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Stephen Fry just doesn't get women's attitudes towards sex

Stephen Fry is wrong to say we hate sex – we don't cruise because it would be dangerous

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* The Observer, Sunday 7 November 2010
* Article history

Stephen Fry has attributed the absence of heterosexual cruising areas to women's aversion to sex ("Please don't tell me what I feel about sex, Mr Fry", Comment). He bases his argument that women do not enjoy sex on the proof that women do not go out and seek sexual encounters for their own sake. This absence proves women's lack of interest in sex as anything other than a tool of manipulation or the glue that holds a relationship together.

Yet at no point does Fry entertain the notion that women may not be seeking anonymous sexual encounters in public places because of fears for their own safety. Fry's observation on the dearth of sexual adventuring among women takes no account of rape, sexual assault or any fear of sexual violence.

Can you honestly say that it is frigidity rather than the very real threat of violence, coercion and assault that prevents women from stalking parks looking for a sexual liaison? I find the idea of walking across a park after dark extremely risky (not risqué), let alone trusting that I could engage in a sexual encounter there that I knew would be pleasurable rather than abusive.

Surely the idea of sex without consequences is contingent upon the likelihood of not actually having to face any consequences. There are very few women who have grown up without experiencing some form of verbal assault, unwanted sexual attention, or much worse, that has sharpened their awareness of the need to acknowledge their own vulnerability.

These experiences mean that there is a difficult line to walk between consensual sex and coercion which makes it difficult to relate to Fry's glib comments. Commentators on women's sexual freedom cite Sex and the City to rebuff arguments like Fry's, but there are other very good, unsexy and deeply problematic reasons that women don't lead the sexual lives of men.

Sara Wood

via email

Stephen Fry is right. A friend told me recently that he was "on a final written warning" from his wife for looking at internet porn. Men like looking and women don't really. The polygamous instinct is writ no larger in male DNA than female, but this avowed (or, indeed, thwarted) curiosity lies at the core of much of what the Twitter King seemed to be getting at.

It's not the sex itself that disgusts women; rather, it is the curiosity about a wider world of sex that many women at least appear not to share with their male partners. Gay men endure no such impasse.And if you're wondering why I've withheld my name, that's easy: my wife would kill me!

Name and address supplied

Today's women still have to live in a manmade museum, doing their best to update the stupidities and injustices and trying to make the place decent for both sexes to live in. Unfortunately, males still have the controlling hand, in both cultural and economic terms and so still call the shots as to how sex is displayed and practised. Some males are at last beginning to see that when it comes to leadership in sexual matters, women, as the more crucial investors of the two, are far better equipped to form policy and a blueprint for a mature future.

Over time, appropriate sexual attitudes for both male and female are necessary if we are to avoid the eventual extinction of the species.

Ian Flintoff

Oxford

Men know nothing at all about women; they never have and unless Mr Fry finds some way to change his biological gender from male to female then he will never understand these things either, much less be able to comment upon them .

I resent the lack of integrity implied by the assumption that women exchange sex for material/emotional security in the form of a relationship. Why not say that all women are whores and leave it at that?

Miss E Jamieson