What are these psychologic factors in sexual response which Kinsey investigated? They are such factors as observing the opposite sex, nude figures, one's own sex, erotic art, genitalia, exhibitionism, movies, burlesque strippers and floor shows, sexual activities, portrayals of sexual activities, animals in coitus, peeping and voyeurism, preferences for light or dark, fantasies concerning sex, sex dreams, diversion during coitus, stimulation by literary materials, erotic stories, writing and drawing, wall inscriptions, graffiti, discussions of sex, and the like. Altogether there were thirty-three such factors investigated, and it was only in respect of three itemsmovies, reading romantic literature, and being bittenthat as many females or more females than males seem to have been affected. In respect of twenty-nine of the thirty-three items, fewer females than males were affected.
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While there can be little doubt that social conditioning plays a considerable role in influencing patterns of sexual response, and that the male in this respect seems to be much more conditionable than the female in our culture, there can be equally little doubt that there is a profound biological difference between the sexes in this respect. The male seems to be in a chronic state of sexual irritation. The woman who in a letter to Kinsey described the race of males as ''a herd of prancing leering goats" was not far from the truth. It is the male who is preoccupied with sex, and his preoccupation with sex, in our culture at any rate, is at a very superficial level of sensitivity. The male of the Western world is the gadfly of sex; hell mate with virtually any woman he encounters. The female, on the other hand, is much less occupied with sex than the male. She is not in a chronic state of sexual irritation; she is not like the male in a state of continuous rut. Sexual response in the female has to be aroused, and it cannot be aroused by superficial stimulation. Sex means a great deal more to the female that it does to the male, and except for the highly abnormal instance of prostitution, she will not mate with just any male she encounters.
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These differences seem to be biologically based, and from every point of view they confer superiority upon the female biological, moral, social, and aesthetic. The fact that these differences are biologically based does not, however, mean that the male's behavior is either excusable or unalterable. It makes
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