--- Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
>
> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> >
> > One sociobiological explanation why women have the
> > clitoris placed so that they don't orgasm during
> > intercourse is so that they can see if men are
> > willing to go out of their way to please them. A
> man
> > who only selfishly wants his own pleasure and
> > doesn't care about his partner's is not likely to
> be
> > a very good mate in general for her.
>
> I would think it doubtful that any significant
> anatomical changes
> occurred (species wide) since the original emergence
> of biologically
> modern humans.
That would be about 40,000 years ago, with the Cro-Magnons. That fits with my hypothesis. It's just an evolutionary guess, like most evolutionary explanations.
Hence the just-so story you tell, if
> correct at all,
> would have had to take place within an earlier --
> probably _much_ earlier
> -- homo species. {Where is the clitoris of Bonobos
> located?)
Never looked. But it doesn't follow that the change would have to have been earlier. Anyway, the theory might explain why the current clitoral position was maintained where it is, if not why it started there. The objects of the two explanations -- why did the trait originate and why did it it persist, are different. and the explanations may be different.
>
> Carrol
>
> P.S. Up until early 19th century (in the west) it
> was believed that
> female orgasm was necessary for impregnation. When
> Mary Therese. Empress
> of Austria, consulted her physician as to how she
> could conceive, he
> recommended that her husband "tickle" her clitoris
> prior to intercourse.
> See Thomas Laqueur, _Making Sex: Body and Gender
> from the Greeks to
> Freud_.
I knew that. Makes perfect sociobiological sense. It would take the Victorians to squelch a really constructive myth like that.
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