By David Futrelle
Look, everyone, it’s yet another dude who thinks that female orgasms are a myth.
How bad do you have to be at sex to post something like this? How completely lacking in self-awareness?
Alas, it gets worse, with the inclusion of some Evo Psch and possibly the creepiest take on female genital mutilation I’ve ever seen.
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H/T — found this in r/BadWomensAnatomy; couldn’t locate the original source
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Weasel-rah: how do you know that is the evolutionary purpose of orgasms?
Most traits are not selected at all so it requires significant evidence to show that a trait is even a selected one let alone that it was selected for a particular purpose.
@Moon Custafer
“The Grapes of Wrath” was really about incels’ hatred for pink berries.
Is ‘encouraging cis women to do more sex’ not an evolutionary purpose, then?
I read a book a few years ago that told about a 19th century French prostitute who got interested in why some women frequently have orgasms during penis in vagina sex, while many others never or seldom did.
She had an advantage over male researchers of the time. She had lots of women who would let her examine their genitals, as well as talk honestly about sex to her . She went about her study methodically, and eventually decided that if the clitoris was more than an inch from the opening of the vagina then orgasm during p-n-v sex was unlikely in the man on top position. Such women were not “frigid”. The variation in their anatomy made orgasms in typical missionary position unlikely. In fact, she found that the woman sitting in the man’s lap during sex was most likely to achieve an orgasm during p-n-v sex in such women.
Now, I doubt that most of you have ever heard of this woman. She was just a prostitute and a woman as well, so no one ever paid any attention to her. And I doubt if anyone has redone the analysis since, since I’ve never heard anything about it until I read this fairly obscure modern book.
The book is Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Burr. It has a lot of interesting things in it. I recommend.
@Seph
Not to them. They really like to construct a narrative in which rape is OK, so they don’t care if women want to have sex. We hear that a lot among the orgasm denialists and manospherians in general.
@Naglfar
Yep sorry that was an English failure on my part. What I meant was that it is essentially what they’re doing already when they spew that shit, they’re completely wearing that metaphorical sign.
I have a bad combination of language traits, 1) I’m really fuckin verbose and 2) I am not actually that good at English despite what everyone here tells me, so the result is I often take many, many words to say the exact opposite of what I mean 😀
I don’t know if you get used to it eventually. I still haven’t.
I m afraid its only a beginning and that dude is checking the waters for all that FGM stuff. I am actually suprised that manosphere has not came up witch such idea earlier. In cultures this practice is prevalent it is considered a necessary measure to curb female sexuality thus making them proper wife material. In more radical version girl is even being sewn up so urine and menstrual blood have to pass throu pinhead sized hole untill wedding night when small knife comes handy for the groom… Now merge it up with all the redpill crap and voila!
@Sinkable John
No problem. Sorry if I misinterpreted what you said. I thought you were describing a literal sign, as I have a tendency to read things far too literally. The error is on my end.
@Otrame: ooh interesting, that might go on my to-read queue at some point.
@Naglfar
I spent most of my teenage years believing that humans should be exclusively matriarchal, and that men should be allowed no political or military power… For many of the same reasons these guys think biology justifies rape. Even if the “facts” were correct, the conclusions they draw tell us worlds about what kind of people they are.
I’m starting to feel inclined to go around telling people that men don’t have nipples. I mean, there’s no reason for them to, evolution-wise. If anyone tries to tell me I’m wrong, I’ll just double down, because apparently you can do that.
I just want to agree with @Specialffrog. I’m no kind of scientist, but it is also my understanding that we would need evidence to claim that orgasms experienced by AFAB people emerged in humans because of X selective pressure. Maybe some evidence will be found to support that hypothesis, maybe not.
To me, the important thing is what Buttercup Q. Skullpants said. It doesn’t have to serve some purpose to exist. These dudes are just using words that sound vaguely scientific to disregard women’s feelings and desires.
Rebecca Watson on this topic:
Another round of “if I can’t think of a reason, there must be no reason.”
I remember an old essay by Stephen J. Gould titlesMale Nipples and Clitoral Ripples on the subject. He wanted to title it Tits and Clits but his wife objected. His take is that both traits are a result of developmental pathways shared regardless of sex.
Yeah, people really tend to overestimate the amount of nitpicky ‘selection’ caused by evolutionary pressures. A lot of things in biology are how they are because there’s no pressing reason for them not to be. E.g. Why are pandas that colour pattern? Because nothing hunts them and you don’t need to sneak up on bamboo, so there’s selective pressure to be any particular pattern. The rest is just genetic drift and a small founder population.
@Surplus:
I suspect Irene’s point is that animal copulation tends to be a lot less… performative than the human variety. It tends to be rather perfunctory and mechanical to our eyes. There’s usually no great climax, and afterwards both parties seem to go about their business very matter-of-factly and with about as much ceremony as they carry out any other bodily function. The difference may be because the “performance” part is taken care of by the courtship displays that precedes most animals’ mating; another possibility is that humans have a concept of deferred gratification that I’m not sure many other animals share, and so we generally try to spin out the act for as long as we can while also maintaining arousal.
@Cat Mara
Bonobos are also known for drawn-out foreplay much like that of humans. As well, there is some evidence that dolphins do this as well (dolphins tend to be hypersexual and rather kinky). Many other animals appear to experience orgasm, but like you mentioned, they don’t have long copulation the way humans do.
@Naglfar
No no no it definitely was not on your end, I read it again and even I wondered what the hell I meant, so, yanno 🙂
Shoulda been “these dudes are making humanity better” instead of “would be”. I kinda have a curse with ESL mistakes, the ones I make are always the weird near-undetectable grammar fails that completely change the meaning of a sentence – no one can tell I used the wrong tense there without knowing what I meant, and no one can know what I meant based on what I said because I spectacularly (and very elegantly if I do say so myself, I’m a master wordsmith of ESL fuckery tbh) messed up the grammar.
Hi I’m John, I mostly lurk and don’t show up often these days because depression is kicking my ass hard, but when I do I make sure to remind y’all of why everyone hates the French 🙂
Im not a scientist, so take my opinion with as much salt as you want. But I’m not sure why suddenly the well researched mechanism of a body releasing dopamine when something good for its survival/propagation occurs is called into question when it’s the female orgasm only.
There’s no ”reason” for people to love french fries like they do, except that your body craves salt and fat because those were, pre -civilization, harder to come by so getting them was incentivized. (I’m using incentivized here as a shorthand, I don’t know if there’s a good concise word in English for “adapted over millennia by selective pressure by a cold, uncaring universe”)
Also, I’m giving alllll the side eye to the claim that animals don’t orgasm. How would we even know? I’ve been in enough zoos and farms to know that at least the mammals and birds masturbate, and females as well as males.
The amount of time spent doing the deed seems to relate more to how likely it is that you get predated on or potentially injured by a partner. Prey animals can’t really spend hours locked together like wolves can.
@Sinkable John
This time of year makes me depressed as well. Hope you feel better soon.
OT: Economics has a patriarchy problem. https://evonomics.com/economics-gender-women-adams/
@Weasel-rah: my comment applies to AFAB and AMAB orgasms. Just because there is a dopamine release associated with some acts that can be helpful to passing on genes it doesn’t automatically follow that this characteristic was selected for in human ancestors. It may seem intuitively true but demonstrating to be so takes more work. The consistent failure to do this work is why evo psych is almost entirely baseless.
You could even argue that AMAB orgasms are a hindrance to reproduction as it is generally easy to have them in non-reproductive contexts.
Hiya! I’m back!
Can he explain the sale of vibrators? Or the mere existence of Ann Summer’s shops?
Special frog, since the structures that produce orgasm in AMAB and AFAB folks start out in the fetus exactly the same and change according to influence of hormones in utero, it’s not really far fetched that they have similar abilities. See also nipples, as was mentioned above.
Weather or not traits have a purpose or are random hiccups or holdovers from an ancient past is really beyond anyone to really say, I think. Unless Jesus actually does come back to Clarissa Explains It All to us someday (unlikely) most people agree that orgasms exist, and many of those people seem to find them a motivating factor. But I’m sure there will never be a shortage of people willing to study it For Science.
It is not circumcision, it is excision. It has nothing to do with just offing the small skin hood above the clitoris, it is, as you just write it after, the cut of the clitoris. It is about the same thing as if you are cutting the head of the penis or emasculate a person.
Contrary to circumcision, excision (for religious motive or other) is prohibited in France and considered as a mutilation (same thing for emasculation). It does not concern, of course, withdrawal operations with consenting persons. But as excision is mainly acted upon young adolescents, consent can not be considered as given in the majority of cases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_female_genital_mutilation