By David Futrelle
It’s time once again for another installment in my series MGTOWs Explain Sex. I think this is the second installment. It’s been a while.
Anyway, as longtime readers of this blog no doubt already know, most MGTOWs seem to have convinced themselves that women basically hate sex and only pretend to like it so dudes will give them stuff.
But what about kissing? I mean, ladies (or at least a lot of them) seem to love movies with kissing in them more than they love movies with explosions, right? So there must be something about kissing that these mysterious creatures like?
Not according to MGTOW Redditor goadsaid — and he’s got SCIENCE on his side. Or at least he thinks he does.
In a post last year, goadsaid reported his SCIENTIFIC findings to the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit.
I was just reading some science stuff for leisure and I am no expert but the stuff I stumbled upon (much of it in this article http://www.livescience.com/3328-saliva-secret-ingredient-kisses.html) suggests that men release oxytocin when kissing women but women do not release oxytocin when kissing men. Oxytocin is released in women when they kiss babies which is what is said to bond them to the babies. Oxytocin is the “love” neuron according to what I’ve read.
So basically that feeling of “adoring” women is not reciprocated (or at least not at the same times for sure) and they only feel heart tugging when being intimate with babies but not men.
Well that’s certainly an … interesting conclusion: The hot babes love the hot babies! But it’s not quite the same conclusion that the researchers who actually conducted the study — Neuroscientist Wendy Hill and a student at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania — themselves came to. According to the article that goadsaid himself quotes, the two studied
the hormone levels of college-aged male-female couples who had kissed and those who had just held hands and listened to music for 15 minutes in a room in a student health center.
Ah yes, nothing more romantic than making out in the student health center!
Subjects were measured for their levels of cortisol, a stress-related hormone, and oxytocin, the bonding hormone involved in social recognition, male and female orgasm, and childbirth.
Cortisol (stress) levels decreased in men and women after kissing, but only men’s oxytocin levels increased, while women’s decreased.
Huh. That’s interesting, but can we really draw any definitive conclusions from a small study conducted in possibly the least sexy place to make out in, and in which the makeout sessions were interrupted after a few minutes by someone coming in to measure the kissers’ hormones?
Turns out that Hill herself has asked this question, and answered it with a “no.”
Hill thought that the setting might have been too clinical for the women to get turned on, so she tried in her latest study to up the ambience by locating the couples in a secluded room of an academic building, outfitted with a couch, flowers, jazz music and electric candles.
This time, cortisol levels were found to plummet, post-kissing, in both men and women, Hill found, but the other hormone results are still being analyzed … .
My own half-assed research hasn’t turned up Hill’s followup results, but I did run across something in the Lafayette Psychology Department newsletter in which Hill is quoted:
“Because the oxytocin levels rose only in males, we think that women might need a more romantic atmosphere than Bailey Health Center,” said Hill. “Or that males are less affected by ambiance when kissing.”
Regardless of whether or not the results changed in the more “romantic” setting, you can’t determine whether or not a woman enjoys kissing based entirely on her oxytocin levels, because you can’t reduce a person’s feelings about something to a single hormone. For one thing, in addition to lowering cortisol levels in Hill’s study, kissing also releases feel-good neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin. For another, there’s more to human beings than their biochemistry.
So I’d call that a swing and a miss for MGTOW Science non-expert goadsaid. But his next claim is even weirder.
Another piece I read suggested that women don’t actually enjoy mouth kissing men at all because mouth kissing evolved to only be between mother and child during “pre-mastication” (before the baby can chew its own food) and men began kissing women to “trick” them into bonding by imitating the baby while simultaneously “dosing” them with testosterone from male saliva in order to stimulate their sex drive.
Wat.
Who woulda thought? They don’t really like kissing men or having sex.
Uh, no. Maybe the real lesson here is that women would rather be kissing men with giant fat baby heads who like eating prechewed food from their mouths?
If so, these devious women are doing a pretty good job of hiding this preference from the world’s non-baby-headed men.
In any case, I was unable to find the source of this claim either, though admittedly I gave up my research pretty quickly after running into too many stories about weirdo actress Alicia Silverstone, who infamously decided to kick it very old school indeed by pre-chewing food for her young son and exuding it into his mouth.
Well, that’s enough science for me right now. I conclude from all this that while I like kissing, and all the women I’ve kissed have also liked kissing, I do not want to kiss Alicia Silverstone, at least not during dinner.
When you think they reached the pinnacle of stupidity already but they prove you wrong by saying even dumber shit…
Sounds like MGTOWs have found a new reason to be jealous of babies. Darn babies. First they get to hog the breasts, but now they get to hog the kissing? Harrrumph.
I care for babies every day as it is how I earn my living.
Babies are gross. Seriously. I love babies. Taking care of babies is actually my dream job, but FFS, they are GROSS!
If someone wants to make out with babies, well…they probably either don’t know real babies or they should never be left alone with actual infants cuz EW!
NEURON? Oh my god, thanks for this stunning insight, MGTOW, all this time my understanding was that it was a hormone and neurotransmitter. Instead it is one single neuron (brain cell).
I suspect that’s how many neurons he used trying to understand this.
I would rather kiss a baby, a cat, a dog, my own hand or even a tarantula hawk than a MGTOW. So there’s that.
@Flora
The science I just pulled out of my ass CONCLUSIVELY PROVES that MGTOWs have precisely one neuron, which spends its time wandering around the inside of their heads crying because it’s lonely.
Like we need more proof that MGTOWs are idiots.
Okay, then…if women have no genuine enjoyment of sex, what’s supposed to be the motive for riding the Cock Carrousel of Chads?
@Full Metal Ox
Oooooh, I know this one! We do that so we can get all of their moneys and stuff. Which is why I’m rolling in wealth and haven’t had to work for … wait a minute.
If this migtow dude reads science for “leisure”, he needs to find a new pastime. Perhaps Go Dog Go would be better material.
Wait a minute. I sometimes read science for leisure, and I’m not one of those misogynistic crypto-fascist troglodytes…
What I find odd here is that both the original study and this chimp’s (mis)interpretation of it seem to be ignoring the fact that oxytocin isn’t so much about “love” as it is about “protectiveness” (or, perhaps more accurately, “protectionism”). Yes, it’s associated with bonding between parents and children as well as sexuality, but it’s also the hormone released when we feel racism and other kinds of xenophobia. It bonds us to those closest to us at the (often forceful) exclusion of everyone else.
Oxytocin isn’t the “Love Hormone”, it’s the “Fuck You, Got Mine Hormone”.
What this suggests to me is that the gender disparity here may not simply be the result of women wanting a more “romantic” environment and the fact that this is not brought up makes me wonder if Dr. Hill is studiously avoiding making any conclusions that could be interpreted as “politically incorrect”. Still, I’ll leave it to smarter people than me to figure out what it all really means.
@Violet
Even their neurons are incel.
Cellcel?
I’m confused about the pre-mastication stuff. We’re not birds, that’s what milk is for.
Exactly! And then later, after the woman hit The Wall, she shacks up with a boring but financially stable beta male, instead of the attractive Chads she was fucking before because… Uh… Hey, if all women care about is money and hate any kind of sex or kissing why wouldn’t they go for the ugly rich guys right from the start again?
VP:
Also, babies have touched a vagina more recently.
On the egregious evopsych, I feel I should mention that kissing isn’t exactly a human universal. Lots of societies don’t do it, and think it’s kinda weird.
I’m old, and I still like kissing! thank goodness the spouse does too!
This is like those old studies that concluded female Praying Mantii killed the male after mating (but eventually it was found this was only in laboratory conditions) This study could have turned out much more awkwardly and wouldn’t that be hard to explain to the ethics committee?
Given the reference to oxytocin as ‘the love hormone’, I think this comic might be relevant: https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3339
@pitshade
Pffft. That’d be an interesting study to break.
“According to the results of the study, female humans who are placed in stressful laboratory settings and induced to be physically intimate with a male partner are orders of magnitude more likely to kill and eat their partner. It is advised that no further studies regarding this phenomenon be undertaken.”
Never getting any axon with other neurons.
Tsk tsk, doesn’t this woman know feeemales at all? The couch should be a pair of hard chairs, the flowers should be money (bauxite or any other valuable resources will do in a pinch), the jazz should be pop music with a billion writing credits, and the electric candles just gotta be fuckin scented. Femoid 101 honestly…