WHY DO WOMEN HAVE ORGASMS

By David P. Barash and Dr. Judith Eve Lipton, National Sexuality Resource Center. Posted August 22, 2009. "Scientists are still mystified about the evolutionary advantages of many aspects of women's sexuality." This is a very lolng article but also interesting. To read the several page article, click here.

From the Times Online 6/20/2005: "The first brain scans of men and women having sex and reaching orgasm have revealed striking differences in the way each experiences sexual pleasure. While male brains focus heavily on the physical stimulation involved in sexual contact, this is just one part of a much more complex picture for women, scientists in the Netherlands have found.

The key to female arousal seems rather to be deep relaxation and a lack of anxiety, with direct sensory input from the genitals playing a less critical role.

The scans show that during sexual activity, the parts of the female brain responsible for processing fear, anxiety and emotion start to relax and reduce in activity. This reaches a peak at orgasm, when the female brain’s emotion centres are effectively closed down to produce an almost trance-like state." Fir more of this article, go to this site.

My sense in reading both of these articles is that scientists are going too far back and crediting evolution (the command to procreate) too highly. Modern women have discovered the pleasure of orgasms and, since the 70s, more women have substituted masturbation rather than the non-gratifying sex demanded by men who do not understand the need for foreplay to ready a woman for sex by lubricating her and distending the vaginal wall to 'make room', so to speak. The upsurge in sex toys, vibrators attached to a 'realistic' feeling phallus, has heightened the pleasure of the orgasm while eliminating the need for the insensitive male who cannot wait for her to orgasm. It seems to me there is 'evolution' currently going on in that process which no animals can replicate either because they don't have orgasms or lack the tool making abilities to invent them.