Mary Roach: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Quote: Originally Posted by keenhumor seriously, this woman is not old! She's sexy!! :P Except, do you think, in the sack, she ever stops talking?

Quote: Originally Posted by samtheman Why is it that the people that study sexual coupling always tend to be on the older side, if not extremely older side? Why aren't there 'sex scientists' in their young 30s? @samtheman: A reasonable question about a muddled discipline. There might be several reasons for age bias. As John Johnson suggested above, one reason is the way the academic 'research' hierarchy is structured to favor the tenured and those with strong grant-acquisition and publication track records. In other words, people who are paid to live in their heads. It takes years to gain job security, develop standing, and internalize the biases of funding sources. More germane is our cultural bias about the academy itself. Are intellectualizers really best qualified to objectify and explain human sexuality? Unfortunately, the incentives that drive this milieu fragment and skew its premises, priorities, and conclusions. They tend to valorize statistical significance and professional status over unquantifiable body-centered experience. Could another reason be that it's only when you're older than 35 or 40 that you start to understand that life and especially sex are best when they're not all about the ephemeral 'self'? To understand anything requires being able to step back far enough into at least quasi-objectivity to be able to empathize with other beings. That requires abandoning the protracted juvenile subjectivity that our MSM consumer cultures are obliged to cultivate. And honestly, how much credibility would a study have if carried out by twenty-somethings who had not yet themselves sampled the unimaginable dimensions of sex with partners in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond? If someone suffered from a mysterious, incapacitating ailment, who would take a 28-year-old specialist fresh from a residency over a 48-year-old with 20 years of clinical field experience? It's not the age of 'sex scientists' that we should call into question. It's their imputed stature as disinterested, unbiased, and authoritative experts. In fact, they are co-opted middle-class contemplatives who are much better suited to pondering organs than orgasms and orgies.

seriously, this woman is not old! She's sexy!! :P

I got say, the preview has got me hooked.

She just wanted you licking her feet. The story of the orgasm was just an incentive for you, my fool friend !

I will add that what she says about women is the truth. I dated a woman that really liked to have an orgasm by me licking her foot. The trouble was, it wasn't always the the same foot let alone the same spot. I guess it was kind of fun to try and find this spot when we made love.

Mary Roach is hot

@samtheman: The most probable reason why those in their young 30's "aren't studying sex" is that within the ecosystem of scientific research, it is only the established scientists with tenure and extensive grant writing experience (i.e. 'old' people) who are capable of forming and leading such projects without excessive risk to future career or funding. No doubt, even though they are not named, there are younger researchers behind the scenes in the labs of all of the main sex research personalities. After paying their dues, they'll be lead investigators eventually, though that traditionally isn't until they are more advanced in age.

Hmmm, maybe we should get off of our SSRI's and start brushing our teeth more...

I don't know why someone would find it odd that a woman would be averred from having an orgasm or small "seizure" in her brain every time she brushes her teeth.