 547.