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Why Does The Female Orgasm Exist? - Dr Robert King

Go see Chris live in America - https://chriswilliamson.live Dr Robert King is a psychologist, professor at University College Cork, and researcher on the evolutionary function of female orgasm. What makes the female orgasm so mysterious? For generations, men across the globe have sought to decipher it, and many women share their curiosity as well. So why does the female orgasm even exist? What’s its evolutionary purpose? And have scientists like Dr. Robert King finally cracked the code? Expect to learn what most people don’t understand about the female orgasm, why women have multiple orgasms and men don’t, the biggest predictors of the female orgasm, how much female desire of men is driven by other female’s desire of those men, what women want in men sexually, if penis size and length are as bog of factors as men tend to think, if there are similarities in reproductive anatomy across males and females, and much more… - 0:00 How Do You Get into Studying the Female Orgasm? 2:23 What Does Sex Research Look Like? 4:42 Misconceptions About the Female Orgasm 11:16 How is the Female Orgasm Adaptive? 24:38 What are the Biggest Predictors of Female Orgasms? 28:26 Intrasexual Competition 46:27 Catherine Salmon and the Dark Romance Genre 52:42 Romanticisation of the Lesser Man 54:45 Does Size Matter? 58:59 Why is Ease of Orgasm So Varied? 01:11:22 Do Orgasms Differ Depending on Sexual Relationships? 01:16:19 Characterising Modern Sex Culture 01:27:23 Find Out More About Dr Robert - Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at ⁠https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom⁠ Get up to $350 off the Pod 5 at ⁠https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom⁠ Get a 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at ⁠https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Chris WilliamsonhostDr Robert Kingguest
Aug 7, 20251h 29mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 2:23

    How Do You Get into Studying the Female Orgasm?

    1. CW

      How do you get into studying the female orgasm?

    2. RK

      (laughs) Um, let's just go, go, get, dive straight in. Um, okay. So my background was, I was a school teacher for 20 years. Um, and I, uh, was interested in psychology and maths. That's what I taught. About 20 years ago, I came across a really interesting book by a woman called Elizabeth Lloyd. Uh, it was, uh, uh, A Bias in the Science of, uh, of Evolution. I was on holiday in Thailand. Uh, I read it. Um, the book told me that female orgasm did nothing, uh, had no function. And, uh, to say I was, I was surprised would be, uh, an understatement. And, uh, I, I just, I got interested, and I started studying evolutionary biology. And I approached, uh, some prominent figures in the field and said, "I think I have an i- you seem to have an issue here, uh, studying this subject, I think..." Um, and it, it, it, um, you know, just sort of, I, you know, I'm obviously quite a, a nerdy kind of character. I, I delve into these things. I read the original stuff. And once I started reading the original stuff, it became obvious that there were two very distinct traditions of, of studying, um, human sexuality, particularly female orgasm. One of them, uh, went down this, this strange route of saying it did nothing, and another one, which had been somewhat, uh, sidelined, uh, suggested it actually had some really interesting functions. So like-

    3. CW

      What was your-

    4. RK

      Uh-

    5. CW

      W- w- what was your intuition? What was it that you thought early on, "Huh, this, this seems to be a fruitful area to research more into"?

    6. RK

      Um, it, it became obvious from a fairly early stage that a number of the people who were opining about, about female orgasm, we're not studying sex at all. Uh, not in any kind of, you know, sense of, of actually being in the room with other people having sex. Uh, that's, that's why I start off the book by talking about, uh, animals in zoos and, uh, mating in captivity because what was being studied in laboratories just felt a lot like studying mating in captivity. And that doesn't, doesn't capture the, the range of, uh, what humans are up to or interested in. It doesn't capture the range of what other animals are interested, uh, makes them interesting either to be honest. Uh, um, I mean, it's, you know, it... That's, that's why I start off the book talking about COVID and the fact that... Uh, I, I live next to Fota, which is a terrific, um, uh, wildlife park, and I recommend it highly. And we have the, uh, the breeding, uh, group of, of a number of animals, uh, giraffes, uh, cheetahs. We've got some new tigers there. What else have we got? Uh, lions. And they've all had babies. And one of the reasons they have babies is because they have privacy. Uh, they can hide away from humans when they don't, don't want to play with us and do want to play with each other.

  2. 2:23 – 4:42

    What Does Sex Research Look Like?

    1. RK

    2. CW

      What does sex research in the lab look like when it's done well, when it's done badly? What, what, what's-

    3. RK

      Hmm.

    4. CW

      ... the, what are, what are the mechanisms of, of how you do this?

    5. RK

      Well, I'm, I'm not, I mean, I certainly, I'm not, not gonna, uh, uh, reject all lab-based research. But one of the primary platforms on which a lot of sex research is based is, uh... Uh, listeners will probably have heard of Masters and Johnson because there was a TV series about them. I think it was called Masters of Sex a few years back. And they, uh, they're the sort of the famous sex researchers from the '60s. And the essence of their research into female orgasm was to get half a dozen women, um, to get them to masturbate to orgasm in a lab. And they inserted a, uh, a glass tube, which they called Ulysses, inside, which had a camera, and they measured the results. And g- genuinely, that was the, that was the platform on which they based their whole idea that, uh, female orgasm didn't really have any function.

    6. CW

      Right. Slightly ... an evolution.

    7. RK

      And I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say it was done badly, but I, I would just say that it, it wasn't the final word.

    8. CW

      Okay. And what does better sex research or female orgasm research in a lab look like?

    9. RK

      Well, um, the, uh, at the same time, Masters and Johnson were doing their stuff in labs, there was a, a, a team in England, uh, the Foxes, who were both doctors. Uh, they were also, they were married and they were having sex in their own marital bedroom. And the, they're, um, very intrepid kind of, uh, pioneers and, and, and heroes of the field. Um, so Dr. Fox's missus inserted a telemetry device and a pressure change device inside herself and had sex with her husband on the marital bed and then measured the pressure changes.

    10. CW

      Okay. That sounds like, yeah, pioneering work.

    11. RK

      Mm-hmm. Yes. And, and they, and they f- and they found some very interesting... I mean, that's true. I'm, I'm just giving one example of the, of the work that was done. But, uh, it was, they, they, they found something that Masters and Johnson didn't, which was that female orgasm is associated... I mean, they, they studied oxytocin action and, uh, they, they studied pressure ch- uh, uterine, uh, interuterine pressure changes, and that, that provides a mechanism for, for orgasm to, to increase fertility.

    12. CW

      Okay.

    13. RK

      So in many ways, they were sort of the foundation of the, of the, of the thread that, that we picked up 50 years later. There are other people in that thread. Uh, you know, it's not, not just sort of me and, you know, our team and the Foxes. There's, there's a, uh, a huge team in Central Europe led by a guy called Ludwig Wild who did a whole lot of stuff on oxytocin throughout the late '80s and, and '90s as well. And, uh, you know, they, they sort of, uh, amplified this research.

  3. 4:42 – 11:16

    Misconceptions About the Female Orgasm

    1. RK

    2. CW

      What do most people get wrong when it comes to understanding female orgasm?

    3. RK

      (laughs) Oh, blimey. Um, well, um, I think, uh, that because it's, they think because it, it, it's comparatively difficult to bring about, there has to be something wrong either with women, uh, or with nature in general, um, or with, um, uh... No, actually, no, those, those are the, those are the two dominant fields. So rather than thinking that, uh, women are picky and choosy in other fields and you can apply that principle to, uh, their, their orgasmic response, they sort of go, "Well, either women are sort of psychologically broken," which is basically Freud's theory, um, or that they're just badly designed by a capricious nature, which is the bi-product theory.

    4. CW

      Ooh. Ex- go, go a little deeper on the bi-product theory for me.

    5. RK

      Mm-hmm. Okay. So starting off, uh, in the 1970s, um, with, um, uh, a, a pioneer called, um, uh, Simons. It was, it was... he wrote a book called The Evolution of Human Sexuality. Back in the '70s, it, well, the, the, the full structure and nature of the clitoris, you, you might have been mistaken for thinking that it was as he described it, uh, which was something a bit like a male nipple.... and, uh, i.e. sort of small, functionless, external and, uh, and not particularly, uh, not particularly interesting. Now actually, if you, if you delved even, even into, uh, the, uh, the specialist research of the time, I mean, that, that, that story would not have got off the ground because actually there, there were people who knew that wasn't true. But it was possible to believe that in the 1970s. By the time we got to the 1990s, it, you know, it really wasn't possible to believe that. However, the idea had sort of taken root that the, the, the, the main area of sensitivity in women was, was external and then therefore i- it was plausible, for example, that it was almost impossible to generate orgasm through, um, normal penetrative intercourse. And the, the idea behind it was, and you, uh, Steve Gould... Uh, I mean, partly this was publicized by Steve Gould who was an extremely famous and, and popular paleontologist. And because, uh, he was considered to be a, a big supporter of evolutionary theory and, um, particularly in the States where evolution is, is sort of massively politicized and it also became a religious thing, the fact that he was a supporter of evolution meant that people were, were willing to elide over the fact that he was politically very opposed to the applying of, of evolutionary theory to human beings. I mean, to, to put it bluntly, he thought that if human beings, uh, started applying evolutionary theory to themselves, they'd all turn into fascists. So the, the, the important thing to do was to stop them do... And this isn't, this isn't me saying this. I mean, his, his Evolution For The People, uh, group sort of pretty much, uh, pretty much said that. And he championed this idea that, uh, that female orgasm was a byproduct and Elizabeth Lloyd was, was, was his sort of, um, protege and colleague and so her book was the one I read.

    6. CW

      Right.

    7. RK

      That was, that was the one that started me off.

    8. CW

      Is this, is this similar to sort of looking at it like a spandrel of some kind?

    9. RK

      Yeah.

    10. CW

      Right.

    11. RK

      Yes, yes, the whole spandrels thing, yeah (laughs) . Um, this, uh, that would be a, a very good example of, uh, of, of Gould's kind of thinking on this. Um, I mean, you know, they're not cal- called spandrels. In fact, this would be typical of Steve Gould. Um, he, he, he though, his famous paper is called The Spandrels of San Marcos and it's th- this idea that these, these, uh, ornate structures weren't actually integral to the, to, to the, um, the structure of the cathedral. Uh, they're just byproducts. But actually the, the structures in question aren't even called spandrels. Um, uh, they're called pendentives. Uh, and in fact, they are integral to the structure (laughs) .

    12. CW

      Oh, for fuck's sake. Right. Okay, so I'm wrong twice. No, I mean that maybe-

    13. RK

      No, no, no. Come on. Uh, you're not wrong at all. Um, um, you know, you're, you're, you're accurately reporting what the literature says. It's just that Steve, S- Steve Gould is, uh, is, is just notorious for this. He will, he will sort of drop these things into... And, and then people will sort of pick it up and they'll, they'll go around and they'll, they'll say things like, "Oh, well, you know, these, these things are just, uh, spandrels," or, um, "These things are ju-" I mean, one, one of his favorites is just so stories. And he, he's done huge amounts of damage in, in the, uh, in the literature 'cause people just sort of dismiss adaptive, uh, adaptationist ideas and they think that they've got Steve Gould's backing for, for doing so.

    14. CW

      Oh, yeah. We are talking the same language here. Um, okay.

    15. RK

      (laughs) .

    16. CW

      So to, to recap what we're up to now-

    17. RK

      Can, can I show you briefly why Steve, why Steve is, Steve Gould is wrong? I've, I've just taken a carrion. So this, this, this here is a clitoris. Um, and I can't remember whether I said-

    18. CW

      No, that's not, that's not, that's not a clitoris. That's a Pokemon.

    19. RK

      (laughs) . Well, this is, this is a, this is a, a life-sized clitoris and I've been giving these away with the book, um, and, uh, the, the, the... Because I mean, I have, I've got chapters in the book that are k- obviously devoted to, to looking at the nature and structure and form and function, all the rest of it. Um, but there is, there is nothing quite so dramatic as just sort of going, "The clitoris isn't what you think it is. You think it's something like a male nipple, you know, and it isn't. Look, you know, look at the size of it. It's about four inches long. Most of it is internal. Um, it's got ducts. It's multiply innovated. It's got its own somatosensory cortex associated with it in the brain." You know, and it, yeah, none of those things are true of male nipples.

    20. CW

      Is it correct to say that the clitoris is the only part of the human body which is exclusively designed for pleasure?

    21. RK

      Um, no, I don't think so. I, I, I'm not... I, I wouldn't say it is just exclusively designed for pleasure. I think it's non-accidentally designed for pleasure. Um, but, and, but, uh... Oh, hello. We've... I lost you, I lost you there for a second. Uh, but, but pleasure always does a job, doesn't it? If, if something is, if something is, is, is pleasant for humans... Uh, Dan Dennett does a, a nice talk on this, on, uh, a TED Talk a couple years back. So s- what's it called? Sweet, Cute, Sexy, Funny I think is the name of the talk. The, the order might be different. And it, and his point, which I think is a very good one, it's, is that if nature needs you to do a job, uh, which would otherwise be a chore, then, then it makes it pleasurable or it makes it, you know, there, there is, there is a, there is a, there's a pleasure-

    22. CW

      Okay. So, uh, r- right. May- maybe I should have reworded what I said. Uh, the, the proximate reason for the clitoris is pleasure. And are you aware of any other areas of the human body where the proximate reason for their existence is also just pleasure?

    23. RK

      Um, so that's an interesting question. Uh, I would, uh, I think you're almost certainly right insofar as it's got the, the highest concentration of, of nerve endings, uh, associated with pleasure.

    24. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    25. RK

      Um, so, um, uh, women are lucky that way. And there is this, there is this old story, isn't it? That the, the, the, um, guy Tiresias who was the, the prophet, apparently, uh, the reason he was made blind by the gods was because, because he'd been a man and a woman various times and, and somebody asked him, uh, "So, so, you know, give us the, what's the $64,000 questionnaire? Who has the most fun during sex?" Uh, and he went, "Oh, women, easily." Um, and, uh, so they blinded him 'cause you're not allowed to say that in public if you're-

    26. CW

      Oh, don't, um-

    27. RK

      ... if, if... Greek prophet.

  4. 11:16 – 24:38

    How is the Female Orgasm Adaptive?

    1. CW

      Interestingly, I remember listening to a podcast talking about, mm, either men who transitioned or women who transitioned-

    2. RK

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    3. CW

      ... and the difference in the experience of orgasm-

    4. RK

      Mm.

    5. CW

      ... when, when they had different hormonal profiles. Um, and the p- I think it was female to male and the difference being much more local. Well, actually you can tell me. Have you looked at this? Is this something-

    6. RK

      Mm.... uh, I, it's not- it's not d- I mean, I- I- I'm- I'm- I don't, uh, I- I hang around people who- who do a lot of that kind of research. I don't- I don't do it directly. But the- the- the glans or the clitoris, it's... So, the- the- the bit that a l- a lot of people are talking about is... So if you imagine sort of the, um, the walls of the- the- the- the lips of the vulva, sort of around there-

    7. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    8. RK

      ... the- the bit that's- that's visible is what people think of as- as the clitoris, and it's the glans of the clitoris, and that's where the bulk of the- the nerve endings are, and that's- that's a bit which you- you want to keep, uh, if you're doing, uh, vaginoplasty. You wanna- you wanna make sure that that stays around, um, because otherwise, um... Or if you're doing phalloplasty, um, you know, that's- that's where a lot of the nerve endings are. But-

    9. CW

      Okay.

    10. RK

      ... you know.

    11. CW

      So if Freud, uh, women are psychologically broken, that's another thing, if we're saying it's not a spandrel, that it's not some, uh, biproduct like male nipples, how is the female orgasm adaptive? Can you make the case for the other side of this argument?

    12. RK

      Sure. Um, well, I think... I mean, well, I think one of the difficulties is that, uh, uh, if you ask women about their orgasms, quite often they'll say, "Well, you know, which ones do you mean?" Um, so, uh, just park that for a second because the- the- it does... Their- their experiences are more, um, multifaceted than the male ones. But parking that for a moment, the- the- the- the common thread that runs through pretty much, uh, all of this is oxytocin-mediated peristalsis. So we... And- and- and the thing that's- that's kind of interesting about that-

    13. CW

      What's that? What's peri- what's peristalsis?

    14. RK

      So, peristalsis is the- the pulsing which creates pressure changes and-

    15. CW

      Okay.

    16. RK

      ... uh, administering oxytocin, uh, artificially, which is what the- the- the Vilt team did, uh, in the '90s, will- will create those- those pressure changes and they'll- they'll create, um, movement, um, in the, uh, in the oviduct. But, uh, orgasm creates a big flow of oxytocin. It has- it has the same effect. Um, we've known about this, uh, in humans for 50 years. That was the basis of the Fox studies, and we've known about it in animal models, uh, going back nearly 100 years. There's... Particularly there's- there's- there's German research going back into the late 20s, early 30s, looking at rapid sperm transport in- in, uh, rats, uh, dogs, rabbits, uh, and then, uh, animals that are important for agriculture like sheep and, uh, and pigs and cattle and horses. Now, we don't know what those animals are experiencing and that's- that's the advantage of being a human ethologist, is you can go off and you can sort of go, you know, to your- to your human participants, "Do you feel..." um, and you've got a big long list of things that we know oxytocin does, like it makes you feel floaty, it gives you a sense of trust, it creates breath apnea. All... Yes, and you can ask... Say, do... Uh, you know, they can- they can tick these things off and go, "Yep, I get that. Yep, I get that." And you can't- you can't ask that of, uh, of- of dogs and- and horses, but you can- you can still measure the oxytocin levels. Does that... Uh, does that answer the question or am I- am I going around it obliquely?

    17. CW

      Uh, no, no, no, no. No, not at all. I think it increases oxytocin levels, but when most people think about oxytocin, we're thinking about pair bonding, we're thinking about sort of lovey-dovey sense of buy-in, we're thinking about, "Well, you know, we need to stick together if we're gonna eventually have kids and I- I need to be invested in you and I need to see you not as an o- a stranger, but as kin." Um, but you're talking about other stuff. You're just- no, not-

    18. RK

      Mm-hmm.

    19. CW

      ... just talking about pair bonding's effects of oxytocin. Uh, so what else is it doing?

    20. RK

      Yeah, it's- it's- it's even more basic than that. Uh, the- the- the... It look- it looks- it looks like... And this- this is going back, uh, phylogenetically. It, uh, it looks like the origin of oxytocin is, uh, milk production. So it is... It's the basic mammalian, uh, hormone. And the, uh, the thing that it seems to have been primarily associated with is producing, um, producing milk, so that, yeah, that- that we are mammals. Um, it just... It has these other functions as well. And as the- as the milk production, uh, started coexisting with the other features of, um, of being mammals, like for example, having, um, altricial young. Or not- not all- not all mammals have altricial young, but some of them do.

    21. CW

      What's altricial?

    22. RK

      So, they- they need a lot of, um, they l- need a lot of care.

    23. CW

      Right.

    24. RK

      So they... I mean, they n- they need to hang arou- um, I'm sorry. All- all mammals need to hang around the mother a bit because they're, um, they're being mammals. Uh, they're- they're suckling milk. But some of them need a lot more care than others, and human babies need the most care of all. And, uh, creating a bond between the, uh, the mother and the baby is- is another, uh, function of oxytocin. And it looks like nature is just lazy, and it just went, "Well, we can- we can- we can do this with, uh, with- with mothers and offspring." This is one of the- this is one of the things that's- that's interesting about Freud. Freud sort of thought that, uh, males would be- would be shocked if they realized that, um, the- the sort of the ins- the- the- the nurturing instincts, um, the sort of the- the sex instincts were being turned into nurturing instincts. And like a lot of things with Freud, I think he got it precisely the wrong way round and the primary instinct was bonding with offspring. And some of that has just sort of overspilled into going, "Oh, well, it's probably nice to keep a guy around as well."

    25. CW

      Right. So what is happening mechanically that is adaptive with regards to female orgasm? Presumably it's doing something to do with likelihood of conception or- or s- or something else, before we even get into the interpretation, the sort of like-

    26. RK

      Mm-hmm.

    27. CW

      ... uh, social, relational aspects of this. What... Like-

    28. RK

      Mm-hmm.

    29. CW

      ... mechanically, how does it help or hinder?

    30. RK

      So the- the uterine peristalsis creates pressure changes and, uh, you can- you can act- you can actually measure the- the movement of- of sperm-like product. Now, this is where it become... This becomes where it- it becomes difficult, of course, to do this in laboratories. So y- we sort of have to- to measure these things in- in various different ways. Uh, the Fox team actually used to measure the pressure changes directly, um, by, uh, while they were having sex, and then they also measured, uh, similar effects by just administering oxytocin. Uh, Vilt's team expanded this out and I think, uh, eventually they measured up... Uh, ended up measuring certainly 100, it might have been even twice that, women with- with large oxytocin, uh, doses and then, uh, introducing spermatogenic... Well, sp- uh, sperm-like material. And then we- we came around, uh, in 2016 and came up with a way of, um, of measuring, uh, back flow. So there's a phenomenon called back flow which is, uh, up to an hour after sex, uh, the vagina will eject material, uh, from the reproductive tract and you can measure the amount that's- that's- that- that's come out. Now if you, uh, if you- if you... Well, people know what a moon cup is? It's a- it's a device that you can use for collecting, um-... uh, period fluid, uh, if you don't want to insert things. Now, if, if we, we, we, um, just produced a method for inj- uh, injecting something that was like a sperm-like material, putting it in a moon cup and then creating a deep orgasm in- inside the woman in question and then measuring up to an hour later what came out. And 15% to 20% less comes out if she's had an orgasm.

  5. 24:38 – 28:26

    What are the Biggest Predictors of Female Orgasms?

    1. RK

    2. CW

      Hmm. What are the biggest predictors of female orgasm?

    3. RK

      Oh, um, the, the biggest one we found, uh, was attractive partner smell, which, um, we, we found really interesting because that was, that was, uh, where w- when we went from the sort of describe your orgasm types to us to, well, describe your partners to us, uh, one of the first things that they said we should ask about was partner smell, and it turned out to be the, the, uh... I mean, none of these are huge effect sizes, but, but that's because the sort of data you collect with these, these things is, tends to be quite, uh, quite muddy. But it was the, the largest effect size, and that's interesting because it suggests that the, the biggest predictor is, is something to do with genetic compatibility because that's how we're advertising our genetic compatibility to each other, with, uh, with smell.

    4. CW

      Okay. What else? What are some of the other predictors?

    5. RK

      Uh, dominance, uh, sexual dominance, um, and also at the same time, considerateness. So those, those things might seem to be pulling in opposite directions, but I, I, I actually don't think they are for a, for a bunch of interesting reasons. We als- we also asked a raft of the sort of the usual bunch of questions that evolutionists ask about things like muscularity and, um, uh, that kind of stuff, and none of that's, none of that came out. So, uh, it looks like people want somebody who is, um, a, uh, sexually dominant but not, uh, but, but also considerate, um, nice-smelling partner who, uh, pays close attention and, uh, provides deep penetration.

    6. CW

      Right.

    7. RK

      Those, those would be, th- those would be the, the big four.

    8. CW

      Okay. W- where does attraction come into this? Where does level of attraction come into this?

    9. RK

      Um, I, I-

    10. CW

      Desire.

    11. RK

      It's a... Yes, it's an interesting one, isn't it? Um, I'm, I, uh, it de- I suppose it, it then depends on how you're gonna, uh, decompose desire. If, if you're gonna break it down into just, um, sort of, uh, uh, whether a guy is good-looking or not, we haven't actually found anything that's, that's a predictor there. But, um, there's, there's, there's so many confounds in there because they're, women are often not going to go bed with someone they don't find desirable in the first place. So, uh, it, we, we need to be able to make, discrimi- we need to be able to discriminate between the various guys that the women are talking about. But that, that was, that was what was interesting in the init- in the, um, in the 2012 study we did is because we were asking women explicitly to make comparisons between different sexual encounters 'cause we're asking them to describe different orgasms. Um, and I'd, I'd like to, I'd like to follow that up with a, with a, with a bunch of other, um, uh, bunch of other measures because there are some sort of fairly obvious things that make males attractive that as far as we know so far aren't predictive of orgasm. So I mean, I haven't done this research myself, but Dan Nettle and, and I've just forgotten the, the guy's name, his student at the time, Tom, it'll come back to me. Um, they looked at things like, like finance, and that didn't seem to have an effect. I think some people have looked at height, and that doesn't seem to have had an effect. Um, they're the kind of things you think might because you might think, "Well, these, these would, we'd, would, would spark off certain triggers saying, you know, high status, prestige-"

    12. CW

      Resort acquisition, yeah.

    13. RK

      ... all of, all of, all of that kind of stuff. And I'm n- I'm, uh, not for a second saying that they, they're, they, they aren't there to be measured, but we, we haven't, we haven't measured them in such a way yet that they've come out as being predictive.

    14. CW

      I suppose it's interesting because trying to get a representative sample of men having sex with women would require women to get rid of their filter for which men they want to have sex with. It's like, "No, no, no, no, you must have sex with one from each category."

    15. RK

      (laughs) Yeah.

    16. CW

      And it's like, "No, I've already pre-selected."

    17. RK

      Yeah.

    18. CW

      So when you try and control for other things, it's pretty difficult.

    19. RK

      Yes. Um, I mean, uh, that, uh, and it's one of the reasons why we, uh, you know, we, we, we have to use, um, data which are not necessarily the, the, the most, um, most re- But we can't do randomized control trials here, um, um, alas. Um, uh, and, um, and if we could, the ethics, um, the ethics teams wouldn't let us. Um, I'm pretty confident of that.

    20. CW

      Getting in

  6. 28:26 – 46:27

    Intrasexual Competition

    1. CW

      the way again. Okay, how much, uh, how much of female desire of men is driven by other females' desire of those same men-

    2. RK

      (laughs)

    3. CW

      ... do you think?

    4. RK

      Yes. Um, considerable. I mean, there, you know, there, there are female groupies, there are male groupies, um, and that there's, there's good reasons for that for some bunch-

    5. CW

      It's a crisis of female rock stars.

    6. RK

      Well, right, yes. No, you, I mean, you, you've, you, you know all about this stuff, you know, the, the whole Fisherian sexy son stuff, uh, women need to queue off one another because what counts as being success in the local environment is not always immediately obvious, whereas what counts as being fertile in the local environment is, is, is obvious. Men, men have a baseline, you know, what they find attractive. Um, and, and, uh, I mean, women might do as well, but it's, it's, it's a considerably different one. I mean, the number of men who can just get away with being beautiful, well, w- we know their names, you know, they're, they're, they're the ones (laughs) who can be on telly being models and being film stars, all the rest of it. The rest of us have to have some other kinds of qualities. Um-

    7. CW

      Not allowed to play the guitar or do poetry.

    8. RK

      That's the kind of thing, yes. Yeah. They, they... And, and there, there's a reason why those groupies get all excited because it makes sense, you know. If, uh, if, if the local, local peacock is just slightly more pretty because his feathers are slightly brighter, um, then he might have, have sons who feathers are also brighter. And so, uh, they, it makes sense for them to queue off each other, which, which they seem to.

    9. CW

      Sexy son, sexy son hypothesis is so fascinating to me, and, uh, it m- m- makes an awful lot of sense. I remember seeing (laughs) , I remember seeing some fascinating research around the attitudes of, uh, women to casual sex based on whether they had sons or daughters.

    10. RK

      Oh, um, yeah.

    11. CW

      So interesting to me, like, that, I, I guess, uh, like, ecological component of, of, of how we show up, of how our, um-... programming can be adapted to the local environment. Um, okay, so what we need more-

    12. RK

      And it's also one of the reasons, I think, uh, a lot of the time that we, we, we men are, are blind to female-female competition because there, there's a real... I mean, the, the, the, the, the mere existence of a sexy son hypothesis immediately means that there's gonna be a tension, doesn't there? Because, uh, the women are gonna be queuing-

    13. CW

      There's only one Sexiest Son creator out there-

    14. RK

      Yeah. Yeah.

    15. CW

      ... and then if you don't get him, then it means you need to get the next one, which means you want-

    16. RK

      So once you're getting, yeah. Yeah.

    17. CW

      Yeah. Well, I mean, I suppose, you know, going back to the groupies thing, uh, uh, the idea of lots of other men competing for the same woman as you is very different to the idea of other women competing for the same man that you're after. Um, I guess m- in the same way that men like to go to the gym in order to get bigger muscles, they, the kind of male-male competition is inherently exciting. But I don't... You're, you're totally right. Like, I don't know... And I suppose the other, the other issue that you have is because women are so much more choosy, the pool, the groupie pool that you're pulling from as a woman i- i- of, of high s- I mean, like, what do you, what do you even... What's the level of attractiveness? Like, status, the guys don't care about your status, but that... Uh, comparatively, uh, you know. I'm speaking in very broad strokes here. Um, they don't care about your ability to acquire resources. They don't care that much about your level of competence beyond being smart, you know, be- being, being nice, being caring, being funny, conscientious, like, stuff that people that have done a bit of work will have an understanding of. But for the most part, you know, the, the most talented woman on the planet is competing with a 21-year-old barista from Starbucks. Uh, and it's, I guess, in some ways kind of a, a much more vicious hierarchy. And then in other ways, men's hierarchy is much more vicious as well because it's much more sort of winner takes all. But yeah, you're so... I mean, female intrasexual competition for me, I spent basically probably half of 2023 just obsessing over-

    18. RK

      Mm-hmm.

    19. CW

      ... intrasexual competition, especially among women.

    20. RK

      Mm-hmm.

    21. CW

      And, um-

    22. RK

      You, you had, um, uh, Bennison on your show, didn't you, at some point?

    23. CW

      Chris Bennison's been on. Cristina Duranti's been on.

    24. RK

      Mm-hmm.

    25. CW

      Sara Hill's been on.

    26. RK

      Right.

    27. CW

      Corey Clark came on, like-

    28. RK

      Okay.

    29. CW

      You know, I- I've, I've done the rounds, so to speak. I've done the round, I've done the round-

    30. RK

      All, all, all first-rate scientists.

  7. 46:27 – 52:42

    Catherine Salmon and the Dark Romance Genre

    1. RK

    2. CW

      So fa- fascinating insight on that. Fuck. Who is, who is the... (laughs) I'm gonna have to be really crude here.

    3. RK

      Mm-hmm.

    4. CW

      I'm gonna have to be really crude.

    5. RK

      It's your show.

    6. CW

      I'm, I'm gonna have to be really crude because I can't, I can't remember her fucking name. Who is the blonde haired, big boobed sex researcher who did the come on face research?

    7. RK

      Oh, uh, not, not, um... not, not, um... Well, I mean, the, the... Oh, g- god, no. See, thing is I know these people, so whatever I say I could, I could get myself in trouble here.

    8. CW

      You're gonna mislabel.

    9. RK

      I'm thinking of either Catherine Salmond or, uh-

    10. CW

      Catherine Salmond. Thank you.

    11. RK

      Okay.

    12. CW

      Don't say the second one. No need to say the second one and get yourself into trouble.

    13. RK

      Salmond.

    14. CW

      Um, Catherine ca-... Catherine Salmond told me, and this is one of my... this is one of my favorite insights.

    15. RK

      Mm-hmm.

    16. CW

      Um, when you had the ascendancy of the dark romance genre, um, there was, as you've kind of alluded to there, a little bit of a pushback. "Well, this is a, a very sort of barbaric base, um, uh, uh, perspective of female sexuality. It seems to pedestalize the man in a way. It has a lot of elements of dominance that we don't like." Uh, and in a time where Time's Up and MeToo and all that stuff was coming about, uh, there was a sense that this needed to be sanitized a little bit. So they came out with... Have you heard of golden retriever husbands or, or cinnamon roll husbands?

    17. RK

      No.

    18. CW

      Okay. So-

    19. RK

      No, I haven't.

    20. CW

      The reason I know this... (laughs)

    21. RK

      But I, I should write this down because I don't want to forget it.

    22. CW

      Fa- well, thankfully we're recording it, so-

    23. RK

      Okay.

    24. CW

      Um, cinnamon roll husbands, uh, golden retriever husbands. I spent-

    25. RK

      Okay.

    26. CW

      I spent every summer-... from the age of 26 to th- about 32, traveling to America because I was a cover model for Dark Romance books.

    27. RK

      Right. Oh, right. (laughs) Oh, you were the guy who was on the ph- okay, that makes sense. Yeah. Okay.

    28. CW

      I'm on, I'm on quite a few. And what was fascinating, what, what they would do is they would fly out the male models and imagine a freshers fair, any kind of, any kind of, um, convention. What you want, what you want is people to come to your stall. What's a great way, if you're an author of dark romance, to get people to come to the stall? Put the model that's on the cover, and you can get a photo, and he'll sign your book, and the author will sign your book, and you sell more books. Right? And, uh, the bigger authors realized that if they flew the models out that they would sell so many more books that it compensated for my flight, plus, you know-

    29. RK

      Yeah.

    30. CW

      ... cash to pay me to eat or-

  8. 52:42 – 54:45

    Romanticisation of the Lesser Man

    1. RK

      V-shaped, the, all of the cues typically, not brooding. And, uh, Catherine brought this up on the episode, and she said, "This was an attempt-"

    2. CW

      So, I've been fascinated by this narrative, this sort of meta, uh, for the last few weeks. I've only recently seen it being commented on. So it's a commentary on when... outside of sex, just for a second here, The Notebook, uh, The Notebook is a really great example of this. It's a commentary on the romanticization of the kind of hopeless thug, in a way, the kind of noble, noble thug you might be able to say. So the, the, the Notebook is a fucking great example of this because you have a guy who is kind of good as a handyman, but can't really hold down a job, and is passionate but kind of loose. And he is victorious up against a decorated war hero who is a successful businessperson, and really slick and equally attractive or whatever. And the same meta... I wonder what this is feeding into because, as we've said before, if female desire can be mediated by other females' desire, you have to assume that female desire can be mediated by culture as well. What are the archetypes that we think are part of our... Did you... Was your sexual awakening a bad boy or was your sexual awakening a pops-, a clean pop star or whatever? That has to color the way that you look.

    3. RK

      And just-

    4. CW

      In, in-

    5. RK

      Just being famous, yeah. I mean, I, Colin Firth came to the school where I taught, uh, not f- long before I left, and one of my students showed him around the school, uh, 'cause he was thinking of sending his kid there. Um, and she was one of the sixth formers, so she'd be about 17 or 18. Uh, and she came back to the class and she was appalled at the behavior and th- this is the, this is the funny bit. She was appalled at the behavior of the female staff who were following him round the school, spying on him and just behaving like... just... I mean, it was... Now, I mean, he's a good-looking fellow, um, but, you know, mainly because he's famous. You know, he's, he's been presented to them as, uh... who, who was it? It was Mr. Darcy, wasn't it? I think it was-

    6. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    7. RK

      ... at the time. You know, and I know he's a, he's a good-looking chap, but he's not, he's not the best-looking chap. He's not the only good-looking chap. But the fact that he was, uh, sort of the object of desire in certain films just meant that... And I think he was just, he was just, you know, bored, bored with it by that stage.

  9. 54:45 – 58:59

    Does Size Matter?

    1. RK

    2. CW

      Yeah. Okay, so getting back to sex-

    3. RK

      Yeah.

    4. CW

      Um, just do a recap for me of what the predictors are. It was good smell, so immunocompatibility.

    5. RK

      Yeah.

    6. CW

      Uh, it was dominance, it was c-

    7. RK

      Dominance, um, penetrative vigor.

    8. CW

      ... considerate...

    9. RK

      And, and, and also t-

    10. CW

      Penetrative vigor?

    11. RK

      Yeah. Um, yeah, we, we, we went there, yeah. Um, and, uh, um, and also considerate. So, y- y-

    12. CW

      Okay. Give me, give me... D- we, we're not going, we're not moving on beyond penetrative vigor, I'm afraid.

    13. RK

      Okay.

    14. CW

      What's, what's that?

    15. RK

      Well, um, okay, so, um, uh, hu- humans have got the largest penises of any primates and, um, they also-

    16. CW

      Champion. Let's go.

    17. RK

      (laughs) Does sound like I'm boasting it.

    18. CW

      Fucking chimps.

    19. RK

      I, um... But, you know, we're, we're bigger than gorillas. Well, gorillas com- compete with their... You know, this is well-known, to your, to your, to your, to your listeners, I'm sure. Gorillas can compete with their big 400-pound bodies, but they've got tiny testicles and tiny penises. Um, chimps are, are somewhat stronger and they're less, uh, sexually dimorphic but their, their penises aren't as large. Bonobos are as long as ours but they're not as thick. Um, but also, uh, chimps and bonobos are highly promiscuous and so their testicles are huge because they're producing a lot of sperm, spermatogenic, sp- spermatogenic material. Um, with humans, one of the things we seem to be competing with is penis size because we are larger than the other primates and, uh, there are some supposed explanations for this based on the head size in the womb. I go into some detail in the book why I think that's unlikely to be the case. Uh, whether that's just-

    20. CW

      I want us just to, just to, just to linger there. Are you... Is there a suggestion or a theory that human penises need to be bigger because babies' heads need to be bigger, because... which means that women's vaginas need to be sufficiently sized, which means that the penis is playing catch-up to the baby head, because if it didn't, female, uh, pleasure wouldn't be able to be reached?

    21. RK

      Yeah, th- that, yeah. That is... that's, that's kind of roughly the idea. I, I go into some detail in the book with-

    22. CW

      Do you know that all of our... or that our penises are in an arms race against our own babies?

    23. RK

      Yeah. I, I don't, I don't buy the s- the story. I, I g- as I say, I go into some detail in the book with, with, uh, um, sort of comparative, uh, sizes with, um, primate heads and, and penises, and sort of try and show why, wh- I don't think that's true. But, um, one of, one of the big clinches is we don't have a baculum. Uh, some other animals, uh, often they have a penile bone which keeps it stiff, uh, and we don't. Um, so there's all this talk of sort of female orgasm being sort of inefficient and there's this idea, "Well, because that, that shows it's a byproduct." But of course male, you know, male penises aren't always that efficient. That's, that's why we have a, a thriving trade in Viagra and, uh-

    24. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    25. RK

      ... and Cialis and all the rest of it, um, because, uh, it, it takes a certain amount of, uh, of, of health and vitality to produce the kind of penis that will, um, please the, uh, the partner. Yeah.

    26. CW

      In that way, does it mean that male erections are a fitness signal identifier?

    27. RK

      Hmm. I th- I think so. I, uh, we haven't studied this directly but, um, yeah, the indirect evidence seems to be, uh, seems to be there. Plus also, you know, if you ask women, they say it is. Uh, it's, it's... you know, it's one of those things where we get, get kind of coy about it, like, like we just did with, with breast size. Um, I mean, there, there, there are these, these, these big signalers that we carry around on our bodies that if you ask the opposite, if hetrosexual... actually, no, homosexual and heterosexual members of the opposite sex, you know, "Do you, do you care about these things?" "Yeah, of course we do, you know. Of course, of course we notice them and of course we care about them."

    28. CW

      What is the... What... Is there any data around length versus girth? Is that something that's important?

    29. RK

      Girth... Uh, we asked, we asked women about girth and girth was, was the thing that they, they prized the most. That seems to be generally true, that it is... it seems to be thickness rather than length. Um, yeah. And that, that would, that would make sense because, uh, if, if we come back to my clitoris here, um, where, where the penis would be-

    30. CW

      No, but you keep getting confused, Robert. It's a Pokemon.

  10. 58:59 – 1:11:22

    Why is Ease of Orgasm So Varied?

    1. RK

    2. CW

      Why is it very easy for some women to orgasm even multiple times, it's hard for others, and they need a combination of-

    3. RK

      Yeah.

    4. CW

      ... increasingly elaborate stimulation to get there and it's impossible as well for a final grip?

    5. RK

      Yeah. Right. We... I mean, the, the, the hon- the simple honest answer is, is we don't know. Um, and I wouldn't want to suggest that my book is, is, is a clinical work. So, you know, there could be things that are clinically up with people. There could be drug interactions, there could be hormonal interactions. Um, all of that aside, um, it's... it, it... one, one of the things that... part, part of the things that confuse it is that, is that for a variety of reasons, women will have sex when they're not aroused. You know, they could be... and I don't just talk... I'm not just talking about sort of the obvious grizzly cases of coercion. It's just a sort of, "Oh, let's just get on with it, you know, and I'm not really into it," um, kind of, kind of situation, which I'm sure happens, uh, all the time. Also, I think, uh, a lot of the time, people, uh, could only have sex if they're on some kind of drug, including alcohol. That, that doesn't help. Uh, and they're coy about, uh, telling their partners what they want. I mean, one, one of the ways that you run interference on people... you know, if, if you're... if, if you're a, if you're a dominant female baboon, you, you go around sort of whacking the other female baboons on the back of the head and that raises their cortisol levels and that, that makes it less like 3D-

    6. CW

      Pushes them out of... Yes. Yeah. Well, this is one of the arguments for concealed female ovulation in humans, right? That it doesn't allow other women to fuck with you when you're f- ovulating.

    7. RK

      Well, the, uh, and we- we're- we're- we're- we're better than baboons 'cause what we do by just going around and telling people how they're allowed to orgasm. I mean, there- there is- there is genuinely no culture where, um... which is neutral about female orgasm. Now, and th- and this is where it ge- it gets interesting, and I- I think I've got, I've got some speculative suggestions, but I, uh, and some patents, but there are some cultures that, that celebrate female orgasm. I mean, to the point, um, that there are those te- um, those temples at Karnataka, I think they are, where they've actually got representations on the walls over 1,000 years old of how to generate orgasm in everybody, you know, in every possible permutation, um, through, uh, to cultures where they chop off bits of the clitoris in order to tr- and re-fibulate people in order to try and prevent them having an orgasm at all. And there's everything in between. And some of the things that are in between are things like, uh, uh, use of guilts, uh, use of misinformation, and all kinds of other stuff like that, which are- are basically just running sexual interference on each other. That's- that's what those mechanisms, that's what those- those behaviors are in... Um, you- you just described some great examples with venting. Um, but also, you know, telling people, uh, that, uh, (laughs) they have to lie back and think of England is actually a sexual interference strategy.

    8. CW

      (laughs)

    9. RK

      For example.

    10. CW

      Yeah. Yeah, that if you don't enjoy sex that much, you're not gonna be looking for it elsewhere, which means that my partner, who's supposed to be loyal to me, isn't gonna be taken away by you because you don't actually enjoy sex that much. Okay. Yeah, I, look, I- I'm- I'm sort of pretty fascinated by the range of physiological blessing and curse that I guess women have got when it comes to their ability to orgasm. Like, I-

    11. RK

      Mm-hmm.

    12. CW

      ... I have a non-zero sample of partners across my life, and aside from a kind of slow, linear increase in experience-

    13. RK

      Mm-hmm.

    14. CW

      ... I've been the same person. So you say that we can't do random controlled trials, but at least I'm a pretty good control because I've been the same person before.

    15. RK

      You are, you are a longitudinal study, yeah.

    16. CW

      Of myself, yeah, exactly. Um, and unless I've had wild variation in how much women are attracted to me, which I'm sure that I have, but unless it's been like really, really high, there are, there is a- a barbell spectrum from one end, which is very easy over and over, to another end, which is we could be here for days and i- it's- it's not gonna happen. And, um, I think, you know, the conversation around female orgasm and culture is really interesting because it almost always laid at- laid at the feet of the man's job to understand the woman's body better. And I think that this is a... It's like noble in a way, like women are sensitive about their bodies and don't make them more fucking sensitive.

    17. RK

      Mm-hmm.

    18. CW

      Um-

    19. RK

      Yeah.

    20. CW

      ... I haven't seen the same thing. So if- if a woman didn't reach orgasm a lot of the time, it would be, "Well, why don't you ask your partner to do this?" And, "Well, the foreplay wasn't there," and, "Maybe- maybe attraction isn't there," and so on and so forth. Very rarely is the finger sort of pointed toward, well, you know, maybe you're physiologically just unfortunate in this sort of a way or whatever. But if the reverse happens, if you have... I think kind of the only real equivalent that we have as men is not being able to get it up. Um, and but if that happens, I never see a headline that's like, "Men not erect, women to blame." It's like, "Men not erect, men to blame. Women not orgasming, also men to blame."

    21. RK

      Yeah, I thi-

    22. CW

      So I do think, I do think there's a little bit

    23. RK

      ... that's the way female sexual selection works. I mean, I mean, it, yeah. (laughs) It's- it's- it is our fault. Yeah, no, we- we- we're- we're right to feel judged. I mean, it's, we are being, we- we're being judged, yeah.

    24. CW

      At all times.

    25. RK

      You're, you are, your- your- your performance anxiety is- is- is, um-

    26. CW

      Warranted.

    27. RK

      ... is, well, well, (laughs) yeah, well-founded. Uh-

    28. CW

      Yeah.

    29. RK

      ... and, um, not- not just yours, I mean, all of ours, you know. Um, uh, I- I mean, I- I- I count myself lucky that, um, uh, I was cuter when I was younger, uh, and- and older women sort of explained things to me, um, and I, and I'd pay attention in class. Uh, I would-

    30. CW

      Yeah, I see, I see. Well, look, and this is the-

Episode duration: 1:29:20

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