Once a supposedly evidence-based discussant begins with, “Common sense suggests … “, it’s time to stop listening. Dr. Hanson’s post invited discussion of the premise “there is an inexplicable shortage of sex,” and the implied difference between male and female sex drive. I have strained, but I cannot find anything in any of your comments that addresses this issue.

As noted, I am new to blogs. Apparently there is some cliche about how many comments will be made before the word “Hitler” is used; am I remembering correctly? Has anyone ever posted an analysis on a sophisticated blog such as this one about how many comments it takes before there is no mention of the original subject, such as Mr. Tyler’s? For instance, on this thread there are 41 (now 42) comments. Excepting this one, and three others, all discussants address some aspect of the original topic. The three that do not are all by the same author.

As to the question of current sexual research, our professional society is the International Society for Sexual Medicine, begun in 1982 as the International Society for Impotence Research, and broadened to include all male and female sexual issues. Here is the home page. Damn! I got back on topic!

If the genes “want” it to be present in males, the embryologic device requires that it be present in females at no extra charge, even if it has no demonstrable genetic purpose.

Right – but it can be present the same way that antlers are present in females – i.e. hardly at all.

Call me a panadaptationist, but male nipples don’t seem like a good example of what a vestigal feature (which owes its existence to embryological developmental constraints) looks like, either. In rats, mice and horses, male nipple development is completely suppressed by male sex hormones. However many other male mammals have nipples – and they often contain a rich supply of sensory nerves and erectile tissue. Common sense suggests that they have a role in sensing, generating and signalling arousal.

The article you referenced about Macaca fuscata concludes that female orgasms are most likely when a low-ranking female has sex with a high-ranking male, and least likely when a high-ranking female has sex with a low-ranking male. One wonders: did any grant money go into this research? We of the intelligentsia call this the “Donald Trump Syndrome”. Conversely, impecunious janitors, however well-motivated toward their fellow humans, ain’t gettin’ any from Victoria Secret models.

Seriously, as was noted, we’re all the same in the blastocyst stage. We’ve got everything they’ve got, and vice versa. From there on, it’s just phenotypia. There’s no extra expense for female orgasms at all. Because we have evolved a system of toti-potentiality in the early stages of embryonic development, it has to be hard-wired from the start. If the genes “want” it to be present in males, the embryologic device requires that it be present in females at no extra charge, even if it has no demonstrable genetic purpose.

Assessment of male quality is one obvious possibility: e.g. see Female orgasm rate increases with male dominance in Japanese macaques.

Ironically for a book with the subtitle “bias in the science of evolution,” The Case of the Female Orgasm is marinated in bias: against “adaptationism,” “androcentric thinking,” and heterosexuality, and in favor postmodernist “social constructivism” as well as anything ever written by Stephen Jay Gould.

- Let a Thousand Orgasms Bloom! A review of The Case of the Female Orgasm, by Elisabeth A. Lloyd. .

The question addressed is “why we have too little sex”. An implied question is “why have men evolved to desire sex more than women?”

First, the answer is not the physiology of achieving orgasm. Given equal arousal states, clitoral stimulation produces orgasm as quickly and reliably as penile stimulation. And why shouldn’t it? The clitoris *is* the penis. And the mysterious “G-spot” is the clitoral crura. The penile crura are the reason that male perineal massage is pleasant, i.e., the “male G-spot”. A blastocyst of totipotential stem cells has all the same stuff, save the sex chromosomes, no matter which gender it becomes. Here’s a brief embryologic discussion. “There are no surprising facts, only models that are surprised by facts; and if a model is surprised by the facts, it is no credit to that model”. – Eliezer Yudkowsky.

Second, male and female orgasms have different evolutionary roles. The male orgasm is tied to reproduction; the female orgasm is a vestigial male function (the reverse is nipples in men). In spite of the hundreds of references to increased fertility in orgasmic women, and the howling of feminist leaders, it just ain’t so. Dr. Elisabeth Lloyd has made that abundantly clear in her research of evolutionary psychology example. here. In this discussion, she is the giving the answers about some “evidence” that female orgasm leads to fertility . Lloyd states: “We have many decades of sex research, most into reproduction, fertility, and their ties to sexuality, which failed to produce any evidence linking (female) orgasm to fertility.” The American Society for Reproductive Medicine does not mention female orgasm at all.

My point is that orgasm, you know, the part that feels *really good* for both genders, has a genetic role for males and a memetic role for females. Ask Shere Hite. Richard Dawkins: “We are survival machines–robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.” How has that memetic evolution changed things? Paleontologist, Stephen J. Gould asked, “How can we possibly know in detail what small bands of hunter-gatherers did in Africa two million years ago?” Perhaps the best way is to look at the sexual customs of bonobos, where the females have more sex than the stronger males, primarily because they have it with other females as well, both for bonding and for specific pleasure. Look how “evolved society” has cheated us!

Richard Dawkins also has observed :”In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to *get lucky* (my emphasis), and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.”

Here’s hoping we “get lucky”.

But isn’t the question why there’s a shortage of sex now, not why there was in the 19th century?

You’re missing the point. Sex has been dangerous to women for most of our evolutionary history. Even ignoring the metabolic costs of pregnancy and the various costs of taking care of a child alone, childbirth has been very risky for humans. Women are (on average) not designed to maximize their sexual encounters. Men (on average) are.

It’s more complex than that, but it goes a long way toward explaining why people aren’t having sex as often as they can.