reasons; to boost their self-esteem, to keep their lovers, or because
they are raped or coerced. Love? That's just a song. We are among the
bad apes now. Why, I
ask Meston, have people never really talked about this? Alfred Kinsey,
the "father" of sexology, asked 7,985 people about their
sexual histories in the 1940s and 50s; Masters and Johnson observed
people having orgasms for most of the 60s. But they never asked
why. Why?
"People just assumed the answer was obvious," Meston says.
"To feel good. Nobody has really talked about how women can use sex for
all sorts of resources." She rattles off a list and as she says
it, I realise I knew it all along: "promotion, money, drugs, bartering, for revenge,
to get back at a partner who has cheated on them.
To make themselves feel good. To make their partners feel bad." Women, she says, "can
use sex at every stage of the
relationship, from luring a man into the relationship, to try and keep a man so he is fulfilled and doesn't stray.
Duty. Using sex to get rid of
him or to make him jealous."
"We never ever expected it to be so diverse," she says. "From
the altruistic to the borderline evil." Evil? "Wanting to give someone a
sexually transmitted infection," she explains. I turn to the book. I am
slightly afraid of it. Who wants to have their romantic fantasies reduced
to evolutional processes?
The first question asked is: what thrills women? Or, as the
book puts it: "Why do the faces of Antonio Banderas and George Clooney excite
so many women?"
We are, apparently, scrabbling around for what biologists
call "genetic benefits" and "resource benefits". Genetic benefits are
the genes that
produce healthy children. Resource benefits are the things that
help us protect our healthy children, which is why women sometimes like men
with big houses. Jane Eyre, I think, can be read as a
love letter to a big house.
"When a woman is sexually attracted to a man because he
smells good, she doesn't know why she is sexually attracted to that
man," says
Buss. "She doesn't know that he might have a MHC gene complex
complimentary to hers, or that he smells good because he has
symmetrical features."
So Why Women Have Sex is partly a primer for decoding
personal ads. Tall, symmetrical face, cartoonish V-shaped body? I have good
genes for your brats. Affluent, GSOH if too fond of acronyms and
kind? I have resource benefits for your brats. I knew this already;
that is how Bill Clinton got sex, despite his astonishing
resemblance to a moving potato. It also explains why Vladimir Putin has become a
sex god and poses topless with his fishing rod.
Then I learn why women marry accountants; it's a trade-off. "Clooneyish"
men tend to be unfaithful, because men have a different genetic
agenda from women they want to impregnate lots of healthy women. Meston and Buss call them "risk-taking, womanising 'bad boys'". So,
women might use sex to bag a less dazzling but more
faithful mate. He will have fewer genetic benefits but more resource benefits that he
will make available, because he will not run
away. This explains why women marry accountants. Accountants stick around and sometimes
they have tiny little feet!
And so to the main reason women have sex. The idol of "women
do it for love, and men for joy" lies broken on the rug like a mutilated sex
toy: it's orgasm, orgasm, orgasm. "A lot of women in our
studies said they just wanted sex for the pure physical pleasure," Meston says.
Meston and Buss garnish this revelation with so
much amazing detail that I am distracted. I can't concentrate. Did you know that the World
Health Organisation has a Women's
Orgasm Committee? That "the G-spot" is named after the German physician Ernst Grδfenberg? That
there are 26 definitions
of orgasm?
And so, to the second most important reason why women have
sex love. "Romantic love," Meston and Buss write, "is the topic of more
than 1,000 songs sold on iTunes." And, if people don't have love,
terrible things can happen, in literature and life: "Cleopatra poisoned
herself with a snake and Ophelia went mad and
drowned." Women say they use sex to express love and to get it, and to try to keep it.
Love: an insurance policy
And what is love? Love is apparently a form of "long-term
commitment insurance" that ensures your mate is less likely to leave
you, should
your legs fall off or your ovaries fall out. Take that, Danielle
Steele you may think you live in 2009 but your genes are still in the stone age,
with only chest hair between you and a bloody death. We
also get data which confirms that, due to the chemicals your brain produces
dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine you
are, when you are in love, technically what I have always suspected you to be mad
as Stalin.
And is the world mad? According to surveys, which Meston and
Buss helpfully whip out from their inexhaustible box of every survey ever
surveyed, 73% of Russian women are in love, and 63% of
Japanese women are in love. What percentage of women in north London are in
love, they know not. But not as many men are in love.
Only 61% of Russian men are in love and only 41% of Japanese men are in love.
Which means that 12% of Russian women and 22% of
Japanese women are totally wasting their time.
And then there is sex as man-theft. "Sometimes men who are
high in mate value are in
relationships or many of them simply pursue a short-
term sexual strategy and don't want commitment," Buss explains.
"There isn't this huge pool of highly desirable men just sitting out there
waiting for women." It's true. So how do we liberate
desirable men from other women? We "mate poach". And how do we do that? We
"compete to embody what men want" high heels to
show off our pelvises, lip-gloss to make men think about vaginas, and we see off our
rivals with slander. We spread gossip
"She's easy!" because that makes the slandered woman less inviting to men as a long-term partner.
She may get short-term
genetic benefits but she can sing all night for the resource benefits, like a cat sitting out in the rain. Then then! the
gossiper mates with the man herself.
We also use sex to "mate guard". I love this phrase. It is so
evocative an image I can see a man in a cage, and a woman with a spear and
a bottle of baby oil. Women regularly have sex with their mates
to stop them seeking it elsewhere. Mate guarding is closely related to "a
sense of duty", a popular reason for sex, best
expressed by the Meston and Buss interviewee who says: "Most of the time I just lie there
and make lists in my head. I grunt once in a
while so he knows I'm awake, and then I tell him how great it was when it's over. We are
happily married."
Women often mate guard by flaunting healthy sexual
relationships. "In a very public display of presumed rivalry," Meston
writes, "in 2008
singer and actress Jessica Simpson appeared with her boyfriend,
Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, wearing a shirt with the tagline
Real Girls Eat Meat. Fans interpreted it as a competitive
dig at Romo's previous mate, who is a vegetarian."
Meston and Buss also explain why the girls in my class at
school went down like dominoes in 1990. One week we were maidens, the
following week, we were not. We were, apparently, having sex to see if
we liked it, so we could tell other schoolgirls that we had done it
and to practise sexual techniques: "As a woman I don't want to
be a dead fish," says one female. Another interviewee wanted to practise for
her wedding night.
The authors lubricate this with a description of the male
genitalia, again food themed. I include it because I am immature. "In Masters &
Johnson's [1966] study of over 300 flaccid penises the largest
was 5.5 inches long (about the size of a bratwurst sausage); the smallest non-
erect penis was 2.25 inches (about the size of
a breakfast sausage)."
Ever had sex out of pity and wondered why? "Women," say
Meston and Buss, "for the most part, are the ones who give soup to the sick,
cookies to the elderly and . . . sex to the forlorn." "Tired,
but he wanted it," says one female. Pause for more amazing detail: fat people are
more likely to stay in a relationship because no
one else wants them.
Women also mate to get the things they think they want
drugs, handbags, jobs, drugs. "The degree to which economics plays out in sexual
motivations," Buss says, "surprised me. Not just prostitution.
Sex economics plays out even in regular relationships. Women have sex so that
the guy would mow the lawn or take out the garbage.
You exchange sex for dinner." He quotes some students from the University of
Michigan. It is an affluent university,
but 9% of students said they had "initiated an attempt to trade sex for some tangible benefit".
Medicinal sex
Then there is sex to feel better. Women use sex to cure their
migraines. This is explained by the release of endormorphins during sex they
are a pain reliever. Sex can even help relieve period pains.
(Why are periods called periods? Please, someone tell me. Write in.)
Women also have sex because they are raped, coerced or lied
to, although we have defences against deception men will often copulate
on the first date, women on the third, so they will know it is
love (madness). Some use sex to tell their partner they don't want them any
more by sleeping with somebody else. Some use it to feel
desirable; some to get a new car. There are very few things we will not use sex
for. As Meston says, "Women can use sex at
every stage of the relationship."
And there you have it most of the reasons why women have
sex, although, as Meston says, "There are probably a few more." Probably.
Before I read this book I watched women eating men in ignorance.
Now, when I look at them, I can hear David Attenborough talking in my
head: "The larger female is closing in on her
prey. The smaller female has been ostracised by her rival's machinations, and slinks away." The
complex human race has been reduced in
my mind to a group of little apes, running around, rutting and squeaking.
I am not sure if I feel empowered or dismayed. I thought that
my lover adored me. No it is because I have a symmetrical face. "I love you
so much," he would say, if he could read his evolutionary
impulses, "because you have a symmetrical face!" "Oh, how I love the smell of
your compatible genes!" I would say back. "Symmetrical
face!" "Compatible genes!" "Symmetrical face!" "Compatible genes!" And so we
would osculate (kiss). I am really just a
monkey trying to survive. I close the book.
I think I knew that.
Courtesy of http://www.guardian.co.uk
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