the headline of this article was offputting

until i actually read the article itself. of COURSE it makes sense.

men are studs if they fuck. women are sluts (even if they just flirt)

If Women Do Have Lower Libidos, It Would Make Sense
By Amanda Marcotte, RH Reality Check.
Another Valentine's Day, another round of features on sex and love, and another bout of studiously ignoring the role sexism might play in diminishing women's sexual desire. Consumer Reports published a sex poll, and once again women's on-average lower sexual desire is treated as an unfortunate but largely inexplicable phenomenon. In this, they stuck to the mainstream media trend of talking about women's desire -- the lack of it, really -- without addressing any social causes for why that might occur. Most media outlets treat women's desire as a free-standing, unchangeable misfortune brought on by fate or biology, but certainly not worth exploring in depth.

Journalists refuse to explore polling data demonstrating a reported gap in men and women's sexual desires for the same reason people refuse to really tackle the issue in their own relationships. Even in the polling data citing the top six reasons people don't feel desire, two of the reasons given, constituting 59% of respondents, were just a restatement of the problem, and not really a reason. (Forty percent of respondents said they just weren't in the mood, and 19% were too busy watching TV, which is a polite way of saying they aren't in the mood, since people in the mood use Tivo.) But really addressing the reason men and women feel this gap in desire means asking hard questions about how our society treats men and women differently, and doing that means signing up for defensive responses. No wonder journalists writing pieces on the issue avoid the question strenuously. .........