CHAPTER 1: ME HUNTER, YOU PREY
1. Paula England, “Understanding Hookup Culture: What’s Really Happening on College Campuses,” Media Education Foundation, 2011.
2. Eric R. Bressler, Rod A. Martin, and Sigal Balshine, “Production and Appreciation of Humor as Sexually Selected Traits,” Evolution and Human Behavior 27, no. 2 (March 2006): 121–30.
3. The idea of everyday sexism refers to “words, actions, behaviours, or acts that exclude, marginalize, or belittle women,” but are not perceived as such since they are part of the prevailing culture. Brigitte Grésy, Petit traité contre le sexisme ordinaire (Paris: Albin Michel, 2008).
4. Jeffrey A. Hall, “Sexual Selection and Humor in Courtship: A Case for Warmth and Extroversion,” Evolutionary Psychology 13, no. 3 (2015).
5. John K. Donahue and Melanie C. Green, “A Good Story: Men’s Storytelling Ability Affects Their Attractiveness and Perceived Status,” Personal Relationships 23, no. 2 (June 2016): 199–213.
6. Amy Muise et al., “Not in the Mood? Men Under- (Not Over-) Perceive Their Partner’s Sexual Desire in Established Intimate Relationships,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 110, no. 5 (May 2016): 725–42.
7. Paul W. Eastwick and Eli J. Finkel, “Sex Differences in Mate Preferences Revisited: Do People Know What They Initially Desire in a Romantic Partner?,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94, no. 2 (February 2008): 245–64.
8. Mythical yet deeply entrenched diagnosis according to which women with a strong libido have a psychological disorder.
9. In Quebec, like elsewhere around the world, women and girls make up the majority of sexual assault victims. According to official police records from 2014, 84 percent of victims were female, while 96 percent of alleged offenders were male.
10. “Fais moi mal Johnny” is the title of a 1955 French song by Boris Vianin in which a woman sings of how she likes “rough sex,” until one day her partner really beats her up. It has been criticized as a sexist song and was written by a man, but sung by a woman.
11. Lucia C. Lykke and Philip N. Cohen, “The Widening Gender Gap in Opposition to Pornography, 1975–2012,” Social Currents (September 2015).
12. Daniel Bergner, What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (New York: Ecco, 2013).
CHAPTER 2: COUGARS AND NYMPHETS
1. Society still exerts control over the behaviour and appearance of mothers. In 2015, for instance, the New York Post asked people via Twitter whether they would let their mother out of the house dressed like celebrity moms Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé, and Kim Kardashian.
2. Zoe Lawton and Paul Callister, “Older Women-Younger Men Relationships: The Social Phenomenon of ‘Cougars,’” research notes, Institute of Policy Studies (January 2010).
3. The term “puma” can also be used to refer to a “younger” cougar — a woman in her thirties — or to a “cougar” over fifty. Although the term is broad, it will be used in this book to designate “men who date younger women”; after all, it’s only fair to label men with unconventional sexual preferences, and not just women.
4. Stephen Follows, “Are Men in Romantic Movies Older Than Their Female Co-Stars?,” Film Data and Education, June 2015, stephenfollows.com/are-men-in-romantic-films-older-than-women.
5. “The Hollywood Gender Age Gap: Part 1; Band of Brothers,” GraphJoy, August 2015, graphjoy.com/2015/08/the-hollywood-gender-age-gap-part-1.
6. Stephen Addison, “‘Cougar’ Trend of Women Chasing Younger Men a Myth,” Reuters, August 19, 2010.
7. Christian Rudder, “The Case for an Older Woman,” OkCupid (blog), February 16, 2010, .
8. Jean Twenge, “How Long Can You Wait to Have a Baby?,” The Atlantic (July/August 2013).
9. Joan K. Morris and Eva Alberman, “Trends in Down’s Syndrome Live Births and Antenatal Diagnoses in England and Wales from 1989 to 2008: Analysis of Data from the National Down Syndrome Cytogenetic Register,” British Medical Journal 339 (2009): b3794.
10. M.V. Zaragoza et al., “Nondisjunction of Human Acrocentric Chromosomes: Studies of 432 Trisomic Foetuses and Liveborns,” Human Genetics 94, no. 4 (October 1994): 411–17; H. Fisch et al., “The Influence of Paternal Age on Down Syndrome,” Journal of Urology 169, no. 6 (June 2003): 2275–78.
11. World Health Organization, “Adolescent Pregnancy,” Fact Sheet 364, updated January 2018, apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/112320/WHO_;jsessionid=B54F92470BFF7D093982E639DFEC6C1F?sequence=1.
12. This is similar to the parental investment theory, which holds that men, unlike women, don’t need to be selective in choosing their sexual partner, because they won’t be investing nine months of their life during the resulting gestation. It follows that men don’t have to weigh the consequences of entering into a sexual relationship with a given partner.
13. Interview with Dr. Luc Bessette, “Forme physique, sexuelle, cognitive: à quel âge est-on à son apogée?,” Radio-Canada, May 2015.
14. Laurie Tarkan, “The Biological Clock, Ticking for Men Too,” New York Times, May 2, 2008.
15. Julia Medew, “Fertility Clock Ticks for Men Too,” Sydney Morning Herald, March 26, 2012.
16. Interview with Dr. Luc Bessette.
17. Sexplora, Season 2, ICI Explora, 2017.
CHAPTER 3: THE PURITY IMPERATIVE
1. Demos, “The Use of Misogynistic Terms on Twitter,” www.demos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Misogyny-online.pdf.
2. Elizabeth A. Armstrong et al., “‘Good Girls’: Gender, Social Class, and Slut Discourse on Campus,” Social Psychology Quarterly 77, no. 2 (May 2014).
3. Derek A. Kreager, “Unlike Boys, Girls Lose Friends for Having Sex, Gain Friends for Making Out,” American Sociological Association, August 24, 2015, www.asanet.org/press-center/press-releases/unlike-boys-girls-lose-friends-having-sex-gain-friends-making-out.
4. To take this further: my suspicion is that many people are afraid that if their fantasies change, nothing will arouse them anymore. The result, they fear, would be some sort of sexual apocalypse.
CHAPTER 4: SEX SEGREGATION
1. Deuteronomy 22:5.
2. Antoine Krempf, “Les seins se porteraient mieux sans soutien-gorge,” France Info, April 10, 2013, francetvinfo.fr/sciences/les-seins-se-porteraient-mieux-sans-soutien-gorge_1651155.html). Krempf did qualify his results, allowing that the small sample size composed of athletes was not representative of the general population.
3. As women age, they often forgo long hair and form-fitting clothes: our culture condones, and even advocates, abandoning a classic image of femininity after a certain age.
4. American Society of Plastic Surgeons, “2015 Cosmetic Surgery Gender Distribution,” 2015 Plastic Surgery Statistics Report (2015): 10.
5. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1972).
6. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (Fall 1975): 6–18.
7. Gerulf Rieger et al., “Sexual Arousal and Masculinity-Femininity in Women,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 111, no. 2 (August 2016): 265–83.
8. Eleanor Steafel, “Women Are Either Bisexual or Gay But ‘Never Straight,’” Telegraph, November 5, 2015, telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11977121/Women-are-either-bisexual-or-gay-but-never-straight.html.
CHAPTER 5: THE FIRST SEX
1. Philippe Bernard et al., “Integrating Sexual Objectification with Object Versus Person Recognition: The Sexualized-Body-Inversion Hypothesis,” Psychological Science 23 (2012), 469–71.
2. Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth (London, UK: Chatto & Windus, 1990), 139.
3. Paula England, “Understanding Hookup Culture,” The Media Education Foundation, February 13, 2013, youtube.com/watch?v=L3Q2L7YQ2Hk.
CHAPTER 6: THE HOLY GRAIL
1. Geoffrey C. Urbaniak and Peter R. Kilmann, “Physical Attractiveness and the ‘Nice Guy Paradox’: Do Nice Guys Really Finish Last?,” Sex Roles 49, no. 9–10 (November 2003): 413–26.
2. Pat Barclay, “Altruism as a Courtship Display: Some Effects of Third-Party Generosity on Audience Perceptions,” British Journal of Psychology 101, no. 1 (February 2010): 123–35; Jerry M. Burger and Mica Cosby, “Do Women Prefer Dominant Men? The Case of the Missing Control Condition,” Journal of Research in Personality 33 (1999): 358–68.
3. Moira Weigel, “The Foul Reign of the Biological Clock,” The Guardian, May 10, 2016, theguardian.com/society/2016/may/10/foul-reign-of-the-biological-clock.
4. Conseil du statut de la femme, “Pour un partage équitable du congé parental,” Government of Québec, April 2015, csf.gouv.qc.ca/wp-content/uploads/avis_partage_conge_parental.pdf.
5. C.L. Muehlenhard and S.K. Shippee, “Men’s and Women’s Reports of Pretending Orgasm,” Journal of Sex Research 47, no. 6 (November 2010): 552–67.
6. The belief that a nuclear family headed by two heterosexual parents is the only acceptable model.
7. Terri D. Conley, Ali Ziegler, and Amy Moors, “Backlash from the Bedroom: Stigma Mediates Gender Differences in Acceptance of Casual Sex Offers,” Psychology of Women Quarterly 37, no. 3 (2013).
8. “The Big One,” Gilmore Girls, season 3, episode 16, written and produced by Amy Sherman-Palladino, aired February 23, 2003.
CHAPTER 7: THE ORGASM GAP
1. Mona Chalabi, “Gender Orgasm Gap,” FiveThirtyEight, August 20, 2015, citing the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior Report (2009), fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-gender-orgasm-gap.
2. Paula England, “Understanding Hookup Culture.”
3. Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Paula England, and Alison C.K. Fogarty, “Accounting for Women’s Orgasm and Sexual Enjoyment in College Hookups and Relationships,” American Sociological Review 77, no. 3 (May 2012).
4. Jessica R. Wood et al., “Was It Good for You Too?: An Analysis of Gender Differences in Oral Sex Practices and Pleasure Ratings Among Heterosexual Canadian University Students,” Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality 25, no. 1 (2016).
5. Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Paula England, and Alison C.K. Fogarty, “Accounting for Women’s Orgasm and Sexual Enjoyment in College Hookups and Relationships”; Barbara J. Risman and Virginia Rutter, Families As They Really Are (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009), 362–77.
6. Elisabeth A. Lloyd, The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).
7. “Lili Against the Machine,” Sexplora, Season 1, ICI Explora, YouTube, January 13, 2016, youtube.com/watch?v=S5yIpGM0gsU.
8. Elisabeth A. Lloyd, The Case of the Female Orgasm.
9. Annie Sautivet, “État des lieux des connaissances, représentations et pratiques sexuelles des jeunes adolescents,” sexology thesis, Université Montpellier I (2009).
10. Breanne Fahs and Elena Frank, “Notes from the Back Room: Gender, Power, and (In)visibility in Women’s Experiences of Masturbation,” Journal of Sex Research 51, no. 3 (2014): 241–52.
11.Cécile Daumas, “Vaginale/clitoridienne. À corps et à cris,” Libération, August 2, 2008, liberation.fr/cahier-special/2008/08/02/vaginale-clitoridienne-a-corps-et-a-cris_77436.
12. Letitia Glocer Firoini and Graciela Abelin-Sas Rose, eds., On Freud’s “Femininity” (London: Routledge, 2011).
13. Stuart Brody and Rui Miguel Costa, “Vaginal Orgasm Is Associated with Less Use of Immature Psychological Defense Mechanisms,” Journal of Sexual Medicine 5, no. 5 (March 2008): 167–76.
14.Nicole Prause et al., “Clitorally Stimulated Orgasms Are Associated with Better Control of Sexual Desire, and Not Associated with Depression or Anxiety, Compared with Vaginally Stimulated Orgasms,” Journal of Sexual Medicine 13, no. 11 (September 2016): 1676–85.
15. Vincenzo Puppo and Giulia Puppo, “Anatomy and Physiology of the Clitoris, Vestibular Bulbs, and Labia Minora with a Review of the Female Orgasm and the Prevention of Female Sexual Dysfunction,” Clinical Anatomy 26, no. 1 (January 2013): 134–52.
16. James G. Pfaus et al., “The Whole Versus the Sum of Some of the Parts: Toward Resolving the Apparent Controversy of Clitoral Versus Vaginal Orgasms,” Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology 6, no. 1 (October 2016).
17. Diana Fleischman, Daniel Fessler, and Argine Cholakians, “Testing the Affiliation Hypothesis of Homoerotic Motivation in Humans: The Effects of Progesterone and Priming,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 44, no. 5 (July 2015): 1395–1404.
18. Justin R. Garcia et al., “Variation in Orgasm Occurrence by Sexual Orientation in a Sample of U.S. Singles,” Journal of Sexual Medicine 11, no. 11 (November 2014): 2645–52.
19. Mihaela Pavličev and Günter Wagner, “The Evolutionary Origin of Female Orgasm,” Journal of Experimental Zoology 326, no. 6 (July 2016): 326–37.
20. Günter Wagner, quoted in Agence France-Presse, “L’orgasme féminin, un vestige de l’évolution?,” August 2, 2016. My emphasis.