Ahh, a favorite topic of mine.

Newsweek did an article called Why Women Have Sex : New Research. Before I even started reading it, I was completely insulted by the title. Why women have sex? Hmm, I didn't realize it was such a mystery. Men have sex because it feels good, do women have a different purpose for sex?

Putting that aside, I finally read the article. . .and was no less annoyed.

The mystery of why women have sex, and what they want out of it, has long been an elusive study-something even Sigmund Freud called "the great question."

Really? It's an elusive study? And don't even get me started on Sigmund Freud. As a Psychology major, I considered him to be a major hack. And he rings true to the statement that apparently, to be a psychologist, you have to be pretty nuts yourself.

Researchers have historically theorized that women's motives lie in love and commitment, while newer studies have shown they do it for pleasure, just like men. But women are complicated creatures: their sexual health is determined as much by their emotions as by their physical state, which might help explain why as many as 50 percent of women have trouble getting aroused.

Okay, I'll bite. I find a bit of truth to that statement. Some women do need to be emotionally aroused to help be physically aroused.

"I think the stereotype tends to be that women have sex for love and men have sex for pleasure," says Meston, director of the Sexual Psychophysiology Lab at UT Austin. "But in reality, women's sexual motivations are vastly complex."

Thank you Cindy Meston. It's not cut and simple 'Women need love for sex, Men need pleasure for sex'.

And while the notion that sexual decisions are tethered to our caveman (or cavewoman) past has come under recent criticism, it seems just as reasonable that the myriad of female motivations could come from the flood of mixed messages we hear about how women are supposed to behave: enjoy sex but don't enjoy it too much, withhold it but don't be a prude, save it, flaunt it, be sexy but not a slut. No wonder things get complicated.

THANK YOU. Something I've blogged about before, about how society has clouded our view of what sex actually is. It sends us so many mixed messages that we no longer even know how we're supposed to think about sex. No wonder some women don't even know what turns them on!

But men, if you really want to know what turns a woman on, well, why don't you just ask her?