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{the scientific purpose of the female orgasm} andrew rl Why do women orgasm? At first blush, this question may seem so obvious and common-sense as to be patently ludicrous. Everyone knows why women orgasm, you say, It’s because…. Because….. There are three conventional-wisdom explanations for the existence of the female orgasm. Not one of them provides a complete picture (or even gets very close to the truth of the matter) by itself. Orgasm Theory #1: The Big O Makes Us Want to Fuck “Women orgasm, of course, for the same reason that men do…..to ensure the survival of the species!” The assumption here being that, since an orgasm feels good, it is therefore the evolutionary “hook” that developed in order to entice men into having sex with women and thereby fertilizing them. This would be a perfectly rational explanation, were it not for two simple facts: 1) Hormones make us want to fuck, not orgasms. 2) Orgasms are actually uncoupled from sexual intercourse itself — and even ejaculation: although men are genetically predisposed to develop a physiological need to ejaculate sperm on a more or less regular schedule, an ejaculation need not feature an accompanying orgasm…and vice versa. And of course every man knows that a woman’s orgasm is only loosely related (if at all) to actual intercourse. So much for that theory. Moving right along… Orgasm Theory #2: Orgasms Mean Our Souls Have Melded “Women only cum with guys they really love, right? The purpose of their orgasm is to make them feel attached to their bestest lover, releasing all those warm and fuzzy feelings and bathing both lovers in a blanket of blissful ecstasy!” Actually, no. Although the female orgasm does trigger higher levels of oxytocin, the famous pair-bonding, social-recognition, trust and arousal neurotransmitter (as well as some other endorphins, catecholamines, and another nonapeptide, vasopressin ), the mere presence of this neurochemical cocktail of delight is not by itself an explanation for why female orgasms exist at all (although the impact of these pair-bonding chemicals and the overall altered brain chemistry brought about by good sex is a very powerful tool in relationships, as I detail in The Power of Sex). Furthermore, recent studies have shown that a valid predictor of a woman’s likelihood to orgasm with a given partner was the degree to which that partner had a symmetrical body. In other words, guys with more symmetrical bodies (= more beautiful bodies) give more orgasms. Now, before we slippery-slope into the realm of “Only hot guys can get hot girls!” thinking, let me restate the research: body symmetry is a predictor of orgasm, not the predictor. In other words, one of many. Anyway, given all the above, there goes the idea that orgasms are linked exclusively to love and romance. But wait, there’s more…! Orgasm Theory #3: Female Orgasms Are…um…Accidental? This has got to be my favorite conventional-wisdom female-orgasm theory. It has some pretty heavyweight supporters, including the likes of Stephen Jay Gould (author of Time’s Arrow and The Mismeasure of a Man, among many others). The basic premise is that, since the female clitoris is basically an analogous structure to the penis (just with all the nerve endings concentrated in an area 10x smaller), the female orgasm that can be produced by clitoral stimulation is “vestigial”, in the same sense that nipples on a male are “vestigial” (meaning they serve no useful purpose). This theory has been pretty well dismantled, by two main facts (are you seeing a pattern here?): 1) The female orgasm is not actually vestigial — it does have a function (which we will get to in a few more sentences…). And even if it didn’t have a function, at the very least, it has an effect, on neurochemistry (which is more than can be said of the male nipples). 2) The clitoris is not the only progenitor of orgasms. The exposed bulb of the clitoris, in fact, is only about 10% of the actual surface area of the entire organ, and there are additionally a number of quite sensitive structures inside the vagina that can also be used to cause orgasms — to say nothing of the erogenous nipples, lips, earlobes, hips, thighs….in short, the female orgasm is above all a mental event that can be linked to and triggered by stimulation of virtually any part of the body. And that’s the final nail in the coffin of these silly conventional theories: an orgasm that is not tied to a single organ cannot be a vestigial byproduct of evolutionary progress. Nor is there sufficient evidence to say its primary function is pair bonding, or even motivation to have sex in the first place. So, enough foreplay, eh? What’s the actual, scientific purpose of the female orgasm…for real? May the Best Man Win: Orgasms Enable Infidelity A series of studies by two Liverpool University anthropologists in the late 1980s have lead to a “bizarre and astonishing explanation of the female orgasm” (Ridley, 1993 ). Baker and Bellis found that the amount of sperm that is retained in the vagina after sex varies according to the frequency and timing of previous orgasms — as well as the presence or absence of a “noncopulatory” orgasms having occured since the last date of intercourse. In layman’s terms, this means that the longer it’s been since a woman has had sex, the more sperm she will retain if she orgasms. It also means that female masturbation reduces sperm retention. And we are not even to the shocking part yet. The researchers, having uncovered the above information, were not terribly impressed — the information, by itself, wasn’t all that earth-shattering, even though Baker and Bellis were the first to unearth it. The two scientists next did studies to determine how often women achieved orgasm, and what type of orgasm, when sleeping with their husbands…versus their extramarital lovers. The results are telling: faithful women, those who did not have a lover, experienced high-retention (fertile) orgasms about half the time (55% to be exact). So an average man, sleeping with his wife with the intention of getting her pregnant, has about a 50% chance that, when she orgasms, she will have the type of orgasm that essentially vacuums his sperm up into her cervical canal, where it has a much better chance of fertilizing an egg. Unfaithful women had these fertile orgasms with their husbands at a rate of 40% — and with their lovers at a rate of 70%. And (unconsciously) these unfaithful women were also having sex with their lovers during the times of the month where they would be most likely to conceive. These two effects, taken together, combine to form the following rather staggering fact: an unfaithful woman may have sex with her husband twice as often as with her lover and still be slightly more likely to conceive by her lover than her husband. I’ll quote directly from The Red Queen here, as Mr. Ridley’s mastery of prose easily surpasses my own: The typical woman’s pattern of infidelity and orgasm is exactly what you would expect to find if she were unconsciously trying to get pregnant from a lover while not leaving her husband. Closing Thoughts & Citations I want to inject some caution into the discourse at this point: first of all, nobody is accusing women of malignancy; although women may be able to control when they have an orgasm (for instance, by masturbation, or using particular sex positions or techniques in bed), they certainly cannot consciously control what type of orgasm they have, and as Baker and Bellis have discovered, some orgasms are more fertile (better at sucking up sperm) than others. Secondly, Baker and Bellis are responsible, careful researchers: in the best tradition of empirical scientists, they do not claim that their conclusions are anywhere near ironclad: merely that they are fascinating hints that ought to be followed up with more research. I, in the framing of this article, obviously feel different — their study results line up too neatly with my own understanding of evolutionary biology, and the voluminous body of anecdotal evidence — but by no means do I encourage everyone to take my hunches as gospel. The relevant study citations are presented below. 1. Human sperm competition: Ejaculate manipulation by females and a function for the female orgasm. By: Baker, R. Robin; Bellis, Mark A.. Animal Behaviour, Nov93, Vol. 46 Issue 5, p887, 23p, 7 charts, 8 graphs, 1bw; (AN 9403093057) 2. Do Females Promote Sperm Competition? Data for Humans. By: Bellis, Mark A.; Baker, R. Robin. Animal Behaviour, Nov90, Vol. 40 Issue 5. |
