Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?: And Other Reflections on Being Human

by Jesse Bering

  But what Bartlett and her coauthors were especially interested in was if there’s any truth to the negative stereotypes surrounding fag hags. So they invited 154 heterosexual women to participate in an Internet-based survey on fag-haggery (my term, not theirs). These women ranged from seventeen to sixty-five years of age (with an average of twenty-eight years) and had a varied history of romantic relationships. Some were married, some single, still others divorced, widowed, currently dating, and so on, and most were reasonably well educated, having at least some college education. Each woman was asked to provide certain quantifiable information that would allow the authors to test several key hypotheses about myths surrounding the fag hag.

  First, women simply gave the total numbers of gay male, straight male, and female friends they had. Also, out of these friends, they were asked to rate their degree of “closeness” with their best gay male, straight male, and female friend. Next, the women completed a commonly used instrument called the Body Esteem Scale, a twenty-four-item questionnaire measuring a woman’s self-perceived sexual attractiveness and her weight concerns. Finally, each of the participants provided information about her romantic history over the past two years, including whether she’d been the “dumper” or the “dumpee” in recent failed relationships.

  The results were analyzed to test the common assumption that women befriend gay men because they have poor body esteem and feel unattractive to straight men. If this was true, the authors reasoned, then there should be a meaningful statistical association between a woman’s number of gay male friends and her body esteem and relationship success; in other words, the more pathetic a woman’s romantic life and the more she sees herself as being undesirable to straight men, the more she should seek out gay men as friends. But the data revealed otherwise. In fact, with this sample at least, there was absolutely no link between a woman’s relationship status, the number of times she’d been on the receiving end of a breakup, or her body esteem and the number of gay male friends in her life.

  Debunking common assumptions in science is nothing new, and that goes for myths about the fag hag too. But there were also some unexpected findings in this study. For example, the more gay male friends that a woman had, the more sexually attractive she found herself. Now, obviously, this is a correlation, so we can only speculate on causality. It could be—as the authors suggest—that women with more gay male friends actually are physically more attractive than those with fewer gay male friends. Perhaps being around gay men offers these women some relief from the constant sexual overtures of straight men. (Bartlett’s study measured only perceived self-attractiveness, not others’ ratings of attractiveness, so this is an open question.) Alternatively, being surrounded by flattering gay men may elevate the fag hag’s self-esteem, and because this attention comes from men, it may be especially effective in doing so. Interestingly enough, however, the longer that a woman has been friends with her closest gay male friend, the lower her self-perceived sexual attractiveness. Interpreting this unexpected finding, the authors suggest that it may actually reflect some core but nuanced truth of the “fag hag” stereotype: “Perhaps women who perceive themselves as less sexually attractive develop closer relationships with gay men.” Others just go for superficial, less enduring attachments with them.

  To my own favorite fairy princess, Ginger: This one’s for you. I love you. For the rest of you, here’s a final thought to scratch your heads over. It occurred to me while writing this essay that the social category of straight men who like to socialize with lesbians is astonishingly vacant in our society. Sure, you may hear about some random “dyke tyke” or “lesbro” (two terms that, unlike “fag hag,” are hardly part of the popular slang vocabulary and actually required me to do some intensive Googling), but their existence is clearly minimal. Your guess is as good as mine as to why there’s such a discrepancy in frequency between the two mixed-gender homo friendships.

  Darwin’s Mystery Theater Presents … The Case of the Female Orgasm

  I’ve written at some length about the curious evolution of the male reproductive system in our species, so it’s only right to devote some time to the natural origins of a biological mechanism that doesn’t involve the Y chromosome. (Well, at least it doesn’t have to.) Needless to say, the subject of female orgasms isn’t exactly my cup of tea. Being a gay man, I’ve always thought of the female orgasm as rather exotic and foreign, sort of like decorative basket weaving in a small African village. I could be wrong about this, but as far as I know, I’ve never even been in the same room as a woman having an orgasm, let alone given a woman one. So with that in mind, let’s have a look at what’s happening with those whose orgasmic bliss isn’t neurologically grounded in something that protrudes seven inches (or so) from the rest of their bodies.

  Fortunately, a handful of dedicated researchers have spent a lot more time on this issue than I have. Yet it’s fair to say that even these scientists are still scratching their heads over the evolution of the female orgasm. Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page about what a female orgasm actually is. A good working definition can be found in a report in the Annual Review of Sex Research. According to the psychologist Cindy Meston and her colleagues:

  Female orgasm is a variable, transient peak sensation of intense pleasure, creating an altered state of consciousness, usually with an initiation accompanied by involuntary, rhythmic contractions of the pelvic striated circumvaginal musculature, often with concomitant uterine and anal contractions and myotonia that resolves the sexually induced vasocongestion (sometimes only partially), generally with an induction of well-being and contentment.

  Actually, in light of that description and sans the female bits, perhaps it’s not entirely foreign to me after all. In fact, in terms of evolutionary function, women having orgasms with men is almost as puzzling as men having orgasms with men. How many of us human beings were conceived in the wake of our mothers having orgasms may never be known, but the same mystery doesn’t surround our fathers’ orgasms that day. Unlike men, women don’t need to have an orgasm in order to propagate their genes.

  So, from a biological perspective, the “adaptive function” of the female orgasm is still hotly contested. Some theorists, including the late and legendary Stephen Jay Gould, have claimed that it serves no purpose at all but is instead only a quirky, functionless by-product of the ejaculatory response in males. In one of his more provocative essays, “Male Nipples and Clitoral Ripples,” Gould fleshed out an old argument first made by the anthropologist Donald Symons. In 1979, Symons noted that early in embryological development, males and females share the same basic body plan. As a serendipitous consequence of selection for male ejaculation (which in straight men serves obvious reproductive purposes), some of the shared connective tissue and nervous system pathways in females were “accidentally” shaped for pleasure by evolution, too, leading happily to the occasional orgasm in sexually mature females. The clitoris is essentially the female version of the penis, since the two derive from the same embryological substrate. This also explains why female orgasms are achieved more by clitoral than vaginal stimulation.

  Lest you think the by-product hypothesis was propagandistic, cooked up in some musty faculty lounge by ivory-tower misogynists, note that for years the main advocate of this position has been a female philosopher of biology named Elisabeth Lloyd. In fact, it was Lloyd who had initially given Gould his lead on Symons’s thinking on the subject and who would later write a book strongly endorsing the by-product hypothesis called The Case of the Female Orgasm. Lloyd’s book was roasted by many evolutionary thinkers because of the not-so-subtle feminist undertones in her writing; basically, she argues that female carnal bliss has been liberated from the ugly realities of reproductive biology. Her position? Ladies, go out—or stay home alone, your choice—and enjoy yourselves, your sexuality is about more than just baby making. But over the years, other empirically minded detectives have been working on
this case as well, and many have begun to question the by-product account, claiming instead that the evidence does indeed point to a possible adaptive function of female orgasm.

  To help you play along in the role of orgasmic sleuth, here are a few suggestive clues that researchers in this area have been trying to piece together into a plausible evolutionary story:

  Clue #1: Twin-based evidence shows that orgasm frequency has a modest heritable component. Uncomfortable as it may be to think of your flush-faced grandmother moaning in ecstasy, there is a clear genetic contribution to female orgasm. Hereditary factors account for only a third of the population-level variance in female orgasm, however.

  Clue #2: Most women report that they are more likely to experience an orgasm while masturbating than during sexual intercourse with a male partner, and importantly, such masturbatory orgasms do not always hinge on simulating penile-vaginal sex. However, as the evolutionary psychologist David Barash notes, “just because something (e.g., female orgasm) can be achieved in diverse ways (e.g., masturbation) does not argue against it having evolved because it is particularly adaptive in a specific, different context (e.g., heterosexual intercourse).”

  Clue #3: Educated women are more likely to report having masturbatory orgasms—but are no more likely to experience coital orgasms than are less educated women. Religiosity is another social mediator: religious women tend to have less frequent orgasms than nonreligious ones (or at least they report having fewer).

  Clue #4: Using self-report data collected from college-aged American females, researchers such as the psychologist Todd Shackelford and the biologist Randy Thornhill have uncovered a positive correlation between frequency of orgasm and the physical attractiveness of male partners, with attractiveness being measured by subjective ratings as well as by indexes of facial symmetry. Recall that in “genetic fitness” terms, attractiveness tends to correlate positively with health and overall genetic value.

  Clue #5: There is some physiological evidence that female orgasm leads to the retention of more and/or better-quality sperm among a single ejaculate. I don’t think I can put it any better than the psychologists Danielle Cohen and Jay Belsky: “During the female copulatory orgasm the cervix rhythmically dips into the semen pool, thereby increasing sperm retention (by about 5 percent) relative to intercourse without orgasm, along with the probability of conception.” But as Lloyd points out, most references to these classic “data” on the “uterine upsuck” properties of female orgasm derive from a single participant and were part of an old study done back in 1970. Nevertheless, tellingly, a woman’s “desire to conceive” leads to more frequent self-reported orgasms during sex, and female orgasms are also most likely to occur during the most fertile period of the menstrual cycle.

  Clue #6: In a provocative study by the psychologists Thomas Pollet and Daniel Nettle, Chinese women who were dating or married to wealthy male partners reported having orgasms more frequently than women whose partners made less money. That is to say, male partner income correlated strongly and positively with female orgasm frequency, and this income effect panned out even after the authors controlled for (ruled out) a host of extraneous variables, including health, happiness, education, the woman’s personal income, and “Westernization.” In any event, if we were to employ Pollet and Nettle’s theory to other species, women may not be the only females in the animal kingdom whose orgasms are linked to the status and wealth of their male sexual partners. Japanese macaque females display the “orgasm-like” clutching reaction more often when they’re mating with high-status males. There’s no data yet on whether or not they also bite their lower lips in the process.

  Together, these findings seemingly vindicate Barash, a vocal critic of Lloyd who, in fact, has been arguing that female orgasm “is a signal whereby a female’s body tells her brain that she is sexually engaged with a [socially] dominant individual.” Pollet and Nettle speculate that female orgasm may be linked to male income because money (resources) is a reliable indicator of the male’s long-term investing in offspring and it may also reflect desirable underlying genetic characteristics. In this light, female orgasm may serve an emotional bonding role, motivating sexual behavior—and hence conception—with high-status males. This is one way to interpret those data, of course, but you may have some other ideas of your own. High-status males typically have higher self-esteem than other men, for instance, which possibly translates to their being better, more secure lovers in the boudoir. In other words, it could be that the men’s actual behavior in the bedroom matters more than their social capital or their net worth.

  As you can see, the natural origins of female orgasm remain somewhat mysterious. Some of the findings and logic favor the by-product hypothesis, whereas recent data on male quality and orgasm frequency cast reasonable doubt on the “functionless” accounts. What’s more, female orgasm is unfortunately one of those questions that do not easily lend themselves to controlled experimentation in the laboratory. One can’t, of course, randomly assign women to have sex with males differing in status and attractiveness to see if they climax or not. There are many other important avenues left to explore too, including whether orgasms in lesbians, for example, are tied to similar partner attributes as those above, or whether there’s a different pattern with orgasm among gay women altogether.

  I do wish there were a climax to the story and that I might satisfy you, but unfortunately this one doesn’t have a tidy ending. As we’ve seen, some of the greatest minds in modern evolutionary biology have put their heads to the pleasure-filled pudenda, with astonishingly little success (or at least agreement). So in the end, I’m afraid I must leave it to you, dear readers, to piece together a once-upon-a-time story of female orgasm featuring the clues you’re left with.

  The Bitch Evolved: Why Are Girls So Cruel to Each Other?

  Not long ago I was invited to give a brief talk to my nephew Gianni’s first-grade class—nothing too deep, mind you—simply about what it was like living in a foreign place such as Belfast. The highlight of my presentation was the uproarious laughter that erupted when I mentioned that people on that side of the Atlantic refer to diapers as “nappies” and cookies as “biscuits.” But one must play to the audience.

  Now, my sister resides in a small town in central Ohio, so perhaps there’s something about the Midwest that breeds especially endearing and affectionate six-year-olds, but I should be forgiven for momentarily siding with Rousseau that afternoon on his overly simplistic view that society corrupts and turns such naive, innocent cherubs into monstrous adults. To give an example, one little girl waved at me in so kind a manner that it seemed, in that instant, I was in the presence of a better species of humankind, one that naturally regards other people as benevolent curiosities and one for whom the contrivances of social etiquette haven’t tarnished and brutally tamed genuine emotions.

  What shattered this rose-tinted illusion of mine was the knowledge that these diminutive figures giggling and sitting cross-legged on the carpet before me might also be viewed as incubating adolescents. Perhaps it’s just me, but I’d swear the world knows not a more sadistic soul than an angry, angst-ridden, hormonally intoxicated teen. And in just a few years’ time this little pigtailed girl may morph into an eye-rolling, gossiping, ostracizing, sarcastic, dismissive, cliquish ninth grader, embroiled in the classic cafeteria-style bitchery of adolescent politics.

  If that strikes you as misogynistic, rest assured it’s merely an empirical statement. (Rest assured, also, that I’m afraid I have much in common with this tactical style, and I have great respect for more refined Machiavellians, so I’m not throwing stones here.) In fact, over the past few decades, scholars from a variety of disciplines—including developmental psychology, evolutionary biology, and cultural anthropology—have noted a striking difference in the standard patterns of aggression between males and females of reproductive age. While teenage boys and young male adults are more prone to engage in direct physical aggression, including hi
tting, punching, and kicking, females, by comparison, exhibit pronounced social aggression.

  Here’s a prototypical example, taken from a study in the International Journal of Adolescence and Youth:

  Jo is a fifteen-year-old girl. She is average at her high school work and she is involved in school tennis in summer and netball in winter. In the past, she was well accepted, having a close group of friends and getting along well with most of her peers. After a day off with illness, she returns to school to find that things have changed. She walks over to her usual group but when she tries to talk to any of them, their responses are abrupt and unfriendly. She tries to catch the eye of her friend, Brooke, but Brooke avoids her gaze. In first lesson, she sits in her usual seat only to find that Brooke is sitting with someone else. At recess time, she joins the group late but just in time to overhear one of the girls bitching about her.

  In peer discussion groups with teenage girls in South Australia, researchers found that Jo’s situation is incredibly common. And what’s especially sad is that adult authority figures such as teachers and parents often miss such devastating acts of reputational violence because they’re so subtle and often occur “in context”—that is, they’re less conspicuous than the physical altercations of boys.

  Let me attempt to preempt the obvious criticism by noting that this is not, of course, to say all teenage girls are catty—need I really point out the obvious, that many are of course wonderful, thoughtful, and mature people? Nor is it to say that teenage boys are never socially aggressive or that girls don’t display physical violence. But the culturally recurrent findings of female social aggression, and the largely invariant age distribution where such behaviors and attitudes are especially prominent (flaring up between about age eleven and age seventeen in girls), suggest a strong psychological bent in the fairer sex that leads “naturally” to these types of displays.