Psychology Today: The Orgasm Wars

Psychology Today: The Orgasm Wars

For years, scientists have been debating the function of female
orgasm. Nowthey've finally figured it out. For women, the psychology of sexual
satisfaction turns out to be much more sophisticated than most (male) scientists
have been willing to concede. Of course.

Ever since Alfred Kinsey and Masters and Johnson made the subject of human
sexual response safe for respectable scientists, laboratory studies of the
physiologic "hows" of sexual arousal have flourished. Volunteers have been
prodded, filmed, tape-recorded, interviewed, measured, wired, and monitored,
quantifying for the annals of science the shortened breath, arched backs and
feet, grimacing faces, marginally intentional vocalizations, and jumping blood
pressure of human orgasm.

While physiological details abound, fewer scientists have attempted to answer
the "why" questions about human orgasm. To those who view human behavior in an
evolutionary framework, which we believe adds an invaluable perspective, male
orgasm is no great mystery. It's little more than a physiologically simple
ejaculation that is accompanied by a nearly addictive incentive to seek out
further sexual encounters. The greater the number of inseminations a male
achieves, the better his chances of being genetically represented in future
generations.

Compared with the more frequent and easily achieved orgasm men experience,
women's sexual climax has remained a mystery. After all, women do not need to
experience orgasm in order to conceive. So what is the function of orgasm in
females?

Darwinian theorists who made early attempts to address female orgasm proposed
that orgasm keeps a woman lying down after sex, passively retaining sperm and
increasing her probability of conception. Others suggested that it evolved to
create a stronger pair bond between lovers, inspiring in women feelings of
intimacy and trust toward mates. Some reasoned that orgasm communicates a
woman's sexual satisfaction and devotion to a lover.

Most recently, evolutionary psychologists have been exploring the proposition
that female orgasm is a sophisticated adaptation that allows women to
manipulate--even without their own awareness--which of their lovers will be
allowed to fertilize their eggs.

Male Nipples?

The diversity of evolutionary hypotheses reflects one general attitude: that
the quickened breath, moaning, racing heart, muscular contraction and spasms,
and nearly hallucinatory states of pleasure that orgasm inspires constitute a
complex physiologic event with apparently functional design. But critics of
adaptationist hypotheses have long argued that evolution is more slipshod than
purposeful. A few, including Harvard evolutionist Stephen lay Gould, have
insisted that female orgasm probably doesn't have a function.

Instead, Gould argues, female orgasm is incidental, caused by an anatomical
peculiarity of embryonic development. In embryos, the undifferentiated organ
that later becomes the penis in males becomes the ditoris in females.
Antiadaptationists like Gould--whose thinking uncannily parallels Freud's belief
that women spend their life in penis envy--hold that the clitoris is,
biologically speaking, an underdeveloped penis; it can let women mimic male
orgasm, but it has no functional relevance or evolutionary history of its
own.

Well known for his emphasis on chance events and structural constraints as
major players in the evolutionary process, Gould sees the supposed
functionlessness of female orgasm as a classic illustration why scientists ought
not automatically assume that a trait has adaptive significance. He criticizes
other evolutionists for overemphasizing natural selection and functionality, and
concludes that female orgasm is like the male nipple--nothing more than
developmental baggage.

Many evolutionists have rejected Gould's notion that women's orgasms are
developmentally contingent on men's. Unlike a male nipple, adaptationists have
pointed out, the female orgasm does something. It inspires strong emotions that
can affect bonding and sexual preferences, making women more likely to prefer
the company of one mate over another.

Only during the past few years have studies begun to yield evidence that may
resolve the baggage-versus-adaptation debate over women's orgasms.

Sperm Competition, with Women Judging

Clues for a reasonable adaptation hypothesis were readily available by the
late 1960s, when The British Medical Journal published an exchange of letters
about the muscular contractions and uterine suction associated with women's
orgasm. In one letter, a doctor reported that a patient's uterine and vaginal
contractions during sex with a sailor had pulled off his condom. Upon
inspection, the condom was found in her cervical canal! The doctor concluded
that female orgasms pull sperm closer to the egg as well.

Yet, it was only three years ago that two British biologists, Robin Baker and
Mark Bellis, tested the so-called upsuck hypothesis. They were building upon
ideas articulated by evolutionary biologist Robert Smith, who suggested that
since women don't have orgasms every time out, female orgasm favors some sperm
over others. Baker and Bellis sought to learn just how female orgasms might
affect which of a lover's sperm is used to fertilize a woman's eggs.

They asked volunteers to keep track of the timing of their orgasms during
sex, and, after copulation, to collect male ejaculates from vaginal flowback--a
technical term denoting a distinct form of material that emerges from the vagina
several hours after sex (scientists have devised a way to collect it). The team
counted sperm from over 300 instances of human copulation.

They discovered that when a woman climaxes any time between a minute before
to 45 minutes after her lover ejaculates, she retains significantly more sperm
than she does after nonorgasmic sex. When her orgasm precedes her male's by more
than a minute, or when she does not have an orgasm, little sperm is retained.
Just as the doctors' letters suggested decades earlier, the team's results
indicated that muscular contractions associated with orgasm pull sperm from the
vagina to the cervix, where it's in better position to reach an egg.

Baker and Bellis proposed that by manipulating the occurrence and timing of
orgasm--via subconscious processes--women influence the probability of
conception. So while a man worries about a woman's satisfaction with him as a
lover out of fear she will stray, orgasmic females may be up to something far
more clever--deciding which partner will sire her children.

Good Men Are Hard To Find

Meanwhile, other researchers were making discoveries about the nature of male
attractiveness. Behavioral ecologists had noted that female animals, from
scorpion flies to barn swallows, prefer males with high degrees of bilateral
body symmetry, called developmental stability in the parlance of science.

Development, or the translation of genes into parts of the body, can be
perturbed by stresses such as disease, malnutrition, or genetic defects. One
measure of developmental instability is deviation from bilateral symmetry in
traits like hands, eyes, and even birds' tail feathers. Males whose immune
systems are strong, and who forage well, develop with high symmetry, so females
who choose symmetrical suitors are securing good genes for their offspring.

Evolutionary biologist Randy Thornhill and psychologist Steve Gangestad at
the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque have tested whether humans also
share this preference. And indeed they do. In their studies, women consistently
identify as most attractive males whose faces (and other body parts) are most
symmetrical.

But this, it turns out, is more than a matter of mere aesthetics. A large and
growing body of medical literature documents that symmetrical people are
physically and psychologically healthier than their less symmetrical
counterparts.

Thornhill and Gangestad reasoned that if women's orgasms are an adaptation
for securing good genes for their offspring, women should report more orgasms
with relatively symmetrical mates. Collaborating for a second time, the two,
along with graduate student Randall Comer, devised some very interesting studies
to test this idea.

First they enrolled 86 sexually active heterosexual couples from among the
undergraduates. The average age of the partners was 22 and the couples had been
together an average of two years. Then the researchers had each person
privately--and anonymously--answer questions about his or her sexual
experiences.

The researchers took facial photographs of each person and analyzed the
features by computer; they also had them graded for attractiveness by
independent raters blind to the study. They measured various body parts to
assess bilateral symmetry--the width of elbow, wrist, hand, ankle, and foot
bones, and the length of the second and fifth fingers. Earlier studies had
suggested all of these were associated with health.

Indeed, the hypothesized relationship between male symmetry and female orgasm
proved to be true, the researchers recently reported in the journal Animal
Behavior (Vol. 50, December). From data on sexual behavior provided by the
women, those whose partners were most symmetrical enjoyed a significantly higher
frequency of orgasms during sexual intercourse than did those with less
symmetrical mates. Even the data on sexual experience provided by the men showed
the women had more orgasms with the most symmetrical men.

Of course, symmetry is a relative thing, and a relative rarity at that. No
one is perfectly symmetrical, and very high symmetry scores were few and far
between in this sample, as in others. In consolation, Thornhill and Gangestad
point out that the differences they are measuring are subtle, and most require
the use of calipers to detect.

What's Love Got To Do With It?

It's important to note what did not correlate with female orgasm during sex.
Degree of women s romantic attachment did not increase the frequency of orgasm!
Nor did the sexual experience of either partner. Conventional wisdom holds that
birth control and protection from disease up orgasm rates, since they allow
women to feel more relaxed during intercourse. But no relationship emerged
between female orgasm and the use of contraception.

Nor can the study results be explained by the possibility that the
symmetrical males were dating especially uninhibited and orgasmic women. Their
partners did not have more orgasms during foreplay or in other sexual
activities. Male symmetry correlated with a high frequency of female orgasm only
during copulation.

The findings support evolutionary psychologists' "good genes" hypothesis:
Women have orgasm more often with their most symmetrical lovers, increasing the
likelihood of conceiving these men's children. Well, that's how it would have
worked for millennia, before condoms and the Pill.

And it is for the precontraceptive stone age that our brains seem to be
built; the agricultural and industrial revolutions are flashes in the geological
pan, far too recent in evolutionary terms to have fundamentally changed the way
we experience emotions or sex. To argue, as may champions of chance like Gould,
that sexual attraction has remained completely arbitrary throughout evolution
seems increasingly unwarranted.

Cheating Hearts

Here's the cruelest part of Thornhill and Gangestad's findings: The males who
most inspire high-sperm-retention orgasmic responses from their sexual partners
don't invest more in their relationships than do other men. Studies show that
symmetrical men have the shortest courtships before having sexual intercourse
with the women they date. They invest the least money and time in them. And they
cheat on their mates more often than guys with less well-balanced bodies. So
much for the beleaguered bonding hypothesis, which wants us to believe that
women with investing, caring mates will have the most orgasms.

The women who took part in the study were no saints, either. They sometimes
faked orgasm. Their fakery was not related to male symmetry. Faking, however,
was more common among women who reported flirting with other men. Clearly
earlier theories were not too far off the mark when they proposed that a man
looks for cues of sexual satisfaction from his mate for reassurance about her
fidelity. Faking orgasms might be the easiest way for the woman with many lovers
to avoid the suspicions of her main partner.

Baker and Bellis found that when women do engage in infidelity, they retain
less sperm from their main partners (their husbands, in many cases), and more
often experience copulatory orgasms during their trysts, retaining semen from
their secret lovers. Taken together, these findings suggest that female orgasm
is less about bonding with nice guys than about careful, subconscious evaluation
of their lovers' genetic endowment.

Exhibit B

Patterns of female orgasm point to one important conclusion about our
evolutionary past--that sexual restraint did not prevail among women. But that's
only part of the evidence. Exhibit B is male ejaculation.

Baker and Bellis found that the number of sperm in men's ejaculate changes,
and it varies according to the amount of time that romantic partners have spent
apart. The longer a woman's absence, the more sperm in her husband's ejaculate
upon the couple's reunion. Males increase ejaculate size, it seems, to match the
increased risk that a mate was inseminated by a competitor.

In an ancestral environment of truly monogamous mating, there would have been
no need for females to have orgasm or for men to adjust ejaculate size. Both are
adaptations to a spicy sex life.

Male Bias

Darwin proposed that female animals' preferences have shaped male ornaments
such as peacocks' tails. But his audience--largely male scientists--laughed off
his theory of sexual selection on the grounds that females (human or otherwise)
are too fickle to exert the necessary selection pressure.

Today, evolutionary biology is no longer so completely a male discipline. But
many male evolutionists nevertheless carry old biases. The notion that female
orgasm is anything other than a developmental legacy leaving females able to
imitate "the real thing" will be difficult for some to accept. But as
uncomfortable as it may make many of us men--including male scientists--a
woman's orgasm appears to be a more complex and discriminating comment about her
lovers' merits than are our own.

Explosive Findings!

If we use his study's findings to understand how we humans are designed to
behave in the sexual domain, says Randy Thomhill, Ph.D., then we are better
equipped to deal with problems that arise in relationships. He points to the
following results as among those we should take to heart:

o A woman's capacity for orgasm depends not on her partner's sexual skill but
on her subconscious evaluation of his genetic merits.

o Women's orgasm has little to do with love. Or experience.

o Good men are indeed hard to find.

o The men with the best genes make the worst mates.

o Women are no more built for monogamy than men are. They are designed to
keep their options open.

o Women fake orgasm to divert a partner's attention from their
infidelities.