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Dear Extropy,

In “Sexual Information” (Extropy 3, Spring 1989) Tom Bell correctly affirms that “orgasms feel great because we’ve been naturally selected to enjoy them. Animals wired up to enjoy sex tend to engage in more sex than animals that find sex unpleasant, and animals that engage in more sex have more babies” (p. 22). Some three paragraphs later Bell notes that orgasms are neither necessary nor sufficient for reproduction: “you can have plenty of babies without having any orgasms. Likewise you can have plenty of orgasms without having any babies… .”

The latter is certainly true (thank goodness!), but the former applies only to females, as (perhaps) is indicated by his footnote (#5). In the note, Bell wonders “why, on the average, human females orgasm relatively infrequently relative to males …” (p. 23). “Perhaps,” he continues, “it’s because it’s much more difficult for the male to reproduce without orgasming.” Indeed, I can imagine few things more difficult!

But the “difficulty” of (male) reproduction without orgasm is a red herring, as perhaps Bell himself comes to realize. For he gets somewhat closer to the underlying truth when he says in next sentence that “due to their generally greater strength, males have tended to initiate and control sexual encounters. Perhaps this has made the incentives of orgasm pay off more for males’ genes;

because males could force sex on females, it is primarily the former that have been selected to enjoy sex.” Granted, males often forced (and, sadly, sometimes still do force) sex on females. But this is not due to their greater strength; it is due to their evolutionarily selected greater sex drive (and lack of refinement): their strength merely facilitates the expression of that drive in reproductive acts.

So why should males have developed inflated sex drives? Because evolution requires that we “go forth and multiply.” What we need to recognize is that males and females obviously go about this in quite different ways. Before we became ‘civilized’, males had very little investment in the reproductive process after insemination. The goal (at least from the standpoint of the species) was to impregnate as many females as possible to facilitate the preservation of his genetic information. Because he had little investment in, or responsibility for, the development, birth, and rearing of young he needn’t be particularly choosy about his mates. Nor was there any particular need to restrain his robust sexual urges.

Exactly the opposite is true of females: they have an enormous investment in the reproductive process. Not only do they have to bear the costs of gestation, they must suckle their offspring for many months, and provide (sometimes by themselves) extensive supervision and training for years (as we all know, humans have one of the

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longest periods of infant dependency). Moreover, a female has only a limited number of reproductive resources. Assuming female fertility runs from age 13 to 40, and 13 ovulations per year (and assuming only one zygote per insemination will become viable), she will produce at most 351 zygotes. Of course, she can’t actually conceive every month; at her most prolific then (and if everything goes perfectly, and she doesn’t drop from exhaustion!), she can bear at most 36 children. Males, on the other hand, do not face such limitations. They are constantly fertile and could (if they could find willing females) father hundred, even thousands of children.

Obviously, the female’s investment and risk is enormous — this is no time to be screwing around. Because of this investment she must be very selective about her mates; eggs and reproductive energies are too precious to waste on inferior suitors. She will attempt to select not only those who are genetically superior, but also those from whom she can extract some kind of commitment to child-rearing (the birth of monogamy?). It would be counterproductive, and unnecessary, for females to be as sexually charged as are males. This does not mean that males enjoy sex more than females; it’s just that nature has made it easier for males to reach orgasm and its attendant pleasures, again to facilitate the transmission of his genetic information.

Two closing thoughts: First, since the female orgasm does seem to play an important role in successful fertilization, it would be interesting to know whether females’ ability to achieve (vaginal) orgasm varies with ovulation cycle. I would not be surprised if there were such a correlation, though I know of

no research on this topic (perhaps someone out there does). If none exists, I would — in the interests of science — be happy to volunteer my services as a research subject.

Second, none of the various stimulating articles on Love (same issue) touched on the connection between Love (whatever that is) and the male/female reproductive functions discussed above. It has been my view for many years that our understanding of our own romantic gyrations (or at least the gyrations of heterosexuals) can be greatly enhanced by giving the evolutionary biological facts their due.

Keep up the good work!

Extropically yours,

Jim Stramel
Graduate Student,
Philosophy, USC

Dear Jim,

Thanks for your comments. You’ve fortuitously raised a number of points that I address in this issue’s ‘Why Monogamy?’ There are some others, though, that I’d like to address here.

You seem to have studied ‘Sexual Information’ closely, so it seems odd that you assert that male humans cannot impregnate women without orgasming. As I explained on page 23 of my article, ‘[O]rgasms are neither necessary nor sufficient for reproduction. A lot of sexually repressed women become mothers, and at least a few men have been unpleasantly surprised to find that the preseminal fluid they emit prior to ejaculating carries sperm. (That’s why even well-timed coitus interruptus

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