The Evolution of Human Sexuality

The Evolution of Human Sexuality

Cover of the first edition
Author	Donald Symons
Language	English
Subject	Human sexuality
Published	1979 (Oxford University Press)
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	358 (first edition)
ISBN	978-0195029079

The Evolution of Human Sexuality is a 1979 book about human sexuality by anthropologist Donald Symons, in which Symons discusses topics such as human sexual anatomy, ovulation, orgasm, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, and rape, attempting to show how evolutionary concepts can be applied to humans. Symons maintains that the female orgasm has no evolutionary purpose, and occurs only as an accidental byproduct of the male orgasm, that rape can be explained in evolutionary terms and arguments that it is not sexually motivated are incorrect, and that differences between the sexual behavior of male and female homosexuals help to show underlying differences between male and female sexuality. In his view, homosexual men tend to be sexually promiscuous because of the tendency of men in general to desire sex with a large number of partners, a tendency that in heterosexual men is usually restrained by women's typical lack of interest in promiscuous sex. The Evolution of Human Sexuality was reviewed both positively and negatively when first published. Symons' book has been called a classic work on human sexual evolution and used as a textbook, though critics have questioned his view of the female orgasm and his suggestion that eliminating rape "might well entail a cure worse than the disease". Symons arguments about homosexuality have received both criticism and support from commentators, and he has been both accused of supporting genetic determinism and defended against the charge.

Background

According to Symons, the ideas that he developed in The Evolution of Human Sexuality were partly inspired by a conversation he had with ethologist Richard Dawkins in 1968. Symons, who had concluded that "men tend to want a variety of sexual partners and women tend not to because this desire always was adaptive for ancestral males and never was adaptive for ancestral females", found that Dawkins had independently reached the same conclusion. Symons presented an early draft of The Evolution of Human Sexuality during a 1974 seminar on primate and human sexuality he co-taught with anthropologist Donald Brown. Symons argued in the draft that there are universal human sex differences. Brown assisted Symons in writing The Evolution of Human Sexuality.

Summary

Symons argues that women and men have different sexual natures, apparent in their typical "sexual behaviors, attitudes, and feelings", but partially concealed by moral injunctions and the compromises inherent in relations between the sexes. He attributes these differences to human evolutionary history, writing that during its hunting and gathering phase, the sexual desires and dispositions that were adaptive for men obstructed reproduction for women, while those that were adaptive for women obstructed reproduction for men. He writes that his discussion of sex differences in sexuality is not intended to affect social policy. He discusses evolutionary concepts and the difficulties involved in applying them to humans, the capacity for orgasm, the loss of human estrus, sexual selection and its components intrasexual competition and sexual choice, the desire for sexual variety, and the development of human ovulation. He argues that among all peoples, sex is typically understood to be a service that females render to males.

In the introduction to his book, Symons makes six major points: that modern understandings of "natural selection" and "fitness" are value free, the latter term measuring reproductive success rather than referring to human value judgments, that is necessary to distinguish between proximate and ultimate explanations of animal behavior, the former being concerned with how animals come to develop behavior patterns, and the latter with why they develop these patterns, that while a feature of structure or behavior may benefit an animal, only features that result from natural selection should be considered functions, that the persistence of the nature-nurture controversy is partly the result of failing to distinguish between proximate and ultimate causation, that learning abilities are more often concerned with specific problems than they are the expression of general capacities, and that the secondary sex differences that exist in animals of most species are the consequences the different reproductive behaviors of males and females.

Symons writes that while orgasm in the human female has been proposed to be an adaptation resulting from selective forces, the available evidence, which shows that the female orgasm is far from being a universal result of heterosexual intercourse and that its frequency varies greatly between cultures and between individuals, does not support that conclusion. Symons suggests that the female orgasm may be possible for female mammals because it is adaptive for males. He notes that in most mammalian species the only known function of the clitoris is to generate sensation during copulation, but sees no evidence that "the female genitals of any mammalian species have been designed by natural selection for efficiency in orgasm production." Symons proposes that male human ancestors lost the ability to detect ovulation in females by smell because females gained a reproductive advantage by concealing ovulation. According to Symons, a result of reproductive competition is that men frequently want to have sex with large numbers of women, despite women's lack of interest in having sex with large numbers of men. Symons argues that psychologist Clarence Arthur Tripp's hypothesis, put forward in The Homosexual Matrix (1975), that for both sexes, but especially for men, erotic feeling depends on resistance, makes adaptive sense, since females may almost always have been a scarce sexual resource in natural human habitats and selection favors the experience of pleasure or satisfaction not only in consummation but in the effort to consummate.

Discussing rape, Symons suggests that because males can "potentially sire offspring at almost no cost ... selection favors male attempts to copulate with fertile females whenever this potential can be realized." He criticizes feminist Susan Brownmiller's book Against Our Will (1975) and her argument that rape is not sexually motivated, stating that Brownmiller inadequately documents her thesis, more so than any major author since Konrad Lorenz in On Aggression (1963). Symons argues that none of the reasons that Brownmiller and others have given for concluding that rapists are not motivated by sexual desire is above criticism. Of Brownmiller's claim that the function of rape is to keep all women in a state of fear, Symons remarks that no process that might generate "functions" of this kind has been shown to exist. Symons argues that socialization towards a "more humane sexuality" requires the inhibition of impulses that are part of human nature because they have proved adaptive over millions of years, and concludes that while under the right rearing conditions, "males could be produced who would want only the kinds of sexual interactions that women want" this "might well entail a cure worse than the disease."

Symons writes that two different kinds of evidence are especially important in supporting his claim that there are typical differences between the sexual desires and dispositions of men and women: hormone studies and the behavior of male and female homosexuals. Because homosexuals do not have to "compromise sexually with members of the opposite sex" their sex lives "should provide dramatic insight into male sexuality and female sexuality in their undiluted states." According to Symons, fundamental differences between men and women are apparent from the fact that, while there is a substantial industry producing pornography for male homosexuals, no pornography is produced for lesbians, and that lesbians, as compared to male homosexuals, have much greater interest in forming stable and monogamous relationships and having sex with loving partners.

He argues that the similarities between heterosexual and lesbian relationships, and the differences between both and the relations of male homosexuals, show that "the sexual proclivities of homosexual males are very rarely manifested in behavior." He proposes that heterosexual men would be as promiscuous as homosexual men tend to be if most women were interested in engaging in promiscuous heterosexual sex, and that it is women's lack of interest that prevents this. He considers, but rejects, alternative explanations for the differences between male homosexual and lesbian behavior, such as the effects of socialization, finding them unsupported. He concludes that while the "existence of large numbers of exclusive homosexuals in contemporary Western societies attests to the importance of social experience in determining the objects that humans sexually desire", the fact that male homosexual behavior in some ways resembles an exaggerated version of male heterosexual behavior, and lesbian behavior in some ways resembles an exaggerated version of female heterosexual behavior, indicates that other aspects of human sexuality are not affected by social influences to the same extent.

Reception

1979–1989

Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy reviewed The Evolution of Human Sexuality in The Quarterly Review of Biology, describing Symons' work as "an insightful, theoretically sophisticated, and delightfully literate examination of the sexual emotions of men and women through the eyes of a sociobiologist." Hrdy predicted that many social scientists, but few few zoologists, would disagree with Symons' conclusion that there are innate psychological differences between men and women. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz criticized The Evolution of Human Sexuality in a review in The New York Review of Books, writing that "virtually none" of Symons' claims are based on research Symons conducted himself, and that Symons has "made no direct inquiries into human sexuality", instead basing himself on anthropological reports and other material, resulting in a book that is "a pastiche more than a study". Geertz wrote that while the evaluation of Symons' characterizations of male and female homosexuals "may be left to those more competent to judge them" he saw them as being at "about the level of descriptions of the Irish as garrulous and the Sherpas as loyal". Geertz added that whether Symons' "undigested, fragmentary, surface observations" support his claims about differences between male and female sexuality "seems at least questionable."

Author Brian Easlea wrote that while Symons sees desire for anonymous sex as characteristic of men in general, it is actually typical only of sexist men. Easlea rejected Symons' view that socializing men to "want only the kinds of sexual interactions that women want...might well entail a cure worse than the disease". Hrdy, writing in her book The Woman That Never Evolved (1981), asserted that in The Evolution of Human Sexuality, "Symons argues that women have sexual feelings for much the same reason that men have nipples: nature makes the two sexes as variations on the same basic model." According to Hrdy, it is because Symons holds this view that he maintains that female orgasms occur only as an accidental evolutionary byproduct of the existence of the adaptive male orgasm. Hrdy found Symons' views of female sexuality to be reminiscent of those of Aristotle and 19th century Victorianism. Biologists Richard Lewontin and Steven Rose, and psychologist Leon Kamin observed in Not in Our Genes (1984) that, like some other sociobiologists, Symons maintains that "the manifest trait is not itself coded by genes, but that a potential is coded and the trait only arises when the appropriate environmental cue is given." In their view, "Despite its superficial appearance of dependence on environment, this model is completely genetically determined, independent of the environment." They concluded that Symons' arguments provide examples "of how sociobiological theory can explain anything, no matter how contradictory, by a little mental gymnastics".

Biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling wrote that while Symons believes that rape should be eliminated, he also states in The Evolution of Human Sexuality that the rearing conditions needed to eliminate rape "might well entail a cure worse than the disease." Of that statement, Fausto-Sterling commented, "Worse for whom, one might wonder." Professor of Russian Daniel Rancour-Laferriere saw The Evolution of Human Sexuality as an "important treatise", but argued that while Symons questions whether the female orgasm is adaptive, the evidence Symons cites about animal behavior should have led him to suspect otherwise. Philosopher Michael Ruse, writing in Homosexuality: A Philosophical Inquiry (1988), concluded that while Symons' hypothesis about male homosexual promiscuity may possibly be correct, it depends on controversial and disputable claims.

Ethologist Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, discussing why there are no "visible signs of estrus in the human female", questioned Symons' argument that the absence of visible estrus in women developed so that they could "offer themselves to men to obtain portions of the booty from the hunt", pointing out that prey is shared in chimpanzees without sexual rewards. Eibl-Eibesfeldt rejected Symons' hypothesis that the female orgasm has no function because it occurs infrequently, calling it "unacceptable".

1990–present

Author Jared Diamond, writing in The Third Chimpanzee (1991), called The Evolution of Human Sexuality "outstanding". Law professor Richard Posner called it the "best single book on the sociobiology of sex". Anthropologist Helen Fisher criticized Symons' views on homosexuality, writing that he wrongly believes that "homosexual behavior illustrates essential truths about male and female sexual natures". Psychologists Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom wrote that Symons' observation that "tribal chiefs are often both gifted orators and highly polygynous is a splendid prod to any imagination that cannot conceive of how linguistic skills could make a Darwinian difference."

Journalist Matt Ridley, writing in The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (1993), argued that Symons' ideas about the evolution of gender differences had revolutionary implications, since "the overwhelming majority of the research that social scientists had done on human sexuality was infused with the assumption that there are no mental differences" between the sexes. Ridley endorsed Symons' argument about male homosexual promiscuity. Psychologist David Buss called Symons' book "the most important treatise on the evolution of human sexuality in the twentieth century" and a "classic treatise". Journalist Robert Wright, writing in The Moral Animal (1994), called Symons' book "the first comprehensive anthropological survey of human sexual behavior from the new Darwinian perspective". He credited Symons with showing that the tendency for men to be more interested than women in having sex with multiple sexual partners holds good across many cultures and is not restricted to western society.

Philosopher Maxine Sheets-Johnstone observed that while The Evolution of Human Sexuality is "used as a textbook and is considered a major formulation of human sexuality", she sees as the work "a paradigm of the prevailing Western biological view" of female sexuality, a view she considers "essentially male". Literary critic Joseph Carroll described Symons' book as "a standard work on the subject", but criticized Symons' arguments about homosexuality. Sociologist Tim Megarry dismissed Symons' book as, "a projection of American dating culture onto prehistory." Anthropologist Meredith Small argued that the work of sex researchers Masters and Johnson, which shows that the female clitoris is made of the same tissue as the penis and responds sexually in a similar manner, suggests that the clitoris results from an embryonic connection with the male penis and supports Symons' view that it has no purpose in evolutionary terms. Evolutionary biologist George C. Williams called Symons' book one of the classic works on "the biology of human sexual attitudes", alongside the work of anthropologist Hrdy. Alan F. Dixson described Symons' argument about male homosexual promiscuity as "interesting".

Biologist Paul R. Ehrlich described The Evolution of Human Sexuality as a "classic but controversial treatise on human sexual evolution", and identified Symons' study of the development of human ovulation as a landmark. Biologist Randy Thornhill and anthropologist Craig T. Palmer, writing in A Natural History of Rape (2000), identified Symons as the first author to propose that rape is "a by-product of adaptations designed for attaining sexual access to consenting partners." They wrote that Symons has falsely been accused of basing his arguments on the assumption that "behavior is genetically determined", even though he explicitly rejects that assumption and criticizes it at length. Thornhill and Palmer endorsed Symons' argument about male homosexual promiscuity. Pinker, writing in The Blank Slate (2002), called The Evolution of Human Sexuality "groundbreaking", and criticized what he considered personal abuse of Symons by Lewontin et al. in their discussion of Symons' book in Not in Our Genes.

Anthropologist Melvin Konner called The Evolution of Human Sexuality "the classic introduction to the evolutionary dimensions" of sex. Author Elizabeth Lloyd concluded that Symons proposes "the best available explanation for the evolution of the female orgasm", stating that while Symons' conclusions are not beyond dispute, and have been criticized on a number of different grounds, they are consistent with existing evidence, and help to explain "otherwise mysterious findings."

See also

• Gay pornography
• Lesbianism in erotica

References

Bibliography

Books

• Brown, Donald E. (1991). Human Universals. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc. ISBN 0-07-008209-X.
• Buss, David (2003). The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465008025.
• Carroll, Joseph (1995). Evolution and Literary Theory. Columbia: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8262-0979-3.
• Diamond, Jared (2006). The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal. New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0-06-084550-6.
• Dixson, Alan F. (1998). Primate Sexuality: Comparative Studies of the Prosimians, Monkeys, Apes, and Human Beings. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-850182-X.
• Easlea, Brian (1981). Science and Sexual Oppression: Patriarchy's Confrontation with Woman and Nature. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0 297 77894 3.
• Ehrlich, Paul (2000). Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect. Washington: Island Press/Shearwater Books. ISBN 1-55963-779-X.
• Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Irenäus (1989). Human Ethology. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. ISBN 0-202-02030-4.
• Fausto-Sterling, Anne (1985). Myths of Gender: Biological Theories About Women and Men. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-04790-4.
• Fisher, Helen E. (1992). Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery, and Divorce. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. ISBN 0-393-03423-2.
• Hrdy, Susan Blaffer (1981). The Woman That Never Evolved. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674955394.
• Konner, Melvin (2002). The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit. New York: Times Books. ISBN 0-7167-4602-6.
• Lloyd, Elizabeth (2005). The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674022461.
• Megarry, Tim (1995). Society in Prehistory: The Origins of Human Culture. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-5538-0.
• Pinker, Steven (2003). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-140-27605-X.
• Pinker, Steven; Bloom, Paul (1992). Barkow, Jerome H; et al. (eds.). The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-510107-3. {{cite book}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |editor= (help)
• Posner, Richard (1992). Sex and Reason. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-80279-9.
• Rancour-Laferriere, Daniel (1985). Signs of the Flesh: An Essay on the Evolution of Hominid Sexuality. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-20673-1.
• Ridley, Matt (1994). The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-029124-5.
• Rose, Steven; Lewontin, Richard; Kamin, Leon (1990). Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human Nature. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-013525-1.
• Ruse, Michael (1988). Homosexuality: A Philosophical Inquiry. New York: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-15275-X.
• Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine (1994). The Roots of Power: Animate Form and Gendered Bodies. Chicago and La Sale, Illinois: Open Court. ISBN 0-8126-9258-6.
• Small, Meredith F. (1996). Female Choices: Sexual Behavior of Female Primates. New York: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-8305-0.
• Symons, Donald (1979). The Evolution of Human Sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19502535-0.
• Thornhill, Randy; Palmer, Craig T. (2000). A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-20125-9.
• Williams, George C. (1997). The Pony Fish's Glow: And Other Clues to Plan and Purpose in Nature. New York: BasicBooks. ISBN 0-465-07281-X.
• Wright, Robert (1994). The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life. London: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-87501-5.

Journals

• Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer (1979). Dykhuizen, Daniel E. (ed.). "The Evolution of Human Sexuality: The Latest Word and the Last". The Quarterly Review of Biology. 54 (3). New York, New York: Stony Brook University.

Online articles

• Geertz, Clifford. "Sociosexology". Retrieved 2016-02-17.