"A Billion Wicked Thoughts": Completely Thoughtless

Photo: A Billion Wicked Thoughts

By DEMETRA HUFNAGEL

August 5, 2011

There are few things more irksome than scientists or researchers that claim to be exposing ‘new’ and ‘groundbreaking’ trends, when they’re simply rehashing established data in the form of a glossy book or paper (#researchscienceproblems).  But Dr. Ogi Ogas and Dr. Sai Gaddam, two neuroscientists from Boston University, have coupled this common methodology of pop-psychology with an infuriatingly simplistic sexual stance in their May release of A Billion Wicked Thoughts. Ogas and Gaddam claim to have “uncover[ed] the remarkable truth about what really turns people on” through their intensive studies based on internet search terms; they studied terms entered into Dogpile for one year, and now have ‘discovered’ the holy grail of sexual desire for men and women respectively. Wesley Yang of the New York Times reduces Ogas and Gaddam’s central thesis to a simple two sentences: “Men like pornography. Women like romance novels.”

Before I even begin to point out some of the problems that this argument implies it’s important to question the research methods involved. For one, online behavior does not necessarily reflect actual behavior (also, SRSLY, who still uses Dogpile?). While Ogas and Gaddam claim that it’s the anonymity available on the internet that lends authenticity to the results of their study—i.e. we expose our true selves and our true desires when we are anonymous—it can also be argued that online behavior isn’t strictly correlative with real-world actions. There is a significant difference between entering some words in a search bar for a plethora of reasons unknown to a third-party observer or an algorithm and actually being aroused by or positively interested in the subject matter. Furthermore, what about those individuals that do not watch pornography? Only 44 million Americans regularly watch pornography, leaving about another 267 million people’s sexual behaviors unstudied. How do these studies account for their sexual behaviors? They don’t. Perhaps unsurprisingly given these major flaws in research design, the study was conducted without Institutional Review Board guidance, which is often considered a fundamental legitimizing element of any study involving human subjects. Because Ogas and Gaddam did not accept federal funding for the project, they were exempt from stringent IRB requirements that regulate questions of professional ethics.

Now, back to the argument itself. Sorry to break it to you, Ogi and Sai, but isn’t this just the same stereotypical drivel that we all know? Ogas and Gaddam have repackaged age-old overly-reductive statements on human sexuality in fresh binding with words like “computational neuroscience” peppered throughout to make it seem as futuristic and progressive as Zenon: the Zequel.
Ogas and Gaddam largely focus on the idea that “men’s brains are designed to objectify females” due to evolutionary pressures to select a “fit” mate. Besides the fact that they use words like “female ornamentation” and ignore non-visual factors like smell—major histocompatibility complex anyone?—and the variety of other ways in which one can be “fit,” I’ll buy into this argument to an extremely limited extent, as long as it applies to heteronormative individuals (good going Ogas and Gaddam! You’ve totally excluded a significant portion of the population!). Precariously, Ogas and Gaddam don’t explain the ways in which the male brain is physically “designed” to objectify the female, leaving the reader to assume this has something to do with hormonal pathways, thereby presenting a pretty aggressive and myopic assertion with little recognition of the subtleties certainly involved. Sure, sexual selection and sexual attraction are in some ways objectifying for both parties, but to assume that these drives are the be all and end all, that they cannot be overridden by other factors and are overridden all the time is just false and kind of irresponsible science.

Ogas and Gaddam continue to theorize on what they have grossly called the “Miss Marple Detective Agency.” Men tend to have sexual responses to gender-specific sexual stimuli (e.g. straight men are generally not turned on by homosexual sex videos, or sex videos of other closely related species like bonobo monkeys) that match self-reporting of arousal. Women have a less gender-specific response (they often have increased genital blood flow when exposed to videos of gay, straight, or even bonobo sex) that often do not correlate with self-reports of arousal. Though many cultural explanations are possible for such a phenomenon—perhaps the ladies just don’t want to admit they enjoy watching bonobos get nasty—Ogas and Gaddam jump to a pretty shaky biological conclusion. Apparently, the explanation for this is that women must have a neurophysiologic structure that inhibits them from reaching arousal or acting upon such stimuli unless with an evolutionarily ‘fit’ partner, a “strong and decent man willing to invest in a stable, long-term, child-rearing relationship.” This safety mechanism is so lovingly termed “Miss Marple”—and here I really thought we had gotten past this whole something-must-be-floating-around-in-a-woman’s-brain-to-make-her-act-in-such-misunderstood-ways thing. I’m pretty sure “Miss Marple” is basically the same thing as Anti-Hysteria, like the evil-twin of your uterus bouncing around in your headspace reminding you to stay chaste if he isn’t going to put a ring on it. This totally makes sense if we completely ignore almost every nuance involved in sex. Let’s just forget about queer women, women that engage in casual sex, women that don’t need to be with some sort of ubermensch Fabio before they’re satisfied and in fact prefer a quiet or nontraditionally ‘masculine’ partner, women that knowingly fuck noncommittal twits time and time again, and the fact that women could be excited by something but not actually want to engage in sex… or maybe this “Miss Marple” has loosened up her granny panties for the 21st century.

Ogas and Gaddam continue to propose, without adequate support, theories that in today’s sexual and political climate are frankly dangerous and insulting. Despite the fact that about one-third of all Internet pornography users are women who enjoy a variety of fantasies, the authors claim that it is romance novels and steamy fan-fiction that primarily cater to female sexuality, specifically the female desire to submit to a dominant and providing man. Moreover, men that enjoy submissive pornography must be keying into the “female software” of the brain that incites such desires. As Yang highlights, how can neurological “software” be gendered if it can and does belong to both sexes? There is no explanation of what this “software” even really is (pretty sure they missed the memo on materialism), and depressingly little discussion of how nurturing and cultural influence play into sexual development. Clearly, Ogas and Gaddam don’t know enough about female “desire” to tell that right about now the only thing I want to do is kick them in the balls.

In, perhaps the worst of it all, Ogas and Gaddam characterize the use of pornography as beyond reproach in today’s age due to its increasingly common use; obviously things that are embraced by the populace are without fail good for us, look at the medical wonders of cigarettes! Being a sex-positive (and, for the Dan Savage fans out there, GGG) feminist, I don’t find pornography to be inherently bad. Yet like every aspect of human life, porn, specifically the roots of the desires and fetishes that porn indulges, deserves questioning and study. But Ogas and Gaddam’s understanding of such paraphilias and fantasies ironically lack any true cognitive processing. They ignore the rampant abuse and exploitation promoted by the sex industry, they ignore the meaning behind certain fetishes and their implications (hellooo, gonzo porn anyone? Or is violence against women just a-okay if it’s just a fantasy?), they ignore the complications that pornography use in relationships can cause, and most infuriatingly, they completely ignore the fact that porn is NOT a reflection of real human sexual interaction. According to Ogas and Gaddam, porn allows for the desires of men and women to be satisfied, effectively killing two birds with one stone: “women are satisfying their own psychological cue of irresistibility, the exhibitionist desire to be desired… Men, on the other hand, are very willing to pay to see such authentic, novel expressions of female sexual pleasure. Everybody’s happy.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s only the (straight?) women in the porn industry that “win” by this argument right? Because last time I checked, when I see a naked lady moaning and bouncing on a guy’s loins, I don’t get a feeling of “irresistibility” by some universal transitive porn property. Also, can we all just have a moment of collective laughter at the HUGE FARCE of porn that they’re trying to pass off as “authentic” and “novel” sexual expression? Either these dudes have never seen porn, or they’ve never had sex.

Frankly, unless you want to be super pissed off and spend the rest of your week listening to Bikini Kill and sneering at people like you’re the next Brody Dalle, I’d suggest skipping this one. It feels more like Ogas and Gaddam are trying to legitimize their own behaviors and interests, while making names for themselves as provocative mavericks in the world of pop-sex-psychology, than truly exposing anything “authentic” or “novel.”

Demetra Hufnagel is a sophomore at Yale College. She is an Associate Editor for Broad Recognition.