“Women are ovens and men are microwaves”

Is it true that when it comes to sex, men are like microwaves and women are like ovens? As in, men are always ready to go and women take a long time to get turned on and heated up? I'm a sex therapist, and let's break this down. The fast answer is just no. There are plenty of women who get turned on quickly and easily and plenty of men who need a little bit of time to warm up. It also really varies from day to day. Certain times it might feel really easy to get turned on, and other times it might feel next to impossible. But as a sex therapist, I dislike this phrase because I think it's yet another way that we make women's sexuality seem so much more complicated than male sexuality when the reality is that just isn't true. What we're really talking about here isn't actually a gender issue, but what I call the emotional physical conundrum. So some people like to feel emotionally connected before having sex, and other people like to have sex as a way to feel emotionally connected. If you're an emotion first person, it's going to feel like you're an oven that needs preheating because you're wanting something to come before having sex. So let's stop with the harmful gender stereotypes and just start respecting what each of us needs to feel open to intimacy.