Who Is Louder in Bed?

Why are women so much louder during sex? Is it biological or are they just doing it for the man's benefit?

"Benefit?" I'm guessing that means the same as "love," but semantics aside, biology has not thus far imbued the female body with any unique amplification capability. (You'll remember that Leonardo da Vinci's brassiere-shaped public-address system, while innovative, had serious mechanical flaws.)

While a man's quiet dignity in bed is cleaved from years of deceit about what he is doing in the bathroom all goddamn night, women are practically encouraged to shriek like animals.

"I mean," asks Marshall Miller, coauthor of I ♥ Female Orgasm: An Extraordinary Orgasm Guide, "do you ever see a female orgasm appear in a movie where the woman isn't making noise?"

Guarding Tess comes to mind, but I can't think of any others. Somewhat interestingly, uninhibited vocalization is thought to elevate the experience for both genders.

Barbara Carrellas, author of Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-first Century, actually believes that each of the body's energy centers has a corresponding pleasure sound, or something.

"I've had orgasms just by making sounds," she maintains, to no one's surprise. And while I've long since lost interest in answering your question, you can rest assured, because a group of German scientists are on top of it.

Their recent observations of a clan of horny Barbary macaques revealed that when the females made noise during sex, the males ejaculated 59 percent of the time, as opposed to less than 2 percent of the time when the females kept quiet.

The scientists also noticed that the females made more noise when they (the macaques, not the scientists) were most fertile, and the power and speed of the male macaque's thrusting increased accordingly, but I think that's fairly typical of all Scots.

But, let's face it - loud sex is fun sex. More oxygen in the lungs means more oxygen you know where. Who stays silent while riding a roller coaster - no one! Or, rather, no one with a soul.

I suppose there are pristine WASPS out there who can enjoy an orgasm with a polite cough, but isn't the alternative so much more enjoyable?

ON THE OTHER HAND....I have lived in a thin-walled apartment building (really a house divided) in which listening to loud sex was the absolute worst.

When Charlie and I moved to South Royalton, Vermont, so he could go to law school, we were in a rabbit warren of apartments in a farmhouse built for one family.

I had to be up at 5 a.m. to be at work by 6 for an afternoon newspaper, we had a baby daughter and we were way past tolerating the kind of drunken/sexual hijinks associated with various law students.

In the mornings when I drove to work, I'd pass by the single-family homes and envy them because they didn't have to listen to Loud Sex.

And then there was a very memorable time in Erie, P.A., when I was a reporter covering some sort of story out there.

I had stay at Best Western where loud sex seemed to be the norm. Lying awake listening to theBw thump, thump, thump of the bed and the moans of ecstasy from the woman prompted me to search out the most reliable white noise machine.

I never travel to a hotel - no matter how nice - without it.

Obama Increasingly Conservatice: "Cut Spending!"

In a further demonstration of his subservience to Wall Street, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said that the $700 billion bailout of US financial institutions now moving through Congress would force a delay in additional spending by an incoming Democratic administration.

In an interview Tuesday morning with NBC’s “Today” show, Obama said of the bailout, “How we’re going to structure that in budget terms still has to be decided.”

He continued, “Does that mean I can do everything that I’ve called for in this campaign right away? Probably not. I think we’re going to have to phase it in. And a lot of it’s going to depend on what our tax revenues look like.”

The new spending Obama has proposed on programs like education, infrastructure and health care is so minimal, compared to the vast social need, that it doesn’t deserve the label “reform.”

It is barely a sop. But even this is likely to be withheld initially, and then canceled outright once the cost of the Wall Street bailout mushrooms, as it inevitably will.

As late as the weekend, in an interview with John Harwood of CNBC, Obama had rejected suggestions that the magnitude of the Treasury expenditure for purchasing mortgage-backed securities would put any new social spending off the agenda.

He claimed that he would proceed with a proposal to expand health insurance as well as additional funding for education, the environment and child care.

But by Tuesday the Democrat had abandoned even this position, promising only to retain a series of tax cuts in the first budget of an Obama administration—which will inevitably accrue more to upper-income families—while making no such pledge for social spending.

Paulson's Panic

Call it Paulson's Panic. That's both unfair and accurate. It's unfair because Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson didn't create the underlying conditions that led to today's financial turmoil, and the failure for not quelling it is shared by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

But it's also accurate, because as world financial markets verged on panic, Paulson himself panicked. He saw no remedy except a massive bailout: having the government buy up to $700 billion worth of risky bonds.

Historians will judge whether his outsized proposal was necessary, but the notion that its congressional enactment -- assuming that happens -- would magically end the crisis seems like wishful thinking. Americans often delude themselves that all problems can be "solved" if only government would act "boldly." This may be another example.

What we are discovering is that all the complex securities, combined with ever-greater international investment flows, have created a global financial system "so arcane that few people can understand its workings.

The difference between now and two years ago is that financial managers then thought they understood the system; now they know they don't. Ignorance breeds risk-aversion and fear.

Like wage-price controls, Paulson's plan is no panacea. Banks, hedge funds, private equity funds and others are trying to reduce risk by "deleveraging" -- selling stocks and bonds to raise cash, increase capital and cut their own debt.

The rush to cash is a hallmark of financial crises. But what makes sense for one may be ruinous for all.

Heavy selling depresses prices; lower prices then increase losses, deplete capital, prompt more selling and heighten fear. At best, Paulson's plan might preempt this spiral by allowing investors to unload their least attractive securities.

But it wouldn't automatically stimulate new lending, revitalize "securitization" or prevent more "deleveraging." Time is needed. The rescue is being constructed so hastily that it may include all manner of flawed provisions: too much power for the Treasury secretary; authority for bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages.

Congress faces a wrenching dilemma, imposed on it by financial markets and Paulson.

If it dawdles, it may invite the panic that Paulson has brazenly predicted. But if it acts quickly, it may create a monster whose full implications emerge only with time.

The Election Circus: But Where's the Bread?

Taken as a whole, the Bush administration's economic record is by far the most dismal of any administration since Herbert Hoover's.

Median income in America is lower, in real terms, today than when George Bush became president nearly eight years ago.

That's the first time since the Great Depression that median income has fallen over such a prolonged period.

The percentage of Americans living below the poverty line is higher today than eight years ago.

The number of people on food stamps is at an all-time high, and food banks and churches around the country report extraordinary increases over the past few years in the numbers of Americans relying on charity food to survive.

And the country's banking system, after decades of deregulation promoted by conservative ideologues, increasingly looks like a house of cards.So, if today's Caesars aren't delivering on the bread front, they'd better at least remedy the situation with a damned good circus.

After all, as the Romans knew all too well, people get angry when their bread disappears and their entertainment isn't top notch.

Yet a funny thing happened when my wife and I took our children to the circus in Sacramento a couple Sundays ago.

To put it bluntly, when the elephants came onstage, for reasons unknown they began shitting copiously, one after the other. I've never seen anything quite like it at a circus before, and I daresay most of the people in the audience hadn't either.

The elephants would walk a few steps, stop for a minute, and when they started again, there would be great piles of dull yellow balls of elephant crap in the spaces they'd just vacated.

I felt a metaphor coming on...

We're all standing on an economic precipice. If more big banks fail and Wall Street continues its swoon, there's a very real chance that people's savings could be wiped out, that businesses without access to credit could start to crumble en masse and unemployment could soar.

And even if the bailout works, the ricochet effects around taxation, unemployment, inflation and long-term standard of living measures are likely to be devastating. The mess isn't all the Republicans' fault.

But a pretty large part of the blame does lie with the party whose symbol is the elephant - with their loathing of government regulatory agencies and their dismantling of government oversight systems.

After eight years of Bush, the country's international reputation has plummeted, the dollar has fallen from its once-unassailable perch and the economy has now entered what Alan Greenspan calls a "once-in-a-century" period of chaos.

That the election is even remotely close at this point is extraordinary. At the risk of overdoing the circus metaphor: if you can't stop the elephants crapping all over the place, ultimately you've got to send them off the stage.

The Dollar Hangs by a Thread

Critics of the administration’s Wall Street bailout condemn the waste of taxpayer dollars. But the taxpayers aren’t the weightiest American financial constituency, even in this election year.

The dollar is the world’s currency. And it is on the world’s opinion of the dollar that the Treasury’s plan ultimately hangs.

It hangs by a thread, if Monday’s steep drop of the greenback against the euro is any indication. We Americans, constitutionally inattentive to developments in the foreign exchange markets, should be grateful for what we have.

That a piece of paper of no intrinsic value should pass for good money the world over is nothing less than a secular miracle. We pay our bills with it.

And our creditors not only accept it, they also obligingly invest it in American securities, including our slightly shop-soiled mortgage-backed securities.

Every year but one since 1982, this country has consumed much more than it has produced, and it has managed to discharge its debts with the money that it alone can lawfully print.

No other nation ever had it quite so good. Before the dollar, the pound sterling was the pre-eminent monetary brand. But when Britannia ruled the waves, the pound was backed by gold. You could exchange pound notes for gold coin, and vice versa, at the fixed statutory rate.

Today’s dollar, in contrast, is faith-based. Since 1971, nothing has stood behind it except the world’s good opinion of the United States.

And now, watching the largest American financial institutions quake, and the administration fly from one emergency stopgap to the next, the world is changing its mind.

Where all this might end, nobody can say. But it is unlikely that either the dollar, or the post-Bretton Woods system of which it is the beating heart, will emerge whole.

It behooves Barack Obama and John McCain to do a little monetary planning. In the absence of faith, what stands behind a faith-based currency?

Maureen Dowd: 'Blowjob' Palin Meets 'Humpty' Kissinger

I don’t agree with those muttering darkly that the picture of Gov. Sarah Palin with a perky smile and shapely gams posing with a pleased Henry Kissinger, famous for calling power the ultimate aphrodisiac, is a sign of the apocalypse.

It isn’t even a sign of the apocalipstick.

How the mighty 85-year-old Henry the K has fallen from his days chasing Jill St. John and running the world to his hour briefing of a 44-year-old Wasilla hockey mom who may end up running the world.

Governor Palin knows a lot about the End of Days from her years at the Pentecostal Wasilla Assembly of God, which had preached (after a war in the Middle East about light vanquishing darkness) that Alaska would be a shelter for Rapturous “saved” Christians at the end of times when they ascend to heaven.

Sarah was motorcading around Manhattan even as a “greed is good” Wall Street experienced an End of Days vibe while a world gone sour on America descended on the United Nations.

After losing its moral superiority abroad with phony evidence for attacking Iraq, the U.S. has now lost its moral superiority in the financial arena. Once more, W. took the ball, carried it off the cliff and went biking.

It’s hard to imagine that John McCain and Sarah Palin still want advice from the Unwise Man Kissinger. It’s sort of like villagers in those old movies who bring in the wizened witch doctor to shake a stick over them.

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comments (5)

1. adult toys left...

Tuesday, 17 March 2009 4:04 pm :: http://www.edenfantasys.com/

Frankly speaking I don't like noisy women, but It depends on whether you are in the same bed or in the next room ;) Sometimes It would be music to my ears at any volume.

2. chaser48 left...

Monday, 23 March 2009 12:59 am

Women are louder! I have been enjoying sex with women of all ages since 1973 and the younger ones scream and the older ones scream and moan -- Its tough on me because I am concentrating on an eventual orgasm and something for me about sound is that it disrupts the inner timing thing which is visual -- visually watching numbers 456, 457, 674, 675, 987.988. 989. 990 etc, click away in my brain. The noises and scratching disrupt my thought pattern but I always seem to be able to pick up again at some arbitrary number --it really doesnt matter if the numbers are sequential I've learned. Yes women love to let that inner OOOFFFFF or AARRRGGGHHHHHH outof there and Im glad about cause it signals shes happy --- wax shooting ear protectors work for me too. Nails and scratching simply hurts like hell!

3. chaser48 left...

Monday, 23 March 2009 1:02 am

#2 'chaser48' posted this on Mon 23 Mar 2009, 12:59 am Women are louder! I have been enjoying sex with women of all ages since 1973 and the younger ones scream and the older ones scream and moan -- Its tough on me because I am concentrating on an eventual orgasm and something for me about sound is that it disrupts the inner timing thing which is visual -- visually watching numbers 456, 457, 674, 675, 987.988. 989. 990 etc, click away in my brain. The noises and scratching disrupt my thought pattern but I always seem to be able to pick up again at some arbitrary number --it really doesnt matter if the numbers are sequential I've learned. Yes women love to let that inner OOOFFFFF or AARRRGGGHHHHHH out of there and Im glad about it cause it signals shes happy --- wax shooting ear protectors work for me too. Nails and scratching simply hurts like hell!

4. Ed Strong left...

Monday, 23 March 2009 1:50 pm

I don't get the numbers thing - unless it's to control premature ejaculation. Otherwise, you sound like a lucky man. Maybe women moan & groan because they've been watching too much porn. It's become ritualistic in sex clips.

5. chaser48 left...

Wednesday, 25 March 2009 9:23 am

Premature?? Hardly, I make love for hours -- sometimes the alarm clock set for the next morning goes off so the evening becomes a morning thing. Never had an issue with PE I wish I could ejaculate say within an hour but cannot -- Not had a complaint either except from a lady who felt that just was to long!!! But we were simply discussing the matter (My doctor!)

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