Are Human Sex
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Are Human Sex
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Heather Whipps writes about history, anthropology and health for Live Science. She received her Diploma of College Studies in Social Sciences from John Abbott College and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from McGill University, both in Quebec. She has hiked with mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and is an avid athlete and watcher of sports, particularly her favorite ice hockey team, the Montreal Canadiens. Oh yeah, she hates papaya.
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Birds do it, bees do it, humans since the dawn of time have done it.
But just how much has the act really changed through the millennia and even in past decades? Are humans doing it more? Are we doing it better? Sort of, say scientists. But it's how people fess up to the truth about their sex lives that has changed the most over the years.
Humans have basically been the same anatomically for about 100,000 years—so what is safe to say is that if we enjoy it now, then so did our cave-dwelling ancestors and everyone else since, experts say.
"Just as our bodies tell us what we might like to eat, or when we should go to sleep, they lay down for us our pattern of lust ," says University of Toronto psychologist Edward Shorter. "Sex has always offered pleasure."
Sexuality has a lot to do with our biological framework, agreed Joann Rodgers, director of media relations and lecturer at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.
"People and indeed all animals are hard wired to seek out sex and to continue to do so," Rodgers said in a recent interview. "I imagine that is evidence that people at least like sex and even if they don't they engage in it as a biological imperative."
It is nearly impossible to tell, however, whether people enjoyed sex more 50 years ago or 50,000 years ago, said David Buss, professor of psychology at the University of Texas and author of "The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating" (Basic Books, 2003).
There is "no reason to think that we do more now than in the past, although we are certainly more frank about it ," Buss told LiveScience .
Indeed, cultural restraints —rather than anything anatomical—have had the biggest effect on our sexual history, Shorter says.
"To be sure, what people actually experience is always a mixture of biological and social conditioning: Desire surges from the body, the mind interprets what society will accept and what not, and the rest of the signals are edited out by culture," he writes in his book, "Written in the Flesh: A History of Desire" (University of Toronto Press, 2005).
That's not to say that cultural norms keep people from exploring the taboo, but only what is admitted to openly, according to archaeologist Timothy Taylor of Great Britain's University of Bradford.
"The idea that there is a sexual line that must not be crossed but in practice often is, is far older than the story of Eve's temptation by the serpent," he writes in "The History of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture" (Bantam Books, 1996).
Religion especially has held powerful sway over the mind's attitude towards the body's carnal desires, most sexual psychologists agree. Men and women who lived during the pious Middle Ages were certainly affected by the fear of sin, Shorter said, though he notes there were other inhibiting factors to consider, too.
"The low priority attached to sexual pleasure by people who lived in distant times is inexplicable unless one considers the hindrances that existed in those days," Shorter writes. He points especially to the 1,000 years of misery and disease—often accompanied by some very un-sexy smells and itching—that led up to the Industrial Revolution. "After the mid-nineteenth century, these hindrances start to be removed, and the great surge towards pleasure begins."
Many historians and psychologists see the late 1800s as a kind of watershed period for sexuality in the Western world. With the industrial revolution pushing more and more people together—literally—in dense, culturally-mixed neighborhoods, attitudes towards sex became more liberal.
The liberalization of sexuality kicked into high gear by the 1960s with the advent of the birth control pill, letting women get in on the fun and act on the basis of desire as men always had, according to Shorter.
"The 1960s vastly accelerated this unhesitant willingness to grab sex for the sheer sake of physical pleasure," he said, noting that the trend of openly seeking out sex just because it feels good, rather than for procreation alone, has continued on unabated into the new millennium.
But despite the modern tendency towards sexual freedom, even today there are vast differences in attitudes across the world, experts say.
"Cultures vary tremendously in how early they start having sex, how open they are about it, and how many sexual partners they have," said Buss, noting that Swedes generally have many partners in their lifetime and the Chinese typically have few.
An informal 2005 global sex survey sponsored by the condom company Durex confirmed Buss' views. Just 3 percent of Americans polled called their sex lives "monotonous," compared to a sizable 26 percent of Indian respondents. While 53 percent of Norwegians wanted more sex than they were having (a respectable 98 times per year, on average), 81 percent of the Portuguese were quite happy with their national quota of 108 times per year.
Though poll numbers and surveys offer an interesting window into the sex lives of strangers, they're still constrained by the unwillingness of people to open up about a part of their lives that's usually kept behind closed doors.
And what if we weren't bound by such social limitations? Taylor offers the promiscuous—and very laid-back—bonobo chimpanzee as a utopian example.
"Bonobos have sex most of the time ... a fairly quick, perfunctory, and relaxed activity that functions as a social cement," he writes. "But for cultural constraints, we would all behave more like bonobos. In physical terms, there is actually nothing that bonobos do that some humans do not sometimes do."
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Key points
Most sex happening right now around the world is not procreative.
Research shows that the physical pleasure of genital stimulation is not necessarily an important component in the decision to have sex.
Sex is truly pleasurable because through it, we may transcend our aloneness.
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Our conversations are sprinkled with slips, pauses, lies, and clues to our inner world. Here’s what we reveal when we speak, whether we mean to or not.
Posted April 16, 2012
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Reviewed by Lybi Ma
Why do you sleep at night? This is seemingly a simple question. But in fact it is a most difficult question, as of yet unanswered by science. Many seemingly simple questions are, on close inspection, not at all easy to answer. One of these—perhaps the most interesting—is why we have sex.
Why do you want sex? The usual answer is, of course, based on the known reproductive function of sex. We want sex because our continued existence as a species depends on it. Children come from sex, one learns. And the thing about the stork is just a story.
But the facts on the ground undermine this assumption. First, people continue to engage in sex long after they have stopped having children. Often, their sex lives actually get better, because there are no more worries about unplanned pregnancy (or, a bit later, about Junior popping up bedside mid-action saying he needs to pee).
This leads us to the following fact: Most sex happening right now around the world is not procreative. On the contrary, most of those getting busy at this moment would be shocked and upset to find that their joyful acrobatics have resulted in pregnancy. An intense interest in sex and eroticism is not necessarily linked to heightened interest in producing offspring. In fact, those interests are often inversely related.
Moreover, many sexual behaviors we commonly engage in, even in the fertile years, are not related to reproduction at all. If sex is for reproduction, how is the mechanism of sexual pleasure organized regarding anal or oral sex? And why are you holding hands with your boyfriend? Children do not come of it. Besides, you also hold hands with your 3-year-old niece. What's going on here? And what is reproductive about someone pulling your hair? In fact, why does the business of genital, reproductive pleasure spread to all kinds of remote areas not related to reproduction, such as shoulders (very sexy in the nineteenth century), the neck (sexual attraction in Japanese culture), or breasts (contemporary American obsession)? And if a man has a biological urge to find a good mother for his offspring, why do men routinely differentiate between a ‘sexy’ woman and a ‘motherly’ one, and prefer the former to the latter?
Now you say, “Okay, let’s forget all the biology. Why complicate things? Sex feels good. It is a pleasure. I have sex for fun.” But that argument is unsatisfactory as well. It turns out the desire for physical pleasure is not the most important reason for sexual activity.
Research shows that the physical pleasure of genital stimulation is not necessarily an important component in the decision to have sex. Researchers Cindy Meston and David Buss a few years ago asked 400 students about their reasons for engaging in sex. After processing the data and eliminating similar or identical answers, they were left with a list of 237 different reasons for sex, including "I wanted to give him an STD,” "I felt sorry for him," "To punish myself," and "I lost a bet."
The truth is, many people are having sex right now without pleasure or any expectation of it. If it’s pleasure you want, if you desire a nice orgasm , you'll get there faster—and cheaper, with more certainty and less risk of pregnancy and disease—through masturbation . So why are you having sex with your partner? And why, when you do masturbate, are you fantasizing about him (or about someone, anyway)?
It turns out that the deep experience of sexual pleasure depends somehow on the presence, and conduct, of others. A brutal illustration of this principle can be found in prostitution. On its face, prostitution is a cold business—the epitome of (mostly male) selfish pleasure seeking. The customer buys physical sexual release for money, plain and simple. But the customer can give himself an orgasm, for free. So why pay? And why is the customer's enjoyment increased if the prostitute produces the sounds of enjoyment and sexual arousal? If the client's motivation is selfish sexual release, the satisfaction of a biological urge, why does it matter to him if the prostitute is aroused? What excites him about the thought that she is enjoying herself? Fundamental social, interpersonal dynamics are apparently present even here, inside the most alienated transaction.
Beyond that, let's face it, sex is not automatically enjoyable. Remember your first sexual experience. It was not fun. Some mouth-breathing, pimpled nudnik from chemistry class felt you up in the back seat of your dad’s Chevy, forced a wet tongue into your ear because his friend saw something on the Internet about how that’s what you’re supposed to do. And then he asked if you came. Or take for example the business of kissing. What is fun in exchanging saliva and dinner remnants with someone else? Even if we focus on the genitals, most of the sexual organs are very sensitive to touch—for better or worse. If someone touches your genitals clumsily, or when you're not ready or do not want to be touched, the contact will be painful, offensive, and disgusting, not exciting and pleasurable. Good sex is learned; you have to work for it. It does not show up on its own. And it is not just about you alone. Sexual pleasure, it seems, is set up, operated, defined, and organized by external factors.
Randall Collins , the great American sociologist who’s been writing on the subject for decades (and on whose work many of the musings above are based), argues quite persuasively that human sexuality can be fully understood only in a social context. Human beings, fundamentally, are distinctly, spectacularly social. Lonely and isolated, we cannot survive, let alone thrive. For us, power and meaning emerge through making connections. Sexual desire, thus, is not chiefly aimed at physical pleasure or the production of children, but at connectedness with others. Sexual pleasure is fundamentally a social construct, an emergent property of social exchange.
According to Collins, we construct our world in an ongoing series of complex 'interaction rituals' that enable our existence (physical) and give it meaning (mental, spiritual ). All aspects of our lives are conducted through these ceremonies. Conversations between friends, a day's work, a football game, Sunday at church—all these are interaction rituals. They may be different in content, but they are similar in their underlying social and psychological processes: they all involve gathering people into a group whose members are aware of each other, directing their attention to a common interest, sharing a strong emerging emotion, and defining clear boundaries between "us" and 'them'.
In this context, sex is an interactive ritual, and it follows the rules. In a sexual encounter, a small group gathers (usually two, no more). Participants are aware of the presence of the other (no one ever tells you in the middle of intercourse, "Wow, I just noticed you are here"), and their attention is directed to the common interest (they "make love"). Participants share a powerful emotion, in this case sexual arousal, and construct a clear definition of "us" and "them," ("us" are in here having sex, and "them," poor slobs, are outside; they should not watch us, interrupt us, or even know all the particulars about that we’re doing).
The results of such interaction rituals—whether at church or in bed—are also predictable: the solidarity between participants increases (at church, we’re united under God; in bed, we’re faithful to each other), the mental energy builds up (I'm strong in my faith; I am deeply in love). From the encounter, especially if it’s repeated, canonical memories will be chosen to symbolize the relationship to the partners (forty years in the desert; forty minutes at that boutique hotel in Ventura), certain objects will be imbued with a sacred quality (a cross; a wedding ring), and certain gestures will be chosen to clarify the boundaries of the relationship--demarcate what is ours only and distinguishes us from others (we drink the blood of Christ; only we can touch each other there).
According to Collins, a thorough understanding of sexuality is only possible if we look at it from the perspective of the social context, rather than examining it from the perspective of the individual. The dancer becomes such by virtue of the existence of the dance. Instead of saying "Every dog has its day," we should say, "Every day has its dog." You and your lover do not bring your sexual pleasure to the relationship. You get sexual pleasure from the relationship. Your body parts do not charge the relationship with sexual pleasure. The interaction charges your body with sexual pleasure. Pleasure is not derived from the physical stimulation of the genitals or from the possibility of giving birth to the next Bill Gates. In its most fundamental sense, sexual pleasure is derived from the synchronized cooperation between people. The whole of human contact is larger than the sum of its participating individual parts—possessing better resilience , greater wisdom , and deeper delights. Therefore we seek that whole everywhere, including in sex.
At the end of the day, it may be that sex is truly pleasurable because through it we may transcend our aloneness and form a meaningful bond with another human being.
Noam Shpancer, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at Otterbein College and a practicing clinical psychologist in Columbus, Ohio.
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Our conversations are sprinkled with slips, pauses, lies, and clues to our inner world. Here’s what we reveal when we speak, whether we mean to or not.
Without Holiness, no man Shall See God!!!
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Humans are sexual beings by nature and this fact should not be taken for granted. A man is wired differently from a woman. Generally, as a person grows up, his or her sexual appetite also grows. The indicators are the obvious signs of puberty for both males and females. This therefore makes sexuality part of our lives and therefore requires special attention.
God has said a lot about sexuality in the Bible to guide mankind through the lifetime journey as sexual beings. 1 Corinthians
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