Hi everyone!
My name is Sarah, and welcome back to Everyday Consent.
Today we’re going to talk a bit about arousal, and we’re going to learn why it’s important
to separate how aroused someone’s body might look, how aroused that person actually feels,
and whether that person actually wants to have sex.
Let’s start by thinking about some commonly known physical signs of arousal.
You’re probably familiar with some of the following:
increased heart rate hardened nipples
heavy breathing erect penis or clitoris
tightened scrotum swollen labia
lubricated vagina
The messages that we often hear about these signs is that they are equivalent to arousal
itself.
In other words, that if someone has an erect penis or a lubricated vagina, then they must
be aroused, and we even sometimes hear that if they are aroused, then they must want to
have sex.
The reasoning behind this conflation is complex, but it is partly because so much of the language
that we use around sex and desire is in the form of euphemism and metaphor.
Think about the saying, ‘Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?’
The speaker is talking about an erect penis, but naming it as sexual excitement.
Romance novels do this a lot too, using phrases like ‘his throbbing desire’ and ‘her
yearning dampness’.
Using these bodily changes to communicate arousal is so instinctual, that one of the
most common ways to tell someone that you’re turned on is to say ‘I’m so hard’ or
‘I’m so wet’.
And because we talk about these two things so interchangeably, it can be easy to assume
that they are actually the same thing.
Buuuut It’s not quite that simple.
The body and the mind don’t always line up so easily.
And if you think about it, you probably already know this.
This tends to be most widely understood when it comes to penises and unexpected erections.
If you have a penis, you’ve likely experienced this.
Even if you don’t have a penis, you’ve likely heard stories about things like erections
first thing in the morning, unexpected erections in class or in the grocery store, or even
erections caused by certain fabrics.
These are all pretty common examples of erections that are not at all linked to arousal.
Similarly, it’s also a common experience for a penis owner to be very aroused, but
unable to achieve an erection.
If this is a chronic problem it’s often related to Erectile Dysfunction, but a person
can also be perfectly healthy and experience a lack of erection every once in a while.
Okay Sarah, so we can have an erection while not aroused, and we can be aroused without
an erection.
But how often does that happen?
And what does this mean for people without penises, what does it mean for people with
vulvas?
Now that’s where things get interesting, and where we turn to research for the answers.
Multiple studies have been conducted which measure the genital response of subjects while
watching short clips of different kinds of pornography, and some of these studies also
included clips of animals mating instead of humans, as well as clips with no sexual content
at all.
They did this by attaching a “strain gauge” to the penis and by measuring blood flow to
the vulva, and having the participants separately record what they perceived to be their own
level of arousal.
What these studies have found, is that there is quite often a difference between subjects’
genital response and their reported level of arousal.
This discrepancy is called Arousal Non Concordance.
These studies also found that there are significantly different patterns in male versus female respondents.
Annoyingly, I haven’t been able to find any information about the gender identities
of participants or whether these studies included any intersex individuals, so we simply don’t
know how these trends play out in populations other than cis women and cis men.
But what these studies did find is that in biosex males, genital response and reported
arousal, though far from lining up perfectly, were correlated enough to be considered highly
statistically significant.
One source says about 50% of the time.
In biosex females, however, they did not correlate enough to be considered statistically significant
at all.
The physical response and reported arousal matched as low as 10% of the time.
What this means is that, as a group, cis men tend to have concordant arousal, where genital
response can be considered predictive of subjective arousal, whereas cis women, as a group, tend
to have non concordant arousal.
It’s important to note that this is statistically speaking.
Any single individual could land anywhere on the concordance spectrum, but there is
a striking difference between these two groups, and this difference has been replicated in
multiple studies.
So all of this is discussing the difference between genital response and arousal.
It’s important to note that even actual arousal is also different from wanting to
have sex.
Thinking back to those people in the lab being studied, of the ones that did report that
they felt aroused, it’s unlikely that all of them actually wanted to start having sex
right there in the middle of the lab.
And this is true just generally.
I’m not going to go into much detail today, but there are plenty of things that could
lead a person who is aroused to not actually want to have sex, like being stressed out,
or busy, or not wanting to cheat on their spouse, or any number of other conscious and
unconscious reasons.
So let’s go back to the issue I mentioned at the beginning of the video.
The issue of assuming that, because someone’s genitals are acting in a certain way, then
that person must want to have sex.
Not only does arousal not necessarily mean that person wants to have sex, we also learned
today that their genitals acting that way might not even indicate arousal.
And the other way around too, that they might be aroused even if their genitals don’t
act like we expect them to.
So what does all this mean for us, my fellow consent explorers?
Well mostly it’s just something to keep in mind.
This reminds us to try not to make too many assumptions about what’s going on with our
sexual partners based only on what we can see.
We now know that especially if our partner has a vulva, their genital response or lack
thereof might say something very different from what they’re actually feeling, and,
even if they have a penis, the state of that penis might still not actually tell us what’s
going on.
So all of that is to say, if we want to know how aroused our partner is, we should probably
ask.
Your assignment this week is to reflect on how this has related to your own experiences.
Have you ever guessed about how aroused a partner was based on what their genitals were
doing?
Have you ever found out that your guess was wrong?
Has anyone ever made assumptions about your level of arousal based on your genitals that
turned out to be incorrect?
In any of these cases, what could you or someone else have said to clear up these misconceptions?
As always, let me know any of your thoughts down in the comments or you can email me at
everydayconsent@gmail.com.
Happy consenting, folks, see you next week!