The Function Of The Female Orgasm Essay

, Research Paper

The function of the female orgasm.

This is something I wrote while I was at college about a year ago and it details some new research that has been published about the possible purpose of the female orgasm, which I think is pretty interesting… It’s pretty dry and academic in tone and contains some fairly specialist language, but most of it should be pretty clear to most people. If anyone has a question or wants some more information on this kind of thing, mail me: mwall@netcomuk.co.uk Does the female orgasm have a function and, if so, what is it. The female orgasm, and indeed female sexuality in general, has been one of the most consistently debated areas in human behavioural ecology. For many years the field was characterised by a paucity of any real experimental evidence; largely because of the ethical and practical difficulties encountered in researching this area. However in recent years a number of studies have been published which go some way towards shedding some light on the possible adaptive significance of the female orgasm. In the history of the field there have generally been two diametrically opposed positions taken up by researchers. The first position holds that orgasm in females is of little or no adaptive significance and that it is merely a phylogenetic holdover from normal development of the male. This idea springs from the fundamental observation that while male orgasm is essential for conception to take place, female orgasm is not, and indeed does not always (or even often) occur during copulation. This view is represented by writers such as Donald Symons (1979): .the potential for female orgasm can be understood as a by-product of selection for male orgasm. in much the same way as the existence of nipples on males can be accounted for by the selection for lactation in females. Symons cites the fundamental neuro-muscular similarity of male and female orgasms as support for this position, citing Masters and Johnson.s demonstration that the contractions reliably occur at exactly the same time interval (0.8 seconds) in both sexes. One of Symons central arguments is that the female orgasm is highly individually variable and unpredictable. Symons proposes this to mean that the mechanism is revealed not to be an adaptation purely by virtue of its seeming inefficiency and unreliability. This point is also made by Hrdy (1981) who comments: .a physiological mechanism….that is important to fitness (or reproductive success) and properly adapted to its task should work better than that.. Symons calls on a variety of other evidence to back up his position; primarily ethnographic studies (including, unfortunately, the now badly discredited work of Margaret Mead on the people of Samoa) but the absence of any real empirical data is highly conspicuous, mainly because very little real experimentation had been done at this time. The other position taken by researchers in this field is that female orgasm is indeed adaptive and serves a clearly defined, and beneficial, purpose. One of the first writers to put this idea onto any firm footing was Desmond Morris in .The Naked Ape. (1967). Morris espoused two possible functions for the female orgasm; firstly that mutual enjoyment of the act of copulation facilitates the formation of a strong pair bond between males and females and secondly, that the female orgasm promotes contentment and drowsiness leading to sleep. This second point (rather ungraciously termed the .poleaxe hypothesis. by Baker and Bellis ) is judged to be of importance because of the bipedal gait of humans. If a human female stands up after copulation gravity may have some effect on the number of sperm retained, therefore the adoption of a supine posture after copulation may be adaptive for conception. However, these arguments are again devalued by a lack of hard evidence to support them. In the last few years several extremely significant studies have been performed which have gone some way towards solving this problem. The study performed by Baker and Bellis directly tested two hypotheses; the .poleaxe. hypothesis of Morris (1967) and an alternative theory first espoused by Fox et al (1970) termed the .upsuck. hypothesis. This argument contends that female orgasm actively facilitates conception by the sucking of the contents of the vagina into the uterus. Baker and Bellis collected samples of semen from the male participants of their study in order to estimate the amount that would normally be ejaculated. They then also collected samples of .flowbacks. (the mixture of semen and vaginal mucous that is ejected by the female after copulation) from the couples participating in their study. This, together with analysis of the .flowbacks. and a nationwide survey of female sexual behaviour, enabled Baker and Bellis to come to some definite conclusions about the merits of the two hypotheses. After analysis it was found that the data did not support Morris.s (1967) .poleaxe hypothesis., but that the .upsuck. hypothesis of Fox et al (1970) was amply supported. It seems that sperm retention is at its best when the female has a copulatory orgasm any time between one minute before the male ejaculates and forty-five minutes after. Female orgasms occurring more than one minute before the male.s ejaculation had no significant effect on sperm retention by the female. This suggests that .the upsuck mechanism continues to function for at least 1 min after the f