Dolphins do it better
Hello,
I’ve been puzzling over the evolution of the female orgasm and the clitoris it comes out(?) of for quite a long time.
Today I finally googled it, discovering, to my delight, that scientists (albeit very few) have also been asking stuff like:
Why have female mammals evolved a clitoris that provides mind-blowing pleasure but, because of its location kind of “outside” the vagina, doesn’t seem to serve any reproductive or evolutionary purpose?
and then:
What evolutionary purpose does the female orgasm serve?
Evolutionarily speaking, if something is there, if it’s bothered to hang around for millions of years, there is almost always a reason. The male orgasm (usually) coupled with ejaculation of sperm is an obvious one. Millions of years ago, it was the males who experienced something close to orgasm when they ejaculated (specifically, into females) and therefore were motivated to do it again, whose genes would be more likely to continue into the next generation of humans, creating even more males who enjoyed ejaculating into females, and so on.
The other guys—the ones who, say, were more into sucking toes or having their hair pulled—didn’t impregnate quite so many females, and their genes didn’t make it into quite so many babies.
(So far, this reads like an argument for widespread male heterosexuality, but fear not, I will soon proceed to bust that myth!)
Female breasts and hip width are also obvious. The females who, millions of years ago, had tiny hips and/or non-milky breasts would have had trouble squeezing a baby out and/or ensuring it got fed during its first years (since the dawn of modern medicine, interestingly, this has become less of a “problem”, what with cesarians and baby formula—in these respects, natural selection has become a thing of the past).
Meanwhile, for the females who did manage to squeeze a baby out, it was the ones who experienced some kind of oxytocin/pleasure-kick from breastfeeding, and/or overwhelming hormonal love for the baby, who were most likely to keep their kids alive, ensuring their genes made it into the next generation.
All of this seems obvious in hindsight, and, notably, I’m focussing on male ejaculation and female nursing-of-babies. There has been less evolutionary interest in the instincts males have evolved to ensure their children live, or why females might have been similarly motivated to have sex with males. Which generates an assumption that the humans of a million years ago consisted of males running around raping females, and females who only cared about nursing their babies.
An assumption that has some biological basis, but also one that is without a doubt coloured by our present-day culture and how we (I?) look at things.
It’s much easier to imagine a “natural” order of things similar to the heteronormative culture we now live in, than it is to imagine the humans of millions of years ago as wildly pansexual, running around having sex with anyone and everyone, and occasionally—hit and miss—a male would penetrate a female, resulting in a baby, which the whole gang would help her look after.
Now there’s a theory that explains the external positioning of the clitoris and of the male prostrate—we were all also gay!
Which brings me to the first article my googling led me to, about dolphins.
Bottlenose dolphins, apparently, are having sex all the time, with anyone and everyone. À la the pansexual scenario described above:
“[Scientists] see them having sex year-round, even when the females are not receptive, so not ready to get pregnant and have babies. And not only do they have sex all the time, they have a lot of homosexual sex as well. The females will rub each other’s clitorises with their snouts and their flippers really often. […] The males will have anal sex, they’ll insert their penises into each other’s blowholes.”
Dolphins are mammals, a.k.a. at one point before there were humans or dolphins (or pigs or elephants or rats, etc.) we were kind of all the same less-specialised mammalian creature.
Given their appetite for sex, it would seem that sexual pleasure has played quite an important role in dolphins’ evolution, as it probably also has for other sex-loving animals like bonobos (yes, the ones with the matriarchal societies—coincidence?!)
Which doesn’t necessarily explain the evolution of the clitoris, but it does suggest that there could be other reasons (i.e. non-reproductive reasons) for its existence. Dolphins are, for example, known for their close social bonds. As are humans. So, potentially, if we’re anything like dolphins (which we are, a little bit) our close, interdependent social networks could have their roots in a lot of pansexual sex.
The second article I read was less sexy-dolphin-utopia, and had some other (slightly more rational, conservative) points about clitoral evolution.
“Dr. Lloyd thinks the best explanation for the female orgasm is that it hasn’t served any evolutionary purpose at all. It’s nothing more than the byproduct of the development of the male orgasm. The orgasm is to women, she believes, as nipples are to men.”
Which (sigh!) also makes a lot of sense. However,
“Ovulatory cycles [i.e. ovulating only once a month] evolved in only a few lineages of mammals, including our own, Dr. Pavlicev and Dr. Wagner found. Before then, our ancient mammal ancestors originally relied on ovulation triggered by sex with a male.
Those early mammals developed a clitoris inside the vagina. Only in mammals that evolved ovulatory cycles did the clitoris move away. Based on these findings, Dr. Pavlicev and Dr. Wagner argue that the female orgasm first evolved as a reflex to help females become pregnant.
When early mammals mated, the clitoris could send signals to the brain, triggering hormones that released an egg [like males do with sperm]. Once the egg became fertilised, the hormones may have helped ensure it became implanted in the uterus. This arrangement has worked well for mammals that rarely encounter males. It helps females make the most of each mating.”
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But, before I jump into conspiracy theories (THE INFERTILITY CRISIS IS DIRECTLY CORRELATED WITH THE ORGASM CRISIS!), a disclaimer from the scientist duo:
“Eventually some mammals, including primates like us, started spending their lives in social groups. Females had access to regular sex with males, and orgasm as an ovulatory mechanism was no longer so useful. Our female forebears instead evolved a new system: releasing eggs in a regular cycle.
As the original purpose of the orgasm was lost, the clitoris moved away from its original position.”
Øv! Put it back!
This theory does explain the diversity of human clitorii and of female orgasms: if your clitoris is positioned differently depending on your particular strand of ancient evolution/luck, you’re potentially more or less likely to orgasm from penetration, from external stimulation or, well, not all.
However, I suspect there’s also a fair amount of cultural conditioning that contributes to female orgasm diversity. For example, do more women orgasm in The Netherlands (where young people learn about pleasure) than in the UK (where pleasure isn’t on the sex-ed curriculum)? Do more women orgasm now (that we “know” about the clitoris) than they did in 400 years ago? I don’t know, nobody measures any of that.
None of this, by the way, rules out the existence of an ancient dolphinesque human sexual utopia. On the contrary, clitoral pleasure, despite its “uselessness”, didn’t disappear; at some point it may have just become detached from the ovulation process, potentially making females less heterosexual than before (because before, when the clitoris was located somewhere up inside the vagina, then it would have made evolutionary sense to only have sex with males/sticks/cucumbers).
But why did it move?
Was there was some evolutionary benefit to having the clitoris located “externally”? Community-building sexual relationships with other females? Easier-access masturbation generating greater desire for penetrative sex?
Your guess is as good as mine.
Optional toppings
🦑 OMGYES: forget why, here’s how
💥 The Big Gang Bang Theory by Maja Malou Lyse and Esben Weile Kjær, as part of ART IN A DAY 2022, in Copenhagen (it’s this Friday!)
🐬 What dolphins reveal about the evolution of the clitoris in The New Scientist
⚗️ Scientists Ponder an Evolutionary Mystery: The Female Orgasm in The New York Times, if you want to read the full shebang
🍆 How to Have Vaginal Orgasms on the Orgasmic Enlightenment podcast with Kim Anami, who is a bit of a conspiracy theorist, and has (I think) an annoying voice, but some of her talk about if-only-women-surrendered-to-alpha-males-during-sex-we’d-be-orgasming-(from-penetration)-all-over-the-place might have some truth to it (skip to 7:50 for the guest interview)
👀 @the.vulva.gallery on Instagram
My own disclaimer: all of these (especially my own rambling) theories are inevitably coloured by my 21st century perspective as well as what-I-want-to-be-true. If anything, this newsletter says more about my own sexuality and desires for human society than it does about the evolution of the clitoris. Make of that what you will.
— H. E.
such an interesting read! loved it <3