I criticized the Zietsch and Santilla paper on the female orgasm. Now one of the authors has responded.
One response he makes is that some of the limitations to the study that I pointed out were also explicitly recognized in the paper. This is true; however, my purpose in mentioning them was to highlight the fact that they make it impossible to draw even the tentative conclusions the authors do…which obviously is not something that was done in the paper. Admitting that assessing orgasmic function with self-reports, for instance, is a limitation doesn’t really change the fact that extremely weak evidence was published to support a particular hypothesis.
Another problem I raised is that the comparisons between male and female orgasmic response were inappropriate. They compared the timing of male orgasm to the likelihood of women having an orgasm at all. My objection is two-fold: they are using phenotype as a proxy for a genetic difference, which is problematic in a trait so strongly responsive to an environmental difference, and it treats two parameters, timing and likelihood, as equivalent in men and women. I don’t think these are necessarily directly connected at all. Zietsch’s reply emphasizes that he does think this is a valid comparison.
Indeed, we measured susceptibility to orgasm in response to sexual stimulation (let’s call it ‘orgasmability’) by assessing the likelihood of orgasming during sexual activity in women and the time taken to orgasm during sexual activity in men. That’s because during sex, men tend to reach orgasm faster than women and generally cannot continue once it is reached. Even when women reach orgasm faster than their man, they can generally continue intercourse until he reaches orgasm, sometimes achieving more orgasms. As such, women’s orgasm during sex is time limited – if she doesn’t reach it in relatively quick time, she might not have it at all, whereas men can go until they finish. That’s why we measure likelihood of orgasm in women and time to orgasm in men, consistent with countless other studies and definitions of orgasmic ‘dysfunction’ in men and women in DSM-IV.
How odd. If sexual activity is limited mechanically by the maintenance of the man’s erection, then yes, it would be true that women’s orgasm during sex is time limited. However, given that vaginal intercourse and female orgasm are only weakly connected, isn’t this an unfortunately male-centered perspective? I will confess that personally, if my sexual performance were measured only by time to orgasm, I’d be considered a pathetic lover (admit it, all you guys reading this: it’s true for you too), but somehow my sexual encounters go on considerably longer, to the delight of both participants. Human sexual activity is considerably more complex than wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, as I’m sure Zietsch knows.
It’s also a self-destructive assumption. Was there ever a time in our evolutionary history when sexual interactions were limited by male time-to-orgasm? I suspect not; caveman/cavewoman sex probably involved a fair amount of courting and cuddling and playing, just as it does nowadays. And if it didn’t — if it really were nothing but 3-to-5 minute intromission and ejaculation sessions — then there was no opportunity for female orgasm to be selected for. So this is really all an irrelevant objection.
Also…extremes in variation in the timing of the male sexual response are considered dysfunctional because they deviate far from a solid norm. A man who takes a half-hour of focused stimulation to achieve orgasm is probably experiencing some real problems. A woman, on the other hand, who takes that long is not that unusual at all; she is not ‘dysfunctional’. She is normal. It’s a problem when your study assumes that a stable, normal, healthy condition in a woman is comparable to a dysfunctional condition in a male.
Now one central explanation I offered was that male orgasmic response was strongly canalized — that is, there had been selection for multiple genetic processes keying on a strong environmental cue, the presence of testosterone, that made the male response much more robust. The byproduct hypothesis postulates that the female orgasmic response uses the same genetic circuitry, but is more weakly expressed because the cue is largely missing. Unfortunately, we seem to be arguing past each other.
Myers makes some other points that suggest that although he read the paper, he didn’t read it very carefully, since he misses its main point. The by-product theory, as described in detail by Lloyd (2005), says that female orgasm is currently (and always has been) maintained by ongoing selection on the male orgasm. Selection can only operate on additive genetic variation, so if the male orgasm has zero heritability (i.e. zero additive genetic variation) as Myers suggests, then there is no selection on it and therefore no indirect selection on female orgasm. (Hidden genetic variation with no phenotypic effects in males but expressed in females, which Myers alludes to, is irrelevant here because it’s invisible to selection, assuming no direct selection on female orgasm). He goes on to talk about males and females sharing orgasm-related circuitry and genetic apparatus (which nobody denies) – but, to be repetitive, selection only acts on genetic variation – for selection on the male orgasm to act on the female orgasm, additive genetic variation in male orgasm needs to correlate with additive genetic variation in female orgasm. If such a correlation exists there would be a correlation between opposite-sex siblings, and that’s what we tested.
Well, male orgasm has almost zero heritability. There is a low frequency of dysfunction that can be selected against. But largely, it’s true, males hit puberty and they’re generally sprouting erections and ejaculating frequently; selection has done its job and given us guys a remarkably reliable physiology in that regard (and I for one say hooray for evolution). We males are so good at that part of sex that it’s unlikely that there is currently much selection going on on our side of the sexual divide to make orgasm more likely, and so you can remove us from the equation right now and for a long time in the past — we’re done, and all the evidence suggests that that part of our evolution was established at least since mammals evolved.
So Zietsch and Santtila went looking for some kind of significant variation in the male population, and found one in the self-reported variation in time to orgasm. Could there be natural genetic variation in that parameter? Sure. But my objection is that it probably is not significant (was selection for sexual performance ever so strong that males who ejaculated in 3 minutes had an advantage over males who took 5 minutes? I doubt it), and that a self-reporting survey on such a charged question would not produce valid results. 35% of their sample reported spending more than 10 minutes in active intercourse before orgasm, which ought to set off alarm bells right there.
But of course, we males are only half the population. There is known variation in the frequency of orgasm in women, Zietsch and Santilla found the same thing in their survey (note again, though, the unreliability of self-reporting), and we could imagine selection working on that variation. Males are done, as I said, with robust testosterone-dependent developmental mechanisms that assemble a reliable orgasm-generating machine, but there could be, for instance, selection for non-testosterone-dependent orgasm pathways in women, since there is variation in the population.
Only there doesn’t seem to be. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern of women who can orgasm 3 minutes after a penis touches their vagina being more reproductively successful than women who take 20 minutes of clitoral stimulation, nor is there any reason to think faster orgasms would make a woman more fertile. That’s the basis of the byproduct theory — a lack of evidence that selection can or does actually operate on the range of variation in the female half of the human population.
The heart of Zietsch and Santilla’s argument above, though, is this weak one, that unreliable self-reported data shows a lack of correlation in time to orgasm in males and frequency of orgasm in their female siblings. I argue that the variation they describe in the males is unreliable;it is also not significant, even if true; and they haven’t shown that the genetic basis of any variation is even relevant to the genetic basis of orgasm frequency in women. While the neural and physiological basis of orgasm may be shared in men and women (that is a foundation of the byproduct theory), the details of the regulation of the expression of the phenotype are also likely to be dependent on different genetic circuitry. I’d argue that there are multiple pathways in development leading to the formation of the orgasm response, and that all of them contribute to the male pattern, but a major contributor, testosterone-dependent development of the brain and reproductive system, is largely absent in women, leading to a greater reliance on auxiliary systems.
If you want to show that the byproduct hypothesis is false, one good way would be to find, for instance, an estrogen-dependent developmental process that contributes to the female orgasm. That’s what I’d like to see: evidence of a parallel pathway that would only be under selection in females. Showing that would at least be evidence of historical selection for activation of orgasm in women.
One more uncomfortable problem that I’m sure was unintentional: A male scientist writing about female physiology has his work criticized by a number of bloggers; he responds to two of the male critics but ignores a female critic. Again, it’s probably just chance, but it’s an omission that doesn’t leave a good impression. I’ll assume it was just because my argument was so much more magisterial by virtue of my entirely non-sexist authority that he had to reply to me.
(Also on Sb)
I read a book about the attempts to study sex scientifically called “Bonk” that gave me some fascinating information about female orgasm. It mentions one female researcher, IIRC, in the late 19th or early 20th century, who discovered that there was considerable variation in the placement of the clitorous and that women whose clitorous was more than an inch from the entrance to the vagina had a much lower rate of orgasm during “normal” (missionary position) intercourse. This pure mechanical explanation for variability in frequency of female orgasm during intercourse has since been almost completely ignored, at least as far as my admittedly very limited knowledge of the subject goes. It certainly strikes me that this is very useful information and that if it is true, it should be common knowledge. Of course it was a single study done by a non-professional a hundred (or more) years ago. Does anyone know if this had been re-studied in more recent times?
I’ll send a survey to my zebrafish next time I want to discover the inheritability or variability of a trait.
The problem I have with so many of these attempts to explain the female human’s orgasm is that they come off as highly….mechanical for lack of a better word. It may have something to do with largely being a product of a man’s perspective or male gaze (reinforced by widespread societal assumptions that the only sex that counts as sex is penis in vagina penetration, period), where the only part of a heterosexual human mating that is important is the part where thrusting and pumping leads to ejaculation.
Having sex for me and I’m certain the majority of other couples is far more complicated, and it’s all sex, not just the penis-in-vagina portion. I’ve come to dismiss all the bullshit assumptions that everything leading up to penetration is “foreplay” rather than “real sex.” Ejaculation is not the culmination of a sexual encounter, although that seems to be an unusual statement. (For one thing, it’s massively heteronormative.) It seems to come from our inherited patriarchal ideas of women’s sexuality and their purpose being limited to men’s pleasure and vessels for children. Occasionally (yes, it’s shocking) having sex with spouse doesn’t involve any penetration whatsoever. Still sex.
I can’t help but see that bias underpinning much of the papers and research publicity you see attempting to “figure out” the female orgasm as if it was some alien thing.
I understand that they’re attempting to analyze orgasms in early hominids, but it is a jump to assume that prior to the most modern iterations of human beings our mating behaviors were drastically different in that the only goal in the behavior was reproduction (and maybe male pleasure). It simply doesn’t make sense that earlier ancestors would not have some elements of our current tendencies in their mating behaviors:
The other reason it seems unlikely is that societal structures, trends and taboos based on learned behaviors seem to exert a powerful role on sexual interactions. And humans do not have a monopoly on societal structure; simply looking at the way that (even externally suggested) learned behaviors spread through monkey societies or (as I recently learned) that parrots seem to give their chicks a unique name (so to speak) that follows them into adulthood suggests that no matter when orgasms for female hominids (or at whatever earlier stage) emerged, social influences cannot be discounted.
As for the emergence of female physical capacity to orgasm being so dependent on duration of male orgasm, that simply doesn’t make sense when you examine other animals’ sexual habits. There are a number of species that engage in oral sex, so it’s unlikely that non-reproductive sexual pleasure is a particularly new thing.
Cannot continue what? The orgasm? Granted. Merely having the erection for long enough that another orgasm is possible?
I tend to agree on a philosophical level. But natural selection is no philosopher, and will be indifferent to all that unless it culminates in penetrative sex and reproduction. If we’re going to argue an adaptive function, that has to happen at some point. That’s not heteronormative, it’s just a consequence of the fact that reproduction is a necessary component of natural selection.
The only alternative that I can think of would be to show that the female orgasm has some role like sex does for bonobos (where they use it for social bonding). But I’ve never seen any evidence of that. Are women who can’t orgasm more likely to be socially excluded? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Honestly, I’ve never seen any evidence that the female orgasm has any relation to survival or reproduction at all in any context, which is why I incline towards the byproduct hypothesis.
@David Marjanović,
Obviously the researchers mean that sex not only does not continue, but cannot continue once the man is no longer erect.
That’s actually precisely what I meant in pointing out that to many people, including these researchers, the only part of sex that’s “sex” is erect penis in vagina. So as far as their concerned, men cannot continue with sex after climaxing. Which is a ridiculous load of crap.
@Wes:
Natural selection is no philosopher, but if we’re trying to figure out what’s going on when people (or any other species of animal) have sex, it’s not a good idea to ignore a lot of what happens.
What if females who have orgasms have sex more often (because it seems more appealing than slipping away to gather berries), and are more likely to reproduce? (With possible refinements like, if male X is better at pleasing his partners, he’ll have more partners and leave more children.)
@Wes, regarding this point:
I completely disagree. This is assuming that the only evolutionary benefit to sex in complex societies is reproduction. This leaves out the entire issue of benefit from pair-bondings in societal stability and child rearing. (Both their own and the children of others in their group and families.) While it’s not the sole contributor to happiness in and the strength of a relationship, sexual fulfillment for both partners is a major factor in the strength of a pair-bond.
Just as relative care increases the chance of passing on portions of one’s genetics, having strong pair bonds in a species with extended/intensive child rearing. Moreover, to the heteronormative point, I believe that you can examine contributions to raising a sibling’s offspring as beneficial in this way. So the idea that having homosexual pair-bonding is inherently detrimental to evolutionary fitness is not truly accurate. It is entirely possible that a mated pair who is incapable of having reproductive sex can still aid in ensuring that offspring sharing their genes will reach sexual maturity.
Agreed on the weird ejaculation-centric POV taken by a lot of evolution-of-sex researchers. I’d be extremely surprised if premodern humans were all about the penetrative sex, since that (in a pre-birth-control world) means a 20% risk of pregnancy each time you do it! Hard to maintain an ongoing sexual relationship with a pregnancy rate that high. And if you have more regular sexual partners, that means you’ve got more people who probably are emotionally attached enough that you can rely on them in a pinch. Being social means cultivating alliances, and this is a particularly potent kind of alliance.
It’s possible that a lot of them were trained on evolution of sexual systems in nonsocial species, in which case that’s pretty legit. However, it’s entirely inappropriate when applied to animals where sex is a social bonding thing.
Also, “sexual contact ends when the male partner stops having an erection”…yeah, lolwhat? :-p
I mentioned social bonding as a possibility in my second paragraph. I admit it’s possible, but I’ve never seen any evidence that women who reach orgasm bond better than ones who don’t. I suppose it’s possible, but with no evidence to support it, it doesn’t amount to much. I will admit that I’m somewhat skeptical of the idea that ability to reach orgasm would have much of an effect on a woman’s ability to bond.
As for homosexuality, I don’t think it’s evolutionary detrimental. But I’m skeptical as to whether it’s beneficial, too. It may also be a neutral byproduct. Also, the term “homosexuality” probably doesn’t pick out a single phenomenon. Different instances of homosexuality may have completely different underlying causes, which complicates the matter.
Again, that’s a possibility, but where is the evidence for it?
Part of Lisa’s point in her book is that throwing out these possibilities like this doesn’t really get us very far. When you look at the evidence that’s currently available (which admittedly isn’t a lot), the byproduct hypothesis seems to fit it best.
I think we can safely say that ignoring female orgasm is maladaptive for men. It drastically reduces opportunities for reproduction.
@Wes
I tried to do some google scholar research on sexual satisfaction and relationship stability, but the webfilter I’m currently working behind is blocking almost everything as “sexual education.” Meh.
But you’re telling me that absent a consensus of scholarly material establishing that women who are more sexually satisfied (which I can’t help but read as actually enjoying sex, you know, orgasming) are more likely to have stable relationships, you doubt this as an probable explanation?
While I can’t access sources at the moment, at least anecdotally I can look at some examples of women friends and family members that have confided that when their relationships fell apart, a large factor was their sexual unhappiness. Anecdote!= data, but it can contribute somewhat.
Is it really so unlikely to you based on how people form and maintain unions that sexual compatibility and fulfillment plays an important role is strengthening pair bonds?
This assumes that “cavewomen” typically had sex with only one “caveman” at a time. Bonobo females frequently do otherwise, and since they are genetically our closest cousins, it’s not unreasonable to assume that female orgasm emerged in a much more promiscuous social environment.
The byproduct theory fails to answer a number of questions:
1) If orgasms are adaptive because they encourage men to have sex, why is this encouragement not adaptive for women? In other words, why would selection pressures only encourage males to have more sex?
2) If orgasm does encourage women to have sex, why the huge difference in the amount of stimulation needed for orgasm?
3) If orgasm wasn’t selected for in women, why is the female orgasm typically of longer duration and intensity (if achieved)? In other words, why isn’t it just like the male orgasm? One might expect female orgasm to have a wider range of duration, but not a different mean duration.
4) If the longer duration of stimulation needed for female orgasm implies prehistoric foreplay, one has to ask why the stimulation is one-way (male stimulating female)? If it were mutual, the male would still orgasm first. It seems like “after”play would be a more coherent explanation, which lends itself to a theory that the female orgasm encourages pair bonding — which would make it adaptive.
5) Why is it that homosexuality can be explained by conferring non-reproductive advantages but the female orgasm cannot?
Ahem. Men have the funny looking mushroom shaped penis because the sides of the top part rub up against the woman’s g-spot. This will make the woman orgasm. This is a clear evolutionary development to make the woman orgasm. As to the question of why women orgasm? Because it slightly negates the male annoying factor which would otherwise prevent a second encounter and leave the male to write articles.
Is, perhaps, the expectation/hope of an orgasm sufficient to make it adaptive? Is looking solely at the physical aspects of a behavior sufficient to form a compelling evaluation?
This in itself is enough to tell me that Zietsch is a moron.
I do, in fact, wonder whether inability to achieve orgasm would lead to women to be less sexually satisfied. I don’t think it’s as obvious as you’re making it out to be. Keep in mind that a very large percentage of women never orgasm–some perhaps because they’ve never been stimulated correctly and some perhaps because they are physiologically incapable–and yet they seem to do fine. It seems to me possible that a woman could have complete sexual fulfillment and healthy relationships without it. Many seem to do this, anyway. I’m certainly not comfortable with saying that women who don’t orgasm that they have deficient sex lives.
It’s not just that they encourage men to have sex. The associated muscle contractions and such are an important part of ejaculation, which is crucial for reproduction.
And there are some reasons to think that natural selection would favor males having more sex than females. Males in most (but not all) species invest less in reproduction than females, so they can take more chances. A human male, for example, doesn’t have to invest 9 months in a risky pregnancy. But I don’t think that has much to do with the current topic.
I don’t see how that’s a problem for the byproduct hypothesis. If anything, doesn’t it support the byproduct idea?
If it were selected for in women, it would be MORE like the male orgasm in terms of variability, because selective pressure would reduce variability. Part of the argument that the female orgasm is a byproduct is that it is hugely variable compared to the male orgasm. If it were just like the male orgasm, it would probably be an adaptation. You’re offering evidence for byproduct, not against it.
I didn’t see who suggested it had to be one way. But the “prehistoric foreplay” thing presupposes that the female orgasm is adaptive, so you’re just question begging. I’m sure people a long time ago fooled around just like we do (if their cave art is any indication), but I don’t think that explains why women have orgasms.
I’m not convinced that homosexuality is an adaptation either. It MIGHT be, but that’s not a certainty. And the female orgasm MIGHT offer similar benefits, but again, not necessarily. Although I think both are candidates for being byproducts. And the byproduct position is not that the female orgasm CAN’T provide adaptive benefit. The position is that it PROBABLY DIDN’T provide adaptive benefit. Any genetic trait could become an adaptation in the right environment. It would be wrong to declare that any trait can’t become adaptive. But it would also be wrong to assume that all traits ARE adaptive, because many are not.
It strikes me that Zietsch and Santtila are making an assumption about male orgasm with this point: “men tend to reach orgasm faster than women and generally cannot continue once it is reached.” Of course, “tend” and “generally” are loose enough terms that no one could nail them for it, but there’s reason to question those assumptions. In my youth during the heat of the sexual revolution, male prowess was very much vested in taking your time…let the lady go first. I suspect that was not a particularly novel sentiment. And, perhaps men don’t “generally” try to continue having sex after their first orgasm, but with just a few minutes patience much is possible, particularly for the young, so that “cannot” just doesn’t seem like the right choice of words.
it seems obvious that sex as practiced today by humans is not primarily for reproduction regardless of what happened in the dim past. I would say that the idea that we are primarily a monogamous pair bonding species does not seem to be a biological characteristic but a social convention with considerable variation.
So sex in pair bonding in humans may not be so significant but overall social cohesion of larger groups seems more likely.
just how you could even make a study of any particular aspect of human sexuality without even understanding what it is and how got that way without understanding how it has been so deeply entwined in culture seems ridicules
uncle frogy
WTF?
Here’s some news for you: I could go on all night after he’s finished.
So, nope, my time-frame is much broader.
A) Reproductive sex and female orgasm seem to be pretty unrelated. Probably a “while we’re at it anyway”
B) Just because PIV doesn’t give most women an orgasm doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy it and want it, lots of it, and some more of it, please.
ayla
Ahem. Men have the funny looking mushroom shaped penis because the sides of the top part rub up against the woman’s g-spot. This will make the woman orgasm. This is a clear evolutionary development to make the woman orgasm. As to the question of why women orgasm? Because it slightly negates the male annoying factor which would otherwise prevent a second encounter and leave the male to write articles.
Another WTF
Now, we only need evidence for the g-spot, vaginal orgasm and a cler indicator for co-evolution of funny penis and female orgasm.
Once you have them, come back, please.
????
Does that mean a baby every week if you have sex 5 times a week?
Sorry, but it’s nonsense.
A) if she’s pregnant once, there’s about 8 months of risk free sex to have, the deed is done anyway.
B) when the brat is out, you get some 6-12 menstruating-free months while you’re lactating, probably even more in foraging cultures.
C) Combine with the PEARL index of 80, meaning that within one year (OK, those are modern figures) “only” 80 of 100 women become pregnant, you’ll get to brith rates that were most likely necessary to maintain a stable population.
I think you’re making the mistake that since yu only get reproduction with PIV to assume that reproduction is the primary goal of sex. If that were the case we would probably still go into heat like some of our relatives, since we’re wasting an awefull lot of energy and are running serious risks with lots of non-reproductive sex.
QFT
Just so!
(wait…the ‘sides’ of the ‘top part’? what?)
Why do people think this?
No, they are genetically exactly as close to us as are chimpanzees. Chimpanzees have very different social systems than bonobos. Neither one can be assumed to be similar to that of pre-historic humans.
Anyone know if female chimps or bonobos have orgasms? As long as we don’t know which species have a trait, we can’t possibly tell how it evolved!
So, just to make completely sure… you think they’re implying that the erection immediately ends after the man has climaxed?
I was trying to say that, if so, they’re wrong about that.
Indeed, male homosexuality runs in the same families as above-average female fertility.
Are you sure it’s not simply to make sure the penis doesn’t slide out of the lubricated vagina too easily and/or to plug it so the semen doesn’t run out? Or even, as some have proposed, to scoop out as much of the woman’s previous partner’s semen as possible?
Are you speaking from experience?
Well, there are “goals” in terms of why humans do it (proximate cause) and in terms of what natural selection is up to (ultimate cause).
The byproduct hypothesis actually completely separates the female orgasm from reproduction. So if it’s true, then at least women certainly don’t have sex just for reproduction. So in terms of the proximate cause, no, I don’t assume that.
Lisa has already considered the “pair-bonding” hypothesis in an earlier paper and rejected it on the grounds that it, too, assumes that female orgasm must be linked to reproduction, and it simply doesn’t fit the evidence. You can read her point of view here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/r01x5650113311u0/
From a natural selection point of view, sex doesn’t have a “goal”. However, it’s most important aspect for natural selection is reproduction. That doesn’t mean it can’t take on secondary roles (such as social cohesion). But reproduction is absolutely necessary for natural selection to take place.
@Wes #18:
Those contractions are associated with orgasm, but orgasm is not required for them to occur. You could argue that even the male orgasm is not a reproductive adaptation — that it simply encourages cooperative (sexual) behavior that leads to other cooperative behaviors. This certainly seems to be the case for bonobos, less so for chimps. But if they’re doing it for fun and mutual profit, perhaps we are as well.
That explains why males could get away with having more sex, but not why evolution would select for them to do so.
No, it doesn’t, because if you’re assuming that females are encouraged to have more sex due to orgasms, selection pressures should have pushed the onset of female orgasm to a time frame consistent with their standard duration of copulation. So, you either have to assume a situation where a female’s copulatory vocalizations “bring all the boys to the yard” (which still makes orgasm adaptive) — or you have to explain why female orgasm is less reliable than male orgasm, which tends to lead to my third question.
But female orgasm is not just more variable — it is also longer. This is not consistent with it being an unreliable version of an analogous male feature. Also, selective pressure would only reduce variability if reliable timing of the female orgasm was adaptive. If it was merely adaptive for orgasm to happen eventually (with sufficient stimulation) then variation might persist. One way to investigate this would be to see if there is an association between time to orgasm and duration of vaginal lubrication. (I’m pretty sure there is, but I don’t know of anyone having studied this. I am under the impression that female orgasm tends to cause vaginal lubrication to cease.)
Your comments on question 4) are sound.
Fair enough, but the widespread existence of homosexual couplings in various animal species suggests to me that it at least has turned out to be adaptive in a large number of cases.
When it first emerged? Perhaps not. But orgasm seems to go quite a ways back in our evolutionary past, to the point where we shouldn’t be talking about why humans (male or female) have orgasms and instead be talking about why they take the specific forms that they do.
Hey, maybe he’s not a moron, just a virgin. Wink-wink.
Nearly everyone is viewing this in light of modern westernized civilizations. Women’s orgasms were of little importance in reproduction until relatively recently – check out the rules laid out in the bible for what a woman’s role is in pair bonding and rearing children.
However, selection of this sort would be acting in evolutionary time scales. And no, I don’t think that cavemen/women snuggled. I think that the world was red in tooth and claw and that the stronger members of a society got what they wanted. So, the stronger/more fit females were prized by the males and the stronger/more fit males got their choice of the females. Females likely had little say in partner choice.
Obviously, as modern humans we find that notion rightly appalling and hard to imagine. However, consider that many spiders have the reverse strength asymmetry – females are many times the size of males. Whether or not the male is having pleasure post depositing sperm is of little consequence since there is a strong chance he will be eaten. All that matters is that the lure of the act itself is strong enough for him to initiate it and allow for transfer of sperm. Beyond that, his desire for more sex or his satisfaction with the reproductive event is of no matter. Similarly, reproduction in humans only had to be enticing enough to allow transfer of sperm. Once that has happened, her satisfaction is of little evolutionary consequence. In fact, one could argue that it makes theoretical sense to leave her unsatisfied so that the she desires more coitus with more partners near the time of ovulation ensuring fertilization.
My point is that this has nothing to do with modern understandings of the relationships of western societies – and as PZ pointed out, the origin of this likely has little to do with human evolution at all as this this is a repeated them in mammalian pairings. At the most, human evolution has maintained a system that was already in place.
A farmer in Arkansas and his wife were lying in bed one evening, she was knitting, and he was reading the latest issue of Animal Husbandry. He looks up from the page and said to her, ”Did you know that humans are the only species in which the female achieves orgasm?”
She looks at him wistfully, smiles, and replies, ”Oh yeah? Prove it.”
He frowns for a moment, and then replied, ”O.K.” He then gets up and walks out, leaving his wife with a confused look on her face.
About half an hour later he returns all tired and sweaty and says, ”Well, I’m sure the cow and sheep didn’t, but the way that pig squealed, it’s hard to tell.”
I agree with you 100%, onan.
I am wondering why male humans have grossly larger peckers than other apes and monkeys. Women must be selecting men for this based on their own satisfaction, or intensity of stimulation. In other words, size does matter, at least as far as initial attraction is concerned, so at some point in our evolution, female satisfaction became a selecting factor in at least this respect. onan says women that are unfulfilled yet still horny as hell will seek out other copulation opportunities, which I came to the same conclusion.
So, males could have been selected for quick ejaculation(safety factor) and delayed orgasm by women seeking sexual satisfaction, so three minutes is a healthy compromise for men, but women still want more to be satisfied so have multiple partners during ovulation.
In any event, sexual desire has evolved past survival ensuring intensity to the point that humans have sex even when womans aren’t fertile, so some sort of satisfaction feedback must have been a strong selection factor.
Yet another also, male satisfaction is enhanced by female response, is it not? Getting women to achieve orgasm as a matter of both pride and sexual reward for men further increases and already competitive psyche which weeds out weakness in males.
I’ve come to the conclusion that trophy wives are males display of superiority to other males, yet in reality, it is the woman who has the trophy – the trophy husband. You ever seen the cutthroat way women behave around desirable males? But I digress.
I hope I’ve shown how female satisfaction can be a very important driving force
in bragging rights, and in fact, female response is a stronger, or at least very significant, factor in selecting for healthy traits in males.Now, the question of breast size lolz just kidding. But, females have a response in their brains that is at the same location in the brain for nipple stimulation as genital stimulation, that men do not.
I am just trying to tie this in to female importance of pleasure in selecting for males.
Horner what the hell is
“to a time frame consistent with their standard duration of copulation”
by what measurement did you decide what that is? what international study of all peoples did this data come from?
Onan said “Women’s orgasms were of little importance in reproduction until relatively recently – check out the rules laid out in the bible”
If I understand our history and the time involved the bible is recent historical time. We have been wondering around for a very long time long enough to have occupied every continent and had cities all over the world long before the f’n bible was around. what were the other people doing?
there is much more to the world than the dam near east! and the fertile crescent
primitive people are not brutish as we find them and mostly neither are animals at not least how depicted.
uncle frogy
Wes
Ehm, I’m actually not rejecting the by-product hypothesis. I’m rejecting your rather simplistic definition of “reproduction”, which seems to end after the sperm is safely inside the vagina.
Or after the babe is out of the womb. If that were the case, there would be no other creature on this planet than rabbits. But that’s not the case and human reproduction with the long intervals of non-fertility (during breast-feeding, for example)seem to indicate that we go for “quality” in our offspring, rather than quantity.
To get a young to the point weher they can fend for themselves is pretty long in humans and requires a lot of resources, thus the pair-bonding. I don’t see how that goes out of the window with the female orgasm being a by-product. Even without an orgasm, sex is something that feels good for most women, something they want to have, something both parties are willing to waste the energy on, even if the chances for offspring are 0.
Shorter: Natural selection doesn’t select for those ho get the most offspring, but for those who get the most offspring to the age where they can reproduce themselves.
PZ, there was an episode of Discovery Channel’s “Curiosity” that dealt with female orgasm. One study they presented (among many) indicated that the female orgasm assists the transport of sperm to the ovaries. Care to comment on that or other claims of the episode? It would be interesting to get your take.
only in modern times can you even think in terms of pair bonding. I have never heard of hunter gatherers living as nuclear families. They always seem to be in at least small bands of related people where the cohesion of the band insures survival not whether mary and joe are faithful to each other. two people alone is too precarious.
“it takes a village to raise a child”
uncle frogy
uncle froggy
Whut?
Who claimed that pair-bonding meant small nuclear families?
Pair-bonding still has a large value if it only leads to Joe being slightly more inclined to walk an extra mile for Mary than for Mazie because Mary is the one he has sex with and whose well-being is therefore a bit more important to him.
That alone can’t be it. I am a virgin.
The Bible is hardly less parochial than “modern westernized civilizations”, and hardly older.
Evidence?
Even in gorillas, females have plenty of say in partner choice. Sure, they live in harems, but when a new male takes over a harem, about half of the females go with the old male. Apparently they like him better than the new guy.
You’re talking about a 19th-century Western imagination of what “the stone age” was like. You’re not talking about anything evidence-based.
Biggest non-sequitur I’ve seen in months. Do I really need to explain it?
Speak for yourself.
We had this topic just a few days ago, dude. Read Pharyngula more often. It turns out I am one of very few men who can’t be sexually stimulated at the nipples, and that there are such women, too.
And you’re talking about present day gorillas. How this applies to millions of years ago, but not present human experience, is fucking beyond me.
Non sequiter. You’re the expert, you figure it out.
Seeing others have stated the same conclusion as me, get to it, buddy.
Number one, I was being speculative. Number two, are you trying to tell me that men don’t compete with each other for attractive women? Which planet are you from?
You’re a fucking moron. Do you even have a sniff how wrong you are? I’m supposed to read everything every day on this blog in order to make comments on a specific thread?
Do you read anything but Pharyngula? Don’t you read Science Daily? This is what I was referring too:
Sex on the brain: What turns women on, mapped out – life – 05 …
http://www.newscientist.com/…/dn20770-sex-on-the-brain-what-turns-wo... – Cached
5 Aug 2011 – The precise locations that correspond to the vagina, cervix and female nipples on the brain’s sensory cortex have been mapped for the first time …
What, you didn’t know this from reading a thread a couple of days ago on Pharyngula? That it is specific to women and not men?
How about you snottily replying Evidence?, yet you use yourself and a few comments that are anecdotal as fucking evidence?
Really, do you even fucking think before you reply? Do you notice that every reply you give is hypocritical? You are a fucking walking contradiction of logic and scientific, logical thought. I mean, how can someone draw conclusions based on their own experience, when they confess that they have no experience in the first place??
You are a virgin, and you use Pharyngula as your database for *evidence*. And, you say you are not competitive while insinuating that others are inferior.
Go figure
tushcloots
Is it just me, or does it smell like evolutionary psychology in here today? Someone get out the Lysol.
Gonna need something stronger than that.
Yeah, I was just popping back in here and noticed arguments that early predecessors must have operated in social groupings where reproduction revolved around rape because proto-humans were totally savage ‘n stuff.
Given the lack of social groupings that function this way, I’m gonna go ahead and headdesk for a while. Mostly because it’s likely that for a decently long while, human (and pre-human) offspring rearing process was a long and intensive one. In species like this (e.g. elephants) communities with tight bonds seem to be beneficial.
Why don’t you guys hurry up and fuck off, then. You are obviously too elite for this, so leave us peons who use logic and reason and extrapolation correctly, alone.
It smell like some honey badgers just entered. You are going to need something much stronger.
I said that already!
This one is blind, too.
Ya know, not a lot of women find revolting body stench attractive, so unless you think attraction is not part of the selection process for reproduction, you may just have to resort to rape.
Now fuck right off, your anal pouches seem to be inciting me to want to eliminate(LOL) you due to your repulsive smell. I can’t remember why I adopted that trait, but there you go.
What is the point of comments like this? It’s completely unsubstantive, conveys no information, asks no questions. It’s just there to reinforce the bonds of local tribalism.
Do you deny that human social behavior evolved?
Do you have a problem with people trying to figure out how that happened?
Because that’s ‘evolutionary psychology’. Blanket dismissal like yours is tantamount to denialism.
Yes, I know there are certain specific hypotheses and/or practitioners of ‘evolutionary psychology’ that are stupid or ignorant or racist or sexist or otherwise distressing to the liberal humanist mindset, but you did not condemn those. You threw out the bathwater, the baby, and the rubber ducky.
That‘s ‘evolutionary psychology’, for example.
I have a problem with people making hairy wild-ass guesses that can’t be falsified and passing them off as “science.” Especially when they just so happen to replicate a lot of privileged assumptions held by the “scientists,” such as that girls like pink because that was the color of the ripe berries picked by “cavewomen,” or that it’s “natural” for women to be monogamous and men polygynous, or just about anything Satoshi Kanazawa has spewed in Psychology Today.
I’m pretty certain you’re aware of this kind of thing. Your kneejerk defense of the field is not unlike that of all its other fanboys.
@ChasCPeterson, I fully admit that I have overall a fairly poor opinion of evo-psych in general after a few too many articles explaining that [men/women] like [remarkably similar to 1950’s gender role thing] because [strange rationalization tied to evolution]. It makes it hard to take a field seriously when so much of what you see promoted from it is people promoting existing sex stereotypes (and by extension justifying discrimination) because it’s supposedly natural.
What’s worse, I’ve seen this kind of hypothesis given lots of pithy press without a lot of critical analysis. Basically I’m leery of the field unless I see more solidly done science. I would love to see the field redeemed and the current crop of badly reasoned articles relegated to the fringes.
And I’m not entirely certain I agree that what I was attempting to say is solidly in an evolutionary psychology category. Two points from what you quoted:
1. Human beings and likely their proto-human ancestors have a high-investment, long term child rearing process.
This is observable fact based on physiology. It takes a long time for human children to reach independence from their parents, compared to many other animal species. Humans gestate for longer, with fewer young and need to spend a greater time period tending to developing offspring. Given the slow process of genetic changes and speciation, this has probably been the norm for a pretty long time.
2. Other animals (for a specific example, elephants) in which we observe intensive child rearing seem to benefit from tight bonds.
This is nearer the mark, but is still based pretty solidly on social behavior and animal group dynamics we can currently observe.
Now if I had followed that up with some sort of specific hypothesis proposing particular traits in ancestral species in regards to sexual coupling, subsequent pair-bonding and orgasming in females as promoting x, y or z and therefore being at least partially adaptive or ruled out as non-adaptive, that would clearly fall under the heading of evolutionary psychology. But I really don’t have the hard science background or behavior psychology qualifications to speak with authority. So I left it with the first two points criticizing earlier leaps to savage predecessors that left females without sexual choice.
And I forgot to address this question you pose.
To be honest, the point of comments like this is generally criticism of pseudoscientific and hostile commenters like tushcloots above who have no interest in actually engaging others on the issues. Dismissing obvious trolls and non-contributors is not a bad thing generally, although you clearly see it as dismissing legitimate science as well.
As for labeling their ilk here evo-psych, communities tend to get tarred by the conduct of people supposedly championing their cause. There are lots of ways in which men’s issues are ignored, for example, but the term “men’s right’s advocate” is basically unusable forever because of those who use it. As I said, I’d love to see the greater opinion of evo-psych improve as the whole field improves, but we’re not there yet, and so posters like Ms. Daisy Cutter and Dhorvath use “evolutionary psychology” disparagingly.
I’m talking about present-day chimps, bonobos, gorillas, orang-utans, and gibbons… then I extrapolate their sex lives down the tree to their common ancestor, and then back up along our prehistory. It’s called “science”.
Had I talked only about gorillas, you’d be right. But I didn’t. There was a reason for that “even” I put in front of “gorillas”.
Your turn.
Why multiple partners and not simply more sex with the same partner?
You are trying to tell me that most or all men are so competitive they treat sex not as a goal, but as a means for the goal of bragging. How many men are really like that?
If you want to actually tell us something new, you definitely should know if we’ve discussed them to death recently. Read this thread and this one; both of them are about the very study you cite. Will take a while. Have fun.
I can reach my chest with my own hands, thankyouverymuch.
Where’s your database? The study you cite only has a database without a control group…
While what? Inferior in which way(s)?
…Have I understood you correctly? You believe our ancestors stank all the time, so they had to resort to rape?
Please do correct me if I’ve misunderstood you.
Let me godwin this: the term “euthanasia” is unusable in German, people had to create the new word Sterbehilfe, “help with dying”, to be able to even talk about it.
Shitshitshitshitshit! The FtB/Wordpress software doesn’t close tags at the end of a paragraph! I somehow didn’t type the a after “this one”…
@David Marjanović, I’m pretty sure what the lovely and eloquent tushcloots is suggesting is that I am such a disgusting and foul smelling man that I will have to resort to rape in order to find sexual release. It’s a shame that he’s not even good at trying to insult me, since cursory inspection of what I put online readily available here indicates that I am a cis married woman. Hm.
@David Marjanovic’ #46,
Uh, no, I obviously considered that. I also considered that male primates are more vulnerable to attack during coitus and once hurt or killed, no longer are reproductive competition to other males.
Furthermore, while both male and female were(are) occupied, competitors kill the happy couple’s present offspring.
Both these are well documented behaviors in primates, so I fail to see where my conclusion doesn’t follow.
Yours doesn’t, though. You think primate ancestors, perhaps A. sadiba or homo genus – and earlier, males stood around fucking until the female had an orgasm and then asked if it was good for her? You think all, or even most, men today maintain erection and equivalent strong desire to continue copulation after ejaculating? I’m sure we all have done it many times, in the safety and privacy of our bedrooms, or whatever, but I highly doubt that primitive humans like H. ergaster or H. erectus, Ardipithecus, or Australopithecus afarensis(1.5 – 4.5m ago), for example, let alone Hominidae, Hominini, and Hominina(up to 15m ago), Had such luxury.
Multiple partners for females may have had the benefits of weeding out ‘weaker’ sperm or conferring infant protection from multiple males.
I still fail to see how what I said was even slightly improper, let alone a non sequitur.
Blithely writing my thinking off as “non sequitur, do I really need to explain it” is an insult, and I have no problem with that if I deserve it. But, I hope I’ve shown how incredibly hypocritical and condescending your responses have been, and the utter lack of an explanation from you only furthers my conclusion. Providing an alternate yet similar example to the conjecture that I speculated, that was even more implausible than mine, shows your lack of understanding in what I was thinking and what a non sequitur really pertains to.
Let’s move on.
Number one, no I am not trying to tell you that, so whatever you said next is irrelevant. How you figured that, I have no idea(yes I do, but who cares). I was saying that seeing males are already competitive, that bragging about being best is commonplace and that furthermore, the commonly used and understood term “trophy wife” to specifically delineate that this is indeed an indication of competition among men regarding females above the single purpose of procreation, that perhaps this goal could be an indication that sensory (touch, visual) pleasure at some point may have been a selecting factor in the evolution of our sexual drives, and to indicate that perhaps sexual response(orgasms) was itself a contributing factor to the evolution to orgasm in females as well – because maybe they also had imperative to improve their own sexual experience, that it wasn’t just male’s stereotypically neanderthalic mindless desire for coming that imparted orgasmic response to women in our evolution.
Mostly, it was just a tongue in cheek example of getting of being convoluted and male centric in many discussions of this sort.
Again, this was an example of a non sequitur on your part.
‘Recently, a few days ago…’ 40 days ago??? Not only that, but one link you gave is a 404!?? The discussion that you reference that I needed to have read that supposedly debunks the study actually does nothing of the sort, but mostly has fun with it!
Sheesh,
I referenced three of many papers from the last five years, and one was exactly the study you discussed on Aug. 6th itself, one link didn’t paste as html – but the name was there, and the other didn’t hyperlink either – yet the link was present in text form!
You have the audacity to tell me what relevant data is, what fucking scientific thought is, and be condescending while fucking doing it?!?!
BTW, your fucking database isn’t even a study, let alone have a control group. Don’t you know by now that answering a statement with a question like that is a purely evasive and irrelevant? You are the one berating others about your superior use of evidence, so it was appropriate to mock you owing to your displayed hypocrisy.
Allow me:
You don’t have a fucking clue what I’m talking about, as I have shown above, in fact I was using better end points(evidence, as you mistakenly call it) to extrapolate and approximate my scenarios. Telling others what they are thinking is a fucking insult(go ahead, ask me what’s my evidence). It implying that you are so superior, in your understanding, thinking, and source of evidence, even implying you know more than the other what they are thinking.
Oh, goody, it’s called science. Of course I am too stupid to know what science is, fuckwad, if you are supposed to be an example.
And yes, I am now implying and explicitly stating that your knowledge, understanding, and thinking is inferior because you do it to others.
Are you so fucking stupid that you don’t know when you treat others “Inferior in which way(s)” while you do it?
You should see how I respond to being called a troll because I am not putting up with some one’s bullshit,
Let me fill you in. To be truthful, the point of comments like this is to make an unsubstantiated, purely malicious and inclusive insult that’s purpose is to display brazen self importance and intellectual superiority.
The fact that you are feigning a polite and exasperated response is further indication that you are a lying fuck.
If you felt that way about the content, you would just go away without joining in. You went out of your way to make a judgmental posture and ad hominid.
In fact, don’t you think you are being the example of a troll? Trolls seek attention without contributing constructively. I was insulting only toward others that were insulting towards me in the first place, as part of a discussion that may have had content and nuance that you were obviously far to fucking bothered to even pretend to read, my, you are special.
The comment you defend petulantly dismissed the whole conversation and the participants.
@slignot
I love it! I started laughing at your revelation, and I am sorry I assumed your gender.
Thanks for explaining what I had meant, and thanks for showing my ignorance using irony. (Not exactly, but something like?)
A cursory glance is the least you should expect from me =0]
That was my first thought. But then I simply couldn’t believe he hadn’t managed to look at your photo and tried to look for another explanation of his wishy-washy rambling.
Oh well. I’ve seen one or two examples of literally blind rage before.
I’m sorry. Everything feels like yesterday on this blog, and the discussion went on for 6 days. Here you go.
Shock horror. I broke a link. That happens.
Troll? No, you’re not a troll. A troll is someone who comes in and says whatever s/he thinks will cause maximum outrage. You come in and say something you think we don’t know about yet, and that in a way that shows 1) you haven’t noticed its flaws and 2) you generally underestimate the importance of quantification in science. That’s not trolling.
Yes. I have plenty of symptoms of what used to be called “Asperger’s syndrome”. To be fair, your abovementioned attitude (“what you say is all wrong because of this little failure of peer review here *waving study around* that you’ve already discussed to death!”) has made me lose more patience than normal: I figured I had to explain phylogenetic bracketing from scratch, but found myself too tired to do it. But come on, don’t feel inferior for not knowing phylogenetic bracketing! Few non-specialists have ever heard of it.
So, back to my questions:
1) Why do you think the sex lives of our Plio- and Pleistocene ancestors were the way you think they were? In particular, why do you think they were more violent and more patriarchal than those of all other apes (as far as known, means, today)?
2) Doesn’t your scenario imply that the female orgasm is limited to humans (among extant species)? If so, is it limited to humans? Somewhere above, someone asserted (without mentioning evidence) that chimps and bonobos have it, too, and there’s that cruel experiment with a rhesus monkey; what do you think, and why?
You have the audacity to imply that a study which finds that the women they tested can be sexually stimulated at their nipples and draws grand conclusions about differences between men and women from the untested assumption that all or most men lack this response and the insufficiently tested assumption that all women share it isn’t a failure of peer review?
It tests the assumptions I just mentioned. It even disproves them. You only need one black swan to disprove the claim that all swans are white.
I suppose they might have caused the selection pressure against fucking in public, which all other apes do… it would be very interesting to find out when our ancestors started to hide for such activities, but the fossil evidence doesn’t and almost can’t tell. :-(
OK, so, if jealous males exert the selection pressure you talk about, the other ape species, which don’t hide to have sex, should experience it to a much stronger degree than we do. I don’t suppose any research has been done on how long they take to orgasm? Oh, and, again the question of how widespread the female orgasm is.
Sorry, I got distracted. To the point. Don’t you think the fact that humans usually hide to have sex greatly reduces, or eliminates, the selection pressure that jealous males exert? Because if so, your hypothesis that this pressure explains the timing of the female orgasm probably falls flat. (I say “probably” because we haven’t quantified “greatly reduces” yet.)
I cannot form an opinion on this as long as there’s no way to tell when they started hiding to fuck.
BTW, Hominidae, Homininae, Hominini and Hominina are names for clades, not for ancestors. A clade consists of an ancestor and all its descendants. The mentioned ones are nested, and Homo (after which they’re named) belongs to all of them.
Yes, if the penis is shaped so as to scoop competitors’ sperm out of the vagina. Indeed, this has been proposed as an explanation for the shape of the human penis.
Here, the evidence goes in the other direction: judging from various mammals (including orang-utans) in the wild and in captivity, males are much better fathers when they can be sure of paternity.
The very first thing my supervisor told me when I started to write my first paper was: “you will be misunderstood, so try very hard to minimize the number of opportunities for people to misunderstand you.” If you don’t write clearly enough to be understood, I’m not going to blame it on me.
Then how come bonobos? They seem to have all that pleasure, and yet they don’t compete much. Instead, they have more sex. :-)
Another difficult question: how strongly does the existence of trophy wives depend on culture?
One more: again you say “males are […] competitive” – well, for that to result in selection pressure, enough males need to be competitive enough. Have you ever tried to quantify that?
Oh, now suddenly it was a joke? Dude, you’re writing. I can’t hear the tone of your voice. If you don’t make your jokes a little more blatant, you will continue to be misunderstood. :-|
Apparently I have to put this in terms so simple they’re actually condescending. :-/ I apologize in advance. I’m not saying I am good, I’m saying you are mistaken. That’s not the same thing! I’m talking about your hypothesis, not about me!
That was my point. That’s the failure of peer review I’m talking about.
Switch your spellchecker off.
You still don’t get it, do you. I don’t care what blind rages you’ve seen before, its an ad hominum. Do you get this? You fucking insist on excusing and/or denying your contributions to the conflict by assuming my motives, pronouncing my intentions, you misread and misunderstand my 1 post and comments, and you trivialize and continue to plead understanding for egregious inaccuracy on your part at the same time as you lambaste me for irrelevant reasons.
How many times do I have to point out that expecting someone to have read a discussion that is 40 days old is perverse and yet you berate and belittle me as if I have conceded all claim to eligibility to not just be incorrect, but to even participate in this discussion. Fuck.
On top of that, you give me shit for having not have a link to one of my 3(vs 1 for you) links, while you avoid your responsibility for your equivilant, if not greater, transgression. You do it in a disingenuous and immature way by effectively saying, “Oopsie, my bad” and even give an incredible excuse for not being able to even approximately gauge how old this discussion I was supposed to have read to qualify myself to be here in the first place, continuing to defend an already farcical argument you made in the first place while brushing off *evidence* that compounds your initial perversity to heights ridiculousness.
Maybe you understand my doubting the veracity of your claim to thinking scientifically, and mocking you as you have mocked me. (Yet another example of your hypocrisy).
What, do you think using a few references (improperly) is indicative of a scientific approach while your general methodology in everyday behaviour (arguing) is mostly based on assumptions, red herrings, slandering, and obvious double standards? I call bullshit, in the extreme, on you. Even when confronted with irrefutable example of your logically invalid arguments, you discount them as irrelevant, further indicating that scientific method takes a back seat to emotional bias in your presentation.
I must make an aside here, I am purposely trying to sound quasi – intellectual in the spirit of one-upmanship of this entirely pointless discussion as it threatens to extend into cosmic measures of length and irrelevance, at least that’s how I see it ;0]
Where was I. Okay, about your conclusion that I am displaying the characteristics of blind rage. Good one, you are correct! I use it to try to bring a measure of honesty and illumination to equally infantile expressions of rage and contempt using passive – aggressive methods of anger on the part of others. Being condescending, calling names, implying opinion as fact, double standards, purposely misinterpreting, judging final invalidity on not meeting subjective and ridiculous standards, etc, are fucking ignorant in the extreme. I am purposely acting in an immature and invalid way to highlight what I consider to be your equal emotional and affective, inappropriate, anger and contempt.
Make no mistake at all, none, that I find your actions and comments as odious as my swearing is to you and the others. At least I am not pretending otherwise as you hind behind a veil of propriety and, ahem, wit.
Which brings me to your comment about shutting off my spell checker. LOL! If i did that, you would see what a backwards, unknowledgable and uneducated hick I am and wonder if I actually understood what english is.
But, in this instance, even my mistake was hilariously appropriate, don’t you think? Ad hominid for ad hominum!! Bon mot by spell checking ;0)
Before we turn our discussion into a three volume encyclopedia of intellectual narcissism, I’ll just quickly say that I think we’ve mistakenly attributed things argued and implied, by others, to each other. I know I have, I apologize. My rigor is sadly lacking as much as I claim yours is, and ironically, that fault of my not reading properly!!
But, just to clarify, my initial posts were #29 and #30. That is all I was presenting, and even more hilarious, I was just wondering if this nipple response was a sign of, as far as I can tell, an original idea that perhaps sexual pleasure should be considered as part of thee evolution of present sexual pleasure in women, as they seem to be more responsive in numbers of ways to achieve pleasure, independent of how men do. I was trying to insert that it is stereotypically chauvinistic for male researchers to focus only on males as the driving factor in genetically(a redundancy, I know, just to keep the evolutionary flavor I guess) establishing female orgasms. I highly doubt big bad mr. important is responsible for everything just because it is of great significance.
I had almost no knowledge of anything even being part of scientific study at all, and I incidentally became aware of the nipple study while aimlessly exploring daily updates at ScienceDaily.com.
Further, I did not even think of rape being at all relevant to the discussion of female response, none. I meant male aggression towards other males to interrupt a successful outcome to copulation, ie ejaculation and possible impregnation.
It turns out that a lot of what I posted in #30 is actually almost bang on, an example of my superior reasoning and extrapolation ability, or more likely, sheer blind accidental luck, haha. (I mock myself often)
I wondered about infanticide, and it is most extremely important to reproduction and social mechanics.
I stated that prolonged time to achieve sexual release would lead to multiple partners, and it does, in spite of the serious quiche haters claims to sexual prowess and unneccessity(Even a word?) to search elsewhere when proto – arnold could satisfy them fully and relenlessly, failing to take into fucking consideration my explanation that prolonged coitus left proto-Apollo open to attack and disruption, I used the term coitus interruptus to clarify what I meant, and unattended infants open to infanticide and maiming by sexual competitors.
This would explain both the disparity in time to orgasm, and as an aside, collection of trophy, or very desirable, mates.
All of this is fucking true!!! I think, anyways, as I’ve only read two papers, one I pr9vided the link to(ahem, lol) and this one: https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/mkowalew/www/Kowalewski_and_Garber_2010AJP.pdf
I want to read this one – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2141672/
(Male coercion and the costs of promiscuous mating for female …
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › … › Proc Biol Sci › v.274(1612); Apr 7, 2007
by MN Muller – 2007 – Cited by 42 – Related articles
30 Jan 2007 – Here, we test the sexual coercion hypothesis that male aggression ….. M.A. Mating conflict in primates: infanticide, sexual harassment and female sexuality. … of sexual attraction: is there a tradeoff in female Pan between sex …)
This – Female Barbary macaque (Macaca sylvanus) copulation calls do not …
rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/275/1634/571.full
by D Pfefferle – 2008 – Cited by 14 – Related articles
Mating conflict in primates: infanticide, sexual harassment and female sexuality. In Sexual selection in primates new and comparative perspectives Kappeler P, …
this –
PDF] Male aggression and sexual coercion in wild West African …
http://www.eva.mpg.de/primat/staff/boesch/…/C_Tai_sex_coercion_Stumpf_10.p...
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – Quick View
by RM Stumpf – 2010 – Cited by 1 – Related articles
7 Dec 2009 – Sexual conflict has an important selective influence on mating strategies, …… primates: infanticide, sexual harassment and female sexuality. …
and this – etc. see google for more, haha!
Even though I was painted as a mindless hick (I can’t remember who, and who cares anyway) espousing 19century views of males clubbing women over the head and dragging them to a cave by their hair(implied), it does turn out that rape and violence are significant factors in present day primate populations, which I stated I didn’t consider in the first place.
I even read that multiple successful matings by the female(which I stated, and which proto – john holmes would be signing his own extinction by doing it all by hisself) serves the purpose of both selecting for male strength, and protection against infanticide AWA recruiting multiple cooperative males in the care and survival of an infant.
Back to explaining my behavior: I also want to say that I was involved in a debate/argument of the rational superiority(fuck I’m so full of shit!) of evolution and scientific thinking over the Bible as a source for truth, with a fundamentalist pastor. He started eventually saying that science as a whole has the agenda to undermine christianity, and ‘science/evolution research is biased, if not outrightly dishonest, and therefore all science is suspect. He claimed all the usual apologetic shit, insisting that evolution had been debunked, ‘Where’s the missing link?’ shite, the dust level on the moon canard, and finally, the infusion of souls into two homo-sapiens prevarication.
I can’t wait to ask about genetic evidence of human population being recently reduced to a number equal to the passenger list of HRH Noah’s Freighter. (Yes, two people AKA the pure and unassuming hell spawn A & E)
I surely transferred some of my frustration to my actions here, and that’s inappropriate.
I?ll right away grasp your rss feed as I can not to find your e-mail subscription hyperlink or newsletter service. Do you’ve any? Kindly let me realize in order that I may subscribe. Thanks.
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