Daniel Bergner and the Mystery of Lost Libidos
It’s not surprising that Daniel Bergner in What do Women Want does not follow up the one distinction he briefly notes between the rhesus monkey and the human female: the impact of ovulation. We all tend to take it for granted that human females will have sex regardless of where they are in their reproductive cycle. The adaptive function of this ‘constant receptivity’ is argued (at one extreme) as making sexually monogamous pair bonds possible or (at the other extreme) sexual promiscuity.
Frank Beach (famous for his studies of animal, including human, sexual behaviour) remarked:"No human female is ‘constantly sexually receptive’. Any male who entertains this illusion must be a very old man with a short memory or a very young man due for bitter disappointment.” The capacity of many primate females to engage in sex outside of oestrus has long been confused with their actual desire to do so.
In his search for women’s lost libidos Bergner takes us to work done by Meredith Chivers. This research tells us about the disconnect between the genitals and the minds of women: women’s genital arousal (blood flow and lubrication) appears to respond to pretty much anything sexual even when the women report that they do not feel sexually aroused. Has the mystery of lost libidos been solved? Is the answer here in these genital measurements? Has Woman’s naturally rampant sex drive been blotted from her mind by millennia of cultural suppression?
But then we also learn that women are aroused by depictions of sexual coercion, and we also now know that rape victims can experience genital arousal and even orgasm. Adding, as Bergner does, that “arousal is not consent” does little to allay concerns arising from the implication that women’s bodies do really want the ‘unwanted’ sex and it is just their minds that are getting in the way, like some kind of psychosomatic disorder that needs to be fixed. If women’s bodies are aroused by depictions, or actual experience, of sexual coercion, is this evidence of what they ‘naturally’ really want? Bergner clearly interprets women’s genital arousal as a genuine sign of being “turned on”. In this he comes close to Christopher Ryan’s view in Sex at Dawn that a woman’s body knows better than her mind – and this is but a short step away from Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape”.
Bergner dismisses Chivers’ proposal that the female genital response is a protective reflex to prevent injury and infection that might otherwise occur due to unwanted sex. I agree that Chivers’ coerced sex scenario seems overly ‘sex negative’ but having spent some time on the literature surrounding this subject the evidence is clear that this genital response is an automatic reflex. But could it be an automatic reflex because whenever there is any possibility of sexual activity it would invariably be a darn good thing to get active too?
I think part of our problem is that we start from a position of assuming a natural, constant female receptivity – or even proceptivity, the term introduced by Beach in the 1970s to describe the active solicitation of sex by females which was at last being acknowledged. Starting from this position we then assume an absence of desire to be the problem. But if, instead, we start from the position of ancestral primates with a distinct oestrus, and look at how and why they mated beyond this period, then perhaps we can gain more insight into the evolution of female sexuality.
The bodies of oestrous females are hormonally prepared for sex which includes protection of the vagina against injury and infection. So if sex beyond this period becomes an adaptive behaviour for the female then we would expect there to evolve a mechanism to protect the vagina at these times too. For a male things are relatively straightforward in that he has a fairly constant sexual response to signals of fertility in females and nothing new needed to evolve, but the female response had to change a lot: she not only had to appear more constantly sexually attractive to the male but to have a vagina that was prepared for sex.
So, what situations do our primate cousins experience where they gain benefits from this non-fertile sex? A few examples:
Sex with novel males to ‘confuse paternity’ and prevent infanticide is one situation which is now well documented across primates and other species.
In my previous blog I wrote about the female rhesus monkey being receptive to sex throughout her reproductive cycle when she is put together with a male in a cage for a “pair test”. Avoiding sex is not an option. So receptivity to sex when unable to escape a sexually aroused male could be another situation-dependent female sexual behaviour.
At the end of Sex at Dusk I wrote about a female gorilla soliciting sex with the silverback though she was not fertile. This behaviour was due to the presence of another female who was fertile so this is competition between females for the attention of the male. Again this is a situation-dependent sexual behaviour by the female.
Bonobos have the most non-conceptive sex next to humans but again it is often situation dependent (as I wrote about at length in Sex at Dusk). For example, young females entering the group use sex to get close to resident, high-status females and males so as to increase their own social status and ultimately get to the food. Sex is clearly often used strategically, and high status females engage in less sex because they can have access to food without it.
It is clear that for female primates sex is often about something other than sex per se, so it becomes less of an oddity that the brain should be so much more involved in the decision whether or not the situation really does require sexual activity or not. This suggests that the female genital reflex is not just about protection against coerced sex, though that can be one situation females experience, but more about being prepared for sex which may or may not occur, and which may be initiated by the female as a means to some other end. It is not that she does not want the sex but that the sex is not the ultimate goal.
Daphne: “Oh, come now Dr Crane. It’s not like men have never used sex
to get what they want."
Frasier: “How can we possibly use sex to get what we want? Sex IS what
we want."
(From the 1995 “Sleeping with the Enemy” episode of Frasier.)
None of this is to deny the female capacity to feel the kind of sexual desire that a man also feels: the kind that is spontaneous, from within, seeking nothing more than sexual relief. But women are different from men. Context matters much more. The costs and benefits are different. And we should not confuse the response of the vagina and its extended capacity to engage in sex with the sexual response of the sperm-delivery mechanism that is the erect penis.
Perhaps the mystery of lost libidos is less of a mystery when we think about the situations and mechanisms involved in the evolution of female sexuality. Evidence from our primate cousins suggests a natural, adaptive complexity to female sexual behaviour, and that rather than a genital response to all things sexual it is more of a “maybe” becoming a “yes” or a “no” depending on the situation. And perhaps we should at least show some appreciation of women’s evolved sexuality rather than viewing it so often as a befuddled poor relation of simple male sexuality – or as something broken that needs to be fixed.
Frank Beach (famous for his studies of animal, including human, sexual behaviour) remarked:"No human female is ‘constantly sexually receptive’. Any male who entertains this illusion must be a very old man with a short memory or a very young man due for bitter disappointment.” The capacity of many primate females to engage in sex outside of oestrus has long been confused with their actual desire to do so.
In his search for women’s lost libidos Bergner takes us to work done by Meredith Chivers. This research tells us about the disconnect between the genitals and the minds of women: women’s genital arousal (blood flow and lubrication) appears to respond to pretty much anything sexual even when the women report that they do not feel sexually aroused. Has the mystery of lost libidos been solved? Is the answer here in these genital measurements? Has Woman’s naturally rampant sex drive been blotted from her mind by millennia of cultural suppression?
But then we also learn that women are aroused by depictions of sexual coercion, and we also now know that rape victims can experience genital arousal and even orgasm. Adding, as Bergner does, that “arousal is not consent” does little to allay concerns arising from the implication that women’s bodies do really want the ‘unwanted’ sex and it is just their minds that are getting in the way, like some kind of psychosomatic disorder that needs to be fixed. If women’s bodies are aroused by depictions, or actual experience, of sexual coercion, is this evidence of what they ‘naturally’ really want? Bergner clearly interprets women’s genital arousal as a genuine sign of being “turned on”. In this he comes close to Christopher Ryan’s view in Sex at Dawn that a woman’s body knows better than her mind – and this is but a short step away from Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape”.
Bergner dismisses Chivers’ proposal that the female genital response is a protective reflex to prevent injury and infection that might otherwise occur due to unwanted sex. I agree that Chivers’ coerced sex scenario seems overly ‘sex negative’ but having spent some time on the literature surrounding this subject the evidence is clear that this genital response is an automatic reflex. But could it be an automatic reflex because whenever there is any possibility of sexual activity it would invariably be a darn good thing to get active too?
I think part of our problem is that we start from a position of assuming a natural, constant female receptivity – or even proceptivity, the term introduced by Beach in the 1970s to describe the active solicitation of sex by females which was at last being acknowledged. Starting from this position we then assume an absence of desire to be the problem. But if, instead, we start from the position of ancestral primates with a distinct oestrus, and look at how and why they mated beyond this period, then perhaps we can gain more insight into the evolution of female sexuality.
The bodies of oestrous females are hormonally prepared for sex which includes protection of the vagina against injury and infection. So if sex beyond this period becomes an adaptive behaviour for the female then we would expect there to evolve a mechanism to protect the vagina at these times too. For a male things are relatively straightforward in that he has a fairly constant sexual response to signals of fertility in females and nothing new needed to evolve, but the female response had to change a lot: she not only had to appear more constantly sexually attractive to the male but to have a vagina that was prepared for sex.
So, what situations do our primate cousins experience where they gain benefits from this non-fertile sex? A few examples:
Sex with novel males to ‘confuse paternity’ and prevent infanticide is one situation which is now well documented across primates and other species.
In my previous blog I wrote about the female rhesus monkey being receptive to sex throughout her reproductive cycle when she is put together with a male in a cage for a “pair test”. Avoiding sex is not an option. So receptivity to sex when unable to escape a sexually aroused male could be another situation-dependent female sexual behaviour.
At the end of Sex at Dusk I wrote about a female gorilla soliciting sex with the silverback though she was not fertile. This behaviour was due to the presence of another female who was fertile so this is competition between females for the attention of the male. Again this is a situation-dependent sexual behaviour by the female.
Bonobos have the most non-conceptive sex next to humans but again it is often situation dependent (as I wrote about at length in Sex at Dusk). For example, young females entering the group use sex to get close to resident, high-status females and males so as to increase their own social status and ultimately get to the food. Sex is clearly often used strategically, and high status females engage in less sex because they can have access to food without it.
It is clear that for female primates sex is often about something other than sex per se, so it becomes less of an oddity that the brain should be so much more involved in the decision whether or not the situation really does require sexual activity or not. This suggests that the female genital reflex is not just about protection against coerced sex, though that can be one situation females experience, but more about being prepared for sex which may or may not occur, and which may be initiated by the female as a means to some other end. It is not that she does not want the sex but that the sex is not the ultimate goal.
Daphne: “Oh, come now Dr Crane. It’s not like men have never used sex
to get what they want."
Frasier: “How can we possibly use sex to get what we want? Sex IS what
we want."
(From the 1995 “Sleeping with the Enemy” episode of Frasier.)
None of this is to deny the female capacity to feel the kind of sexual desire that a man also feels: the kind that is spontaneous, from within, seeking nothing more than sexual relief. But women are different from men. Context matters much more. The costs and benefits are different. And we should not confuse the response of the vagina and its extended capacity to engage in sex with the sexual response of the sperm-delivery mechanism that is the erect penis.
Perhaps the mystery of lost libidos is less of a mystery when we think about the situations and mechanisms involved in the evolution of female sexuality. Evidence from our primate cousins suggests a natural, adaptive complexity to female sexual behaviour, and that rather than a genital response to all things sexual it is more of a “maybe” becoming a “yes” or a “no” depending on the situation. And perhaps we should at least show some appreciation of women’s evolved sexuality rather than viewing it so often as a befuddled poor relation of simple male sexuality – or as something broken that needs to be fixed.
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