Maslow on sex
Maslow’s original theory of human motivation (Maslow 1943) barely touches upon sex as a motivator, which is an obvious oversight, given the emphasis on lust found in folklore, scandals, religious prohibitions, and human history.
Maslow was not so shy in his earlier work, in which he painstaking interviewed 130 women and 15 men about their sex lives, including masturbation habits, fantasies, and peccadilloes (Maslow 1939, 1942). He seems to anticipate that sex drive ranks with either safety or self-esteem in his eventual hierarchy of motives when he wrote, “for relatively insecure people sex is a power weapon, that in myriad ways relates to dominance-feeling and dominance status, and indeed may be considered itself as a kind of dominance or subordination behavior or at least as a channel through which domination-subordination may be expressed. In general it has more intimate relationships with dominance feelings than it has with physiological drive” (Maslow 1942).
He cautions that this theory “definitely does not hold for people and societies that are secure,” but he doesn’t describe what sexual security looks like or how to obtain it. does.
In ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’ Maslow writes that “Sex may be studied as a purely physiological need,” which would place sex at the bottom of his hierarchy where sleep, water, and food reside. This suggests that lack of sex could constitute a physical emergency, and that without sex, the body will suffer and die — which Maslow admits is not the case. Thus, he suggests that sex might better rank with the need for love, a sense of belonging, and affection although he confuses this assertion by cautioning that “love is not synonymous with sex.”
The ambiguity is unhelpful.
My own experiences tell me that it is not possible to lead a lucid, meaningful life without coming to a better understanding of my sexual identity, aspirations, and motivations. In this respect, men and women are different. They have competitive, rather than cooperative, idealized sexual ambitions (Birkhead 2002). Without constraints, men would seek unlimited access to unlimited sexuality, while women would be more discerning. Because the risk of reproduction falls disproportionately on the women, their ideal sexual strategy would be to seek sperm from the male presenting the best possible genetic fitness, while securing resources (e.g., protein from hunting) from the male most willing to commit.
Birkhead’s work in animals and humans demonstrates that females need not find these two desirable characteristics in the same male. In fact, the liberated woman would be free to seek one man to be the biological father of her child, regardless of his fitness as a parent, and a different man to help raise the child, regardless of his genetic fitness as a sire. This realization is political dynamite, because it is unique to women.
According to Birkhead and other researchers, the ideal female sex strategy is hypergamy — optimization for quality of both the genetic endowment at moment of conception, and provisioning during the long period of child-rearing. By contrast, the ideal male sexual strategy is polygamy — optimization for quantity of sex partners meeting some minimum standard of beauty or fitness.
In other words, men and women are different.
So it may be that Maslow can be excused for side-stepping the role of sex in his most famous work on human motivation, as he had little basis for anything more than the most abstract general theory that would apply to both men and women.
For Maslow, sex is an expression of the motive to seek love and acceptance, which are motives both men and women share.
However, to ignore the obvious biological reproductive motive means Maslow left a gaping hole in his most important research.
Sexual self-discovery
Without better guidance from learned psychologists like Maslow, both men and women will be left to figure things out for themselves. Typically, this requires a process of experimentation, guess work, self-examination, and reflection for which both sexes will be shamed.
That was the case for me for a long time. Although my own journey to self-discovery was postponed by two decades of marriage, after my divorce I found myself questioning many of the beliefs and attitudes I discovered weren’t working for me.
That’s when I got some advice from a mentor who explained that I needed to go visit strip clubs.
I was reluctant.
I’d never understood the point of surrounding myself with beautiful, mostly naked women whom I was expected to pay to sexually frustrate me.
That’s when my mentor said, “You’re forgetting the four legitimate reasons for men to visit strip clubs.”
Here they are, as he described them to me:
Men don't know what they like, because they don't have safe environments in which to experiment. Do they like small boobs? Long legs? Short hair? A strip club is a catalog of different female body types that allows men to explore preferences in their imagination. And they can't do that anywhere else, which leaves men impoverished for self-awareness.
Men don't know what turns them on. Experience and selection have taught the strippers how to explore and experiment with what is arousing. What stories? What dance moves? What attitudes? Men don't know their own fantasies, imaginations, or attraction to different behaviors. Strippers are expert at discovering that, and a man seeking increased self-awareness might be grateful to a stripper for helping him find out what works for him.
Men need practice talking with women. Every man carries with him a biological obstacle to interacting with attractive women called approach anxiety. Some part of the male brain is programmed to fear the Alpha Male Gorilla who prohibits him from mating with females in the troop. So when he begins a conversation with an comely lady, this primitive part of his brain is afraid that some larger, more dominant male will knock him in the back of the head with a rock. Men need practice interacting with attractive women so they can overcome the biological disposition towards approach anxiety, and strippers will afford them that practice without shaming them for the fears they carry into the conversation.
Taking a wife or girlfriend might stimulate her sexual desire. This final reason is the most controversial, and I will explain it anyway. When a man goes to the strip club with his wife or girlfriend, she will see him in an environment in which other attractive women are deferential to him, pleasant to him, attentive to him, and interested in him. It won't matter that these women are seeking money from him. What will matter is that she sees him as the object of their attention. Her attitude towards and expectations of him will change, and if she is at all attracted to her boyfriend, the preselection effect of other women will strengthen that attraction.
What happened when I tested this advice?
Once these four reasons were explained to me, I realized they were all legit for me. Some of my discomfort went away, although I wasn’t looking forward to trying my mentor’s advice until I accepted an invitation to accompany a woman I was dating to a birthday party at a strip club where a number of couples would be celebrating.
Here's what I discovered:
The body type I am most attracted to is hers. I'll spare you the details of my personal preferences because it’s sufficient to say that there wasn't a stripper in the place that I found anywhere near as attractive as the woman I was with. So I found out the body type that worked for me was hers.
Touch turns me on. Because that's not really the way strippers work, I can't get the touch I need in a strip club -- unless it’s the woman I was with putting her hand on my back or running her fingers thru my hair. My most profound memory of the club is the way she touched me while we talked with the other couples or watched the dancers.
My anxiety is better. I have experienced approach anxiety and other forms of social anxiety, much worse than I do now. Part of my recovery is because of experiences I've had with the woman who brought me to the strip club. When I hear her say, in a social setting, "I'm here with Tom," my anxiety disappears and I feel like I am the Alpha Male of Group. In Maslow’s terms, it meets my need for self-esteem, because it no longer matters that I'm not the richest, tallest, strongest, most famous, or most accomplished man in the group. Although there are almost always several other men in any setting who are superior to me in several of those respects, competing with them is no longer the point.
The point is that my anxiety about my standing in the social hierarchy disappears, and it frees me up to be more confident and creative.The sex when we got home was great. Instead of going home worked up, lonely, and frustrated, I went home with my date. As it turned out, my Mentor was correct.