{"id":2635,"date":"2011-04-30T17:08:44","date_gmt":"2011-04-30T22:08:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=2635"},"modified":"2011-04-30T17:08:44","modified_gmt":"2011-04-30T22:08:44","slug":"nice-work-everything-old-is-new-again-including-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2011\/04\/30\/nice-work-everything-old-is-new-again-including-sex\/","title":{"rendered":"NICE WORK: Everything old is new again, including sex"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/www.framingham.edu\/history\/images\/Bridgette.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"118\" height=\"183\" \/> Guest poster and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.framingham.edu\/history\/facutly\/b.sheridan.html\">historian Bridgette Sheridan<\/a> from Framingham State University weighs in on the magic of science. She posted at GWP last fall about <a href=\"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=1914\">dirty sex<\/a>.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s another new book out about \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 sex.\u00a0 <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Billion-Wicked-Thoughts-Largest-Experiment\/dp\/0525952098\">A Billion Wicked Thoughts<\/a>, <\/em>according to an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/blogs-and-stories\/2011-04-24\/a-billion-wicked-thoughts-what-the-internet-can-teach-us-about-sex-review\/?cid=hp:mainpromo7\">article in the <em>Daily Beast<\/em><\/a>, \u201creveals some surprising facts about what turns us on\u2014and what separates men and women\u2019s desires.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to the <em>Daily Beast<\/em>, the authors used web searches, websites, personal ads, and porn, among other data, to discover that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you can imagine it, it exists (though most people desire a lot of the same stuff when it comes to sex)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Men are wired to objectify (though every so often they surprise us)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Women aren\u2019t easy to figure out (though we do know that &#8220;Women need to feel comfortable and safe and desired as well as physically attracted.\u201d)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All that research and <em>these <\/em>are the highlights? Perhaps this goes to show that we like to have \u201cdata\u201d back up what we already believe to be true. Let me give you an example: in the 16<sup>th<\/sup> and 17<sup>th<\/sup> centuries, as scientists began to question ancient medical theory by experimentation and \u201cseeing for themselves,\u201d many of them found, in the body, what they\u2019d known all along: that women were inherently inferior to men. They found it IN THE BODY. And it was <em>scientific<\/em> so it <em>had<\/em> to be true<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Do I think that scientific exploration has led to discoveries that have improved our lives? Yes. I benefit from them daily. Do I think that scientific outcomes can sometimes be shaped by cultural norms? Yes. Do I think the<em> Daily Beast&#8217;s<\/em> breathless reporting on this book is a case of that? Yes.<\/p>\n<p>But what do I know? I&#8217;m just a historian. Maybe I should collect some data before I tell you what I think.<\/p>\n<p><em>-Bridgette Sheridan<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Guest poster and historian Bridgette Sheridan from Framingham State University weighs in on the magic of science. She posted at GWP last fall about dirty sex. There\u2019s another new book out about \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 sex.\u00a0 A Billion Wicked Thoughts, according to an article in the Daily Beast, \u201creveals some surprising facts about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nice-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2635\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}