The Big O?
The female orgasm is a mystery to many, and scientists are not exempt. For men, orgasm and ejaculation are usually simultaneous and from an evolutionary standpoint, that makes sense. Orgasms are great fun, so men want to have them, so they want to have sex and thus propegate their species. Nice and logical.
But what about us ladies? We don't need to have an orgasm to get pregnant. In fact, many women go through life without ever having one at all. So, what's the deal with that? Why are we capable of orgasm at all if ours are not related to spreading our genes? Darwin would scratch his head.
Well, Dr. Elisabeth Lloyd of Indiana University (Kinsey's home base, incidentally) thinks she has the answer. Female orgasms are, in her words, just "for fun."
She thinks that they're just an evolutionary off-shoot left over from embryonic development - no purpose but fun. Just like men's nipples. No purpose, but sometimes fun.
Of course, there are scholars and scientists that don't agree with her, and then there's the issue that orgasms are sometimes so bloody hard to come by (pun!). One scientist has even suggested that female orgasms are being phased out, in an evolutionary sense, so one day women won't have them at all. Say it isn't so!!!
Check out the fascinating O debate in the New York Times.
(Thanks sweet reader R for the link!)
But what about us ladies? We don't need to have an orgasm to get pregnant. In fact, many women go through life without ever having one at all. So, what's the deal with that? Why are we capable of orgasm at all if ours are not related to spreading our genes? Darwin would scratch his head.
Well, Dr. Elisabeth Lloyd of Indiana University (Kinsey's home base, incidentally) thinks she has the answer. Female orgasms are, in her words, just "for fun."
She thinks that they're just an evolutionary off-shoot left over from embryonic development - no purpose but fun. Just like men's nipples. No purpose, but sometimes fun.
Of course, there are scholars and scientists that don't agree with her, and then there's the issue that orgasms are sometimes so bloody hard to come by (pun!). One scientist has even suggested that female orgasms are being phased out, in an evolutionary sense, so one day women won't have them at all. Say it isn't so!!!
Check out the fascinating O debate in the New York Times.
(Thanks sweet reader R for the link!)
posted by Hailey Dai @ 5:57 p.m.
1 Comments:
At 1:27 p.m.,
figleaf said…
Eek! Now I'm reading your blog instead of writing my own! :-)
A biologist I know upended me a few months ago when she pointed out that while everyone assumes orgasms in women are some kind of accident nobody notices that orgasms in men may be equally accidental. Evidently very few animals, even most mammals, of either gender appear to have what we think of as orgasms. That doesn't mean there's no selective basis for better ones in humans, but it does challenge some rather fundamental assumptions about human male sexuality.
I'm not sure it's socially healthy when people are able to dismiss male sexuality with toss-off lines like "Evolutionary scientists have never had difficulty explaining the male orgasm, closely tied as it is to reproduction."
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