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Not finding enough real people to have sex with?
Want a custom sex doll, but don’t want to shell out $7,000 for the privilege of owning one?
No problem: homemade-sex-toys.com says you can build one with off-the-shelf parts, for a fraction of the cost.
Their website asks:-
Is this the ideal love doll or Bride of Frankenstein? We’ll let you be the judge.
Some assembly is required…
Posted by Jonathan as humour at 6:31 PM BST
An interesting article here discusses Open relationships (or what they’re calling flexi-sex) and along with reminding us that the idea of what many people consider to be a committed relationship has changed in the past 50 years (living together was discouraged only 20 years ago, but is now considered normal), they point out that many people will commit to a mortgage before they commit to marriage. Further, they go on to describe a few different couple’s experiences of encouraging their partners to have extra lovers.
There is also some good advice, for anyone considering this lifestyle:
Pushing the boundaries of monogamous relationships can be a thrilling and liberating process for those in a solid relationship. It is not something you should enter into in the hopes of saving one that’s lost its lustre, nor is it something you should try under duress.
In order to work, flexi-sex requires a lot of communication; you can’t just make it up as you go along. Permitting your partner to take a lover is serious stuff. You need to be emotionally mature enough to handle the consequences and your relationship needs to be robust enough to cope as well.
Posted by Jonathan as Sociology at 2:00 PM BST
Moscow is full of smart sexy women and they particularly like westerners. Outside of Moscow, there are very few good economic opportunities in Russia, particularly for women. In fact, the environment they live in is rather harsh, and it has led them to some very different behavioural adaptations and psychologies. Many of them aggressively pursue marriage with westerners, and thousands of them sign up to be mail order brides as a way out of their harsh environment.
There is nothing terribly new or even unusual about women using their ‘sexuality‘ or childbearing resources in exchange for other resources to improve their position in life. In fact, males do it too sometimes. The behaviour is as old as sex itself, nor is it unique to humans, but can be seen in many species. For hundreds of years and in many societies, arranged marriages were the norm. At its most basic these arrangements allow financially wealthy males to ‘obtain’ a sexual or childbearing partner in return for assuring the economic security of the woman (as terrible as that may sound). Arranged marriages are still common today in some cultures. The primary difference here is that in previous times the woman rarely had any choice in the matter. While we often claim it offends our ‘civilized’ sensibilities, functionally, the behaviour is no different than a stay at home wife, or teenage girls getting free drinks from hopeful male suitors in a bar in New Jersey.
If it looks on the surface as if western men are doing the exploiting, that is a distorted view of the situation in Russia. For the most part these are smart, savvy women. They are making their own decisions and doing the best they can to improve a difficult situation. They are using the best tools they have available to them, and they do so with their eyes wide open.
So aside from improving the economy and insisting that all Russian men change the way they treat women, another alternative is to distance oneself morally, which does not help them at all. In any case, Russian women know that the best thing that can happen to them is lots of western men. This will not only help many of them to find a way out, but the influx of the western male perspective should improve the way they are viewed and treated. After all most western Europeans have been trained and socialized from birth to treat women quite differently. If nothing else, the presence of western male mating ‘options’ cannot help but improve their negotiating position with Russian men, and be a positive force for change in a society where attitudes are long overdue for it.
Ok, so having established the moral high ground; if you visit Moscow, or at least Russia, you will be surprised how undemanding and open-minded Moscovite women are compared to their western counterparts. Russian women, in general, are more open about sexuality, for example. ‘Ménage a trois‘ and other experimentation are relatively common. They don’t really treat sex with the same reverence we do in America. Also in Moscow, the lines between girlfriends, mistresses, and hookers, seem to get a little fuzzy at times. There are a lot of ‘part-timers’. Predictably, Russian women seem to expect less of men than western women. A little sensitivity and affection can also go a long way if you find a woman that doesn’t think of it as a weakness. Outside of Moscow, such differences are even more pronounced.
You can also have some great fun in ways that no western woman would tolerate. Take Russian paintball… You play this game with five guys and ten girls. The guys each get their own paintball gun (usually a semi-automatic) and their own uniquely coloured paint. The girls dress in bright clothes and set off into the forest five minutes ahead of the guys, each with their own paintball mask.
For those of you who don’t know the rules of hunting, if you shoot it, you can keep it.
Posted by Scott as Psychology, Sociology at 10:44 PM BST
This is the very controversial and highly sensational scientific theory that the book Sperm Wars was based upon. It was originally put forward in the early 1990’s by Robin Baker and Mark Bellis, and later adopted by various self-styled Seducers, as a justification for their even more bizarre notions about alpha biology amongst humans. I shall endeavour to recount the theory here, with comments and analysis:
Apparently, reasonably young, healthy, heterosexual couples have sex approximately every three days. Perhaps this is coincidental, but this mating frequency maintains an almost continuous supply of sperm inside the female reproductive tract. And so any extra-pair copulations may then lead to Sperm Competition (unless the female had not been having sexual intercourse with her husband, and she only has one additional partner). However, it is very difficult to say exactly how often humans engage in adulterous relationships, and even more difficult to say how frequently a woman might end up mixing sperm from two or more men. For this to happen, a woman would have to have sex with two different men, within approximately a five day period.
Baker and Bellis report that while intra-pair copulations are divided more or less evenly throughout a woman’s reproductive cycle; by contrast, extra-pair copulations are more frequent when women are most fertile (even if fertilization is thwarted by the use of birth control). Baker and Bellis say “at some time in their lives the majority of males in western society place their sperm in competition with sperm from another male and the majority of females contain live sperm from two or more different males.” further, they estimate that in Great Britain1 4 to 12% of children are conceived by “sperm that has prevailed in competition with sperm from another male.” This would be consistent with standard estimates2 of ‘paternal discrepancy‘ (calculated to be about 10%) amongst human beings generally. And, on the surface, this might suggest an opportunity for sperm competition. Additionally, when almost 4,000 sexually experienced women (having had sex at least 500 times) were surveyed1, 1 in 200 claimed to have had sexual intercourse with two different men within half an hour of each other on at least one occasion; Within 24 hours, the figure jumped to almost 30%. Again, suggesting more opportunities for sperm competition.
Many insects and birds have a ‘last male advantage‘. This means that the last male to copulate with a particular female is more likely to fertilise most of her eggs. In the case of mammals, things are rather less straight forward; and so, it is currently completely unknown (particularly amongst humans) whether the first male, the last male or any other male in-between that mates with a female has any advantage at all.
It is quite possible that amongst human beings the probability of fatherhood may simply be a case of depositing the most sperm into the vagina; and then frequent regular sex with a woman could be seen as ‘topping up‘ her reproductive tract, replacing sperm that has become old or disabled since the last copulation. This would keep a pretty much constant supply of sperm inside the female, and would be adaptive under any circumstances, because it would maximize the chances of fertilization (this would be especially true, if the woman might have sex with other men too). Furthermore, from a sperm competition perspective, masturbation could then be a way of making sure that the sperm available to be ejaculated in sexual intercourse have a long ’shelf life’: If the body removes older sperm, then whatever is left should be fresh, and the younger sperm would be better able to compete, and especially more able to penetrate cervical mucus.
Baker and Bellis go on to claim that women can (unconsciously) control the outcome of a sperm competition, and we accept that since women evaluate men by many criteria (emotional, intellectual, physical, financial etc.) while searching for the appropriate qualities in a parent, colleague, friend, lover, protector etc. that there is no reason why a woman should not find herself socially paired with one man, but disposed to have extra-pair sex with another man.
Women are quite likely to be concerned about the overall quality of the male who fertilizes her eggs; and the internal reproductive tract3 of a women produces many barriers, including anti-sperm antibodies that can interfere with fertilization by immobilizing, or even destroying sperm and by impairing their ability to penetrate the egg, while other antibodies act against the egg’s membrane to prevent early egg cleavage and development. The key point here is that these antibodies do not necessarily reduce fertility; instead they diminish the fertility of certain male-female pairings. Therefore, a woman may enhance her reproductive success by seeking a different sexual partner, while retaining her social marital partner (all quite possibly unconsciously).
Another behavioural strategy that may be likely is that of ‘flowback‘. Up to one-third of the seminal fluid ejaculated within the vagina leaks out within a few minutes, and semen can also be expelled with substantial force when urinating, as opposed to dribbling out after sex when a woman stands up (or even if she remains laying down). About 12% of the time, this flowback results in the expulsion of virtually all the sperm ejaculated inside the reproductive tract; so, women are certainly capable of exercising some control over sperm.
Baker and Bellis somehow managed to convince a number of women to capture flowback after both extra-pair copulations and intra-pair copulations; the results they found showed a lower level of sperm retention after intercourse with their main partner. According to Baker and Bellis “women achieve higher sperm retention during extra-pair copulations by reducing their frequency of non-copulatory orgasms via masturbation” So, contractions during female orgasm may actually push out semen and thus by masturbating less (and therefore having fewer orgasms) women end up retaining more sperm from extra-pair copulations.
Insects and birds have sperm storage organs, whereas mammals lack any similar organs. However, it has been claimed that sperm are stored in ‘cervical crypts‘ which are tiny cavities lining a woman’s cervix. It is further claimed that from here they could be released over a period of time, after sex. This would be important for human sperm competition, because the ability to store sperm would encourage sperm competition among successive males. The key question (which scientists are still debating) is how long after ejaculation can human sperm remain viable? and thus capable of competing to fertilize a woman’s egg. Estimates vary from two to ten days; so if we were to assume a median value of five to six days to be true, that would mean that if a woman had sex with someone within five or six days of having sex with another man, the sperm of the two men could be in competition.
Ultimately, a ‘Sperm competition‘ begs the question: How does one win? For a woman, this would be by making the best choice (i.e. having the opportunity to choose more than one man), as well as being able to select ‘good’ sperm, possibly by setting up a competitive situation. For a man, winning would be simply by having ones sperm succeed in fertilizing a woman’s egg.
A male strategy may therefore be as simple as making lots of sperm, we could assume that fertilizing the egg was a type of lottery (i.e. own more tickets and you’re more likely to win). Biologists have therefore asked “What is the best strategy for males, in terms of dividing their sperm between intra-pair copulations and extra-pair copulations?”. And Geoffrey Parker concluded from a detailed mathematical model that males with a partner should generally ejaculate more sperm during extra-pair copulations than intra-pair copulations (assuming that the male was able to maintain an adequate sperm level inside his main sexual partner). The only exception being4 when a male has determined that his partner has been unfaithful, in which case he should increase his sperm numbers; although it is still to be proven whether or not this actually occurs. However, fertilization may be less a lottery than a race; in which case it would be important to make sperm that move quickly.
Baker and Bellis in their ‘Kamikaze Sperm Hypothesis‘ have proposed that it is a war, in which men’s sperm literally do battle with each other, and that only a small percentile of human sperm are actually intended to function as ‘egg-getters‘, which fertilize eggs. Whilst the balance are Kamikazes on a suicide mission, whose goal is simply to stop the sperm of other males. In addition to these ‘Blockers‘ (sperm with coiled and kinky tails) there are supposedly others that go on ’search-and-destroy’ missions. These, it is claimed carry out chemical warfare, via specialized structures known as acrosomes, which are located on the tip of the sperm.
A normal human male produces a wide variety of different types of sperm (amorphous, coil-tailed, crook necked, double headed (bicephalous), pin-sized, short-tailed, weirdly shaped). As an example, the smallest sperm in a single human ejaculate can have 14% of the volume of the largest, and there is more variation within a single human ejaculate than in the mean sizes of sperm from all the different primates put together.
This wide variety of different sperm types has always been thought to be because sperm are so difficult to produce (about 30% of human sperm are acknowledged to be defective in some way). And may be a reason why males produce so many of them; but if natural selection had acted on males to produce ‘egg-getters,’ why should so many sperm be lame, defective, slow or deformed?
Baker and Bellis argue that semen should be seen as another human organ, comparable to the immune system. As such, it would be made up of many different types of highly specialized cells, all of which work together to get an important job done. Amongst rats, sperm from copulation will form a copulatory plug which will get in the way of sperm from the next male; and the sperm which form that plug are those which have smaller heads, and which are more likely to be decapitated. Human sperm does not form copulatory plugs, but there could be an evolutionary advantage for men whose sperm was especially nasty to anyone else’s. Baker and Bellis would suggest that older sperm serve as blockers, guarders, seek-and-destroyers, kamikazes etc.) Further, Baker and Bellis claim that when sperm from two different men are mixed, they could see sperm stuck together in the process of killing each other. They also saw an increase in the proportion of acrosome-reacted sperm (including that they had used their acrosome in the killing process), and they also saw many more dead sperm in mixtures than in single-sperm samples that had been separated and then re-mixed.
This sounds pretty convincing, but other studies from different mammals and birds reported nothing resembling warfare. And, subsequently Harry Moore, working in collaboration with colleagues at a local fertility clinic, reran Baker’s and Bellis’s experiment, but at a much higher level of sophistication. They differentially labelled sperm from the different males to see whether the agglutination Baker and Bellis had reported was between sperm from different males, as it would have to be. But, whatever agglutination there was turned out to be random with respect to the sperm sample; also, mixing sperm from different men caused no induction of the acrosome reaction, and no increase in sperm mortality.5
Some evidence of male sperm competition comes from analysing the detailed makeup of the sperm ejaculate. Human ejaculation takes place in a series of three to nine spurts, and through mammoth efforts, scientists have examined split ejaculates, obtained by capturing a few squirts of semen from various stages of ejaculation. In the experiment, early and late spurts were different. The final squirts actually containing a spermicidal substance which may ambush those sperm of the next male to ejaculate into the same female. At the same time, chemicals6 present in the first half of the ejaculate contribute some protection to sperm in the second half, and possibly against any chemicals deposited by the final spurts of a preceding male.
It is well known that men produce larger ejaculations when their sex lives are interrupted, and then resumed. This is most likely because seminal fluid has had a chance to accumulate over time; and with any emptying, the volume of ejaculation becomes less, so it’s not surprising that Baker and Bellis discovered that when a man spends time away from his female partner, he produces more sperm per ejaculate, once sexual relations have been restored. More interesting is their discovery (from analysing condom contents) that sperm concentration is higher when males engage in sexual intercourse than when they masturbate. Additionally, during sex, they claim that the amount of sperm transferred is adjusted according to the risk of sperm competition, especially how long it has been since the last copulation with the same woman, and even how much time the two have spent together recently. To quote Baker and Bellis1 “Males may not look very sophisticated in the moments leading up to and during ejaculation but… some very sophisticated adjustments are taking place.”
Evidence from primates suggests that human males are less adapted to competing with the sperm of other men, than male chimpanzees, which have to deal with polyandrous, promiscuous females (human beings are less prone to extra-pair copulations than chimps) As evidence, human sperm concentration diminishes more rapidly, with repeated ejaculations. In one intriguing experiment, men engaged in a ‘10-day depletion experience,‘ (averaging 2.4 ejaculations per day). Afterwards, their sperm output7 remained below their earlier pre-depletion levels for more than five months! By comparison, male chimps8 can ejaculate every hour for five hours, after which their sperm count is only halved, and they recover very rapidly. From this we can conclude that whatever the importance of sperm competition in humans, it is likely not as pronounced as it could be.
Biologists, especially Alexander Harcourt, have criticized specific parts of Baker and Bellis’s work more directly, pointing out that mammals are unlikely to produce designated, non-fertilizing sperm for a number of reasons:
Harcourt concludes9 that sperm competition (at least in mammals) occurs via what ecologists call ‘scramble competition,’ in which contestants struggle individually towards a goal, irrespective of the competition, as opposed to ‘contest competition,’ in which individual contestants would seek to physically better their opponents.
Other parts of the theories for specialist sperm were severely criticised10, when in a review of Baker and Bellis’s book, Roger Short pointed out that the sperm which had been designated ‘egg-getters’ were about as likely to be egg-getters as they were to contain little men. Twenty years previously, Short and three colleagues had published a paper in the scientific journal Nature, pointing out that these large-headed sperm were in fact production errors carrying twice the normal chromosome complement, and as a consequence they were incapable of producing a normal embryo. Somehow, Baker and Bellis had overlooked this publication.11
The fact that males produce12 such vast quantities of sperm may therefore be because fertilization is a simple ‘raffle,’ rather than a direct competitive struggle. A raffle would still involve sperm competition, but a competition in which the contestants compete by buying as many tickets as possible, rather than by tearing up each other’s entries. Another answer may be that males make lots of sperm simply because, considering their very high mortality rate (even without sperm competition) it benefits men to make as many sperm as possible, if fertilization is to occur at all. The warmth and moisture of the vaginal environment is ideal for bacteria to enter the female body, so the low pH is as harsh on human sperm as it is on other intruders. Phagocytes roam through every woman’s reproductive tract, and many sperm will end up being absorbed into the uterine wall. Sperm have a long way to swim, as well as the fact that about half will swim up the wrong fallopian tube, whilst a fertile egg awaits at the other.
The reproductive adaptations proposed by Baker and Bellis are rather more extreme than seems likely to have occurred by evolution. It is therefore not surprising that, so far, many of Baker’s and Bellis’s results have failed to stand up to scrutiny, and many of the rest of their conjectures are still far from proven.
In summary, the importance of sperm competition may be overblown and the incredible view of sperm competition that Baker and Bellis have perpetuated, whilst catching the public’s imagination, is little more than a sexual fantasy.
References:
Posted by Jonathan as Biology, Sociobiology at 11:59 PM BST
I stumbled across this slightly old, but still rather interesting top ten sexual legends study from Maxim Online recently; so I thought I’d reproduce it here because it makes fascinating reading about the sexual exploits of modern day libertines.
No clue as to how these feats were achieved was given, and no independent sources for the information were cited, but one assumes that hypergyny and celebrity status might possibly have had something to do with it…
9. EARVIN “MAGIC” JOHNSON
CONQUESTS: 1,000-PLUS
The 1,000-plus number for the hard-court wizard who led the Los Angeles Lakers to five championships is a conservative estimate. One report puts the total at up to 500 shtups a year for a dozen years—much of it done, as we all know, without the benefit of condoms. Still, Magic has stayed strong in the face of adversity and proved that an HIV-positive man can survive and even host the worst talk show of all time.
8. LEMMY KILMISTER
CONQUESTS: 1,200
Most guys on this list can be described as handsome. Not Mötorhead frontman Lemmy—unless you have a thing for James Gandolfini–size facial warts. Yet this rock god is pure catnip to the ladies. His secret? Maybe it’s his technique: “I like stroking rather than banging.” Thirty years after founding Mötorhead, he has 1,200 conquests and a Grammy, proving that music lessons are a tremendous investment.
7. JACK NICHOLSON
CONQUESTS: 2,000-PLUS
He’s one of the few people to win multiple Oscars and also do multiple Oscar winners. Kim Basinger described Jack as “the most highly sexed individual I ever met.” He also showed his Oscar to Academy Award–winning actresses Anjelica Huston, Faye Dunaway, and his One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest co-star Louise Fletcher. And he’s plowed through a number of Oscarless celebrities, too, like Michelle Phillips, Candice Bergen, and Lara Flynn Boyle, not to mention hundreds and hundreds of regular gals for good measure.
6. ILIE NASTASE
CONQUESTS: 2,500
This Romanian was a good tennis player (he won two grand slam titles in the ’70s) who would’ve been forgotten (the man played frickin’ tennis) if not for his wicked behaviour. “Nasty,” as he was called, had a real knack for gaining access to the ladies’ love shacks, as 2,500 chicas can attest. Recently, he mused, “A lot of sex in those days was like taking a shower. You take one, it feels nice, and then you forget it.” Let’s hear it for cleanliness!
5. ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK
CONQUESTS: 3,000
Who knew? The strangely named soft-rock sensation has had more ladies than Kid Rock and Chris Rock combined. Born in 1936 as Arnold Dorsey, he switched to the stage name Engelbert Humperdinck and achieved an endless supply of hoochies with the hit song “Release Me” in 1967. His memoir, What’s in a Name?, includes a chapter where his wife of over 40 years discusses how his many betrayals made her feel (not good), to which Engelbert replied, “Forgiveness is one of the greatest things you can give.”
4. JULIO IGLESIAS
CONQUESTS: 3,000-PLUS
Enrique’s randy old dad set out to be a soccer goalie, but when a car accident damaged his spinal cord he needed to find a new line of work. He settled on music and intercourse. After winning a Spanish singing contest in 1968, he went on to sell 200 million records and boink nearly as many ladies. Iglesias is usually credited with 3,000 notches on his bedpost, but in 2004 he called the number into question, musing, “That probably was until 1976, so they didn’t count the other women.”
3. GENE SIMMONS
CONQUESTS: 4,600
In 1973 Gene started his band Kiss with two goals: make tons of money and score hordes of foxy tail. “I was a 24-hour whore,” he once said. “All I ever thought about was sex.” The long-tongued man-slut has led his group to cash in on all possible merchandising angles (get a Kiss-themed coffin!), while still tagging everything within reach. “The male species manufactures billions of sperm,” he declared. “The only problem with women is they think all those sperm we make are just for them.” Way to share, Gene!
2. CHARLIE SHEEN
CONQUESTS: 5,000
The son of Martin and brother of Emilio Estevez has an infamous lust for hookers. The irony is, of course, that Charlie’s also quite capable of getting ladies who’ll do the deed gratis. It’s how he managed to rack up 5,000 pairs of boots knocked—including those of porn star Ginger Lynn and stunning soon-to-be ex-wife Denise Richards. Denise and Charlie have split, allegedly because she failed to take his observation, “You’re definitely one of the hottest 1,000 or so women I’ve banged, baby,” as a compliment (that’s top 20 percent, missy).
1. UMBERTO BILLO
CONQUESTS: 8,000
Despite lacking fame, wealth, and U.S. citizenship, this Italian hotel porter insists he’s “made around 8,000 women happy,” sometimes entertaining four tourists a night. Umberto, whose talents came to worldwide attention when he appeared on the British TV show Eurotrash, claims he inspired tremendous brand loyalty—“They crossed oceans to see me”—as the ladies repeatedly returned to sample his services. Indeed, after his Venetian employer axed him from his porterly duties, an American businesswoman rushed to Billo’s defence: “I must have spent thousands in the hotel because of him!” His ex-boss remained unimpressed, complaining, “Sometimes he was too exhausted to carry the guests’ luggage.” Hey, the man’s not a machine.
Posted by Jonathan as Art & Literature, History at 11:37 PM BST
A man’s desire for different sexual partners, and for frequent sexual activity, is a natural, instinctive, biological drive. It has been a highly desirable and successful attribute in our species. It must also have been a great evolutionary strategy too (otherwise it wouldn’t be so prevalent). Men that did not possess a strong sex drive might typically not have passed on their genes to subsequent generations. So, what we see in the gene pool today are mostly instinctively strong sexual drives, and behaviours that have been so successful throughout man’s evolution that they are characteristic of virtually all males.
It turns out that most women do not walk around all day ready to have sex at the drop of a hat like we do. Many women are ‘not receptive’ to sexual advances most of the time and have to be switched on. So what triggers a woman’s sexual receptivity, you ask? It’s usually a combination of factors, one of the most important being male lust.
Most women are highly sensitive to desire in men. Men behave differently, or talk differently, or give off pheromones, and women can sense it. Either they feel it, smell it, or catch you looking when you shouldn’t. Probably they know it’s there because the chemistry of your attraction affects their chemistry too, part of that “woman’s intuition” thing. If you don’t think this is true, try to hide your attraction from a woman who really turns you on. It’s hard if you are around her a lot. And if she doesn’t know, her sexual receptivity can be triggered anyway, without her knowing how, or why.
That is not to say that all male lust will turn a woman on, or even that male lust is always necessary. But it can exert a powerful effect on a woman’s chemistry in combination with the right mix of other factors. Because male lust affects women’s chemistry and can help to trigger sexual receptivity, it can be one of the most important assets in a man’s seduction toolbox. This is one of the reasons why it’s a good idea for you to maintain a high sex drive.
This is why the movement in the late 80’s to implement Seduction rules on many student campuses, to deal with date rape issues were so lame. These proposed “rules of conduct” would have taken away one of the most important catalysts in female sexual chemistry and consequently male/female bonding. Most women know this at a gut level. Some women light up when guys come on to them, and seem to want lots of horny guys paying attention to them, even if they are not interested in any of them. They just enjoy being switched on, but they need the horny guys to make it happen.
It is therefore a males “job” to be horny to assist in triggering female receptivity and to initiate the possibility of sexual activity. Because the presence of a strong male sex drive is an important initial catalyst in triggering a women’s sexual receptivity, it is also important for male-female bonding and for that relationship in our species. A strong female sex drive is not needed to trigger male receptivity and is therefore less critical. So guys, cultivate a strong sex drive, it is good for your relationships too.
Posted by Scott as Sociobiology, Sociology at 8:00 PM BST
Posted by Jonathan as humour at 6:46 PM BST
In researching Robin Baker’s book Sperm Wars, I found a number of fascinating stories concerning the man himself, which I’ve collected together here.
It all starts at Manchester University, in 1972, when Dr Baker starts experimenting with the idea that everybody has some sort of inbuilt magnetic compass which helps them navigate. To test this theory, people were transported blindfolded around Manchester, and after reaching a pre-determined point unknown to the subjects, they were asked to indicate the direction of ‘home’. According to Dr Baker, people were actually able to do this. However, other scientists working in navigation research were unconvinced, and many sceptics attempting to reproduce the results failed. Undeterred, Dr Baker re-analysed all the information from the other studies saying the experiments had worked, combined them, and claimed it as additional evidence for his theory.[1]
The media, who loves this type of story, quickly picked up on the idea of people having magnets in their heads, and granted Dr Baker a lot of press coverage. Then, shortly afterwards, Dr Baker turned to sex research, and human sperm competition.
Robin Baker, and his collaborator Mark Bellis, revealed in the early 1990’s that their nationwide survey had shown high levels of polyandry in the population, and that sperm from competing males battled to the death (killing each other inside the female reproductive tract) and that females controlled this conflict, using their orgasms to regulate the uptake of sperm, and ultimately the fatherhood of their children.[2]
At the same time, Dr Baker proposed that men with bigger testicles would be most successful in the race to fertilise most eggs, and that the testis size of individual men could predict their success in sperm competition. Remarkably, Dr Baker had managed to persuade 14 of his male colleagues to measure the size of their left testicle, using callipers. He then asked 20 female colleagues to look at the men, and rank them according to whom they would most like to have an adulterous relationship with. As he predicted, there was a correlation between the big-balled males and the apparent likelihood that the men would engage in extra-pair copulation, if given the opportunity.
Dr Baker’s methodology was however flawed: When reporting testis size, he hadn’t expressed testis size in relation to the height of the male owner of the testicles. In the animal kingdom, it is obvious that larger animals have larger testes. Further, we don’t know the races of the men in Dr Baker’s sample. Racial differences can account for a large variation in testis size.[3] Also, a great many other variables could have caused this positive correlation, none of which were taken into account.
Then in 1994, the media took further interest in the work of Baker and Bellis, as Desmond Morris (of Naked Ape fame) based a portion of his TV series ‘The Human Animal‘ on Baker and Bellis’s theories. Telling viewers that men who suspected their sexual partner had been unfaithful could unconsciously release specialised ‘killer sperm’ in their ejaculate, which then went about destroying the rival male’s sperm, whilst their regular sperm concentrated on penetrating the egg. The programme even showed footage of what looked like one sperm battering another sperm to death. However, according to several Andrologists, this sperm looked like it was already dead. And, even if this really was one sperm killing another, because none of the sperm were labelled in any way, how could anybody know whether these were sperm from different males, or the same male?
The theory that different types of sperm within a human ejaculate each had a specific role in sperm competition formed the basis of what Baker and Bellis termed the ‘Kamikaze sperm hypothesis’. And at the time, the claims made were earth-shattering! Sperm warfare going on inside female bodies was given some initial credibility because of theories about sperm competition and sperm choice provided by other biologists, from studies in the animal kingdom. However, it’s very dangerous to anthropomorphize; and the Kamikaze sperm hypothesis has been disproved several times since then.
Posted by Jonathan as Biology, History, Sociobiology at 10:13 PM BST
Someone at Play-dot-com must have ordered rather too many copies of several fairly uncommon books, by accident, because a story in one of today’s give away newspapers states that Play has conducted a survey, in which it is claimed that “Women are attracted to men who read certain titles while travelling on the Underground”.
For some reason, Play seems reluctant to put any link to this survey on their website, or even mention this survey on the website at all; perhaps because it appears to be particularly unscientific, and in fact rather random.
Furthermore, I can find no links to the Pollsters or Academics that carried out the study, added to the fact that there is no methodology given either.
In summary, a man should apparently be seen reading:
And men should avoid being seen reading:
Possibly, if Play were to publish the entire study, instead of a brief self-publicising puff piece, we might gain valuable insights into the minds of women who read Harry Potter books. Or perchance, how many times people have ever been spotted reading any William Shakespeare play on the tube; and whether they were really romantics, or just struggling actors…
In fact, the only reason that I even entertained writing about this story was that Benjamin Graham’s ‘The Intelligent Investor’ was listed second on the list. So, aside from the tenuous assumption that the reader could be making a lot of money (and surely, if he was making a lot of money, he wouldn’t need that book?). Benjamin Graham was actually a notorious womanizer.
For example, Janet Lowe reports:
Benjamin Graham had a phenomenal personality, great sense of humour and a brilliant mind. However, he was also known to be a womanizer and a male chauvinist. Ben’s students got a chuckle, both from their professor’s jokes, and from his other caprices. A former student tells of the afternoon that Ben hurried into the classroom and on his way dropped a sheet of paper. The student glanced at the page to see whom to return it to and was astonished to find a love poem. It was ludicrously purple prose addressed to a blond model that Ben had fallen for. His colleagues and students knew Ben took an avid interest in the ladies. Ben’s affairs with other women eventually ended up brewing trouble at home. He separated from his wife, who could not tolerate his affectionate affairs with other women.
Later, after the suicide of his son, Graham travelled to France to collect his possessions. When he arrived, he fell in love with his late son’s girlfriend, Marie Louise. Since Graham, at that time, was already married to his fourth wife, back in California; he suggested to her that she shared him with his new love, much to her distress. And from then on, she only saw him for six months of the year.
Personally, I think it may be rather more interesting to buy a copy of the book ‘How to Be the Jerk Women Love‘, and see what reactions I get from that.
Posted by Jonathan as Art & Literature, Sociology at 11:25 PM BST
Everyone knows that, on average, men are more ’slutty’ and selfish, than women, right? There is a strong tendency to condemn the male sex in general, as being promiscuous, and bad. All we are talking about here is the notion that the average man has more (different) sexual partners than the average woman. Well if we define “the average number of different sexual partners” as an appropriate measure of promiscuity, this assertion is demonstrably flawed… I’ll show you.
To demonstrate why this assumption is flawed, imagine a closed world of five men and five women, and imagine that they were all ’straight’. This is not my vision of utopia, just some simplifying assumptions to illustrate a point. If only one man has sex with only one woman, sex takes place only once in this world; and the average number of partners is 1/5 for both men and women. If two different men are with two different women then the average number of partners is 2/5 for both; three men with three women equals 3/5 for both, and so on.
OK, but we know men are sluttier, right? So let’s see what happens when men try to get more sex than women. Let’s say, for example, that one man has sex with two different women. Here, the average for men is 2/5 and the average for women is also 2/5! The same sluttiness equality between the average man and the average woman results no matter how slutty the men try to be. Furthermore, the same mathematical equality results, no matter how many of the men try to get slutty. If the men have sex many times with the same women, we still get the same result; namely male sluttiness = female sluttiness. The inescapable mathematics of this simplified fornication model lead us to the stunning conclusion that (at least in this closed world with simplifying assumptions) it is actually impossible for the average man to be more ’slutty’ than the average woman. The mathematics applies to all situations of equal men and women regardless of whether it is five, fifty, or five billion. The simple reason for this is that for each man that has sex with a unique (different) woman there must be a unique woman that also had sex with that man. If five men have sex with the same woman, there are five normal, one-woman guys on the male side, and the female side is balanced with four virgins and a ’slut’. But they are equal, on average!
Now let’s relax the assumption that there are equal numbers of men and women. After all, maybe women live longer, on average, and maybe there are, in fact, more women than men in the world. Let’s say in our simplified world that there are six women and five men. Now if each of the men had sex with only one woman, the average number of partners for men would be 5/5=1, but the average for women would now be 5/6<1. In this situation there could be a (small) difference in ’sluttiness’. Now the interesting question that arises is: Do we want a world in which the men withhold sex from female number six, just to be in keeping with a less ’slutty’ model of behaviour? Would we really want a world in which one in six women don’t get any sex, just to keep the averages! I don’t think so, but let’s ask woman number six…
Bear in mind that if there are significant differences between male and female homosexuals, then putting aside the assumption of everyone being ’straight’ can allow some serious imbalances in sluttiness. Other than that the only way it is even possible for men to be more promiscuous than women, is if there are more women around. But if there are more women than there are men around to take care of them, Surely, it is every mans duty to take on a little ‘extra’ even if they are a little older! And they call us the selfish sex!
Posted by Scott as Philosophy, Sociology at 7:26 PM BST
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