To encounter erotica designed to appeal to the other is to gaze into the psychological abyss that separates the sexes.
Donald Symons
The vast majority of the differences between the software of male and female minds are all located down in that most intimate and controversial of locales, the sexual brain. But down here the differences are even greater than you think.
As we described previously, we all come wired with a set of sexual cues analogous to our tongue's taste cues. However, men respond to radically different cues than women. Male cues are primarily visual. Female cues are primarily psychological. Men do have psychological cues, but (with a couple exceptions) these cues are quite different from female psychological cues. A man's cues are all directed outwards, at his partner. Some of a woman's cues are directed outwards at her partner, but some of her cues are also directed inwards at herself.
Male Software vs. Female Software
But not only are the male and female cues different, the mind software that processes these cues is different. The male sexual software is what a computer engineer would call an "OR gate." It is instantly aroused by any single cue. The male brain is turned on by deep décolletage or sashaying hips or the whisper of a sultry voice or two Applebee's waitresses kissing.
The female sexual brain is what a computer engineer would call an "AND gate." It requires input from multiple cues simultaneously to surpass a combined threshold of activation before arousal occurs. The female brain may be turned on by a man who is handsome and a cardiologist and pets her beagle and is popular with her lady friends and plays the sensual melodies of Cat Power in the dappled candlelight.
(Most gay men's brains also have an OR gate, though a minority of gay men appear to have an AND gate, as we'll discuss later.)
Though for most men the OR gate can be triggered by any one of a variety of sexual cues, for some men one specific cue is essential. This necessary cue is a fetish (a paraphilia in the literature). For example, some men require an onion booty ("a butt so fine it makes a grown man cry") to trigger the OR gate. Such men can often achieve sexual release using nothing but a photograph of a big, round bottom.
However, for women, no single cue is necessary or sufficient. The female brain is designed to be flexible and adaptive. In order to achieve this adaptive flexibility, the female sexual brain can mix and match sexual cues. If a man is smart, makes her feel adored, and is handsome, that might trigger her AND gate. If the same man slouches and has a comb over—but also an American Express Black—that might also get the job done. If he's not smart, gentle, nor handsome but is tall, confident, and a man of dusky mystery, that could still trip the same woman's AND gate. But there's not many women who can obtain sexual release by gazing at a disembodied photo of a naked man's buttocks. Even if it's Ashton Kutcher's.
When we gaze across the psychological abyss that separates the sexes, the AND gate and OR gate stare back at us from across the divide.
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