BBC World News reported this morning (on Chicago Public Radio) on a British Psychological Society report that nine of ten British women still think sex should have an emotional component. This raised concerns about "whether women have really gained the sexual freedom they are supposed to have enjoyed since the 1960s." "The results," researcher Dr Hinchcliff observed with apparent perplexity, "did not fit in with images of today's independent woman who can go out and get sexual fulfilment without the ties of a relationship."
You can go to the story yourself (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4863770.stm) if you're having a hard time believing your eyes. The study didn't seem interested in men's opinions, but the assumption underlying Hinchcliff''s comments seems to be that men have already figured out how to act like animals.
What strikes me as most interesting is how open Hinchcliff is. Of course all science has its biases, but few are honest enough to admit to them. But if science is descriptive, then why should the results of this study worry anyone? If nine of ten women want emotional involvement in a sexual relationship, then it seems psychology has to work with instead of against that desire. Shoot, there may even be something to it. The radio story included comments by an author who wasn't particularly worried, figuring that sexual fulfillment might be about more than drive reduction. In Ulysses, Bloom addresses a woman as "the link between nations and generations...sacred lifegiver." Such appellation is becoming impossible in a world that, despite the warnings of C. S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley, Graham Greene, Flannery O'Connor, et al., seems intent on pursuing instinct over intimacy and hedonism over humanity.
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