If we are to believe the plethysmograph, then men know exactly what they want.

Either women, if they are straight, or men, if they are gay. Meanwhile, women respond to... everything... including apes.

And the men's subjective account of what aroused them matched what the plethysmograph recorded, while the women's subjective account was — if we are to believe the plethysmograph — a pack of lies.

As soon as I asked about rape fantasies, [sex researcher Meredith] Chivers took my pen and wrote "semantics" in the margin of my notes before she said, "The word 'rape' comes with gargantuan amounts of baggage... I walk a fine line, politically and personally, talking frankly about this subject. I would never, never want to deliver the message to anyone that they have the right to take away a woman’s autonomy over her body. I hammer home with my students, 'Arousal is not consent.'"

We spoke, then, about the way sexual fantasies strip away the prospect of repercussions, of physical or psychological harm, and allow for unencumbered excitement, about the way they offer, in this sense, a pure glimpse into desire, without meaning — especially in the case of sexual assault — that the actual experiences are wanted.

"It’s the wish to be beyond will, beyond thought," Chivers said about rape fantasies. "To be all in the midbrain."...

She spoke about helping women bring their subjective sense of lust into agreement with their genital arousal as an approach to aiding those who complain that desire eludes them...