Men are NOT more visual than women

and why I'm so giddy about it

A married couple stood at the front of the class. They taught together at my local LDS Institute of Religion and were very popular. Standing room only for anyone arriving late. Toward the end of their lesson, the man stepped back as the woman got emotional.

She looked out at the mixed-gender group of young twenty-somethings and tearily thanked the young women in the crowd for covering their bodies with modest dress. She reminisced aloud about her return missionary son who recently found his eternal companion and recalled the gratitude he expressed to his fiancee for dressing in a way that made it easier for him to have righteous thoughts. What a Christlike service she and all of us sirens in the audience that day rendered to these poor men of the covenant.

Excuse me, can I take a moment to appreciate the term “vomitrocious” once more? Thank you, Muffy Crosswire.

Men are more visual than women! Or so I’ve always been taught. Much hangs on this one seemingly universal truth. So let’s break down a handful of sub-claims we’re about to destroy.

Men are more visual than women, therefore…

• Men can’t help themselves

• Women should cover up to help righteous men control their thoughts

• Men should avoid seeing uncovered female bodies at all cost

• Women are responsible for managing men’s sexuality

• Unwanted pornography use is a man’s plight

• Women are a man’s stumbling block

• Women who go around immodestly dressed are walking pornography

• Men’s bodies are functional—Women’s bodies are beautiful

• Women have to do things like monitor their male partner’s screens and worry about their man’s gaze at the beach

• Men are more easily aroused than women

I have sat through countless lessons in church settings that LOVE to harp on this concept—that men are biologically visual creatures, unlike our passionless daughters of Christ, and therefore, men must avoid women who they aren’t married to and women are trapped playing gatekeeper for the men.

The problem is it’s bullshit.

A Study on Sexual Arousal

In 2019 The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found quite a different conclusion—that biological sex evidently makes no difference in arousal to visual sexual stimuli.

Researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 61 neuroimaging studies that presented erotic visual stimuli to 1,850 participants, both male and female. Biological sex was found to be the least predictor of arousal. And men, contrary to popular belief, did not experience a larger sexual arousal than women. Ironically, the only notable difference between the sexes was that women’s arousal maintained activity levels while men’s arousal decreased with repeated exposure.

So what’s with the assumption that men are more easily aroused than women?

Well, although some studies in the past have agreed with this popular myth, our 2019 analysis explains those reports, too. One journalist who covered the research summarized it this way:

“Their brains didn’t demonstrate a difference, but men self-reported being more aroused and feeling more sexual desire than women reported. That makes it much more a psychological thing than anything biological or natural.” —Kelly Gonsalves

So in other words, why is visual stimuli such a problem for men? Probably because we tell them it’s a problem.

And oh boy do we tell them! It seems everywhere I look there’s a lesson geared toward men on the dangers of pornography, the importance of modest dress for fear of causing them to stumble, and the self-deprecating stories of men who were able to overcome Satan’s exploitation of biology and their constant daily struggle to stay pure.

Sounds exhausting doesn’t it? And the worst part is, these kinds of efforts are only exacerbating the issue… if not causing it.

When religion is the problem

The trouble is not men or women. The trouble is what we believe about men and women. If men can be free to accept their sexuality without shame or entitlement, they may be able to notice beauty, appreciate its existence, and move on— without needing to conquer it—because they won’t see it as a threat in the first place. Women do this all the time.

Before deconstructing our Mormon beliefs, my husband and I were both highly anxious about what might pop up on our screens, especially regarding women showing “too much” skin. My husband developed his anxiety from a young age in various church settings. I developed mine from many years as a believing Mormon as well, but the anxiety didn’t show up until after we were married because that’s when I began to fear other women as threats to our relationship. I remember feeling extremely anxious while watching Disney’s live-action Mulan when the beautiful Liu Yifei went for a skinny dip and her shoulders were visible. Y’all… it was that bad.

Fast forward to the other night as we sat down to watch “We Live in Time” about a couple’s journey falling in love, co-parenting, and battling cancer together. There is no violence or coercion in this couple’s relationship, just plenty of consent, raw emotion, and yes, nudity. At one point during the film, my husband said to me, “It’s just so interesting. Ever since deconstructing my religious beliefs, nudity has been completely disarmed.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

And we’re not the only ones. One man shared his story of leaving the LDS church and his porn “addiction” behind at the same time:

“…because I was labeled a porn addict, naturally I internalized that identity and turned to porn when I was older and had more access to it. it was a daily obsession or white-knuckling struggle. this was my ultimate test from God in this life. i spent countless hours with bishops and therapists from LDS Family Services. those ARP meetings were dreadful. it seemed I would never be “strong” enough to get myself together. I was twice engaged and both engagements ended painfully because I valued being honest with my bishops instead of lying. I couldn’t attend BYU or serve a mission (grateful for this now, but the shame was crippling)

I left the church officially in 2020 once my shelf broke. my porn consumption plummeted overnight. these days, I watch porn once in a blue moon and I do it without shame. probably less than 10x in the past year. it doesn’t control me or inhibit my life. I’m living a real life now

it’s almost as if porn was never the real problem, it was the intense porn preachings and the people who wanted to cast shame. that “shame cycle” is nasty. without that in my life, the “forbidden fruit” is far less desirable. on that note, I’ve also had far less sexual partners since I left. I definitely didn’t leave so I could sin more

porn being out of my life is what I always wanted. it’s what my parents, bishop, and therapists always wanted. the entire time, all I needed to meet that goal was to walk away” — source

And here is one ex-evangelical man’s story of how he went from an overwhelming fear of lust to “hardly ever thinking about it.”

“Much of the constant angst evangelical men feel about lust isn’t due to their bodies having a problem so much as it is due to the scripts they’re living by.

If you’re willing to deconstruct the theological assumptions that foster entitlement hierarchies, take responsibility for your own actions, and experience having a body in ways that foster wholeness rather than harm, then you’re probably going to be just fine.

You may even be able to go to a pool and experience the coolness of the water without having an existential crisis. Or perhaps you could attend a yoga class and practice mindfulness without fearing eternal conscious torment. You’ll probably discover women to be humans. And then rather than fearing and controlling them, you’ll be able to hang out and have fun. —Rick Pidcock

Exiles in Christendom

Hurt people hurt people.

Healed people heal people.

And trapped people trap people.

This is why, to free women from sexual subjugation, we need to simultaneously free men from sexual subjugation.

Why I’m so giddy about this new information

The messaging about men, women, and their so-called biological differences concerning sexuality started as soon as I entered the young women’s program as a twelve-year-old. These dogmas quickly withered the humanity of the male sex in my eyes and left me feeling forever subject to their “vulnerabilities” and “needs.” I was over the moon when I found the research contradicting the false assumptions I was taught throughout my life because it gave me the evidence I needed to be free. Free from the beliefs that agonized me as a young woman, strained my marriage, and made me fear “raising a boy in this world”. Free to let men manage themselves, speak up confidently when I hear misinformation being repeated, and free to offer my kids a healthy sexual education instead of initiating them into perpetual shame cycles, including the one popularly known as repentance.

It doesn’t have to be this way. As a progressive Mormon, I often feel like Asha from Wish— I want “something more for us than this!”

I want women to be free of the beliefs that subject them to men’s sexuality, and deprive them of the freedom and ownership that allow their own to flourish.

I want men to be free of the beliefs that cause them to fear women, deflect their own sexual nurturing and accountability, avoid emotional intimacy, get stuck in hyper-sexual compulsions, and use women, however benevolently, to validate their belonging in the social hierarchy that supplants men’s connection with women by rewarding power over them.

And I want the truths that give us freedom, not the ideologies that keep us forever chasing it.