FEMALE ORGASM: THE GREATEST SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY OF THE 20TH CENTURY?
In which I pose the question: Why are Humans so Fucking Sexy?
[T]he human female is capable of constant sexual arousal. She is physically able to make love every day of her adult life. She can copulate during pregnancy, and she can resume sexual activity shortly after having a child. She can make love whenever she pleases.
This is extraordinary. No females of any other sexually reproducing species make love with such frequency. All other females have a period of heat, or estrus, during which they copulate, and when they are not in heat they do not regularly engage in sex.
-Helen Fisher, The Sex Contract (1982)
Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.
-Laura Dodsworth, Free Your Mind (2023)
Hey Folks,
So lately, I’ve been on a bit of a sexology kick. Some readers might think that I’m getting a bit sidetracked from serious political philosophy, but I don’t think I am. If you think about it, human politics really does have a hell of a lot to do with sex.
The reason that I’m studying anthropology is because I want to understand human nature so that I can understand what is politically possible and what is not.
My belief is that any political system worth its salt must be aligned with human nature. There’s no point trying to stuff a square peg in a round hole. If a system cannot accommodate human beings behaving like human beings, should it even exist?
And if we want to understand human societies, we must understand that all human cultures are different solutions to the same basic problem - intergenerational survival. And intergenerational survival ultimately comes down to babies and to child-rearing. And where do babies come from? Sex. And what is the primary biological purpose of sex? Reproduction.
Sex is often treated as a topic of marginal concern in politics, but in a very real way, POLITICS IS ABOUT SEX.
As Laura Dodsworth put it:
Everything in the world is really about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.
Actually, I’m beginning to think that sex might be one of the most neglected areas of political philosophy. The question of sex touches upon every aspect of society.
Indeed, if you zoom out far enough and attempt to see human cultures from an trans-generational perspective, individual human beings basically fade into insignificance.
What do you know about your great-great-great-great-great grandparents, for instance? Precious little, I’m guessing. But you know that you would not exist were it not for them. How much does it matter what their individual desires and wishes were? How much can we even know about such things?
My point is this: for the vast majority of people who have ever lived, the most consequential thing they ever did in their lives was reproduce. And chances are that most of them were lead by their sexual desire. Indeed, it seems beyond dispute that human psychology is oriented towards sexual reproduction. It seems reasonable to assume that the purpose of biological life is reproduction.
Yet sex is still seen as something to be feared, to be controlled, to be censured, to be monitored, to be policed… Why? Why is sex so dangerous?
Personally, it makes sense to me to assume the incredible human capacity for pleasure is a big part of what makes us different from other animals.
Simply put, if we are to make a serious study of human nature, we must acknowledge that human sexuality is VERY different from that of other mammals. And if you ask me, the question of sexuality cannot really be separated from other questions regarding human social behaviour.
What we are talking about is a seemingly God-given instinct to seek pleasure. Why do we distrust this instinct so deeply?
Patriarchal religions are notorious for their dread of sex, often imagined as an ever-looming source of woe and havoc, forever threatening to rend society asunder by its corrupting influence… yet sexual desire is also a major force weaving the very social fabric upon which society depends.
Anyway, what you are about to read was written by the Canadian anthropologist Helen Fisher. It is excerpted from a 1982 book called The Sex Contract: The Evolution of Human Behavior, which proposes a theory as to why human females are so fucking sexy.
I think that the whole passage is well worth reading, but I’d like to call your attention specifically to the part which deals with female orgasm.
Personally, I think that it’s pretty incredible that the female orgasm was unknown to science until the 1950s. How crazy is that?
[T]here is no doubt that the human female’s sexual capacity far exceeds that of the apes. Though caged baboons and chimpanzees do copulate occasionally when they are not in heat, and wild chimps and orangutans are known to receive males when they are not in estrus, no female ape enthusiastically makes love every day of her monthly estrous cycle…
A human female’s sexual behavior is not confined to the middle of her monthly cycle. Her genitals do not become engorged at ovulation. No all-pervading odor announces her ripeness. No heightened sex drive compels her to copulate at this time. A woman can make love when she is menstruating and she often encourages copulation throughout pregnancy. Theoretically, she can make love every day and every night, every month and every year of her adult life. In this respect, she is unique among all other female creatures on earth. Women have lost their period of heat…
The result is “silent ovulation.” What a remarkable evolutionary twist this is. Because a woman has no obvious period of heat, a couple that wishes to have a child cannot tell when the woman is ready to conceive. So they must make love regularly. It is almost as if nature had wished human beings to make love daily, for in fact, the human female is particularly designed to do so.
It was not until the 1950s that investigators documented a second extraordinary human female endowment. Not only can she make love with impressive regularity (and has to if she wants a child), but her sex organs generate intense sexual pleasure— even more pleasure than the human male derives from intercourse. For nature has provided the human female with a clitoris, a bundle of nerves designed solely for sex. Even the slightest touch to this supersensitive gland causes sexual arousal. Furthermore, about four or five dense masses of veins and nerves congregate in the muscles of her genitals—and during intercourse these sensitive aggregates sharply distinguish her sexual performance from that of her mate.
As a woman becomes sexually excited, blood pours into the vessels of the genitals and the general pelvic area. The nerve bundles begin to expand. The muscles around the clitoris, vaginal opening, and the anus begin to swell with blood. This pressure is known as the "vaginal ache." Shortly, the spongy sacs that surround the vaginal opening expand to three times their normal size; the inner lips double their size, and the muscles of the entire genital area become engorged with blood.
Then suddenly the distended tissues revolt. They have become overwhelmed with blood and fluid. The pressure is too great, and they contract to expel it. First, the wall of the uterus pulsates, followed quickly by the muscle of the outer third of the vagina, the sphincter of the rectum, and the tissues around the vaginal opening and clitoris. About every four-fifths of a second, a new contraction hurls blood from the pelvic area back into the general system. These rhythmic contractions constitute an orgasm.
For men, orgasm follows the same principle. Generalized physical arousal begins with a thought or touch and causes blood to flow into the penis, making it erect. The tissues of the penis fill with blood until the pressure becomes intense, and then the blood-laden muscles contract.
But here men and women part company—the result of an extraordinary evolutionary change. At orgasm, a man normally feels three or four major contractions followed by a few irregular minor ones, all localized in the genital area. Then sex is over. The blood totally diffuses, the penis goes limp, and the male must start from the beginning to achieve orgasm again. The female pattern is very different. She normally feels five to eight major contractions and then nine to fifteen minor ones, and they diffuse throughout the entire pelvic area. But for her, sex may have just begun. Unlike her mate, her genitals have not expelled all the blood, and if she knows how, she can climax again soon, and again and again if she wants to. In fact, the more orgasms a woman has, the more she can have, and the stronger they become. This phenomenon is known as “satiation-in-insatiation” and it sharply separates the sexual physiology of the human female from that of her male lover. Some of the American women surveyed in The Hite Report confirm this. “One never is enough, two sometimes (rarely) is, but I usually ‘need’ about five once I have the first one,” states one anonymous individual. “After the first orgasm I want to be aroused and have another almost right away. I am capable of several in one session...” wrote another, and a third said, “Each subsequent orgasm is stronger than the preceding.” Though these statements are not typical for American women, many of whom remain unaware of their sexual potential, all human females are physiologically capable of multiple orgasms. It just takes practice. As recently as 1966, not one man or woman among the inhabitants of a rural Irish island had ever heard of female orgasm. But sexual behavior in that region was severely repressed. The Polynesians of Mangaia Island know that female orgasm must be learned, and if one man does not successfully teach a young girl, her education is entrusted to another until she learns to climax several times.
Masters and Johnson first documented “multiple orgasm” in their revolutionary study on female sexuality in 1966, and they recorded another unique physiological attribute of the human female as well. This is the state of “continual orgasm” which they observed in some women. It is actually a series of orgasms that follow each other so rapidly that they are detectable only with machines. The Hite Report uncovered a few American women who experience this. Mangaian women call it “extended orgasm” and enjoy it regularly.
Wow! Hooray for Western science! It only took us five millennia to figure out that female orgasm is a thing.
Ah well, better late than never, I guess.
WHY ARE HUMAN FEMALES SO FUCKING SEXY?
Excerpted from The Sex Contract by Helen Fisher.
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