I have some excellent news for guys.
It's not our fault. If you do not catch my general drift, I will gladly spell it out for you -- S-E-X.
Yes, guys, if you take the time to remove all the hyphens, you will see I'm talking about sex. Specifically, I am talking about the fact that, according to statistics I once heard on TV, your average man thinks about sex roughly every seven seconds.
That means persons of my gender think about sex more often than... OK, sorry, what was I saying... Oh, yes, I was talking about the fact guys think about sex almost as much as they think about their barbecues and watching sports highlights.
Like I was saying, this is not our fault. This is not just my opinion; it's the opinion of top scientists. According to a news story I read and partially understood, these scientists have just discovered that sex addiction -- defined as when you care more about sex than you do about watching NASCAR -- is caused by a dysfunction in "a critical brain region that controls decision-making."
Yes, you read that sentence correctly, men. According to actual federally funded scientific research, YOU are not the problem. YOUR BRAIN is the problem. Is that great scientific news, or what? (Hint to male readers: Yes, if you know what's good for you, it is.) This is also the kind of news that tends to divide readers along gender lines as follows:
Typical male reaction: "I told you it wasn't my fault!"
Typical female reaction: "I want a divorce!"
This news story, which appeared on this page Monday under the headline "Brain dysfunction, sex addiction linked," states researchers have discovered male rats with a damaged prefrontal cortex become hooked on sex.
The story quotes Dr. Lique Coolen, Canada Research Chair in the Neurobiology of Motivation and Reward, as saying: "We're always very cautious to draw parallels between studies in rodents with human behaviours."
So, yes, we need to be cautious if we are trying to draw conclusions about human beings, but it's a different story if we are talking about lawyers, teenagers, telemarketers and probably every guy I have ever met in my life.
For the study, the scientists taught male rats to associate having sex with a negative consequence, such as getting sick to their stomachs. We assume the rats were also provided with tiny cigarettes and tiny stereo systems playing Barry White albums.
Anyway, when lesions were made in their prefrontal cortexes (I am talking about the rats' brains, not the researchers), the male rats were still eager to have sex, even though their brains knew something really bad was going to happen.
This is typical guy behaviour. History has shown most guys will want to go to bed with any woman who will look in their general direction, even if scientists warn them this kind of "risky behaviour" may result in the male eventually having to deal with a negative consequence in the form of creating teenagers who think he is a major dork.
However, this study does raise some troubling questions, such as: How the heck do these researchers ever get dates? Seriously, what do they talk about when they go to singles bars?
Single woman: "So, what do you do?"
Researcher: "I watch rats get busy?"
Single woman: "Did I mention I'm carrying a gun?"
I personally am not surprised by the results of this brain research, especially the fact that guys are still interested in sex, even if they know it will be followed by a terrible outcome.
This is because guys my age learned about sex in school. Back in the 1950s and early 60s, we had something called "Hygiene Class," wherein we would be shown grainy black-and-white movies featuring two innocent teenagers, usually Billy and Sally, who would do something brazenly foolish, such as openly holding hands at the school dance, which would result in a negative consequence in the form of Billy and Sally being crushed to death by a comet.
The important thing is science has given us a reasonable explanation for the behaviour of normal guys like Tiger Woods and Jesse James. They couldn't help themselves.
I tried to explain this scientific concept to my wife, but she didn't seem to buy it.
"It's all in your head," she sniffed.
"I know," I told her, "That's the problem!"
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