1. Introduction 2. The Basics of Female Orgasm 3. Pair-Bond Accounts of Female Orgasm 4. Further Evolutionary Accounts of Female Orgasm 5. The Byproduct Account 6. Warring Approaches to Adaptation 7. Sperm-Competition Accounts 8. Bias Notes Bibliography Acknowledgments Index
Lloyd's book isn't just a "must-read," it's a must-own, must-cite, and must-assign-to-one's-students. William James once defined philosophy as "an unusually stubborn effort to think clearly." This is the most stubborn effort I've ever seen to think clearly about female orgasm. -- Rachel Maines, author of The Technology of Orgasm The Case of the Female Orgasm is a review and analysis of the possible adaptive significance of the female orgasm. For decades, evolutionary biologists have questioned why this physiological and emotional response should occur in women; men need orgasm to propel sperm out of the penis and into a female reproductive tract to improve their reproductive success, but women need not orgasm to conceive. Thus female orgasm is a biological puzzle. Some evolutionary biologists have insisted that the response is adaptive while others consider female orgasm an ex-adaptation, a trait that appears only because it happens to appear in the other sex. Both camps have written extensively about their views, both in the popular literature and in academic writing, but to my knowledge, no book has focused solely on female orgasm. -- Meredith F. Small, author of Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Our Children This will make great bedside reading. What, after all, is sexier than a well-constructed argument? Lloyd provides a measured and scholarly evaluation of adaptive and non-adaptive explanations for human female orgasm, a trait that has been the subject of some controversy, and she does it without jargon or acrimony. It is a model of how to fairly and critically look at adaptation. -- Marlene Zuk, Professor of Biology, University of California at Riverside
Elisabeth A. Lloyd is Arnold and Maxine Tanis Chair of History and Philosophy of Science and Professor of Biology, Indiana University.
Biologists agree that the male orgasm has a straightforward evolutionary function: it makes males want to have sex more often, which in turn makes them more likely to have offspring. But how to account for female orgasm, when nearly three-quarters of women don't always reach orgasm during sexual intercourse? Were they driven by the same evolutionary pressures, females would have adapted to be as consistently orgasmic as males. Through the vast majority of this book, Lloyd, an Indiana University biologist and philosopher of science, trashes evolutionary arguments, which range from pair-bonding (orgasms make females more likely to form stable partnerships) to sperm competition (orgasms expel previously deposited sperm from other sexual partners). Lloyd draws on the earlier work of Donald Symons to account for female orgasm as "a byproduct of embryological development," like male nipples. Lloyd argues that "the history of evolutionary explanations for female orgasm is a history of missteps, misuse of evidence, and missed references." Though built on a comprehensive survey of female sex research, the book is more a salvo in a scientific debate than an introduction to the field, and lay readers may well find it drier and at times more opaque than expected. (May) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Lloyd's book isn't just a "must-read," it's a must-own, must-cite,
and must-assign-to-one's-students. William James once defined
philosophy as "an unusually stubborn effort to think clearly." This
is the most stubborn effort I've ever seen to think clearly about
female orgasm. -- Rachel Maines, author of The Technology of
Orgasm
The Case of the Female Orgasm is a review and analysis of
the possible adaptive significance of the female orgasm. For
decades, evolutionary biologists have questioned why this
physiological and emotional response should occur in women; men
need orgasm to propel sperm out of the penis and into a female
reproductive tract to improve their reproductive success, but women
need not orgasm to conceive. Thus female orgasm is a biological
puzzle. Some evolutionary biologists have insisted that the
response is adaptive while others consider female orgasm an
ex-adaptation, a trait that appears only because it happens to
appear in the other sex. Both camps have written extensively about
their views, both in the popular literature and in academic
writing, but to my knowledge, no book has focused solely on female
orgasm. -- Meredith F. Small, author of Kids: How Biology and
Culture Shape the Way We Raise Our Children
This will make great bedside reading. What, after all, is sexier
than a well-constructed argument? Lloyd provides a measured and
scholarly evaluation of adaptive and non-adaptive explanations for
human female orgasm, a trait that has been the subject of some
controversy, and she does it without jargon or acrimony. It is a
model of how to fairly and critically look at adaptation. --
Marlene Zuk, Professor of Biology, University of California at
Riverside
Lloyd summarizes dozens of evolutionary accounts of the female
orgasm--and knocks them all down. Like [Stephen Jay] Gould, she
thinks the female orgasm is purposeless; which is not to say
pleasureless. And she extends the charge of bias, charging that too
many scientists take the male-centered view that the female orgasm
is closely linked to heterosexual intercourse and reproduction. --
Christopher Shea * Boston Globe *
It's been 52 years since scientists first considered the female
orgasm a legitimate object of scrutiny (thank you, Dr. Kinsey). But
they still can't settle on its raison d'etre...Lloyd knocks
down all but one of the 21 existing explanations. Along the way,
she makes a critical distinction between sexual arousal, which she
says is critical in evolutionary terms because it makes women want
to have sex (and thus results in pregnancy), and female orgasm,
which she argues is merely a bonus...Lloyd settles on the unpopular
but, she insists, most scientifically solid theory available...From
an evolutionary perspective, female orgasm is superfluous...Lloyd
hasn't written off the possibility that an 'obscure' and
'exquisitely designed' Darwinian function has yet to be discovered.
But for now, she makes a convincing case that from an evolutionary
perspective, female orgasm is just the icing, not the cake. -- Sue
Ferguson * Maclean's *
[Lloyd's] study of evolution and orgasm offers the most thorough
and serious treatment of the subject to date--and strongly rejects
the claim that orgasm in women serves an evolutionary purpose.
Lloyd has scrutinized 21 evolutionary accounts of female orgasm and
makes a convincing case for the single account that treats orgasm
as a happy accident, a byproduct of the role that male orgasm plays
in reproduction and the sharing of early embryonic tissue by the
male and female genitalia. The other 20 theories she dismisses as
illogical or incompatible with data on women's sexuality. This time
the press has it right. Lloyd's analysis is worth all the
attention. -- Amanda Schaffer * Slate.com *
Okay, you have to be a science nerd to read this, a Stephen Gould
fan, but what's here is [fascinating]. Really, the most radical
book about how female orgasm has been so sensationally
misunderstood and manipulated. Lloyd doesn't draw political
conclusions--but you sure will. -- Susie Bright *
susiebright.blogs.com *
Lloyd's book is penetrating and tantalizing, even intensely
satisfying...Her findings about the scientific process really are
something to scream about. -- Alison Motluk * Toronto Globe and
Mail *
The conclusion, Lloyd argues, must surely be that the female orgasm
has no biological function. Rather, it's on a par with the male
nipple--an accident of shared developmental pathways in the early
embryo. Because women need nipples to suckle their babies, men end
up with rudimentary versions too. They may not give milk, but like
the female's they have erotic sensibilities. As for genitalia,
because men need ejaculatory penises, women end up with clitorises
capable of similar sexual pleasures. Lloyd reckons that biases in
evolutionary thinking have blinkered generations of mostly male
biologists. It is time to give up the adaptationist's fallacy and
face facts. The late Stephen Jay Gould, who encouraged Lloyd's
long-standing investigation, must be cheering from above. -- Gail
Vines * New Scientist *
The Case of the Female Orgasm is of particular interest
because it offers a fairly accessible account of competing
scientific theories, how they are presented (and accepted), and
what evidence they are based on. The data on female orgasm is
shockingly flimsy, and Lloyd nicely shows how even carefully
conceived experiments (such as for testing the upsuck theories)
present a host of problems. Far more troubling, however, is what
the scientists do with that data, often using it as they see
fit--or simply incorrectly using it...This is an important book,
and highly recommended to all scientific practitioners (who might
be reminded of the bias that can so easily creep into their work)
as well as those who interested in everything from scientific
methodology to the role of science in society. * The Complete
Review *
Underlying biases exist throughout science, but surely nowhere in
as extreme a form as in research into female sexuality...Elisabeth
Lloyd neatly dissects the history of these biases and their results
in The Case of the Female Orgasm. -- Sarah Venis * The
Lancet *
She has an interesting and important set of theses. On top of that,
her argument has a straightforward, logical structure I recommend
Lloyd's book to all philosophers of biology and students of
human evolution. -- Dr. Rob Loftis * Metapsychology *
Lloyd asks whether female orgasm is really related to reproductive
success. The search for an answer reads like a mystery story and
involves the critical examination of 18 theories developed on the
premise that the human female orgasm is an evolutionary adaptation.
The author invalidates each of these theories by an examination of
their assumptions and, in many cases, the frailty of their
supporting data...With its 355 references, this book is a study of
the power of a careful analysis of data to show the weaknesses of
certain theories. -- W. P. Anderson * Choice *
In this scientific review of the literature on women's ability to
orgasm, Lloyd lined up thirty years' worth of studies designed to
prove that women's orgasms evolved solely to make us better at
reproducing and proceeds to demolish them all due to their crappy
data, bogus assumptions, or fatal bias. She instead makes a case
for men and women having separate, autonomous sexuality. Human
orgasm evolved because men need it to reproduce, and women got it
as a developmental byproduct. How women use that gift is ours to
determine. Feminism and scientific theory can be uninspiring
bedfellows, but Lloyd proves here that tenacity and hard work can
bring them to a readable climax. -- Beth Brown * On Our Backs *
Elisabeth Lloyd provides a comprehensive and critical review of
evolutionary explanations of the female orgasm. Through her
extensive analysis of 37 years of research on the topic, she argues
against the prominent theory that the female orgasm is an
adaptation that has evolved to improve reproductive success...Lloyd
provides a careful and impartial analysis of the validity of the
findings from cross-cultural, animal, and human sexuality studies.
Contrary to the adaptation perspective, Lloyd supports the theory,
originally proposed in the late 1970s, that the female clitoris and
orgasm are by-products of the embryological development of the
penis and orgasm in males...The work touches on many of the biases
that negatively affect scientific rigor and consequently (mis)shape
our understanding of women's sexual functioning. -- Jayne E. Stake
and Amy K. Silberbogen * PsycCRITIQUES *
Lloyd is a philosopher of science interested in evolutionary
biology, and she provides a measured scholarly evaluation of both
the adaptive and nonadaptive explanations for human female
orgasm...Her meticulously researched book examines 21 explanations
for the evolution of female orgasm...The book becomes about much
more than an aspect of human sexuality. It is an examination of how
evolutionary biologists think, and how their system of gathering
and evaluating knowledge can falter. Her reasoned approach is
refreshingly free of jargon in a field that sometimes seems
abstruse for its own sake; even if one does not agree with Lloyd's
conclusion, the book provides a blueprint of how to critically
evaluate scientific arguments. -- Marlene Zuk * Perspectives in
Biology and Medicine *
In this engaging and carefully argued account, philosopher
Elisabeth Lloyd guides her readers through one of the most
fascinating controversies in evolutionary theory. -- Mark E.
Borrello * Quarterly Review of Biology *
In this closely argued study, [Lloyd] shows how the leading
evolutionary accounts of the human female orgasm are based on two
flawed assumptions: that the female orgasm evolved because it
contributed to reproductive success ('adaptationism'), and that
female sexuality is like male sexuality ('androcentrism'). This is
an important book that casts light on the biases that can prejudice
science. -- PDS * The Guardian *
Upon your shelf...there probably isn't a book on evolution and the
female orgasm. That's because it hasn't been written until
now...Evolutionarily speaking, the female orgasm is 'for fun,' says
Lloyd, and her theory...adds to its more intellectual joie de
vivre. -- Michelle Humphrey * Bust *
Lloyd, a biologist, philosopher and science historian, uses the
human female orgasm (an evolutionary development unique among
primates), and science's wholly inadequate explanations for it, to
focus on the ways science can be led astray by the biases of those
practicing it. -- H. J. Kirchhoff * Globe and Mail *
Methodical and lucid, Elisabeth Lloyd's The Case of the Female
Orgasm is an exemplar of accessible science writing. Those
interested in evolutionary biology, philosophy of science, and
feminism will find the book an interesting, if perhaps occasionally
frustrating, read...Lloyd offers a rigorous case study showing how
political and methodological biases have distorted the practice and
results of evolutionary investigations of female orgasm....Although
parts of the book are somewhat technical, Lloyd carefully explains
most of the crucial concepts and educated readers will find it
generally accessible. -- Meynell Letitia * Hypatia *
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