[lbo-talk] Is Sex Fun for Girls? --> Sociobiology, Sex, and History

Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
Tue Jan 23 11:27:57 PST 2007


On Tuesday 23 January 2007 13:32, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> ... the placement of
> the clitoris, inconvenient for bringing the woman to
> orgasm through intercourse, and promoting intercourse
> would seem to be a major adaptive value of orgasm,
> because it gives women an opportunity to assess
> whether whatever partner she's engaging in sex with --
> and this may be one or many -- would go the extra
> mile, as it were, to satisfy her sexual needs rather
> than merely selfishly indulging his own. This would
> give her information about whether he might be a good
> mate ...

Lotta subjunctives here. Not to be Popperian or anything, but isn't there something unsatisfactory about a way of thinking that requires hypothesis piled upon hypothesis, and offers no way to confirm or refute any of them?

It would be easy enough to come up with any number of such explanations for the perverse placement of the clitoris, or any other vexatious trait. A quick troll through Google suggests that one popular, competing sociobiological explanation for the shy little pearl's out-of-the-way domicile is that it encourages women to select sexual partners with large penes. I do not have the privilege of possessing a clitoris myself, but perhaps some of our clitoridiferous fellow-listers can comment on whether well-endowed partners do or do not create more clitoral bliss, just as a physical side-effect of megalophally.

A cynical reader might speculate that Andie thinks nature selects for Alan Alda because of an ideological commitment to Aldatude; other sociobiological tale-spinners may have ideological commitments that lead them to emphasize hammer-tude. How to decide?



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list