From an evolutionary/developmental standpoint, why would women be able to have multiple orgasms but men, not so much?

A) God is a woman

B) Every sperm is sacred, Every sperm is great…

C) It helps keep woman interested in sex so they will continue to have babies.

Without pointing out the obvious…because women are awesome at figuring out stuff! and Adam wasn’t listening when Eve told him how and that was the end of that.

There has been some discussion of whether female orgasm actually works to improve the chances of a women becoming pregnant (through muscular contractions that draw the sperm further up the reproductive tract). If that’s the case, it is (evolutionarily) to the male’s advantage to be a very good lover and increase the chances of producing offspring.

I don’t know if that orgasm/contraction theory has been debunked yet – I’ll see if I can find a study.

Men don’t need multiple orgasms because they use the “overwhelm with sheer numbers” theory of reproduction. When you flood the vagina with that many sperm, you don’t need multiple injections. And since when do men need any incentive to have sex?!?

muscle contraction will literally “milk” the dick and also transport the goods more effectively to the target, thus improving probability of pregnancy.

@cprevite, regarding “C”, wouldn’t it help keep men interested in sex if men had multiple orgasms?

@autumn43, maybe it’s what the man does that gives the woman the multiple orgasms? Conversely, maybe it’s what the woman’s NOT doing that’s NOT giving the man multiple orgasms? :)

@syz, but wouldn’t multiple ejaculations from the male increase chances as well?

@previte – what man isn’t interested? :)

@SirBailey
it takes a while to assemble a sizeable amount of sperm for delivery. as you may know, the longer you do it, the larger your load.
you may have multiple orgasms, but there still would not be more sperm delivered to the recipient.

@rag, well the additional sperm WOULD be part of the deal. The man could have multiple orgasms accompanied by sperm.

And if you say that this CAN’T be done, then why give the woman MULTIPLE orgasms? Unless @syz is right.

@SirBailey, well, no, he couldn’t; your balls can only hold so much sperm, and we dispense with pretty much all of it in one orgasm. To produce more takes time, as @ragingloli said, and to produce it more quickly, even if feasible, would result in more errors made in the copying of genetic material, resulting in lots of nastiness.

@SirBailey
Even if the man had enough sperm to deliver with each consecutive orgasm, it still would be more efficient to deliver it in one go, than in multiple parts, that would take both longer and more energy.

@SirBailey & @autumn43: Exactly my point. Men don’t need multiple orgasms to be interested. We’re designed to seduce/conquer, spread seed, and move on (usually to a nap).

I think biologically, women are hard-wired to nurture. Sex is just a means to an end. Multiple orgasms makes the act more appealing.

I also like @syz’ milking theory

Women – do you think you have less of a sex drive then men? I don’t agree.

Is any organization accepting test subjects for a study on this important topic?
<—- A volunteer.

@cprevite
actually syz only brought up the “transport the sperm” part.
the milking part was mine.

incidentally, female dolphins have such a milking mechanism.
i heard mating with a dolphin is like heaven for a man.

Watch this TED talk on orgasms

@SirBailey – without generalizing, I’m guessing women don’t think about sex and want it as much as men seem to; maybe their sex drives occur at different stages (before said children (with the means to the end being the child) and after the children are grown…and men just have a constant need/desire).

As far as the milking part, there are women don’t have an orgasm along with the man, so the delivery system still works whether she has one or not.

I do not think orgasms are necessary to ‘lure’ women into having sex with their males. There seem to be an awful lot of species without female orgasms and many women that don’t have them either (!!! not saying they cannot, or shouldn’t !!!). These all a still reproduce. (Be it in a less enjoyable way, I figure.)

There seems to be a positive relationship between female orgasm and conception, but that is not yet fully confirmed by studies, for as far as I am aware.

I think that female orgasms is related to the male and stems from the same brain mechanism. However since female orgasms are not directly linked to the end-game so to say, as they are with men, it can be repeated. So once a woman has learned how to get an orgasm, she is just not physically hindered as the man is.

It is however not impossible for men either to have multiple orgasms. But when in bed and just having had sex, why bother?

@ragingloli: Oops, sorry. I will forever think of you now when I think of milking (or waxing the dolphin). ;^)

Multiples give women a reward to keep on copulating if they need to switch partners in order to up the chances of finding good sperm. Short time of high fertility, lots of hormones and treats for doing it a lot, yay nature!

The human female is the only species of female that has a sex organ not directly related to reproduction—the clitoris. If the clit is not related to reproduction, and clitoral orgasm is by far the most common type of orgasm, what does the female orgasm have to do with reproduction? For me personally, I am sooo turned on by making a woman orgasm that doing it multiple times is no problem at all. No reproduction going on when I give my wife orgasms.

@tinyfaery: Wouldn’t you be reproducing orgasms then?

@tinyfaery I think you are wrong.
According to Vanessa Woods, “bonobo females have the largest clitoris i’ve ever seen on an ape, including humans.”
See http://bonobohandshake.blogspot.com/2007/09/oral-sex-human-invention.html
Vanessa is sure to know, as the article on that page will show you. She is an expert with bonobos and these animals are very eager to show their sexual organs to anyone they fancy, including her. :-D

Interesting. But do they have orgasms?

According to many that work with these creatures, they do. i do not have my copy of “The Inner Ape” handy, but I am sure Frans de Waal describes they do. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal) He describes how they certainly look like they have one and they often masturbate as well, ending in a sort of climax with an expression that says it all.

And just to top it off… bonobo males are far heavier hung than human males. Sad, but convenient at the beach as well, I guess.

@whitenoise
pity that bonobos are so unattractive to humans, eh?

I’m going to basically mimic what @syz originally said. My understanding is that a female orgasm makes it easier for the sperm to get to the egg, the muscle contractions carry it along. For a man, really the strongest swimmers are going to be the first ones out, he injects billions of theose little buggers and it only takes one to do the job. It seems like you’re pretty much emptied out for a while…if I recall my teen years accurately, the first time I’d release a load of knucklechildren, the volume would be large, the velocity would be great, and the product would be very coherent. By the fifth occurrence of self abuse in a 24 hour period, I’d be lucky to produce a few drops which barely drizzled out and which seemed to be almost separated, sort of a bright white chunky part in the midst of something the consistency of water. Basically my point being that ejaculate 2 is not as potent, powerful, or aggressively injected as ejaculate one. And that’s after waiting several minutes to as much as a couple hours to “reload”, and after a while, your nutsack is essentially drained, and let’s face it, you probalby wouldn’t want to raise a kid that was produced from cum #5.

For the female, if she can cum before the guy does a few times, it readies the area and makes it very hospitable, then when the man gravy starts to flow, she is ready to carry it on the ovarian expressway. Also, realize that a man does leak a bit before he shoots his load, which is why pulling out isn’t always effective…you can shoot it all over her chest if you want to, but if you don’t take other precautions, you’ve left perhaps a few million little determined critters in there. If she comes a few times, her body can make sure that even with the limited supply, she can get her egg fertilized. In other words, from an evolutionary standpoint, her body needs to do whatever it can to guide those little buggers to the right place, all he really needs to do is fire off as many as he can….why waste bullets when one will do the trick?

Getting back to the original Q: i conjecture that multiplicity of female orgasms promotes reception of more sperm (probably from a succession of partners rather than all from same partner) and so increases chance of receiving very active sperm and hence of viable offspring. but the other comments have been enlightening.

@LexWordsmith – that has also been demonstrated. I saw a documentary on human sexuality which basically showed evidence that an alarming number of people on this planet are not being raised by their biological fathers, even though they think they are. Basically, a woman’s uterus has the ability to play favorites via whichever partner gets her more excited. As often sex with the hubby is a been there, done that proposition, in the case of a woman who does have a lover, if she has sex with her husband and then has sex with her lover, her body chemistry may actually make it far more hospitable for her lover’s sperm to impregnate her…which often manifests itself with the husband not making the wife cum, but her lover making her cum over and over…the lover’s seed takes the express train and the husband’s takes the old dirt road.

if i recall correctly, couples having sex every day decreases their probability of impregnation because males require a certain amount of time between ejaculations to reach “full strength” both in terms of sperm and seminal fluids. it follows then i think that from an evolutionary perspective that multiple orgasms per session exacerbates the full strength issue (no pun intended).

So then women should have only one also I think.

If sex only lasted 20 minutes instead of 2 hours then I would have to do more work around the house. So I think it is good the way it is currently.

Hm. I guess because it gives the sperm more of a chance to meet the egg. If a man has multiple orgasms, you actually have less of a chance of getting pregnant. They don’t recommend it every single day, usually every other day, when trying to conceive. Because it gives the sperm time to get to the egg, and sperm can live up to 4 days.

But, once again, shouldn’t the woman have one orgasm too, then? I’m talking evolution now. @syz‘s answer would make sense. Do they give women who are trying to conceive but who don’t have multiple orgasms something so that they do? If the orgasm moved the sperm along, one might think the Obstetrician would.

@SirBailey: I imagine if there was a drug the could induce multiple orgasms, there would certainly be a HUGE black market for it.

A woman doesn’t need to have an orgasm to get pregnant. If she has multiple orgasms while trying, however, that is a huge bonus.

This is ridiculous. I sometimes have seventeen or eighteen orgasms in a row.

@Blondesjon: Over the course of a week does not count – even if they are consecutive.

@cprevite . . .A week? Then we are getting into the triple digits. I have actually shot air before. It sounded like a mouse farting.

edit:an enormous mouse

@cprevite, there is. And that drug is called, (wait for it), Sir Bailey”!!!

(oh brother)

r i n g

“Hello.”

“Hi. Do you have SirBailey in a can?”

“Why yes miss. Yes we do.”

click

“Miss?! Miss??”

(sound of tires screeching)

‘If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy’.

@Blondesjon: “Triple digits”!?!?

So, I’m gonna assume “sticky” is the most commonly used word in your house.

No. Actually it is “ick”.

“I sometimes have seventeen or eighteen orgasms in a row.”

@Blondesjon – maybe there’s been a misunderstanding here. Orgasms are not that yellowish liquid you get out of a can.

They happen during sex, something you said your teenage boys don’t give you enough time for before they barge in wondering what mom and dad are doing. : )

@fireside. . .Actually, my orgasms look like little, folded paper swans.

Blondesjon’s orgasms

@fireside
METAL GEAR?!

I have often questioned whether women DID have orgasms much, during the long period leading up to Masters and Johnson, and that’s a long time, no matter how old you think the cosmos and the human species is. Heck, isn’t it true that the medical establishment questioned their very EXISTENCE til relatively recently? And, assuming women were as orgasmic a hundred years ago as they are now, it almost makes me think the ones they were getting were mostly self induced rather than being connected to mating behaviour. Interesting ramifications to that.