[[Any sensible woman would kill a man who so much as pointed his willy in
her direction if it weren’t that sex feels so damned good.]]
It’s also true that a woman is more likely to have sex repeatedly with a man who pleases her sexually, and he is more likely to please her sexually if he pleases her in other ways, too. Which means she is more likely to procreate with a partner/father of her choosing as opposed to a random attacker. This is an important point, evolutionarily; that women have always had some power to pick the fathers of their children. For a very informative, entertaining book on the biology /history of women, check out “Woman, An Intimate Geography” by Natalie Angier.
Jill
A good point, and one I’ve considered. I have no facts or even good science to back me up on this, so bear with me.
Other animals don’t need orgasms to engage in procreative sex because they’re too damn stupid – more precisely, they are more strongly governed by instinct, pheromones, and hormones, and have little or no ability to reason or plan for the future. The lioness doesn’t sit there and think “Hey, if I let this nappy-maned yutz get over on me, I’ll have kittens” – only humans weigh the advantages and disadvantages of getting knocked up, as far as I know.
Female orgasms are an adaptive advantage that works with our increased intelligence (women need a lure to make them risk a major life-change), just as female’s permanently swollen breasts are an adaptive advantage that works with our walking upright (the need for a face-to-face sex lure for the men).
[It’s also true that a woman is more likely to have sex repeatedly with a man who pleases her sexually, and he is more likely to please her sexually if he pleases her in other ways, too. Which means she is more likely to procreate with a partner/father of her choosing as opposed to a random attacker. ]
Can a woman be forced to have an orgasm against her will. As a man, I would think it would be possible but don’t have any experence in this (well except when my wife…when I was sleeping…) but thats not what I was getting at here, I am curious if an ‘attacker’ aka rape-er could cause her to have an orgasm or will that shut off and limit the chance of pregency. Also I am not talking about date rape here.
I’ll grant you the “risky” part, but work? Oh, Camilla, someone’s been treating you poorly. Digging ditches is work, sex is pure pleasure.
Finding a man is generally not a problem, though you did specify plural. I guess hunting for multiple willing men may make the search more difficult…on some planet.
Yeah, I’ve heard that it’s quite difficult ::snicker:: to convince a guy ::snort:: to have sex. ::must keep straight face::
I understand that some actually enjoy being eaten during the process.
I thought that was the point…
Again, somebody been doin’ you wrong (pun fully intended). A little nibbling here and there never hurt anybody (well, maybe just a little. Everybody sing “…c’mon baby make it hurt so good…”)
And that’s why I conceded the “risky” part.
Yep, those damn guys just don’t want sex often enough. Must be genetic.
This whole orgasm thing is very simple. Both man and woman have Orgasms for the same reson. G-d knew we would need something to do before we thought up cable t.v.!
I have to vote for the vary-the-basic-model-minimally-for-reproductive-efficiency party. That makes for lousy conversation, I’ll admit; but you know, from evolution’s amoral-majority viewpoint – particularly 100 years ago when more effort was spent on worrying about floods, droughts, Indians on warpaths and white men on warpaths, and families were very large – most of society – being fat, ugly, undersexed and poor conversationalists – still is/was composed of a vast majority of women who seek/sought mates and kids, with probably very little thoughts about orgasms, and men who had much more leeway but among which the kids of those of whom tended to stay mated tended to survive more often, and it is mainly this predominant heap of human organisms that has constituted the bulk of persisting human society. . .in the full graces of evolution. You people talk a lot. (The last sentence was just to prove that I really can start a new sentence.)
[[still is/was composed of a vast majority of women who seek/sought mates and kids, with probably very little thoughts about orgasms, and men who had much more leeway…]]
Your post was great, Ray. I wonder about the above point, though; specifically the “seek/sought … kids” part. First, kids were a byproduct of sex whether you wanted em or not until fairly recently. And if you go back far enough historically, the connection between sexual intercourse and reproduction wasn’t even necessarily made by most societies. Later this might have been relevant, though it sure isn’t why I have sex.
Oops, I was afraid I was stepping into a quagmire. Not my topic. Didn’t really think back far enough. Not a biology/zoology/anthropology major. Gotta grab something quick (which maybe means even a short sentence or two).
I guess the proper generalization as to the female half of the getting-it-on-for-the-persistence-of-the-species question, in the subjective view, should’ve been ‘being where the action is’. More objectively, there is the display thing. Seems to me, given those, the male can/could and will/would well take it from there – without specialized neural phenomena in the female being needed / pertuating itself evolutionarily – though the latter might shore things up a little.
But during much of the so-called civilized portion of that period, at least, I believe considerable of the direct pursuit of the first act was rather inhibited, with favor given to the second one and/or the security concern, within much of society. However, I guess all that is pretty irrelevant to the persistence of design features in biological organs.
I don’t know if you can do that in “historical times”. I think, as far as the Margaret-Mead sort of stuff within this century, such circumstances have been debunked. I guess one could never know what thoughts were connected in the most primitive tribes at the beginning of historical times; but you would figure, while going back, but still within modern Homo sapiens, you would somewhere find that connection lost somewhere. All of the historical period, I guess, would’ve been too short to have come into play evolutionarily in respect to persistence of orgasms.
I guess I’m ignorant, really, as to whether the more immediate ancestors of man had real estrous cycles or not, but I would guess they did, or at least a much more pronounced display behavior. This prehistoric period of man and his. . .well, her. . .immediate ancestors would’ve been the time to decide evolutionarily whether, a female, should orgazz or not, I would agree.
Well, no offense intended (is that NOI?), but there are even others, it seems, in some of the threads in these forums, in the objective behavior of whom evolution has taken even less direct interest – and concluded, “Well, I’ll be broadminded about all subjective notions, and even in objective behavior, so long as a certain amount of objective behavior is directed in a way that a certain amount of protoplasm will crawl on.”
Well, no offense intended (is that NOI?), but there are even others, it seems, in some of the threads in these forums, in the objective behavior of whom evolution has taken even less direct interest – and concluded, “Well, I’ll be broadminded about all subjective notions, and even in objective behavior, so long as a certain amount of objective behavior is directed in a way that a certain amount of protoplasm will crawl on.”]
]
First, kids were a
byproduct of sex whether you wanted em or not until fairly
recently.
Also remember that child rearing was primarly the responcibility of the woman who was not the liberated woman of present day, I assume she was not exactly given the choice as to weather or not she would like to have a child. The man was the head of the family and he would decide, she would honor his decision. This seems to be true of early Christan city/states as they were IMHO mush more religious then todays socitey and the Bible states “The head of every man is the Christ, in turn the head of a woman is the man” 1 Corinthians 11:3
I also assume that other sociteies had simular doctrine either religious or political - either way, I am lead to belive that when society was formed, it was the man who decided when top have sex and therefor children not the woman.
Also unlike other animals, man (homosapians) doesn’t have seasonal periods of heat, but can engage in sex through out the year. Lower animals are instinctively driven to sex which is usally painful and dangorous expecially for the female, as we have lost the instinct that lower animals posses it may have been replaced by a pleasurable sensation and at that time no relation was drawn between sex and children. all they knew is that man and women can have a great time together and ,unrelated, women sometimes have children.
Are your responses here based on the Christian religion?
Considering the full range of “societies”, on a wide scale of “civilizedness”, the doctrines certainly couldn’t be considered similar.
I would assume that to be true while mated, but I wonder about otherwise, on the level of instigation.
But do you think the short span of the “historical” period had any significant effect on the biological evolution of female orgasm (which is what the original question was about)? I don’t. I wasn’t really thinking right in my first post.
[quote}Also unlike other animals, man (homosapians) doesn’t have seasonal periods of heat, but can engage in sex through out the year.[/quote]
But at what level in his ancestry (pre-modern-Homo-sapiens or pre-Homo-sapiens or pre-whatever-before) do you think/know that that species did experience estrus?
And you’re saying that man is not? I can’t buy that.
You believe that it was painful for the male (and necessarily painful for the experienced female at all times – at whatever stage of evolution you’re talking about here?
Do you think bonobos experience a lot of pain in coitus?
I’d like to see the authority on this.
I agree, previous to a certain point in time, different for different peoples; but you aren’t stating at what times this situation changed for the different tribes.
I think sex was a problem back before they had videotapes; it was just something that interfered with the normal pursuit of war and other violence (but it did tend to supply troop replacements).
1st of all why do most of you have someone’s elses quotes in lines i.e.
quote:
Lower animals are instinctively driven to sex. . .
And you’re saying that man is not? I can’t buy that
…that didn’t even come out right… anyway
Ray, I was taking Christan doctrine because most of europe and the US up to the begining of this century was mostly Christan (I’ll admit this is an assumption). I was using it as an example and combining it with the fact (that I learned back in HS, so I don’t have a sorce) that in most societies the man is the head of the family and in alot of them the woman is concidered property of the man. Now the example that was brought up to counter this was the Iroquois Indians (Native Americans). from this I did a little extrapolation as I said I assume, and we all know where that leads.
_I would assume that to be true while mated, but I wonder about otherwise, on the level of instigation.
_
I am sure once the sex-baby conection was made there were women who wanted children, but also they wanted to be provided for. most women couldn’t suport themselves because of society. Also of intrest is that 3rd world contries have more children then more developed countries. I think it is because children are a net economic benefit to poorer areas where they can be taught to work and take care of other babies when they are old enought and lets face it 5 workers (children when old enough) working the field for however long they live is worth taking a worker (the woman) out for time required to raise the workers. in a developed country it is the opposite as children cost money (not getting into welfare moms here), delivery, medical, school, soccer, telephone, toys, cars, daycare, babysiter, etc. etc. And if the woman decides to work (assuming the man is already working and will continue to do so), alot of time is lost and that time means money.
_
But do you think the short span of the “historical” period had any significant effect on the biological evolution of female orgasm (which is what the original question was about)? I don’t. I wasn’t really thinking right in my first post.
_
Not anything that brought about the female orgasim, but there were certaanly are effects. diffrent societies seemed to value diffrent atrubuted in a mate and certain trates were either inhanced or diminished probally by a combination of selective breeding (as people chose mates based on what society thought was atractive) and enviroment, now this is all my speculation, want to make this clear.
now this is going to seem racist, but I am going to step there anyway but trying to tred lightly, people who are easyly offended by discussing diffrences in races, skip this paragraph.
Looking at 3 societies from Africia, Europe
and the far east seam to value difrent aspects of a mate. The far east (esp. China) seam to value small feet in a woman, is it really a supprise that most Chinese women are small, and the men for that matter, and the breast size is probally smaller then other groupes. The Europians with their Christan values, protected women, they were somewhat sheltered and not exposed to all the harshness of life that the African woman was exposed to, leading to (total guess here) more non esential features that were prized such as long soft hair. In Africa, (admittly in school we mostly skipped over) I think that women had a tougher time and had to bear more children (the sicle cell trait demands this) and still work. Now I am sure that you can think along the same lines and think of atrubutes that seemed to develope in recent history.
_
ok everyone back now.
But at what level in his ancestry (pre-modern-Homo-sapiens or pre-Homo-sapiens or pre-whatever-before) do you think/know that that species did experience estrus?
_
I Don’t know, What about looking at our closest relitive and see if they exp it.
_
Lower animals are instinctively driven to sex. . .
And you’re saying that man is not? I can’t buy that
_
I would say much less so, we have lost many of our instincts or much of them are replacesd by our ability to reason. We are in no way, except maby sex offenders, driven the way cats are - not to that extreme, Admittly there are times that I want it and my wife doesn’t, and I can feal the ‘instinctive?’ urge but I really cant accept that this is the same urge that mittens feals. BTW all of our cats are fixed I am using that as an example.
_
You believe that it was painful for the male (and necessarily painful for the experienced female at all times – at whatever stage of evolution you’re talking about here?
_
I am talking about lower animals here, some exapmles are cats, the female gets bitten on the scruff and the male organ has a barb, when he is finished he pulls it out and rips the female with the barb which triggers ovulation, the female then usally tries to bite the male. there are other examples and alot of males get hurt competeing for the mate.
Also, I wondered if 2 (1 m , 1 f) children were places away from human contact but there needs were provided for, would they discover sex? what percentage of the time would they discover it, what about other animals places in the same situation. I know this have never been done, and hopefully never will but from this you can see the diffrence between instinct and learned behavor.
The ‘why’ is in order to most easily and accurately direct a response. The ‘how’ is with UBB code. See a link for this on the FAQ page for this message board, under the question on signatures.
Up to, from what date. Clearly, before some date in the range of 800 A.D., this wasn’t true. But, in any case, what the Bible states didn’t neceassarily regularly go, and the original question wasn’t stated as restricted to those of European descent, and the neural function discussed in the original post to this thread is not known, whatever the particular cultural effect on its actual use, is not known to vary extremely by race. The original question here dealt with the related evolutionary effect. How would the Bible’s verbiage affect this? It would not, any more than would the practice of some African tribes of mutilating the clitoris of individuals. But I don’t think (despite my first post) that the so-called historical period of existence of Homo sapiens could account for very much evolutionary change in the amount or type of innervation of a genital organ.
You don’t suppose that, in today’s world, this is not true, but rather the greater reproduction is a consequence of less effort toward / belief in birth control and also less distraction by the many other pursuits found in the developed nations? The net effect is to keep those areas much poorer than otherwise.
Well, the question in this thread was strictly about the female orgasm. Sure, there were likely a lot of subtle effects favoring people who could adapt better to urban living, or at least, agrarian living, particularly in temperate climates.
So your claiming the fact that the average Mongoloid Asian is smaller than the average individual of other human strains (except for the special case of pygmy variants) is due to the fact that male members of that group preferred smaller mates? I certainly think all antropologists and biologists would disagree with that. I’m not able to properly state how this discrepancy actually resulted. I think most quick answers to this are bound to be wrong.
I think you’re rather over-convinced of the effects of “Christian values”, and how much there were actually practiced. You could also, claim chivalry for what you put on Christian values, but I think both of them pretty well averaged out to null on this score. But anyway, most of Europe, most of the time during recorded history (and of course before) was not Christian, even in theory.
;-)))) What about the plague in Europe? Didn’t those Caucasian baby factories have to run at high capacity during the period of that problem? Actually, as I understand it, the sickle-cell characteristic is an incomplete attempt to resist malaria. If it hadn’t occurred, maybe there would’ve been less West Africans reach reproductive age. (I actually don’t know at what age this cell variation, in the past, accomplished anything – or, at any time, to any appreciable extent, lessened population expansion.) But all of this is very far off topic.
Well, there are problems with that, mainly that our “closest [present] relative” may be very different from the common ancestor of both of us. The bonobo, or pygmy chimpanzee, has been claimed to be our modern-day nearest relative, but it evolved on its own to be quite different in many ways from other apes, as well as from us. Here is where you can find far more on the daily sex and other life of the bonobo than you ever considered wishing to know. . .or then again, maybe. . .:
There’ll be a quiz as soon as you digest (or whatever you want to do with) all of that. But it’s at least as relevant as the Bible. That page doesn’t really come out and use the term ‘estrus’ or ‘heat’, but, from part of its description, there is a very strong periodic variation in the females physical and behavioral sexual situation, and in the permitted behavior of the male. And in this species, the males appear to be far less of brutes than in any of the other apes or than in lower animals.
Baloney. It’s just that our instincts are usually only expressed in forms highly modified by our complex society and our complex brains that caused same to evolve.
Well, cats will be cats, but other lower animals are not that way at all. And bonobos are extremely different than that. The brain of a cat is actually, comparatively, a very simple thing. So simple, compared to a human’s, that it is pretty hard to correlate subjective pain between the two species. Some people can get along very well with some cats under certain circumstances, but I don’t think there is all that much real empathy going on.
I’m not sure there are any really bona fide cases of children having been raised by other animals sufficiently long for them to have been able to reach adolescence in decent health and then come into contact with an approachable member of the opposite sex. The probability of that is very low, but unrelated to sex. However, if one got that far, I certainly believe that sexual expression would occur at least as strongly as it
It seems to me that the ability to have an orgasm may have originally been a genetic trait. Women who enjoy having sex would be more likely to do it as often as possible, therefore they would have more babies. Also, the fact that the contractions do seem to make pregnancy more likely would also promote a higher fertility rate for these women (I beleive that there are some statistics out there to support this, I’ve run into some in literature about artificial insemination).
This may be an oversimplification, but it has the ring of common sense to me.
did it work? did it work? well I will have to see later,
I think that poorer nations don’t use birth control because it is not an economic benefit over the long hall. today (here in devepoled USA) working women find child birth and rasing a major inconvienence. Befor women entered the work force (Rosie the Riviter) I don’t think birth control would be nearly as popular even if it was as available, acceptable and promoted as today.
As for womans orgasims and why, which, I know, is the topic, I think sex changed from a instinct to a learned, pleasurable behavor as we or our ansestors evolved. I don’t think the female orgasm evolved in historical times but sometime way before.
If 2 humans (1m, 1f) did grow up w/o other human contact (somehow) what is the chance that they would reproduce, I know you don’t know, I don’t either, but since to think that sex in humans is a learned behavor I would have to say it is not 100%, actually I would guess, again total guess here, a range of 50%-90%, a big range, but it is my post so I will do it my way. for other animanls I would say that number is much closer to 100, and if you elimiate the chance that one would eat the other I would say it would be 100%.
Here is one other possible reason why women have orgasms, and generally get pleasure from sex. See if this hangs together for you:
Factoid: Military testing of male and female recruits show that the average man is three times stronger in the legs and five times stronger in the arms than the average woman.
Factiod: As a group, men tend to be much more physically agressive than women. Aggressive is defined as activity with intent to cause harm or pain. Check the local news, your local schoolyard, or any history book. Note that I didn’t way that women weren’t competitive, I just said they are less likely to smack you in the jib.
Anecdotal Evidence: Nearly all of the women who I have been close enough with to ask, have been physically abused in one way or another by a significant other (husband /boyfriend /lover /one-night-stand /etc). Since I’m just a pup, nearly all of these ladies have been young; I’m assuming that more mature ladies will have collected even more lumps over the course of time.
Guys, think it over. If the tables were turned, and half the people in the world were three times bigger, uglier, grosser, hairier, and meaner than you, and they all wanted a peice of your ass, what would you do?
That’s right, you’d be the schnook behind me in line at the gun store asking if you could get a grenade launcher with that AK47.
If there wasn’t some sort of incentive to associate with men, the human race would have faded away a long long time ago. The logical thing for a woman to do is stay the hell away from us.
In fact, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that the main things a woman would want a man for is to lift heavy things and keep other men away. Find herself a large friendly one, put out to make him friendlier, and call it a night.
That also could explain why women tend to pay more attention to mood and settings than men They are answering the primary question ‘is this guy going to hurt me?’ by looking at you and your crib. Get a clue; do some laundry, clean the dump, put away those bondage videos.
Sex also might just be that extra incentive to bother staying alive. Look around: the things that cause pleasure are few, have definite upper limits, and tend to make you fat or cough. The things that cause pain are just about anything, and there doesn’t seem to be any upper limit on how bad something can hurt. In the bad old days you started breeding early, got old soon, and died a gnarly death before you ever had to worry about male baldness pattern. Getting laid once in awhile might just tip the scales and make that next mammoth hunt worth the trouble.
I’d say don’t look a give deiety in the singularity, just take what you can get.
[[Anecdotal Evidence: Nearly all of the women who I have been close enough with to ask, have been physically abused in one way or another by a significant other (husband /boyfriend /lover /one-night-stand /etc). Since I’m just a pup, nearly all of these ladies have been young; I’m assuming that more mature ladies will have collected even more lumps over the course of time.
Guys, think it over. If the tables were turned, and half the people in the world were three times bigger, uglier, grosser, hairier, and meaner than you, and they all wanted a peice of your ass, what would you do?]]
I’ve never been physically abused by a man.
I don’t think all men are meaner, and I think a lot of em aren’t ugly at all.
I use the same amount of weight on the leg extention and leg curl machines as a lot of men at the gym.