Revisiting Sexual Stereotypes

Men's desire is supposedly:
initiative, assertive, physical, competitive, genitally-oriented, quick to arouse, seeking sex, and focused on performance,
while women's desire is supposedly:
receptive, submissive, emotional, cooperative, whole-body oriented, slow to arouse, seeking love, and focused on connection.

These ideas are so ingrained in our social fabric that many people take them for granted. While they may be true some of the time for some people, they are not necessarily true all of the time for all people. When men or women have fantasies and/or desires that do not fall into the correct category for whatever gender we happen to be, our first instinct is to make them wrong, to dissociate from them and pretend they're not there, or even to put them down when we see them in other people.

I would argue that both men and women experience an amalgam of the above traits, at different points in time, even at different ages. The purpose of bringing this to your awareness is so that you can start to ask yourself where in your life you buy into these stereotypes, and therefore where you are limiting your sexual imagination. Do you suppress your desire to be tied up and ravished by a woman because you think it will mean you will be less of a man? If you are a woman, do you get uncomfortable if your male partner asks you to dominate him because you think being assertive sexually is unnatural for a woman?

Just something to think about...