A Billion Wicked Thoughts: Science Bangs our Dirty Minds

If you are waiting for someone to loan you 50 Shades of Grey or you are trying to pace yourself through the Game of Thrones series so you don't have to anxiously wait umpteen years for the next book like this stupid blogger, then I have a great book to recommend for you called A Billion Wicked Thoughts.

I can remember as a little nerd hooka in training, going to the library and seeing the Hite Reports on Female and Male Sexuality, which were probably the largest sex studies after Masters and Johnson, and Kinsey.  Even though I remember the reads being very "sciencey" and staid, I was fascinated, and always made a point to peek at one when I was there. It's good to know that the interest in what turns people on visits onto the third generation and evolves, and becomes A Billion Wicked Thoughts.

The authors, two neuroscientists named Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam, have brought the sexual attraction study game into the 21st century in a huge and interesting way ~ and in a sense, it went viral:  they examined what people do on the internet.  According to them, they studied "a billion web searches, a million websites, a million erotic videos, a million erotic  stories, millions of personal ads, and tens of thousands of digitized romance novels."  By combining this online behavioral data with neuroscience and past studies, they were able to give some sometimes surprising truths and insight about what turns us on.  Past research combined with more current genetic discovery led to some very interesting theories about why we feel funny about certain unexpected things and people and why.

Ogas and Gaddam theorize about a lot of things, including why women are turned on by the dirtiest shit imaginable, and why we (as women) don't realize or admit it consciously, but why we need to do it that way, and how they test this.  Why are straight men are obsessed with being dicks?  Oops, I mean big dicks- and not even their own; big cocks, black cocks, aggressive cocks having sex with their partners while they watch- cocks you would think they wouldn't think about so often-hell, at all- but they do and why, and how they test that. And how, in light of all of this aforementioned research, straight men can think that they are so different than gay men, which they are not but for their sexual hungers and desires? (Duh.)  How bisexual women answer sex questions more like straight men than they do gay or straight women (What you talking 'bout, Scientist?!), and how straight women love gay porn, its growing digital popularity, and how that's pretty normal.

I think that last thing is what made me love this book even more because for years I have battled straight female friends about my preference for gay porn over het porn. Even if the authors of this research are wrong in their theories, I finally feel vindicated. The Bible says it takes a child to lead them, but sometimes, it takes a loud drunk chick who thinks she knows what sexy is. 

You may have an "a-ha" moment as you read, you may have to call bullshit and put it down for a minute, but you"ll have to admit, regardless, that it's very interesting.  And I totally recommend it.