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The Evolution of Female Orgasm: Adaptation or Byproduct?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2012

David Andrew Puts  and
Khytam Dawood
David Andrew Puts*
Affiliation:
Neuroscience Program, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, United States of America. [email protected]
Khytam Dawood
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America.
*
*Address for correspondence: David Andrew Puts,Neuroscience Program, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA.

Abstract

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Do women experience orgasm because this trait was shaped by natural selection to augment female fitness? Or are women merely the lucky recipients of developmental patterns favored by selection to produce orgasm in males? A recent and widely publicized book by Elisabeth Lloyd (2005a) contends that there is insufficient evidence to validate any of the adaptive explanations yet proposed for female orgasm. We agree. But our reading of the data differs from Lloyd's. In this essay, we outline why, unlike Caton (2006), whose review of Lloyd's book appeared previously in this journal, we are not persuaded by Lloyd's argument that female orgasm is a nonadaptive byproduct of orgasm in men. We hold this view because we disagree with the criteria Lloyd uses to evaluate evolutionary hypotheses, and because we believe Lloyd defines female orgasm too narrowly, ignoring critical information about its affective aspects.

Type
Articles
Information
Twin Research and Human Genetics , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , 01 June 2006 , pp. 467 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006