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

Matt lbo4 at beyondzero.net
Fri Jan 26 16:18:34 PST 2007


On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 08:41:33AM -0800, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> This is annoying, stupid, and insulting and I am not
> talking to you about it any more.

You display great patience and take a lot of time to explain many things Legal to those of us not as knowledgeable and that is one of the main reasons I read just about everything you write here. Thank you!

But whenever science comes up your tone gets a little nasty. Just because people disagree with you doesn't mean they are morons.

The sociobiological explanation you presented does not seem to be supported much in the published research. Admittedly I am not a Biologist or an Anthropologist, but I did a quick search:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=female+clitoris+evolution&hl=en&lr=&btnG=Search

This was an interesting letter from SB Hrdy, quite relevant to this discussion:

http://frigor.hit.bg/lib/The%20evolution%20of%20female%20orgasm%20-%20logic%20please%20but%20no%20atavism.pdf

Something similar to your theory mentioned there is the "pair bond hypothesis" and she (an Anthropologist at UC Davis) calls it absurd, based upon research indicating that:

Based on both clinical observations and interviews with

women, there is a disconcerting mismatch

between a female capable of multiple sequential

orgasms and a male partner typically capable of

one climax per copulatory bout. Furthermore,

only a minority of women (on the order of 30%)

typically experience orgasms from intercourse

alone. Even for natural selection rarely an

agent of perfection this level of response

seems . . . substandard to warrant the claim that

the orgasm is an adaptation for fostering pair

bonds though this is not to say that the

orgasm, once it became part of the primate

repertoire, might not subsequently be enlisted

as an agent to promote pair bonding

when social or environmental conditions are

conducive to monogamy . . .

Important, as I see it, is that orgasms are certainly not only found in Homo Sapiens Sapiens. I apologize for not remembering, but someone pointed out that developmentally there appears to be little difference in an early fetus between a penis and a clitoris.

This article

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ap/ar/1998/00000056/00000005/art00898

states in the abstract:

Female orgasmic responses were observed in 80 of 240 copulations

(33%). The frequency of orgasms was not correlated with female age

or dominance rank, but it was higher for copulations lasting longer

and involving a higher number of mounts and pelvic thrusts.

Wow, thats a similar number as Hrdy cites, but that could just be coincidence.

[And if only I had learned more about Macaques when I was younger...]

The sexual reproduction humans engage in has a long history. And the shared anscestor between Humans and Macaques is from about 25MYA. So if female orgasms are at least 25 MY old, I don't know if the sociobiological explanation you posit seems likely.

I'm assuming that a lady Macaque's clitoris is no less displaced than the male Macaque's penis. [I was going to go to the zoo to check, but a Friday evening watching movies seemed somehow less....creepy.]

It just may be that the female orgasm is a wonderful thing evolution has given us, just like the male orgasm. From an adaptive point of view, incredible pain that could only be relieved (please no blue ball jokes) by ejaculating into a vagina would serve the same function as a male orgasm.

But I like the way things turned out.


> After the following
> brief explanation. The question you ridicule was
> raised as part of a larger theory. The theory began
> from the presumption that the human capacity for
> sexual pleasure evolved because it enhanced adaptive
> fitness. This, I understand, is dreadfully
> pro-capitalist and male supremacist. That theory then
> raises a natural question. The question is based on
> the facts (1) that most women require clitoral
> stimulation to orgasm, and (2) the human clitoris is
> not optimally placed to to be stimulated to orgasm
> during intercourse. Why, then, is it located where it
> is?

Hmmmm, where would you like the clitoris to be? I did a survey of women I know and when I told them their clitorises were in the wrong places, they thought I was daft.

So the assumptions being made here: that the clitoris provided an evolutionary advantage because it is important for female orgasms; that female orgasms are biologically important for reproduction, may not be true.

How far back to a common anscestor must one go to find clitorises in other places?

[snip]

I think Hrdy nailed it nicely - if one tries to use natural selection to explain female orgasms as a driver for pair-bonding, the hypothesis is inconsistent with observation. But where societies encourage monogamy, female orgasms can be used to promote pair bonding. But that isn't evolutionary biology.

[Here is where I had started, but deleted, some cheesey comments to prove I wasn't sexist, things about sexual etiquette. If anything I wrote is sexist, I welcome the critique because I am curious how that might be the case. Certainly proud proclamations regarding cunnilingus wouldnt absolve me of something sexist, and might actually be an indicator of sexism. But I digress.]

Matt

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