Why is there such a difference between the ways we achieve male and female orgasm? Why, when a man’s orgasm is pretty much automatic, does a woman’s orgasm often seem so elusive? How did this situation arise? In answer, it could be that we owe an evolutionary debt to the differences between male and female orgasm, which may well have enhanced those human traits we display when at our humanly best.
It was Desmond Morris who suggested this theory as to how the differences between male and female orgasm could have been, and mayhap remain, evolutionarily advantageous.
Morris suggested that the relative difficulty in achieving women’s orgasm favoured those males with the patience, imagination, skill and care needed to help women achieve orgasm. Some males would be the better lovers, more highly sought after by the females of the species, and so the beneficial, humane traits would be augmented, sexually selected for, in the human gene pool.
If men and women achieved orgasm in much the same way, no matter how easy or difficult, imagination, patience and skill would not be needed: self-interest, on the part of the male, would do the trick.
This theory goes further than the more simplistic view that it stands to reason that, if sex is pleasurable for the woman, she’ll want sex more and so will stand a higher chance of conceiving. It highlights the woman’s choice as to who she wants to have sex with, i.e. those men most capable of helping her achieve the most orgasmic pleasure. (Bear in mind here that one lucky – or somewhat over-exerted – male can fertilize a whole tribe’s worth of females. Enter the Lion King.)
In terms of evolution, the choice made by the woman is, of course, more generally significant. In other primates, the aggression of the male – and the ability of males to compete violently with each other – is among the foremost influences upon mate-selection. In humans, that simply isn’t enough. It’s good lovers we want.
You might find there is a pleasing irony, when thinking of those who, on religious grounds, denigrate female orgasm, or the sexual pleasure of males, for that matter, that without such pleasure and such ways of achieving it, humans might not have become so genetically inclined to conceive of God in the first place. The Derridean difference might not have played out. Our psycho-biology might not have been up to it, if you’ll excuse the pun.
Men, make full use of your genetic advantages – patience, imagination, care and skill – be they God-given and/or evolutionarily determined. That skilfully administered oral sex you’re offering your partner could be the clitoral key to what makes us human.