The Ultimate Sex Scene

He (Rhett Butler) swung her (Scarlett O'Hara) off her feet and into his arms and started up the stairs. Her head was crushed against his chest and she heard the hard hammering of his heart beneath her ears. He hurt her and she cried out, muffled, frightened. Up the stairs he went in the utter darkness, up, up, and she was wild with fear. He was a mad stranger and this was a black darkness she did not know, darker than death...

They say that these two paragraphs in Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind are arguably the most famous sex scene in English (language) literature. Simple words are used and there are no explicit or anatomical details. A sure sign of sophistication, most critics or editors have argued.

Reader I have a confession to make. When I first read this scene I got more anxious than aroused. Was there something wrong with me? Was I a latent homosexual taken out of the closet by Margaret Mitchell's sophisticated language? Had I wasted my valuable adolescent allowance buying Playboy when I should have bought sophisticated literature? I tried to control my breathing and reread the two famous paragraphs. And then I knew what was wrong.
Maybe I could lift Scarlett O'Hara. By a stretch of my imagination I could maybe swing her off her feet. I could perhaps even take her up a few steps. But then my imagination would exhaust itself and I would tumble down, down the stairs, wild with fear. And the only darkness I would see would come when Scarlett O'Hara lands on top of me and I would pass out!

I cannot say that the scene doesn't work. Clearly it worked for Margaret Mitchell. She wanted a real man to take her up a flight of stairs, crush her against his chest, and make fierce love to her in a dark room. The scene also works for most women. I am not sure though that it works for men.

You see, although a man and a woman may end-up in bed together, the mechanism that gets each of them there is not the same. To arouse a man, all a woman has to do is pass in front of him. A glimpse of a pretty face, a half naked leg or even a whispering voice for less than a minute is all it takes. It is no accident that Hugh Hefner made his billions by selling colour photos of the female form. And it is no accident that most women spend all their money and half their lifetime buying clothes or in front of a make-up mirror. They understand how the male arousal mechanism works and want to take advantage of it.

Women do not take the same path. Sure, they talk about a man's muscles, glimpse at his ass and observe his shoes but their attention is focused more on a man's qualities rather than his looks. To arouse a woman, a man must help her transcend the path from fearing him to feeling secure when his arm goes over her shoulder. Once a woman crosses this ridge, from fear into security, she may be aroused. If you read carefully Mitchell's two paragraphs beginning with the phrase I have quoted above, you will note that that's exactly what this passage evokes: fear replaced by security. It is no accident then that this passage is famous and that it works so well—on women. And what makes it work is not sophistication, as the critics claim, but the nuts and bolts of the female arousal mechanism.

Inevitably, the ultimate sex scene for men would have to be different. To match the male arousal mechanism it must have explicit anatomical, and perhaps even sexual details to replace the images a man needs. Still, it would be nowhere near as fast nor as effective as a single image may be. It is no surprise that all forms of pornography work so well on men, nor that it is a multi-billion dollar industry, nor that it makes up 50-80% of all Internet data transferred. You may say that it is vulgar, that it lacks sophistication, but that's how the male arousal mechanism works and there is not much we can do about it.

What is ultimately surprising is that the Margaret Mitchell scene still works on today's women. A hundred years ago, a farmer like Rhett Butler could sweep Scarlett O'Hara off her feet and carry her up a flight of steps. In this day and age, where male muscles have been weakened by cars, couches and TV controls (and women are overweight) Rhett Butler would really have to be a furniture mover.

Now, dear critics and editors, how sophisticated is that?