[applause]
>>Ogi Ogas: Thank you. Shannon told me before
that you guys have these talks to get exposed
to new kinds of learning outside your core
competency and this is probably about as far
outside your core competency --
[laughter]
as you're gonna get.
So I'm gonna give a talk today about a theory
about sexual desire that we describe in our
book A Billion Wicked Thoughts written by
me and my co-author Sai Gaddam, he lives in
India so that's why he's not here with me
today.
So I'm gonna talk about our theory of sexual
desire.
I've always thought the best and most useful
scientific theories are ones that explain
diverse phenomena using a single simple theory.
For example, atomic theory can explain why
copper is heavier than helium and it also
can explain why copper conducts electricity
better than helium. This is why atomic theory's
so powerful it explains a diverse phenomena
of electrical conductance in mass than a single
theory.
So I'm gonna try to do the same thing today
with our theory and show how our theory of
sexual desire explains what are the most popular
erotic interests for women and what are the
most popular erotic interests for men.
And this is what we're gonna use --
[laughter]
one of the most popular erotic interests for
women is Edward Cullen, the vampire from the
Twilight series of novels by Stephenie Meyer
also in the movies. I have the text behind
to emphasis that he's a textual character,
a fictional character.
And I'm also gonna explain one of the most
erotic, most popular erotic interests for
men which is Shemale Porn. You may or may
not be surprised to hear that Shemale Porn
is one of the most popular kinds of erotica
for heterosexual men all around the world,
in every country in the world. And it's favored
by heterosexual men not gay men, gay men are
not very interested at all in Shemale Porn.
Some bisexual men are interested, but it's
definitely dominated by heterosexual men.
So we're gonna explain today how our theory
shows, explains why heterosexual women like
Edward Cullen and why heterosexual men like
Shemale porn. And at the end you can tell
me if I was successful in persuading you or
not.
[laughter]
So who are we and what did we do? We are both,
I and my collaborator are both computational
neuroscientists which means we view the mind
as software. Researchers in our field try
to figure out the brain software behind higher
functions of the brain like language, memory,
and vision.
But we thought we would use the techniques
and methods of computational neuroscience
to try to figure out a lower function of the
brain, sexual desire, which is something none
of our colleagues had taken a look at yet
mainly because it is controversial and political
nature.
And so we set out to try to figure out okay
what's the most basic software of the sexual
brain in terms of how it processes sexual
desire. To do so we needed data and we immediately
realized there is a vast, untapped source
of data about everyday people's sexual behaviors
and this is the Internet. It turns out that
nobody in the field of sex research had turned
to the Internet yet and tried to use it to
understand people's sexual interests and sexual
behaviors.
So we decided to use online data and combine
that from findings of neuroscience, animal
studies, psychology experiments, evolutionary
theory, combine all these together to try
to come up with a model of sexual desire in
men and women's brains.
And you might be surprised to hear that the
only systematic study by scientists of people's
sexual desires was done more than a half century
ago that's Alfred Kinsey his famous or notorious
Kinsey Reports. He surveyed about 18,000 people
mainly middle aged Caucasians in the American
Northeast and asked them face to face about
their sexual interests. And this is the only
systematic scientific attempt to try to figure
out what do men and women actually like, what
actually turns on men and women.
And as you can imagine most people are not
very comfortable sharing their most intimate
private sexual details with a stranger, so
until now the only data we've had on what
men and women have liked has been survey data.
So online data finally give us an opportunity
to see what people really are doing behind
the anonymity of their laptops and desktops.
[laughter]
And many of you here who are engineers probably
already have a very good sense of it.
[laughter]
So we tried to gather as much online data
as we could that would reveal something about
people's sexual behaviors.
So gathered Web searches, search histories,
we downloaded a million erotic stories, a
half million erotic videos, we looked at online
personal ads. OkCupid the online dating site
shared data on about six million users, but
that's all anonymous data.
A couple, more than a couple, a number of
porn sites were kind enough to share some
of their internal data with us. For example,
Porn hub which is, I don't know if it is at
this moment, but it's been the most popular
adult video site in the world, they shared
some of their internal data.
One of the most popular porn sites for women
shared, Sssh.com, shared their data. So we
gathered all kinds of data, as much as we
could we looked at Website traffic, porn site
subscriptions, the biggest billing company
for the porn industry, CCBill, shared some
data with us.
So we tried to gather as much different kind
of online data that we could all to try to
figure out what do men and women really like.
[pause]
So as a result of our research we realized
that there's something pretty profound about
the basic way that sexual desire works in
the brain.
So we're all born with a finite hardwired
set of taste cues: sweet, salty, savory, bitter,
and sour we're all born with each of these
senses of taste. It's a neural subsystem and
it also has its own evolutionary function.
For example, we all have a taste for sweetness,
sweetness detects sugar in our food, and sugar
is our source of energy. So there's a neural
subsystem supporting that sense of sweetness
and the reason we like things that are sweet
sweet is because it helps us identify if there's
energy in our food.
It turns out, in analogous fashion, that we're
all born with hardwired sexual cues. But unlike
taste cues men and women share the same taste
cues, men and women's sense of sweetness for
example is pretty much the same. But men and
women's sexual cues are very different. It's
almost as if you gave a man and a woman a
peanut brittle and the man might report a
sense of a taste of saltiness and the women
might report a taste of sweetness. Men and
women respond to the same stimulus in different
ways because they have different cues.
So our goal in our research was to try to
identify the full range of biological cues,
and of course some biological cues are heavily
shaped by culture, but to identify the full
range of biological sexual cues in men and
women.
[pause]
So let me tell you in just a quick overview
of the differences between male and female
cues. Male sexual cues are primarily visual
, that should come as no surprise to most
people. Female sexual cues are primarily emotional
and psychological. Now men do have psychological
cues but the men's psychological cues are
usually quite different than women's psychological
cues. Another basic difference is most male
sexual cues are external, they respond to
what their partner is doing or what their
partner looks like.
Female sexual cues are both external, responding
to the partner, but internal, they also have
some internal cues. For example a woman's
feeling of safety, if she's hungry, if she
feels desired. Internal feelings and internal
physical states affect female sexual arousal,
but very rarely and to a very low extent affect
male sexual arousal.
So let me describe some, give you some particular
examples of male sexual cues, I'm not gonna
run through the whole range right now.
Some of the most common and prevalent sexual
cues for men are anatomical cues, parts of
the body. And what we found from our research
is that there are four parts of the body that
men are interested in universally, in every
country we looked at including preliterate,
unwired countries as well. Four body parts
that all heterosexual men are interested in
it's breasts, butts, feet, and the fourth
body part was a big surprise to us, something
we completely didn't anticipate. It turns
out the fourth body part that heterosexual
men are very interested in looking at is the
penis.
[laughter]
Is that bizarre? We had that reaction at first
as well.
[laughter]
But the data is pretty overwhelming in this.
So men's search for penises almost as often
as they search for vaginas.
If you look at all of the top porn tube sites,
these are pornographic sites that are knockoffs
of Youtube, they always have a category for
large penis porn. We looked at the top 35,000
most popular adult sites in the world and
a thousand of those 35,000 were devoted to
large penises, heterosexual sites with large
penises, devoted to men.
Eye tracking studies they showed images of
clothed men and clothed women to men and women,
the men look at the crotch of the men much
more often than the women do. Men are interested
in penises, especially large penises.
[laughter]
Women are not so interested in the penis --
[laughter]
and as Congressman Weiner's recent scandal
--
[laughter]
We looked at romance novels and erotic stories.
In romance novels, even erotic romance novels,
the penis is rarely just described and when
it is described it's usually described in
emotional terms rarely in physical terms.
When men write erotic stories they always
spend lavish detail describing the penis --
[laughter]
to the nearest half inch, to the nearest quarter
inch --
[laughter]
the length, the girth, the veins, all of it.
In male written erotica you'll get every detail
about what the penis looks like. In female
erotica rarely is much attention paid to it.
But we did find one exception in romance novels,
which I wasn't familiar with 'til I started
this research, when women describe penises
in romance novels they often describe it in
terms of the blood, which to me as a man was
very strange. The blood coursed through is
penis, the blood rocketed to his penis, his
penis surged with blood. Men do not think
about their penis in terms of the blood inside
it, but evidently in romance novels blood
dominates descriptions of the penis.
So these are four body parts, anatomical cues
that seem to be, men seem to have a predisposition,
a biological predisposition to pay attention
to these.
It's also interesting, we looked at gay porn
and gay erotica as well and gay sexuality,
it turns out for gay men these same four body
parts are just as interesting to gay men.
So all gay men universally are interested
in the chests, butts, feet, and, of course,
penises as well. So the male sexual brain,
gay or straight, seems to be interested in
these four particular body parts. And if we
have time afterwards I can explain why it
is that these four particular body parts are
so interesting to men.
>>male #1: Where is the vagina in the top
ten?
[laughter]
>>Ogi Ogas: The vagina's interesting but we
had trouble analyzing with the same specificity
for two reasons. One is that the most common
word for vagina, pussy, is also slang for
a woman in general, so it's hard to distinguish
when a man's searching for hot pussy if he's
searching for that particular body part or
for women in general.
And also all pornography shows the vagina
in some form, close up or not, so it's very
hard to distinguish, take that out and to
identify is a man specifically interested
just in the vagina or something else. So it's
hard to gauge exactly the popularity of that.
So that may be the most popular we can't say.
But the order of popularity if you're curious:
breasts are most popular, then penis, then
butts, then feet. Vagina's in there somewhere,
probably near the top, but it's very hard
to tease apart and that's interesting that
is an anatomical part.
So penis and male cues.
Let me talk about some female cues now. And
again I'm not gonna cover them all just a
few to give you a sense of it.
Perhaps the most prominent and common female
sexual cue is the confidence of the man: a
man's social confidence, his leadership, his
dominance; alpha males are very popular in
romance novels. In fact if you analyze the
incidence of heroes in romance novels the
ten most popular heroes in romance novels
are all alpha males: kings, princes, doctors,
sheriffs, generals, knights; all confident,
strong leaders.
Another sexual cue for women is a man's competence:
his skills, his ability to get things done.
For men not so important; whether the woman's
a waitress or the CEO of Google --
[laughter]
It doesn't make much difference in terms of
sexual arousal. But when a man's a waiter
or the CEO of Google it does make a difference
to many women's sexual attraction to him.
Another fundamental difference between male
and female cues. For men going on to online
erotic sites is a solitary enterprise. Men
don't typically talk about their erotic experiences
online with other men. And if they hear about
their friends' interests online that does
not influence what they look at, what they're
interested in. Knowing that your buddy likes
porn stars, Jenna Jameson or Stoya will not
influence your opinion of whether they're
attractive or not.
This is not the case with women, women are
influenced by the opinions of other women.
Women seek out the opinions of other women
in erotic content, in erotic opinions as well
as relationship opinions of course.
The most popular erotic community for women
online is the FanFiction Community. If you're
not familiar with FanFiction this is an online
community. It did exist before the Internet
but it absolutely exploded on the Internet.
This community's dominated by women and it
consists of amateur authors who write stories
about popular books, characters in popular
books, movies, and TV shows. For example the
most popular kind of FanFiction is Harry Potter
FanFiction followed close behind by Twilight.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer used to be one of
the most popular fandoms in FanFiction, The
Lord of the Rings, just about any TV show,
movie, book, even there's FanFiction about
bands, about professional wrestlers, just
about anything, but dominated heavily by books.
So in the FanFiction community women write
stories about the characters or the settings
of these fandoms . It's not always romantic
or erotic but the vast majority of the stories
in FanFiction are romantic and erotic.
So an amateur woman, will write a story, post
it online, and then there'll be discussion;
people comment on the story, they talk about
it, they talk about what turned them on in
the story, whether the story was authentic
or not, whether the emotions were authentic
or not, the characters are valid, and the
talking goes back and forth, long dialogs
hundreds and hundreds of comments about stories.
And in fact there's even a part of FanFiction
called Meta which is talking about the process
of talking about the stories.
[laughter]
So for women, erotica is a social enterprise;
for men it's a solitary enterprise.
[pause]
And women respond to other women's opinion
of a guy. The more women that are attracted
to a man increases the attraction of that
man. So the phrase, "The best men are always
taken," is doubly true. If a man is taken
by definition he's more attractive and appealing;
if a man's alone and isolated and solitary
and nobody's interested in him that will reduce
his appeal just by virtue of not being taken.
So, let me think if there's any other female
sexual cues I should cover. That's probably
good enough now. I can talk more, add some
more later.
So these are some of the cues there's many
more.
Let me talk about how the differences between
the male and female brain process these cues.
So the male sexual brain responds to any single
sexual stimulus. If a computer engineer was
designing the male sexual brain ?
[laughter]
he would use an or-gate
[laughter]
because any single stimulus will turn on a
man whether he sees a nice chest or sexy,
older woman walking by, or if he's a fan of
BBW or BW images; any single stimulus will
trigger arousal.
The female sexual brain does not work that
way. The female sexual brain if it was designed
by a computer engineer would be and-gate.
The female sexual brain requires multiple
stimuli simultaneously or in quick succession
before arousal is triggered.
Another fundamental difference between the
male sexual brain and the female sexual brain:
the male sexual brain's physical arousal and
psychological arousal are united. So if a
man is physically turned on it's a pretty
safe bet he's mentally turned on as well.
Not the case in women. The female brain is
designed to separate physical arousal and
psychological arousal. So a woman can be physically
turned on but mentally turned off which is
something that many men find a bit baffling,
but it's a common phenomenon.
So this evolved over time apparently to help
protect women from cruel, sneaky, and incompetent
men [audience chuckles] that they've been
faced with over the eons.
So these are two basic differences between
the male and female sexual brain the way they
process the cues: the male sexual brain is
or gate , the female sexual brain is and gate
[ ]; the male sexual brain psychological and
physical arousal are linked; they're detached
in the female sexual brain harder to get them,
takes more work to get them to come together
in the female brain than in the male brain.
So these are some of the basic elements of
our cue theory of sexual desire.
Now I wanna take what we've learned to apply
it to Edward Cullen and Shemale Porn.
[pause]
So the reason cue theory can explain both
Edward Cullen and Shemale Porn is that they're
both examples of erotical illusions, what
we call erotical illusions. Let me explain
to you what an erotical illusion is. Computational
neuroscientists love to analyze optical illusions
and these are two optical illusions that in
my department we analyzed or spent a lot of
time trying to figure out because optical
illusions reveal the software of visual perception.
Optical illusion the whole is greater than
the sum of the parts so like the one on the
left that's called an Ehrenstein disc, you
see a brighter white disc, the bright white
button in the center. Here you see an illusory
triangle. The triangle seems to pop out. So
these I think, these are inputs that are tricking
the brain into seeing things that aren't quite
there.
And there's another one ?
[pause]
nothing is moving but if you stare at it it
looks like things along the periphery are
moving. This is tricking the movement perception,
the movement software, movement perception
software of the visual cortex.
And these work by combining different visual
cues in novel ways, different geometric and
color cues, in novel combinations in ways
that kind of trick out the software designed
for visual perception.
The most --
[pause]
that's Mona Lisa, very dim unfortunately.
The most popular of optical illusion in all
of art is probably Mona Lisa's smile which
you can't see too well here; Mona Lisa's smile
famous for being enigmatic, mysterious. And
the reason it's so bewitching and enigmatic
is because Leonardo da Vinci painted it an
optical illusion. It was first figured out
by Margaret Livingstone she's a computational
neuroscientist at Harvard.
So our brain processes high resolution information
separately from low resolution information,
there's two separate circuits. In our fovea
in the center of our retina we process high
resolution information and that gets sent
down one circuit, in the periphery of our
vision we process low resolution information.
So if you look at the mouth of Mona Lisa,
if you look directly at the mouth it seems
calm and tranquil, but as soon as you look
away to her forehead and eyes, I'm sorry this
is not brighter, as soon as you look away
from the mouth it looks like she's smiling
and teasing. And the reason is Leonardo da
Vinci painted it so the high resolution version
of her mouth is flat, her mouth is almost
a horizontal line, but the low resolution
goes up to the cheekbones and it's kind of
grin like the Joker in Batman, very strong
grin.
So the brain's simultaneously processing these
in different streams in the brain; one stream
is saying it's smiling, one stream's saying
it's not and that gives it this magical, enigmatic
quality. Again it's by combining two separate
visual cues in this new way kind of tricks
the brain.
So that's something very similar to what's
happening with the sexual brain with an erotical
illusion. An erotical illusion combines different
sexual cues in new combinations to trick out
the sexual brain.
So let me talk about Shemale Porn. Again this
is very popular among heterosexual men; gay
men are not interested in Shemale Porn. This
was a surprise, when we went into this we
had no idea that Shemale Porn was going to
be so popular. Obviously this is something
that men aren't comfortable talking about
but the data is quite overwhelming about that
this is universally popular, immensely popular.
So why are straight men so interested in Shemale
Porn? And this actually has clinical implications
too. I've been talking with sex therapists
as a result of our research, and sex therapists
have had no idea what an interest in this
meant. One of the fears that wives of men
had when they discovered this on their husbands'
browsers was that maybe their husband's gay.
And the clinicians had no idea of that was
true or not and no way to think about it so
we think the answer is no, there's nothing
gay about liking Shemale Porn; it's an erotical
illusion. It combines the female anatomical
cues that we talked about breasts, butt, feet,
all the curves of a female body with the other
cue of a penis. [audience giggles] Which we
now see the penis is a cue that triggers sexual
interest in men and it combines them into
a single gestalt. If you talk to fans of Shemale
Porn they usually say something like, "Oh
she's very beautiful, she's very lovely, and
there's an extra something that just pops
out of my brain and
[laughter]
I can't really describe it."
[laughter]
And there's always a sense of the inexplicable
when they talk about it.
[laughter]
"There's something magical and strange, I
don't really know what's going on." It's very
similar to the way people talk about the Mona
Lisa's smile and about optical illusions too.
There's just a sense that there's something
that they can't quite put their finger on
even though there is something that they definitely
can put their finger on.
[laughter]
We know that this is a visual tricking of
the brain and not something more psychological
because as we even see here at first it was
all actual transsexual Shemale Porn consisted
all of transsexual and oh I should say please
don't call your transsexual friends Shemales.
Shemale's a derogatory term, it implies that
you're working in the sex industry. So Shemale's
a standard term within the adult industry
but you shouldn't use that with any transsexual
friend that does not work in the adult industry.
Shemale Porn was originally all human transsexuals,
live transsexuals but eventually erotic artists
started drawing transsexuals, started drawing
Shemales and that made it very clear exactly
what men were interested in because the art
was exactly all of the female, all of the
sexual cues for men that they find arousing:
young women, busty, small feet, butts. Here's
some more erotic Shemale art, hard to see
but that might not be so bad.
[laughter]
Young women, high school girls in school outfits
a lot like anime but always with a very large
package down below, the specific visual elements
that arouse a man. In fact pornographers have
recently learned that they don't even need
to use actual transsexuals. What they've done
now is they use women, usually buxom women,
and have them wear very realistic strap on
penises. And then there's websites devoted
to this, there's one site called futanari.com,
that was the first to do this and became very
popular.
So by having real women with realistic but
fake penises they don't have to get actual
transsexuals to do it, but men are still interested
showing that there's not some underlying psychological
thing going on, it's just pure visual trickery
of the male sexual brain.
So what's interesting about erotical illusions
is an erotical illusion for a man does not
work on women, and erotical illusions for
women does not work on men. So imagine for
a second the opposite of the Shemale, maybe
a man with a bald head, big muscles, tats
all over, a cigar, and a vagina. So --
[laughter]
there is such a [ inaudible ] hard to see.
This is Buck Angel the most popular and perhaps
the only porn star who is a female to male
transsexual. It's hard to see but he does
have muscles, tats all over his body, he's
smoking a cigar, he's got bald head, a beard,
and he still has his vagina.
So heterosexual women do not show sexual interest
in Buck Angel. There is a group of people
that are very sexually interested in Buck
Angel and that's gay men which is what we
would predict from cue theory. Gay men are
interested in Buck Angel, heterosexual women
aren't. There may be some out there, we did
a brief survey and weren't able to come up
with any in the traffic to Buck Angel sites
there was no women visiting Buck Angels porn
sites.
So let's look at the erotical illusion for
women. Andrew Cullen is a vampire, he's a
vampire in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series
of novels.
Over the past decade paranormal romance, as
a sub-genre of romance novels, has just exploded.
It's the most popular kind of romance novels
now, paranormal romance, dominated by authors
like Stephenie Meyer, Laurell Hamilton, Charlaine
Harris who wrote the series of True Blood
based upon J.R. Ward; many, many authors,
many books about paranormal romance. They
feature heroes who are supernatural: vampires,
werewolves, wizards, things like that.
Definitely the king of paranormal romance
is the character Edward Cullen. So he is an
erotical illusion, a female erotical illusion
'cause he combines a number of different female
psychological cues into this novel concoction.
For example, he's 100 years old so he's experienced,
he's confident, he's competent but he's in
the body of a hot teenager. So he combines
the experience and maturity which men are
attracted to with a hot young body. All the
girls at the high school where he goes are
very interested in him but he shows no, he
pays no attention to all the girls at high
school, he only pays attention the heroine
of the series, Bella. He is the ultimate alpha
male. Whenever human boys, near-human boys,
bully his girlfriend, Bella, he can swoop
in, literally swoop in, --
[laughter]
and beat the crap out of all of them without
breaking a sweat. In fact he is also an alpha
among alphas because he is pretty dominant
among other vampires as well. So he's an ultimate
alpha male.
[pause]
There's a few more. The great thing about
paranormal romance and the reason it's exploded
in my opinion is because it allows female
authors to manipulate all these cues in new
ways to exaggerate certain qualities. Oh and
another really important one.
So Edward Cullen lusts after Bella with a
powerful desire because he lusts after her
blood. He's a vampire, he wants to drink her
blood so he's got this powerful, overwhelming
attraction to her, but he proves his love
to her by never giving in to it. So it's almost
an adolescent, female fantasy because he's
always desiring her, endlessly, powerfully
desiring but he always holds off. So it's
endless desire without consummation. To point
out people think that it's just adolescents
interested in this; no women 20's, 30's, 40's,
we saw many women in their mid to late 40's
who are just absolutely sexually obsessed
with Edward Cullen. So it's not just something
that appeals to younger women.
[pause]
The reverse of this is not true. Men are not
interested, for the most part, in Twilight
novels or similar novels and romantic, erotic
stories about female vampires, there isn't
any that has broken out among men. Men don't
find this particularly interesting.
So there's many, many other erotical illusions,
I'll just mention a few that people often
wanna hear about.
Facials. Facials, which women for the most
part find disgusting. We know that from, we
talked to some of the female erotic sites
and they always have surveys about what women
wanna see in erotic videos and facials is
always at the very bottom of the list; for
men it's usually at the top of the list. Why
are men interested in it? It's an erotical
illusion. It combines psychological cues with
visual cues in ways that aren't possible with
any other place. They're almost like emoticons
expressing emotion, having emotional connection
with the visual moment.
Another, this is a Humantauria, another erotical
illusion for men. This one's not so common
but it kind of reveals the nature of sort
of erotic trickery.
Another erotical illusion for women is Slash
fiction. Slash is a sub-genre, I shouldn't
even say sub-genre 'cause it's just about
as big as Fanfiction, the parts of FanFiction
that aren't Slash.
Slash fiction are stories about two men, usually
two strong, dominant, masculine men who share
their emotional side with each other, fall
in love, and have sex; not always have sex,
having the emotional sharing is the important
part just like it is in a romance novel.
Here's a representation of Slash Edward Cullen
the vampire and Jacob Black the werewolf from
Twilight a very popular pairing within Slash
fiction.
This is erotical illusion for women; it combines,
the reason women read romance novels is because
their stories of men revealing their tender
side, their emotional side of strong dominant
revealing the tender side. So this just basically
doubles up all the cues; this is analogous
to men like looking at lesbian porn, two women
making out and kissing regardless of their
personality and character.
In Slash fiction, the emotions of the two
men, the revealing of emotion of sharing their
secret parts with each other, that's always
the focus. The sex is in there too, sometimes,
depending on the author, but it's always the
emotional connection; Slash is very emotional.
You'd never make, mistake Slash fiction for
erotica written by a gay man.
So these are some erotical illusions and one
thing worth considering is just how different
these are, just how different Edward Cullen
is from Shemale Porn or the Humantauria is
from Slash fiction.
The male and female sexual brain, down at
the most basic operation we're talking, of
course, now just its fundamental level not
talking about sexual relationships which are
far more complex and complicated, but just
at the basic level of how our sexual brains
work. The male and the female brain are very,
very different.
[pause]
And that's it.
[applause]
>>male #2: So I'm curious about, so for example
you said that let's say the Shemale Porn was
of interest to heterosexual men. How can you
tell that from the kind of data that you were
able to collect?
>>Ogi Ogas: Sure.
>>male #2: Billing data or whatever?
>>Ogi Ogas: So the most common way is we talked
to people that run Shemale sites and we talked
to Shemale porn stars and they say their fans
are heterosexual men from interacting with
them.
There was actually an academic study that
went into a Shemale bar in Chicago and interviewed
the men there to ask their sexual preference
and I think about 70 percent were straight
men and 30 percent were bisexuals and there
were no gay men at the bar.
Also from search histories, if you look at
search histories, people that search for Shemale
Porn either search for heterosexual stuff
in addition or bisexual stuff. There's not
any clear indication of somebody searching
for Shemale and gay porn. There is once in
a while but it's very rare compared to somebody
searching for Shemale Porn and hot teens for
example.
[pause]
>>male #3: So in these videos does Shemale
usually like attracting the male or attracting
the female? Does that have an effect on like
whether bi men watch it or straight men watch
it?
>>Ogi Ogas: There may. So we haven't, that's
something we haven't disentangled the point.
We mainly tried to look at just the images
themselves. But you're right there's some
Shemale Porn they're having sex with men,
some Shemale Porn they're having sex with
other Shemales. And who those different variations
appeal to we didn't look at that yet, but
probably bisexuals are probably interested
in the interaction. Whereas a lot of Shemale
erotica now is just images like those images
I showed you so I would speculate that you
can see a difference between what straight
men and bisexual men are interested in but
we don't know.
>>female #1: Do you have anything like cultural
studies like where [inaudible] --
>>Ogi Ogas: Yes.
>>female #1: and then like also if you looked
at a lot of Asians, like Asian idols are a
really big thing?
>>Ogi Ogas: Yes.
>>female #1: If you look at their idols and
all the guys they're really [inaudible] ?
>>Ogi Ogas: Yes. So I wanna talk about Japan.
The important thing about Japan is so Internet
came up there was erotic art from all around
the world and Japanese erotic art has just
dominated the Internet because in our opinion
they do the basic visual cues that interest
men the best. An anime girl, young, busty,
round butts, curvy, small feet, high pitched
voice, all the biological cues that interest
men across cultures. We think that's why Japanese
anime has just crushed all other erotic art
and there's actually erotic art in just about
every country in the world, but only Japanese
erotic art rose to universal popularity.
Also another interesting cultural difference,
so I talked about the four body parts that
are universal: breasts, butt, feet, and penises
but depending on the culture other body parts
are also interesting. So in Japan, for example,
men are very interested in something called
the absolute territory which is a strip of
thigh here below a skirt and above a thigh
high stocking; was like the most popular fetish
for awhile, might still be, while we were
doing our research it was the most common
search absolute territory.
In India the belly, the stomach is an erogenous
zone; lots of searches for bellies in India
probably because they present the belly as
erotic interest.
In Victorian England supposedly the ankle
was considered very erotic.
So there is cultural variability in even what
men, the anatomical parts that men are attracted
to but breast, butt, feet, and penises do
seem --
[sound of bells]
In Japan, another interesting thing about
Japan for the women is there's probably greatest
comfort with reading gay stories, stories
about two gay men among heterosexual women
in Japan, very popular and usually –
[pause]
comic books or TV shows will put out a special
Slash version, a gay version, of the characters
even if they're not gay in the actual original
series to appeal to this. But there's much
more comfort among girls and women in Japan
reading stories about two men falling in love
as well and often having more feminized boys
in some of these stories as well.
[pause]
Another question.
>>male #4: Uh, yeah, you talked about the
last major study being done as being Alfred
Kinsey.
>>Ogi Ogas: Yes.
>>male #4: Where is the work of Masters and
Johnson in the 60s, and 70s fit in?
>>Ogi Ogas: They focused on the physiology
of sex.
>>male #4: Okay.
>>Ogi Ogas: They had people come into the
lab and have sex and watched like anatomical
changes things like that. They focused on
the actual physical process of intercourse
rather than what turned people on.
Though one finding that we thought was pretty
interesting is based on what they saw and
this is a bit subjective, it has to be subjective,
they think gay people have better sex than
straight people, that gay people have more
satisfying sex.
And they had gay couples in the lab they always
accorded greater sexual time and they seem
to be more comfortable and have a better time
than men and women. So there might be some
sexual benefit to sharing the same sexual
cues with somebody else perhaps it's just
a greater familiarity with the anatomy. It's
not clear exactly what that might be but other
surveys too that have asked about sexual satisfaction
tend to find that gay people find sex more
satisfying.
But yeah Masters and Johnson focused on the
physiology they didn't look at are people
attracted to animals or Shemales or anything
like that.
[pause]
>>male #5: You mentioned the four body parts
and then you mentioned those people who are
into lesbian porn which seems to go together.
There is one missing body part.
>>Ogi Ogas: The vagina?
>>male #5: No you said there were four body
parts: breasts, bottom, penis which is obviously
missing in this lesbian porn. So why is that
still very popular.
>>Ogi Ogas: Well you don't need all the cues.
Remember any single cue --
>>male #5: Oh it's ignored.
>>Ogi Ogas: Yeah any single cue is enough.
Just a pair of breasts and nothing else --
[laughter]
can be, go to completion let's say.
[laughter]
It's very rare women like to look at a man's
chest and nothing else and manage to get to
completion.
[pause]
>>female #2: So you talked about gay and straight
men.
>>Ogi Ogas: Yes.
>>female #2: What did you find out about lesbians?
>>Ogi Ogas: We did not focus on lesbians as
much unfortunately. We only wanted to report
results if we could talk to actual fans of
the erotica. So we talked to a lot of gay
men. In fact I personally watched a whole
lot of gay porn with my gay friends just to
get familiar with it. [chuckles].
And for the Shemale Porn we found people who
are fans of that. But the truth was we tried
to approach lesbians but they were always
uncomfortable sharing their sexual reaction
and sexual experiences with us, I'm a heterosexual
man. I have a few lesbian friends but I wanted
to go outside just my friends for that because
that's what we did for everything else.
But having said that, we can see a few conclusions.
What lesbians are interested in is very different
from what gay men are interested in. Also
before I say anything, homosexuality in men
is almost certainly biological, like you're
born gay if you're a man. With women it's
much more ambiguous. Some women are born gay
but women, by the nature of their sexuality,
can also become lesbian.
One reason is because their cues their sexual
cues are not tied to physicality they're tied
to the emotions, their tied to the psychology.
So like Anne Heche she was married to a man,
after she was married to a man then she dated
Ellen Degeneres for awhile and then she went
and married another man. Very, very rare to
find the opposite where there's a guy with
married to a woman, is gay for awhile and
then goes back; very rare, I don't know of
any. But the reason is because female sexuality
and lesbian sexuality are much more fluid,
much more dynamic. In fact, female sexuality
in general is much more fluid and adaptive.
Men's sexual interests are formed during adolescence
roughly between ages 12 and 22 roughly and
then they're fixed pretty much for life. What
a guy likes when he's 20 is almost certainly
what he's gonna be liking at age 40.
Not the case with women. Women's sexuality
is designed to be fluid, flexible, adaptive.
What a woman likes at age 20 might be very
different than what she likes at age 40.
The reason for this fundamental difference
is because the information men and women need
to determine a good sexual partner is very
different.
For a man what he's interested in is a healthy
body, a body that can have children and so
a single glance provides enough basic information
to know is the woman healthy and capable of
having children. And that doesn't change.
What's a healthy woman when a guy is young
is the same as what a healthy woman is when
he's 40.
But for a woman she needs a man who's going
to be committed, who's gonna stick around,
who is going to be kind to her and her kids,
who's gonna be competent enough that he can
take care of her and provide for her. And
the kind of man that is capable of doing that
does change; it changes from culture to culture,
it changes from age to age.
So a woman needs to be a little more flexible.
Also that's another reason why women are so
interested in the opinions of other women
because to determine what makes a good man
is a much more difficult project, much more
complicated project.
We say in our book and I believe it the female
brain is more sophisticated than the male
brain because it has to do more sophisticated
long term planning. It has to figure out if
a guy is going to be good over a long period
of time which requires a lot more sophisticated--if
you're writing a computer program, if you
are writing robot, creating a robot for a
male brain and a female brain it would be
much, much harder to program the female brain
--
[sound of something dropping]
than the male brain.
[pause]
>>female #3: Well what's special about the
feet?
>>Ogi Ogas: So that surprised us. I mean we've
all heard of foot fetishes and before we did
our research there was no conventional wisdom
about it, there was no theory about why men
were interested in feet. It wasn't even known
how popular it was but it turns out to be
very popular in every culture, also both gay
men and straight men.
One of the theories about feet has been that
since women wear fancy shoes and high heels
that attracts the men's attention to it. But
of course gay men aren't attracted to men
who are wearing fancy shoes and gay men are
just as interested.
But there's also a study, a guy went into
some preliterate cultures in Iran, Brazil,
New Guinea, cultures that aren't on the Internet,
and found out in all cultures men are always
interested in smaller than average feet, smaller
than average. Women are interested in average
size feet, but men are interested in smaller
than average feet in all cultures. And that's
what we see in online foot erotica too. The
feet are almost always smaller.
The reason we think all of the body parts
that men are attracted to are connected with
estrogen. Estrogen indicates a woman's health
and fertility because it's connected with
her level of energy.
So if a woman's not getting enough nutrition
and she's not getting enough health her estrogen
levels drop and if her estrogen levels drop
her anatomical parts don't necessarily grow
as much as a woman who is getting healthy
nutrition. So breasts, butt, they're both
connected with estrogen.
It turns out estrogen also controls bone growth;
it determines when the end of a bone stops
growing, so estrogen controls the length of
the foot as it turns out. So we think that's
yet another reason men are interested in feet.
It's also the case that when women get pregnant
their feet get larger. So for a man a pregnant
woman would not be a good sexual object because
you're not going to be able to reproduce obviously
so a larger foot would be an indication of
a less likely for a woman to be fertile as
well.
So there's some biological reasons I think
to explain it but our book is the first to
really lay this out so it's gonna need some
more research from other people.
It's clearly the case men are interested in
feet all around the world like Rex Ryan, coach
of the New York Jets.
[laughter]
>>female #4: What about the kink communities?
>>Ogi Ogas: What?
>>female #4: The kink communities.
>>Ogi Ogas: So, do you have any particular
in mind?
[laughter]
>>female #4: BDSM would be a good place to
start.
>>Ogi Ogas: What's that BDSM?
>>female #4: Yes, BDSM.
>>Ogi Ogas: So --
[pause]
BDSM, so there are many, we now know, before
we did the research it wasn't known the popularity
of different kinks, it was just all guessing.
Now we actually have from our research clear
idea of what kinks are common and what are
common.
So now we know Shemale Porn, from example,
common, BDSM also very common.
We think what's going on behind BDSM, so this
is something very new that is not in the research
before we did ours and not in literature.
One of the most fundamental aspects of human
sexuality in the male and female brain is
dominance and submission.
We all come wired to prefer dominance over
submission. This basic fact explains so much
erotica, male erotica and female erotica,
but it's absolutely not mentioned at all anywhere
in the scientific literature.
But from our research it became very clear.
So BDSM is a piece of that but so much male
pornography is determined whether it's dominant,
showing a man dominating a woman, or is it
a man getting dominated by the woman?
So it appears that the majority of heterosexual
men come born, come wired to prefer sexual
dominance, to be the one to be on top. A minority
of men, a very large minority of men, however
come wired to be sexually submissive, they
prefer submission porn.
This reflects what we see in rats and chimpanzees
too. It turns out in the rat brain and chimpanzee
brain we've identified there's a part of the
brain that controls sexual dominance and there's
a part of the brain that controls sexual submission.
But the fascinating thing is that both the
dominance and submission parts of the brain
are in everybody, they're in both males and
females.
So it appears to be the case in humans as
well that we all come with the ability to
be sexually dominant or sexually submission
but one of them get wired up.
Interestingly gay men are much more likely
to be sexually submissive. The majority of
gay men are likely to be sexually submissive;
the majority of straight men are likely to
be sexually dominant. In fact the only difference,
the only difference we could find between
gay sexuality and straight sexuality, besides
the fact that gay men like men and straight
men women, the only difference is that gay
men are more likely to enjoy sexual submission
and straight men are more likely to enjoy
sexual domination.
In every other way gay pornography and straight
pornography are absolutely indistinguishable.
Gay interests and gay behaviors align, absolutely
indistinguishable from straight men. Gay men
do not behave like women online at all, they
behave even more like men than straight men
do.
[laughter]
[pause]
>>Shannon: Well thank you so much for coming.
I think we'll go ahead and sign some books
--
>>Ogi Ogas: Oh sure.
>>Shannon: and feel free to chat and get some
lunch.
Okay, thank you.
>>Ogi Ogas: Thank you.
[applause]
