Devoutly religious people, as well as other morally upstanding folk, are often among those who insist most adamantly that women's feelings and attitudes about sex are much the same as men's. The reason is simply that the myth of sameness makes it easy to appear, and even feel, virtuous.
The man who believes that the world is full of women who want to have no-strings-attached sex with him can appear virtuous for resisting this temptation. It's easy since this temptation never actually exists.
This "virtuous" man's wife can pretend that her husband's resistance to sexual temptation reveals the strength of his love and devotion to her, when neither has actually been tested.
The woman who manages to convince herself that her sexual desires are much like a man's can congratulate herself for the moral willpower required to suppress these urges, when in fact she has never experienced anything remotely like male lust.
The wife who cheats on her husband can make the wrong appear less serious if she tells herself that it was only lust. The truth is she has acted as she has for different and far more important reasons.
These and similar delusions depend on the myth that women's and men's feelings about sex are the same. The moment we admit that women's and men's desires are quite different, this illusion of sexual virtue falls apart, and being good suddenly become much, much more difficult.
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