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What Do Women Want__ Adventures in the Science of Female Desire
Journalist Daniel Bergner surveys a wave of new sexology research to argue that female desire is far more powerful, animal, and ill-suited to monogamy than culture and evolutionary psychology have long insisted.
A profile of this book is on the way.
What it’s about
What Do Women Want? takes readers inside the labs, animal observatories, and therapy rooms of a 'gathering critical mass' of scientists probing female desire—Meredith Chivers with her plethysmograph, Kim Wallen with his rhesus monkeys, Jim Pfaus with his rats, Marta Meana with her eye-tracker, and drug developers chasing a 'female Viagra.' Weaving these studies together with the candid voices of ordinary women, Bergner dismantles the comforting cultural fable that women are naturally the more restrained, relationship-driven, monogamy-suited sex. Instead he assembles evidence that women's genital arousal is startlingly indiscriminate and often at odds with what they consciously report, that emotional safety may dampen rather than fuel lust, that being desired is central to female eros, and that long-term monogamy frequently corrodes women's wanting. Provocative, humane, and scrupulous about what remains unknown, the book reframes female sexuality as an underestimated, constrained animal force.
The through-line
- Who it’s for
- A curious reader—often a woman puzzled by her own waning or unruly desire, or anyone wanting an honest account of female sexuality—who wants to understand what women really want.
- The problem
- The prevailing story about female desire (restrained, relationship-driven, monogamy-suited) doesn't match measured reality or lived experience. They feel confused, ashamed, or defective when their own desire diverges from cultural expectations.
- The plan
- Follow the scientists into their labs to see how desire is actually measured.
- Confront the gap between women's genital and reported arousal.
- Reexamine the historical and evolutionary myths that shaped beliefs about female eros.
- Reconsider intimacy, novelty, narcissism, and monogamy as forces in desire.
- Hold both new evidence and enduring uncertainty honestly.
- The payoff
- A more honest, less shame-bound understanding of female sexuality. · Freedom from the fairy tale that women are naturally tame or made for monogamy. · Compassion for the mismatch between desire and long-term partnership.
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Additional reading
- The Woman That Never Evolved · Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
A foundational text by a primatologist arguing that female primates, our ancestors, evolved to be sexually assertive and promiscuous for reproductive advantage, directly challenging the idea of innate female passivity and monogamy.
- The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating · David M. Buss
Represents the mainstream evolutionary psychology view that the book frequently critiques, arguing for innate sex differences where men are wired for promiscuity and women for choosiness and long-term investment.
- Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud · Thomas Laqueur
Provides historical context on how Western culture has perceived female sexuality, showing how ideas about women's bodies and desires have shifted dramatically over time, supporting the book's emphasis on cultural influence.
- The Science of Orgasm · Barry R. Komisaruk, Carlos Beyer-Flores, & Beverly Whipple
Details the neurological and physiological research on female orgasm, including the controversial existence of the G-spot and different orgasmic pathways, which the book explores in its discussion of the complexities of female pleasure.