Rosie Boycott: Men From Mars, Women From Venus, Talking From Uranus

I’ve never had any particular opinions regarding Stephen Fry before. Yet suddenly, on this topic of whether women like sex as much as men, we are one and the same. Temporarily, we have become Siamese twins. His supporters are my supporters. His critics are my own.

And it physically pains me to feel Stephen Fry banging his wise and venerable head on the wall when he reads ridiculous dumb-assed rebuttals like this one, by Rosie Boycott in the Daily Mail.

So I thought I’d answer it on his behalf (my comments are the ones in brackets):

NO, says ROSIE BOYCOTT - for women, love and sex go hand in hand

(We’re on my first ‘duh’ already, and we’re not even out of the headline. Please note Rosie Boycott’s use of the words ‘love and sex’. Stephen Fry wasn’t talking about ‘love and sex.’ He was just talking about sex. He said that sex was more important to men than it is to women. Not sex with love. Not sex with affection. Just plain sex. A cock and a hole. Wherever and whenever the opportunity for such a union presents itself. I’m banging my head on the damn wall already, and we haven’t even started.)

Much as I love Stephen Fry, he’s gravely mistaken in his ideas about women and sex. When I read them, I ­wondered if he had reverted to playing Jeeves, given just how hidebound and old-fashioned were his views. For the idea that young women (or old for that matter) don’t like sex is utter rubbish.

(For the love of Christ and my wall. He didn’t say young or old women didn’t like sex. He said we didn’t like having sex as much as men. Having sex purely for its own sake. Not in a romantic context, or an emotional context. Just having sex for the sake of having sex. Wherever. Whenever. Whether you’re looking your best or have shaved legs or have just washed your bits or have a nice romantic comfortable setting to do it in. Women impose caveats, worries and turn-offs that men wouldn’t even think about. Because men’s sex drive is massively, hugely, undeniably higher. Is this rocket science?)

Even if we look back to a time when women who had sex out of wedlock tended to keep quiet about it, there was no indication that women couldn’t and didn’t enjoy making love. If women liked sex as much as men, Fry says, there would be ‘straight’ cruising areas in the same way there are gay cruising areas. His implication is that heterosexual men would use such places as a matter of course given the chance, but that women would shy away from them. Honestly, what on earth does he think a bar is? Or a nightclub? Or a university union?

(Well, Rosie - very often, a bar or a club or a union is where women go in search of the things the vast majority care far more about than sex. Specifically, attention, admiration, demonstration of higher social status and desirability than the other girls, flirtation, flattery and potential long-term serious boyfriends. This is not the same thing as going out in search of sex. How many girls in clubs do you know that shags the first half decent guy who looks at them – as would happen in a gay sauna – and hauls them off to the bogs pretty much on sight, for their sheer raw animal biological desire is too high to resist?

(For every women that does this sort of thing (generally a drunk mangy cougar or a fat skank with self-mutilation scars), there are twenty more who are there in search of affirmation, free drinks, attention, admiration, envy, social status and flattery. And who has absolutely no intention of shagging anyone who hasn’t taken them out at least once or twice. As a general rule of thumb, the girls any man with eyesight would want to shag are not there to shag anyone. Ironic really, but dem’s da breaks.)

Of course, these places aren’t just about sex — they are where most of us meet the men we’re going to marry.

(For the love of fucking God and all the saints. You’re arguing my point for me, Rosie. My wall is developing a giant crater. My head is, too.)

For women, love and sex go hand in hand.

(Again, you’re arguing Stephen Fry’s case for him and you’re too stupid to even see it. ‘For women, love and sex go hand in hand.’ Ergo, women have little or no interest in loveless sex. In the basic physical act of shagging, irrespective of the partner and the place. Ergo Stephen Fry is one hundred per cent right. And so am I.)

Women adore men and the male figure.

(Some men, Rosie. Some male figures. If a slightly podgy plain woman goes up to ten straight men in a club and asks if they want to shag her in the bogs, I’m predicting a straight 100% take-up rate. If a plain podgy man approaches ten straight women in the same club with the same offer, I’m predicting the only action he’s going to get will consist of a kick in the nuts. Women are pickier about who they shag. Much pickier. And why? Because the straight physical act of having sex in itself is nowhere near as desirable a proposition to them.

(If this still doesn’t have those little grey cells of yours thinking about the radically different extent of male and female desire for JUST SEX - not sex with Mr Darcy, not sex in a four-poster bed strewn with rose petals, not sex with the hottest guy in the club, not sex with the boy all your friends fancy - JUST PLAIN SEX - you are in pathological denial.)

And Mr Fry seems to have forgotten that the female body is built for pleasure: there are thousands of nerve endings in the female sexual organs that allow women to have multiple orgasms in the way men simply cannot. So, as the saying goes, what’s not to like?

(Oh God, I’m not banging my head on the wall again. My next door neighbour’s started complaining. NOBODY’S SAYING WE DON’T LIKE IT. Just not as bloody often and not as bloody much as men do.)

Fry’s mistake is to assume that all women who sleep with men are doing it only because they want to get a ring on their finger, a new car or a bigger conservatory.

(Christ, he – and I - never said any such thing. Saying that our perfectly sensible and true argument ascribes mercenary or sinister motives to women is setting up a straw men deluxe. If I may speak for Mr Fry, we’re not saying women’s true motivation for having sex is always to do with acquiring money or rings or cars or conservatories. For a wealthy fiftysomething divorcee, the true motivation may be feeling loved, wanted and attractive again. For a fourteen-year-old girl, the true motivation may be having a proper serious boyfriend like the cool girls. But whether we’re talking about the elegant divorcee or the spotty schoolgirl, 99 times out of 100, she’s not just in it for the shag. This is so glaringly self-explanatory it’s making my head ache.)

How hopelessly outdated he is — and how ­little he knows about the fairer sex.

(And how lost in the wilds of denial you are).

Women can enjoy sex just as much as men.

(Yes, Rosie, they _can_ enjoy sex. All things being right in terms of time and place and lighting and partner. This is the whole point. Men don’t need the right time or place or partner to enjoy sex. They’ll enjoy having sex in a smelly public toilet with a woman they hate and who looks like Olive from On The Buses, just because they’re having sex. Saying women ‘can’ enjoy sex as much as men is like saying – given certain conditions, allowances, caveats and small print - girls ‘can’ do just as well in science as boys. And men _can_ be content in the home-maker role. Whether you realise it or not, the little word ‘can’ is actively acknowledging it’s the exception as opposed to the rule. )

My main worry is what’s happening with the younger generation. It is becoming more and more difficult for young women to learn to enjoy sex because some parts of the media, and much of the internet, seem to exist to make casual sex seem normal and desirable.

(Oh for the love of God, woman, you’re arguing Stephen Fry’s corner for him again. ‘Young women need to learn to enjoy sex.’ Why? Because they’re just not naturally that into it. Because Mother Nature and untold centuries of evolutionary biology have seen to it that the basic physical act of shagging doesn’t feel as automatically good to women as it does to men. Young men don’t ‘need to learn to enjoy sex,’ any more than they need to learn to shit or breathe oxygen. Because they just fucking do. Which is exactly what Stephen Fry was saying in the first place. *Sigh*.)

This means that boys are increasingly pressuring girls into sexual ­liaisons they simply don’t like, but they go through with it because they don’t want to seem ‘uncool’.

(And my point is proved yet again. Can you imagine a boy being pressured into a teenage heterosexual liaison he doesn’t like? Uh-uh-uh. If it’s a sexual liaison where his cock meets an available hole, he’s going to like it. And a woman won’t. Because men in general have far higher sex drives than women and want sex far far far far more. Do you ever get the feeling you’re talking to a brick wall?)

Teenage girls should be allowed to develop at their own pace, so that when they reach their 20s they can make their own choices about how they want to live. When I was young, I used to go to every rock concert I could find, met men I fancied and sometimes one thing used to lead to another. It certainly wasn’t prowling the public parks and heaths the way some ­people do today, but it was great fun.

(The crucial words here - ‘men I fancied’ and ‘sometimes’. From a man’s point of view, these caveats would not apply. The vast majority of them would shag whoever. Always. Whether they found them particularly attractive or not. Because that’s just how they’re fucking wired by nature. And women aren’t.)

But I will stop my argument here, while I still have a wall. And a head.

(Don’t agree? Think I’ve been unfair about Rosie Boycott? Share your views. Please mark your email DEAR JULIETTE, I WANT TO MAKE YOU BASH YOUR HEAD AGAINST THE WALL A FEW DOZEN MORE TIMES SO YOUR HEAD FINALLY POPS OUT ON YOUR NEIGHBOUR’S SIDE LOOKING FOR ALL THE WORLD LIKE YOUR NEIGHBOUR SHOT YOU ON SAFARI.)

Now, I’m off to sort out a decent plasterer to tend to my wall.

And while I’m at it, an ambulance to tend to my fractured skull.

J x