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The Case of the Female Orgasm : Bias in the Science of Evolution

List Price: $27.95
Amazon Price: $27.95
Media: Hardcover
Rating: 4.5 / 5

A major accomplishment and enormous contribution to the field of
human sexuality. (Rating: 5)
In her compelling book The Case of The Female Orgasm: Bias in the
Science of Evolution, Elisabeth Lloyd examines whether or not the
female orgasm is an evolutionary adaptation resulting from the
process of natural selection, or rather an evolutional by-product of
natural selection in the male and, hence, a function of the
embryologic relationship between the penis and the clitoris. In
short, does the female orgasm have its own evolutionary raison
d'etre, or is it a happy accident? To elaborate: for the female
orgasm to be a true adaptation, it would need to contribute directly
to reproductive success (like the male orgasm).

Ms. Lloyd examines twenty-one theories that seek to promote the
female orgasm as an adaptation -- from the role of orgasm in helping
to facilitate the pair-bonding process to upsucking and
sperm-competition -- and finds each and every one of them lacking.
One of her main arguments is that it's been well documented that the
vast majority of women do not experience orgasm as a result of
intercourse alone, or do so inconsistently, and that clitoral
stimulation is not a consistent feature of intercourse. She refers to
this as the orgasm/intercourse discrepancy (and it's one that far too
many women are all too familiar with).

Thus, if orgasm fails to occur via intercourse in a significant
percentage of the female population, or if it only occurs
haphazardly, as every major sexology study/survey on the subject
indicates, then it stands to reason that that female orgasm does not
play a pivotal role in reproductive success. Since women can conceive
without experiencing orgasm, it cannot be considered an adaptation.
But does this theory goes against the grain of survival of the
fittest? If mutual pleasuring and long-term sexual fulfillment are
understood as an aspect of the natural selection process, then it can
be argued that the female orgasm is an inherent screening device, and
that couples who are more attuned to each other and more sexually fit
(mutually orgasmic) are more likely to stay together and have more
babies than their sexually unfulfilled counterparts. Yes, conception
can occur without female orgasm, but natural selection favors the
survival of the sexually fittest.

Another explanation for the origin of the female orgasm is based on
what is known as the "by-product" theory, which holds that orgasm is
a trait that is heavily selected in males (reproduction wouldn't
happen without it). As men and women are embryologically
undifferentiated during the first eight weeks of gestation, the
clitoris is homologous to the penis, and thereby retains the male
capacity for orgasm. Penises grow out, clitorises grow in, but they
share the same organic structure and tissue.

Says Lloyd, "It is crucial to note that the penis and the clitoris
are the "same" organ in men and women ... [T]he nervous and erectile
tissues involved in orgasm in both sexes arose from a common
embryological source... These tissues are what the sexual organs are
built from, especially the penis in males and the clitoris in
females."

On the subject of genital similarity and orgasmic potential, Lloyd
continues, "A concert of interactions is involved in producing orgasm
in males - these interactions are present in both mature and immature
males - and does seem to be paralleled in females."

But from an evolutionary vantage, we recognize that the female and
male orgasm are fundamentally different, in that the male orgasm is
essential to reproduction whereas the female orgasm is not. The same
principle also explains the origin of male nipples. Accordingly, the
biological necessity of nursing our young makes the nipple so highly
selected that males develop embryologically immature structures as an
evolutionary by-product.

Similar to the clitoris, the male nipple contains highly sensitive
tissue that contributes to male sexual arousal and pleasure. So
perhaps this facility for non-procreative arousal does have a purpose
after all, in that it contributes to greater sexual pleasure and,
hence, higher rates of conception. Couples that best stimulate each
other sexually in a variety of ways are less likely to grow bored,
more likely to stay together and, therefore, naturally selected to
produce more young.
So why does this rarefied debate of adaptation versus by-product
matter to the average person who just wants to enjoy orgasms? Because
we tend to believe what is "natural" or biologically
determined/selected is what is correct. Our sexual scripts derive
from a paradigm of procreative necessity.

The dominant ideology of sex valorizes coital penetration above all
else. But I heartily maintain that our ability to sustain sexual
interest and pleasure each other outside of procreative purpose in a
variety of ways naturally selects the endurance of healthy
"pair-bonds." It inscribes a Darwinian ethos that favors the survival
and reproduction of the sexually fittest.

As a sex therapist I receive emails daily from women who are unable
to achieve orgasm via intercourse and wonder, "what can I do to
change this? What's wrong with me?" Well if we stop thinking of
female and male orgasms as something that "naturally" should result
from intercourse, we can liberate both men and women from the
oppressive intercourse-discourse (a belief that there's a right way
to have orgasms, and simultaneous ones at that).

Understanding and respecting the vital importance of mutual sexual
pleasure ensures the health and success of our long-term
relationships. By finding new and varied ways to pleasure each other,
we can abate the cultural compulsion to get bored, break up, and
search for new partners. The role of the female orgasm, which I
celebrated in She Comes First, is an essential starting point for
liberating ourselves from the hegemony of sexual normalcy based on
biological determinism.

Much thanks to Dr. Lloyd for providing such fine intellectual fodder.

A solution to the conundrum of female orgasm? (Rating: 5)
It's not been uncommon to wonder why women have an orgasm - a reflex
devoted to pleasure with no apparent further purpose, including
procreational. Naturally, lay people and scientists alike have
wondered whether it has some hidden, evolutionary purpose. And so,
apparently, there have been 21 theories on the subject since the mid
20th century, all speculating on the purpose of the female orgasm.
And according to professor Lloyd, with one honourable exception, they
have all been just that - speculation - for in this book Lloyd
conducts a meticulous piece by piece deconstruction, and ultimately
demolition, of these attempts to crack the conundrum.

Much of the 20-odd conclusions are based, among other things, on
surveys, and Lloyd's first salvo comprehensively points to the holes
in these surveys. They fail even to achieve a proper definition of
the female orgasm, and then go on, on the say-so of unreliable
witnesses and dodgy surveys, to build a picture of the experience of
womankind in this area. Anatomically speaking they by and large even
neglect the crucial matter of the varying proximity of clitoris to
vagina. In my observation, in terms of the general survey of the
phenomenon, they also seem to neglect the importance in pre-orgasmic
arousal of the panoply of mental issues involved. At some point in
the evolving literature, investigators did come to differentiate
between 'assisted and unassisted orgasm with intercourse', but I
suspect they don't really understand what they're talking about here
either, given the great variability of practices that the term
'assisted' might cover here.

I was pleased to see that Lloyd, when considering the supposedly
differing post-orgasmic refractory periods between men and women,
unusually, does at least give a one line acknowledgement of the
practice of male 'retention' and what may be learnt from it.

Cutting to the chase, the one theory that Lloyd is sympathetic to, is
the 'byproduct' theory, developed by Donald Symons in the 70's.
Evolutionary biologists distinguish between adaptations and traits,
more broadly speaking. An adaptation is a development which
contributes to reproductive success (hominids standing up on their
hind legs), while a trait, although genetic and inherited, may or may
not (like our differing eye colours.) Writers in this field have
displayed an inclination, tantamount to an assumption, that the
female orgasm is an adaptation. Unpalatable as it may be, especially
to a certain section of feminists, all the evidence for female orgasm
being an adaptation proves to be paper thin. The trait/byproduct
theory, on the other hand, runs thus. The human embryo lies sexually
undifferentiated for the first 8 weeks of life; it has a genital
tubercule, and it also has nipples. Then the embryo becomes either
male or female. The female develops nipples capable of delivering
milk, while the male nipples, with no need so to do, remain, a
spinoff of the primordial nipples, with no reproductive (or
essentially other) function. Similarly, while the genital tubercule
in males goes on to become the penis as we know it, the female
equivalent emerges as the (already sexually sensitised) clitoris.

It is argued that female orgasm is an adaptation only if in ancestral
populations orgasmic females enjoyed greater average reproductive
success than nonorgasmic females. Naturally, it is rather difficult
to discover very much about the sexual experience of our female
ancestors. Given that on any public scale, the clitoris and female
orgasm have only even become known to a small section of humanity for
a small section of history, I would suggest that they may have lain
dormant, undiscovered, and totally useless and unused for the
majority of humankind, for the majority of our time on earth so far.

One of the threads in the book looks at research into female orgasm
in the animal world. There are greater and lesser supporters for the
notion that females in the wild have orgasms. I would suggest that
the relevant issue is not whether or not they actually have orgasm,
but the degrees to which they are potentially capable of orgasm - and
this is a stronger possibility. Some monkeys and apes are capable of
learning to take advantage of the orgasmic possibility for their own
pleasure - possibly, just like women have done!

The book is subtitled 'Bias in the science of evolution.' The 'case'
in the main title is both specific and general. Specifically, about
investigating the female orgasm, and generally, about the pitfalls of
scientists' own prejudices creeping into their research. Towards the
end Lloyd summarises this thread of the book with a list of eight
assumptions she identifies as having been made by the scientists
under scrutiny here. Having said all that, she does make the point
that although unpersuaded so far, she remains open to the case for
the adaptive orgasm, should further evidence be forthcoming.

There was just one book, (The Sex Contract, by anthropologist Helen
Fisher) which, in her own admission (personal communication), the
author confessed she had overlooked in her research, and has resolved
to review soon. I suspect that this one too will fall under her
analysis. I find her argument persuasive. (So did the late Stephen
Jay Gould.) I leave the final judgement to her scientific peers. As a
lay person (!), I welcome any further demystification,
demythologising and de-media-fying of this glorious territory. The
truth will set us free - in the boudoir, as elsewhere.

More About Science than Orgasms (Rating: 5)
Science is the way we have of finding out how the components of the
universe work. Science works very well, in general; our increase in
understanding of everything from galaxies to quarks is really quite
admirable. Nothing humans do is perfect, and the world's scientific
effort, for all its successes, has a history that also includes some
missteps, prejudices, and erroneous conclusions. It is somehow not
surprising that in investigating sexuality, which is still for some
people a controversial endeavor, there have been consequential
mistakes. This is probably because the subject is both vitally
important to us all and also private and covert. Compound this with
particular investigation of female sexuality, and all sorts of
prejudices might be expected to occur. In _The Case of the Female
Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution_ (Harvard University Press),
Elisabeth A. Lloyd has examined how scientists have tried to
understand how female orgasms evolved. "Female orgasm is a source of
fascination for groups ranging from sex researchers to the lay
public, and evolutionists are no exception," she writes.
Unfortunately, Lloyd shows that the evolutionists' fascination has
borne erroneous explanations. This is a tiny area of evolutionary
science, but it has been explored and written about by many, often in
opposing camps, and Lloyd has given a detailed and serious refutation
of all explanations but one, the one she championed in a paper twenty
years ago. Others might find this a tempest in a teapot, but Lloyd's
serious tone and exhaustive analysis of the flaws in other
researchers' ideas, and the causes of those flaws, make this a
fascinating book of scientific advocacy.

Females don't have to have orgasms to bring forth children, so why do
they have orgasms? Lloyd has tried to find every explanation that
evolutionists have proposed, and has come up with twenty-one of them.
Almost all have found the female orgasm to be an adaptation, meaning
that it is a trait that has evolved to promote fitness in some way,
but over and over again, she shows how the proposals of the
"adaptationists" are flawed. Lloyd is adamant: "There is no plausible
evidence that links orgasm to reproductive success." Her arguments
against this proposal are many, among them that the number of women
who always orgasm with coitus is a minority, about 20%; one would
think that if orgasms were an important adaptation that led to
successful reproduction, they would be far more common and far easier
to get by coitus, rather than, say, masturbation. A particularly
attractive explanation, one which has even been spotted on the
Discovery Channel, is charmingly called "The Upsuck Hypothesis". It
says that during orgasm, the uterus has a drop in pressure, becoming
a sort of vacuum cleaner to suck up any sperm deposited by the male.
This would be a reproductive advantage, but even Masters and Johnson
found no evidence that upsuck happens.

Lloyd finds plausible one explanation of female orgasm, the one that
does not insist that it is an adaptation. Donald Symons in 1979
proposed the "byproduct account". Female orgasm is a potential based
on anatomy, a potential activated only in some females of some few
species. The anatomical foundation is similar to the nipple in the
male. Operating female nipples are strongly selected for, since they
supply nutrition, and are present in the embryo, even before the
embryo differentiates sexually. Thus, inoperative male nipples are a
byproduct of selection operating on the female. In the same fashion,
orgasm and ejaculation are strongly selected for in the male because
of sperm delivery. The hardware involved in such actions is there in
the embryo that might turn male or might turn female, and females get
the erectile, highly-enervated clitoris because the analogous penis
in the male is so important. (This also offers an explanation for the
puzzling fact that the key point of sexual stimulation for females is
not in the vagina which receives the sexual organ of the male, but on
the connected tissue of the clitoris.) There are feminist objections
to this idea, because a female orgasm is derivative from the male
one, but this is putting ideology before science: "Its historical
genesis does not dictate our cultural attitudes toward female
orgasm." Lloyd has looked widely at this explanation and all the
others, and has taken pains to list evidence and arguments pro and
con. She has also given a broader critique to show how androcentrism
or illusory concepts of human uniqueness have caused the mistakes in
reasoning of the adaptationists. This is a far from titillating
volume; surely there are not even fetishists who could get off on so
many pages of deconstruction of one arcane theory after another. As
an account of competing scientific ideas and how preconceptions form
them, however, it is a uniquely valuable account.