“Women may have a reputation for demanding lengthy foreplay, but they become sexually aroused as quickly as men, according to a new study that used thermal imaging to measure increased blood flow to genital regions. While watching pornography, both sexes reach peak arousal within 10 minutes, on average… Earlier attempts to record sexual arousal have involved invasive probes and electrodes… For women participating in previous studies, this sometimes meant the use of an uncomfortable probe similar to a tampon, inserted into the vagina. Such invasive methods ‘made studying sexual arousal very difficult’ and comparing sexual response between men and women even more challenging, says Kukkonen, as the measurement techniques differed between the sexes. For this reason, Kukkonen and her colleagues used thermal imaging to record raised temperatures in subjects’ genital areas… In the new study, 28 men and 30 women first watched a video of the Canadian countryside in a room on their own, so that researchers could establish each individual’s baseline temperatures. Subjects were naked from the waist down and positioned themselves such that their genital area was exposed and readable by the thermal imaging device. The participants next watched another video with the same subject matter, or one featuring pornography, horror or comedic clips from the Best Bits of Mr Bean. The computer only registered a spike in genital temperatures while subjects watched pornography, and not the other films. In those viewing porn, these temperatures increased by about 2°C, on average. Moreover, men reached peak sexual arousal in 665 seconds — about 10 minutes — while women arrived at maximal arousal in 743 seconds. The difference between the times was not statistically significant, the researchers point out.” — New Scientist (US)

Most coverage of this story has rightly focused on the results of the experiment. But if you think about the experiment for a while, you realize that the procedure is interesting itself.

First the subject must have been greeted by one of the researchers. If you check out the web page listing the current lab members, you’ll see that they’re all rather attractive females. (Ms. Kukkonen, quoted in the article, is the blond in the middle of the page.) It makes you wonder if the attractiveness of the researchers primed the subjects for sexual response before they even participated in the experiment. Would they have gotten any different results if the experiments were conducted by grossly unattractive researchers? By a group of hunchbacks or harelips?

Next the subjects donned “special video goggles to minimize distractions,” according to another article. This is for the obvious reason that laboratories are not usually conducive to erotic feelings, with the possible exception of smoldering glances between colleagues who happen to work there. With these goggles the subjects stood exposed before a thermographic camera and watched a video of bucolic countryside. This was to establish a baseline temperature, but you can’t help but wonder if anybody happened to get hot and bothered looking at waterfalls or autumn foliage. After all, there’s a fetish for everything.

Once this baseline was established, some subjects were shown videos that were “determined to be sexually arousing to specific genders” by the Kinsey Institute. Somehow when you hear “Kinsey Institute” you can’t help but imagine black-and-white naturist videos. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to provide participants with an internet connection and one of those all-access porn passes? That way the subject could find what genuinely stimulated him or her, rather than try to work up a response to something that was supposed to be stimulating.

Approximately ten minutes of exposure to pornography was enough to get the subjects’ blood flowing, regardless of their gender and apparently regardless of their individual proclivities. (Did the researchers offer a smorgasbord of fetish, bondage, S&M videos for those so inclined?) What none of the articles state, though, is whether subjects were allowed to alleviate the sexual tension they’d accumulated for science. The articles speak about “maximal arousal,” but what about maximum relief? You can imagine some impromptu “relaxation” sessions in the parking lot.

In the end, there is something sexy about the whole setup of the experiment — from the attractive researchers to the video goggles to the notion of creating a thermal map showing the excitation of your body. (”Look, I’m really hot.”) You can well imagine that, just as the bare breasts of tribal women in National Geographic affected the sexual imagination of a generation ago, these current experiments might breed a new sort of sexual deviance, one centered on instrumentation, measurement, and sexual dramatizations of scientific procedure.

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