The Sex Myth: Why Everything We're Told Is Wrong (5 page)

The status of the females in bonobo society is more equal than it is in chimpanzee society, and females can control food access. Trading sex for food occurs regularly between bonobo females,
appears to reduce tension, and aids co-operation. These encounters lead to stable long-term relationships between females. This in turn helps them form coalitions, control resources, and elevate
their status.
²³
This is as true for bonobos in the wild as it is for their counterparts in captivity.
²⁴

Sexual activity seems to fulfil an important social function in bonobo groups, particularly among females, who initiate more sex than the males and have more same-sex interaction. Sex is more
frequent around feeding time and after a fight, suggesting it helps maintain friendly relationships. Bonobos do not form permanent sexual partnerships and, with the exception of mothers and sons
abstaining from sex together, do not discriminate in types of partners. When bonobos discover a new food source, this usually leads to communal sex, which appears to decrease tension and encourage
peaceful feeding in the group.

While it is still debated whether bonobos are matriarchal or not, it is agreed that female bonobos are not subordinate to males, unlike female chimpanzees. And unlike chimpanzees (and, for that
matter,
humans) there have been no observations of lethal aggression among bonobos either in the wild or in captivity.

Sexual acts clearly serve an important purpose in bonobo society and females instigate this activity more frequently than males do. That all of this occurs in one of the species most closely
related to humans should hardly come as a surprise.

Maybe Freud would have had a better chance of understanding female desire if he had sat a few apes on that couch instead of people.

This picture of the social, sexual bonobo female with wide-ranging tastes and desires is starting to be reflected in human studies as well. Not only with the studies examining pornography
viewing and genital arousal in women, but also in terms of how relationships are formed.

Scientists who study sexual orientation have found that there is a difference in the patterns of male and female sexual orientation. Women’s sexuality appears to be more fluid, and less
categorical. This is interesting considering that the studies of male and female differences in physiological arousal showed similar results.

Women are more likely to have shifted in sexual orientation during their lives than men are. For women, same-or opposite-sex relationships are less likely to have been an exclusive
state.
²⁵
Studies suggest a lot of difference between the origins of homosexual feeling in gay men and gay women, with more gay men reporting their first
attractions to be a result of physical arousal, but women being more likely to have had their first same-sex experiences as the result of a ‘passionate friendship’.
²⁶

Dr Lisa Diamond from the University of Utah, who tracks how women categorise their sexuality over time, observed that in every two years up to 30 per cent of participants in her studies change
how they label their sexual identity. Over longer observation, about 70 per cent change how they described themselves at their initial interview.
²⁷

There are plenty of high-profile examples of women who were previously married to men coming out as lesbians in later life. Women such as Cynthia Nixon, who plays Miranda in
Sex and the
City
, or Mary Portas from
Mary Queen of Shops
have given high visibility to the phenomenon of the ‘late-life lesbian’.

Dr Diamond speculated why this might happen. ‘In my study, what I often found was that women who may have always thought that other women were beautiful and
attractive would, at some point later in life, actually fall in love with a woman.’ It wasn’t that they’d been repressing their true desires before, though. Rather, without the
context of an actual relationship, the occasional fantasies women had earlier in their sexual lives just weren’t considered that significant to their partner choice.’
²⁸

Rather than assume older women who come out as gay or bi were suppressing their true desires for decades, Diamond’s research suggests that multiple possibilities exist all along. Women
seem to respond as much to the particular qualities of the partner in question as they do to specific gender.

While more research focuses on gay men instead of gay women, the origin of sexual orientation in women appears to have a different basis to that of men.
²⁹
There are numerous studies comparing gay men to straight men. They show measurable differences in things like handedness, brain structure, and sensitivity to particular
pheromones. Whether this is due to genetics, developmental environment, or some combination of the two is unclear. But, nevertheless, the biological differences in gay and straight men seem to be
consistent across a wide range of research.

Where these studies have been performed on women, the differences between women who are straight and those who are bisexual or gay is less clear than it is for men. The rigid stereotype of the
excessively masculine lesbian is sometimes true, but it’s not the norm. Whether this is due to a different mix of genetic or environmental factors is uncertain. But it does show it’s
possible that male homosexuality and female homosexuality originate in completely different ways.

Just because women can and do change, of course, does not make that a basis for discrimination. Many opponents of homosexuality have used such research to claim that one ‘chooses’
whether to be homosexual, like picking a meal off a menu. Dr Diamond has been very critical of that simplistic viewpoint in interviews: ‘I think the culture tends to lump together change and
choice, as if they’re the same phenomenon, but they’re not. Puberty involves a heck of a lot
of change, but you don’t choose it.’
³⁰
And with humans having same-sex coupling and sexual fluidity in common with our closest ape relatives, it seems reasonable to think of it as at least partly the result of
evolution, rather than something a few people have fashionably (if you believe the cynics) ‘chosen’.

As the studies of physical response to erotica demonstrate, it turns out women respond physically to a far broader range of sexual stimuli than men do. Even women who identify themselves as
straight can be polymorphously perverse, to borrow the Freudian phrase – capable of erotic attachment with, well, anyone.

In fact a lot of the results give renewed credibility to Freud’s notion of innate bisexuality, the idea that humans are born bisexual but through psychological development eventually
settle with an orientation, with the bisexuality remaining in a latent state. Later, the research of Alfred Kinsey took the idea a step further, proposing a continuum of human sexuality that
stretches between heterosexuality and homosexuality rather than discrete, unchanging categories.

Other ways of considering sexuality exist as well. Gore Vidal once suggested, ‘There is no such thing as homosexuality or heterosexuality; there are only homosexual and heterosexual
acts.’ The sexual life of bonobos would appear to support this as another possibility.

And, of course, there are many examples of people whose sexuality evades established definitions. This doesn’t mean their sexuality doesn’t exist but rather that we don’t yet
have appropriate words to describe their sexual lives. We may never have.

It’s clear the capacity for high sexual appetite in females and a wide variety of sexual pairings is something we share with our closest animal relatives. When combined with recent
research results, and increased visibility of late-life lesbian couples, this suggests that visible female sexuality and having both male and female partners is not an aberration for women. In
fact, it is perfectly natural.

But it’s important to remember that sexual arousal and sexual interest are not the same thing. If they were, one might conclude from the studies that women would rather have sex with
animals than humans, or that most heterosexual women are only somewhat attracted to heterosexual men! Clearly, that’s not the case. We can’t assume emotional attachment is irrelevant to
attraction, but for too
long it has been assumed that in the case of women, emotional attachment is all there is. The research shows that is not true.

What is especially interesting about this area is what it adds to the picture of female sexuality. There are loads of theories ab out what women want: everything from old men with fast cars to
young studs with a nifty line in housework. And some of the most profitable companies on the planet have turned their gaze towards female sexuality, with less than impressive results. But the real
story is far more primal, and interesting, than any of those approaches would predict.

As with so many myths, there is a flipside. For every stereotype of the sexually undermotivated female, there is a supposedly sexually rampant male. For every prim and modest woman, there is
someone whose sexuality is dark, threatening, and dangerous. For every Eve, a Lilith. Unsurprisingly, this oversimplification of human sexuality has led to the rise of another voguish idea –
that of sex addiction.

2

W
hat did you have for breakfast this morning? Was it a fryup? Toast and jam? Yoghurt and fruit, or simply a black coffee
before rushing out the door?

Or did you have a bowl of flakes instead? Corn flakes, perhaps, or bran? Because, if so, your breakfast is at the very cutting edge of what is scientifically known about preventing sexual
addiction . . .

. . . in the nineteenth century, that is.

John Harvey Kellogg didn’t invent the first dry breakfast cereal, but he was one of the earliest and most successful manufacturers of it. What most people don’t realise is that the
Kellogg’s cereals that we still have on supermarket shelves today were the result of one man’s moral and sexual beliefs.

Kellogg was a member of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and advocated sexual abstinence. He wrote books explaining his approach, called
Plain Facts about Sexual Life
and
Plain Facts
for Old and Young
. His belief was that a bland and balanced diet consisting of two meals a day would promote all sorts of health benefits, chief among these being a reduction in sexual
feelings. He believed that anyone experiencing sexual temptation should avoid stimulating food and drinks, and eat no meat. To Kellogg, the suppression of sexual desire was a matter of life and
death, particularly when it came to the ‘solitary vice’ of masturbation – a vice he believed would eventually result in death, where ‘Such a victim literally dies by his own
hand.’

The notion that eating a bowl of Frosties could save people from physical and psychological damage was hardly unique to Kellogg. In the nineteenth century it was widely
believed that people in general, and particularly women, were susceptible to harm from being overstimulated and giving in to their urges.

Belief in the danger of excessive sexual desire became especially voguish after publication of
Nymphomania, or a Dissertation Concerning the Furor Uterinus
, written by MDT Bienville and
translated into English in 1775. French physician Bienville discussed how rich food, chocolate, impure thoughts, reading novels, and masturbation overstimulated nerve fibres and led to
nymphomania.

But if restricting yourself to plain crackers and dry flakes sounds terrible, it was nothing compared to some of the more aggressive medical treatments available.

One particularly detailed case study dates from 1841. Miss T, a twenty-nine-year-old farmer’s daughter, was diagnosed with nymphomania. According to a report by her doctors in the
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal
, she exhibited all the telltale signs of a nymphomaniac: she was restless, her vagina moist, and she had a tumid clitoris. A nurse reported her body
wracked with a ‘paroxysm of hysteria’ – or what we today would more commonly call an orgasm.
³¹
She was given stool softeners, opium, and
muriatic acid as a first course of treatment.

When she did not respond, Miss T was given a solution of lead to induce vomiting. A blistering agent was applied to the base of her neck. Treatment for this serious illness was harsh, but it was
widely thought such measures were more than justified in these cases. Caustic potash was applied to her genitals. This was supposed to lessen their sensitivity (and, after the considerable burns,
probably did exactly that).

Treatment for women like Miss T would also have included bleeding. This might have involved putting leeches on the perineum – the skin between the vaginal and anal openings – to draw
off blood. The report notes that ‘twenty ounces of blood [were] abstracted’, though it does not say how. The barbarity of the treatment led to apparently successful results. After
several weeks, the patient was greatly improved, with ‘not a symptom remaining referable to nymphomania’. She now demonstrated ‘every appearance of modesty’ and her
‘sphincter and vagina generally much contracted’.

The idea of the sex-crazed woman wasn’t new to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Ancient Greece had the
maenads
, crazed and drunken female followers of
Dionysus. Ancient Rome had stories about women like Claudius’s wife, Messalina, the ‘whore-empress’ (according to Juvenal) who supposedly bested a famous prostitute in a sex
competition. But these were unusual examples, the highly sexed actions considered rare aberrations from a woman’s ‘natural’ urges. And quite apart from that, the tales were also
probably untrue.

Victorian doctors (and society in general) believed that sexual desire in a woman was a symptom of disease. Gynaecological problems were thought to be the main source of both physical and mental
disorders in women. These were treated with approaches like the ones described for the case of Miss T. Others received surgery like clitoridectomy (removal of the clitoris) or ovariotomy (removal
of the ovaries).