Tag: sexuality
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Female Orgasm as Mate Screening
Whereas Robinson suggests the evolutionary underpinnings of orgasm lie in the ‘Yes!’ factor of gene continuation, in How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories: Evolutionary Enigmas David Barash and Judith Lipton believe it could be, at least for the potentially multi-orgasmic female, an “anti-infanticide insurance policy” that spurred women to mate successively with…
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Sex Without Orgasm Could Lead to Healthier Relationships
One solution to the “widespread disharmony in intimate relationships” is to “change the way you make love”, promotes Marnia Robinson, suggesting that through ‘conventional sex’ we keep our dopamine and prolactin levels “uncomfortably high or uncomfortably low”. Instead, to ensure a stable relationship (through a more stable neurochemistry), we should practice ‘conventional orgasm’-free sex with…
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The Ambiguity of Sex
I’m not a big follower of athletics, but two news items have somehow made their way to my mental inbox from the IAAF World Athletics Championships in Berlin: how ridiculously fast Usain Bolt is, and the controversy surrounding Caster Semenya. On the latter, Caster is currently undergoing gender verification tests and in the process has…
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Female Sexuality Research: What Women Want
The question ‘What does a woman want?’ was, according to Freud, “The great question that has never been answered”. One person trying to answer this question, however, is Meredith Chivers—a psychologist specialising in sexual behaviour whose work was extensively discussed in The New York Times earlier this year. The article, focusing on female sexuality, is…
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What Maketh A Man?
The Observer asks what five ‘brilliant’ writers believe ‘makes a man’. Jackie Collins goes for talent, Tony Parsons votes for pride, and Jonathan Coe says chivalry… and confusion? If I’m confused about masculinity, in any case, I think that puts me in pretty safe company – the company of every other thinking male in the country.…
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NI Health Chief: Homosexuality is a Mental Illness
Homosexuality is a mental illness, according to the head of Northern Ireland’s health committee, Iris Robinson MP. Can we say ‘forced resignation’? After apparently branding homosexuality as “disgusting, loathsome, nauseating, wicked and vile” she went on to recommend […] “a very lovely psychiatrist who works with me in my offices and his Christian background is…