I think perhaps more plausibly the reason that you don’t see straight cruising sites analogous to gay cruising sites is not due to straight women’s alleged distaste for sex (except for whores? erm. Yikes.), but that a straight woman who wants to get laid can go to a thing called a “bar”, where there might be “dollar kamikaze shots” and “men ripe for the plucking” and “music to which to wiggle.” O the peculiar mating rituals! There aren’t straight cruising sites because there isn’t a straight closet.
via.
The Edge of the American West 
11 comments
November 1, 2010 at 4:43 pm
oaklove
I’m not sure about this theory. Guys I know who use hook-up sites have plenty of access to gay bars too. Plus a selection of public parks where cruising goes on more or less in the open. I live in probably the safest place in the world for gay men (the SF Bay Area) where being out is probably as comfortable as it can be within our larger world realities, and still, cruising sites are popular here.
November 1, 2010 at 5:45 pm
dana
Perhaps; I just don’t think it has anything to do with levels of desire.
November 1, 2010 at 6:50 pm
oaklove
Yes, agreed.
I thought the most telling part of the article was this: “But he has also said he was celibate from 1979 to 1995.” Perhaps his perspective has more to do with his own discomfort around sexuality than anything else?
November 2, 2010 at 4:39 am
CG
Are there lesbian cruising sites? They have access to bars, but are subject to pressures of the closet too.
I don’t agree with Frye, but I don’t think the closet-theory works either or else lesbians would have more hook-up sites. I do believe men have a different relation to their sexuality than women – but this difference is not primarily in levels of desire.
If pushed, I might describe the difference as “Men – at this time, in this society – are more willing to treat their sex drive as an itch that needs to be scratched.”
November 2, 2010 at 9:06 am
foeb
Are there lesbian cruising sites?
Yes, it’s called the Home Depot.
November 2, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Anderson
Women are pickier who they let near their __ than men are about where they put their __.
(You can tell what should fill those blanks, but it also works really well as a Mad-Lib, I’ve just noticed.)
November 2, 2010 at 2:35 pm
elizardbreath
If I can substitute in ‘more risk-averse’ for ‘pickier’, that sounds about right. Cruising for public sex sounds prohibitively dangerous, to the point where I can’t reliably evaluate whether it might sound like an attractive idea if it weren’t prohibitively dangerous.
Now, it’s dangerous for gay men too, of course, and they (or at least some) do it anyway. But I don’t think you can reliably say that the difference is a higher level of interest in sex as opposed to a lower level of fear of violence.
November 3, 2010 at 5:09 pm
jim
Path dependence, people. Homosexual acts used to be illegal. So anonymous sex was self-protective. Anonymous sex has its own pleasures (see Erica Jong on the zipless fuck) but for heterosexuals was difficult to reach. Homosexuals, having been forced to it earlier, kept it up even after other options became available.
November 3, 2010 at 5:21 pm
oudemia
Jim is correct. And “Fry” has no “e.”
November 6, 2010 at 4:33 pm
John Browne
By the obverse of the same token, the stand-alone summary beneath the banner ad
ASIAN SINGLES FOR MARRIAGE says
“Where Foreign Men & Asian singles
find True Love. Join for Free now!”
Nothing for “Domestic men”?.. and these
“singles”… what is it about them? Is no gender required, where foreign men are concerned? (Visions of rectangular American cheese slices in the their individual cellophane envelopes, waiting for the elusive foreign partner… french bread, perhaps, w/ a little gray poupon…) ^..^
November 6, 2010 at 6:02 pm
dana
The U.S. doesn’t allow immigration for same-sex partners, so “female” is probably presumed.