The Strangeness and Origins of Human Sexuality

Abstract

This chapter focuses on critical problems of the nature and genesis of human sexuality: the classic concept of different sexual strategies of men and women, primordiality and naturalness of monogamy, the disinterestedness of women in sex, evolutionary “side effect” of female orgasm. We present and discuss inescapability of adultery, the diversity of sexual relations in pre-state societies, the revealed mechanisms of competition and selectivity in the anatomy and physiology of male and female reproductive organs. The modern versions of the adaptive significance, functions of the female orgasm deserve particular attention. Neither “egoistic” explanations (retention of a partner and “hunting” for good genes) nor esthetic ones (self-value of pleasure) are sufficient. The evolutionary hypothesis explains the genesis of emotional and sexual syncretism in women and the “cleavage” (dualism) of male sexuality. Women’s feelings toward men come from girls’ love and commitment to fathers and older men as protectors. Their feelings toward mothers remain intact: close relationships and at least partial identification with mothers remain in the majority. In boys, the original love for mothers inevitably suffers a crisis both in phylogeny through sexual selection, masculine culture, and in ontogeny through negative reinforcement.