Last time we talked about female sexual potential and how our bodies are designed for exquisite sexual pleasure.

Why is this though? After all, we don’t need pleasure to procreate.

If humans experience pleasure through sex, there must be a sound evolutionary reason for it. (If you’re not of an evolutionary mindset and prefer to believe that God created us as is, the same arguments still apply. A perfect God would not have created such awesomely sexual creatures unless there was some good reason for it.)

Living things evolve in a way that benefits the production of viable offspring. The whole point of life is to create more life.

So if human females are able to experience amazing sex then that ability must, in some way, assist in the viability of their offspring.

Human offspring differ from other species because our babies are born completely helpless and take a long time to grow to a point of being able to survive on their own.

In prehistoric days (and among street children in some countries) this might have been around seven years old (in the modern west it seems to be around 27 - but that’s another story).

For humans to have viable offspring and perpetuate the species they need to be able to look after their children until they are at least seven years old, and in fact, until the youngest child is seven years old.

An important point here – this applies to males AND females of the species.

Yes, it is in a man’s interest to ensure his offspring survive to a viable age too. If not, his genes will not continue.

Interestingly, this is often used as an argument as to why men are ‘naturally’ promiscuous and women aren’t. Apparently men need to spread their seed far and wide to ensure they produce enough offspring to pass on the genes.

What a load of self-serving rubbish!!

The spreading-of-seed approach to reproduction is favoured by fish, amphibians and reptiles; and while one could argue that men who think it’s natural to be promiscuous are in fact a type of reptile, the fact is that higher order animals such as mammals, and in particular the great apes, do not spread their seed far and wide.

Apes actually have a limited number of offspring, and they band together to raise those offspring. Most of the great apes live luxurious lives in the forests surrounded by plentiful food so the raising of those babies is not too onerous.

Humans, however, set out to populate the world and faced numerous dangers along the way. On top of that, our infants are even more helpless and require even more care than the other great apes.

Given the amount of care needed and the dangers that surrounded early humans, having the men going off mating here, there and everywhere would not actually have been in anyone’s best interests.

Such tribes would not have lasted long. Humans have always been very good at cooperating (within our own tribe/clan/group if not between them), which is why we've been so phenomenally successful as a species.

But what has all this got to do with sexual pleasure? Simply that the best way to ensure viable offspring in humans is for the parents and the group as a whole to band together to raise that infant.

What better way to band together than to have wonderful sex together? This is why we can have sex at any time and why it feels good and releases yummy scrummy hormones that make us feel all mushy and lovey dovey.

If a mother and father are having fabulous sex together they are more likely to stay together and raise viable offspring. Simple.

Or is it?

If humans can have great sex with the other parent of their offspring, what’s to stop them having great sex with other humans?

This brings us back to the promiscuity thing.

There may well have been good biological advantage for women to have sex with many men. In far-off prehistoric days, it’s possible no-one even understood that it took a man and a woman to conceive a child.

So the children were more communally the tribe’s and it could well have been in a mother’s interest to sleep with lots of males in the clan to ensure they were all bonded to her and helped to raise her (and the clan’s) children.

In summary, women evolved to have pleasurable sex as an evolutionary advantage - either so that they could have good sex with their partner to boost their happiness together and support each other in raising the children, or so that they could have sex with lots of men so that the whole group felt happy and supported each other in raising the children.

How does this relate to modern humans and all our morals and social codes? Am I promoting non-monogamy? Not at all.

The perils of prehistoric human society are long gone, it’s a very different world now and women can even successfully raise their offspring without men at all, if need be.

In this post I’m talking about biology. Sex within the context of culture is a very different, and fascinating, topic.

Next post I’ll look at that topic, considering female sexuality through the prism of culture, as it evolved over recorded history. (Or at least, a very abridged version thereof!)

Remember my next Luscious Woman workshop is on in Sydney on the 28th of September. Find out more at:

www.jacquelinehellyer.com

Jacqueline Hellyer is a life and sex coach. She runs the highly acclaimed Luscious Woman workshops and in her private practice works with individuals and couples to help them reach their sexual potential.

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