Are Guys and Girls “Wired” Differently Sexually?

Josh Harris makes a good case for that in this outstanding little book:

Sex Is Not the Problem (Lust Is): Sexual Purity in a Lust-Saturated World. Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2003. 187 pp. Amazon | WTSBooks.

In Chapter 5, entitled “Guys and Girls: How Are We Different, and How Can We Help Each Other?”, Josh writes this in answer to the question “How Are We Different?” (pp. 84–85):

Though we have a lot in common, God made men and women gloriously different. We were made to complement each other. We have different strengths. We are “wired” differently sexually.

When it comes to the differences between men and women, the following statements are generally accurate and may be helpful to consider:

• A man’s sexual desire is often more physical, while a woman’s desire is more often rooted in emotional longings.
• A man is generally wired to be the sexual initiator and is stimulated visually; a woman is generally wired to be the sexual responder and is stimulated by touch.
• A man is created to pursue and finds even the pursuit stimulating; a woman is made to want to be pursued and finds even being pursued stimulating.

Isn’t it wonderful how God has made men and women to interact with each other? He made men visually oriented, then made women beautiful. He made men initiators, and then designed women to enjoy being pursued. In the heart of each man is an innate desire to romance and win the affection of a woman. God plants a longing in a girl’s heart from a young age to make herself attractive. All this is part of God’s wonderful design.

Understanding God’s plan helps us to see where lustful desires will seek to sabotage the original purpose. Lust always starts with something good—like a mirror at a carnival, it takes God’s design and then distorts it.

Josh continues in a section titled “Pleasure and Power” (pp. 85–87),

Lust blurs and bends true masculinity and femininity in harmful ways. It makes a man’s good desire to pursue all about “capturing” and “using,” and a woman’s good desire to be beautiful all about “seduction” and “manipulation.” In general it seems that men and women are tempted by lust in two unique ways: men are tempted by the pleasure lust offers, while women are tempted by the power lust promises. . . .

Lust offers men the pleasure of sex devoid of the hard work of intimacy. Lust offers women the power to get what they want relationally if they use their sexuality to seduce. Dr. Al Mohler once made a shocking yet accurate statement: “Men are tempted to give themselves to pornography–women are tempted to commit pornography.” If you’re a woman, you don’t have to pose for a picture or star in a pornographic movie to commit pornography. When you dress and behave in a way that is designed primarily to arouse sexual desire in men, you’re committing pronography with your life.

So Josh suggests five general ways that guys and girls “wired” differently sexually with the result that their sexual temptations are fundamentally different: