Why Womens find sex more disgusting than Men

Women are infamous for being picky and generally fussy about things. And so don't be surprised to know that one of the things that they hate is 'risky sex'. A new study published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, evaluated approximately 2,500 men and women (66 per cent women) on the basis of how disgusting they feel about certain things and scenario.

In the study, the participants were given 72 situations and were asked to rate them ranging from no disgust to extreme disgust. The six categories were lesions, hygiene, sex, animals, foods and appearance. The scenarios included questions like biting into a mealy apple to seeing lice in child’s hair. The sex situations included questions like finding your partner paid for sex, discovering that your partner has poor genital hygiene, your partner having sex with someone shortly after meeting them for the first time.

The findings were that across all the scenarios, women felt more disgusted than men. The most notable differences were how disgusted men and women felt regarding sex-related situation.

The researchers said that humans have evolved in a manner that anything that poses a threat to them like infection or disease, like spoiled foods, open wound, animals, sexual hygiene or promiscuous behaviour makes them cringe. This disgust can also be driven by social norms, add researchers.

Women were more disgusted by sexual situations because they avoid situations that pose threat of infection or disease to them or their children. Another reason could be that men like to take more risks in general, says the study.

Though we came to understand how diseases transmit only in the 19th century, people have an intuitive sense of what to avoid in their environment, says the co-led of the research. Our coevolution with the diseases is responsible for the intuitive sense of what can cause infection. It’s evolutionary.