How Louis L'Amour and the Apes Changed My Views on Men

I always understood men to be of a very simple nature requiring nothing more than food,sex,and perhaps a hobby of some sort to keep them happy and content. In fact,through no fault of my husband as I had this view long before he entered the picture, I had this idea of men as being more animal than human and having little more than things of a sexual nature cross their radar screens at all. " Me need woman! Ok... now me need sandwich!"
Awhile back,though, the Universe sent me some literature to rearrange my way of thinking. Actually, the Universe sent me my educational literature via my friends, Clint and Lora.
My first eye opener was in the form of Louis L'Amour books that Clint brought to me. My grandmother used to read the cheesiest of romance novels (bodice rippers) that had parts that in my opinion,were a little too racy for my Jamaw to be reading, . In fact,in every single novel,the whole plot existed only to lead up to the highly descriptive "love scenes". I dug into the Louis L'amour books with eager curiousity because I assumed they were the same sort of book but from a male point of view. I assumed that the plot would also lead up to something of a naughty nature but minus all the lovey,sappy, nonsense. Understand that I wasn't hoping to get some sort of jolly from reading the books; I just wanted to know how a male would spin the whole romance genre.
The first line in the first book read: "When I saw that black-eyed woman a-looking at me I wished I had a bible." Boy,that Louis was diving right in, wasting no time on descriptions of scenery,location,or the character's background! Alas,that was as naughty as he ever got. The entire book had far less to do with the black-eyed woman than with the character's (I don't think the reader was ever even given his name) difficulty with transferring some gold across the desert. It was stictly about the character meeting his goal, peppered with danger and fight scenes. In the case of "light reading", looks like women are the more sexually-oriented ones.
My second revelation came from an issue of a Scientific American Mind magazine from a stack that Lora brought to me ( It makes me happy that my friends come bearing gifts of reading material). In an article from one of the magazines, I read about a psychologist and her colleagues who wanted to "dissect desire". They guaged the level of arousal in 100 homo and hetorsexual men and women by having them watch erotic film clips.
The clips depicted various um...activities including same-sex and,solitary activities,nude exercises,and mating between apes (bonobos,specifically). To my absolute astonishment, the women's level of interest,to be delicate,increased with the intensity of the sexual level of the activities regardless of who or what was participating. The women totally didn't care WHAT was going on onscreen! The gay women were slightly more particular,not reacting at all to the scenes involving men. They reacted to the apes just like the straight women,mind you,but not the men The straight women reacted to men, other women,whatever.. The men reacted only to the scenes involving people of their preferred category of partner. No apes. No nude exersices of the non-preferred sex.
Again,the women were more sexually oriented than the men,who were alot more particular. The guys seem to have gotten a bad rap. Maybe they do only need food,sex,and sports to keep them content but based on my readings, it seems they're more discriminating and can,in fact,have other things on their minds.