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Another facet of the evolutionary importance of pleasure-giving in sex by men for women is pointed out by Lionel Tiger. Even women on 100 per cent effective contraception, he points out, are still notably choosy about who they mate with; the atavistic, selective tendency asserts itself in most circumstances. And the durability of the ancient erotic and emotional imperatives also shines through in the orgasm-only mating patterns
of
homosexuals
. Lesbians, Tiger observes, mirror their reproductive, evolutionary role even in patently non-reproductive relationships. They are, he says, far more discriminating than men, typically having four to twelve partners in a lifetime. ‘Even when there is no ultimate cause of reproduction,' he concludes, ‘male and female homosexuals still act as if there is.'

The mechanically tricky, emotionally enigmatic nature of the female orgasm can thus be seen in a remarkable new light: as a selective mechanism for women to choose mates not as an animal would, by body size, ferocity and aggressiveness, but by qualities such as intellect, sensitivity, kindness, reputation and popularity – plus a little dexterity with finger or tongue, for added spice. In animals, cruder parameters are the most important predictors of a male mate's providing ability and his genetic quality; but in humans, social qualities are an infinitely better augur of genetic success in the future.

No wonder, then, that Darwin said: ‘The power to charm the female has sometimes been more important than the power to conquer other males in battle.' Or that the clitoris has been referred to by anthropologists as the ‘mate meter'. Or that our friends the Mehinacu in the Amazon basin have a saying that the clitoris is, ‘the nose that sniffs out sexual partners'.

We are perilously close, in this tidy model of evolution, to seeing the clitoris and its picky preferences as something closely akin to one of the primary motor forces in the promotion of human intellectual progress: men who are intelligent and sensitive get more chances to inseminate women; they pass on their own genetic advantage to their children; the traits of intelligence and sensitivity are selected for; humanity moves up the intellectual ladder stage by stage; the survival of the smartest thus ensures the continuance of the species.

And once you start applying this model to other aspects of human sexual behaviour as it has both evolved so far and developed culturally, everything makes sense. The woman's near-unique, permanent sexual availability, a true evolutionary adaptation if ever there was one, is in perfect harmony with
a monogamous imperative. So would the much-discouraged, and apparently self-defeating, practice of faking orgasm, which most women and not a few men have very likely done since ancient times. Additionally, the persistent idea that it takes more than a single sex act to produce a baby, which, as we have seen, is strongly believed in many preliterate societies, is a conviction quite consistent with the maintenance of monogamy and the painstaking development of a loving, skilful sex life. (Tribes we studied in the previous chapter who allow a series of men to ‘help' inseminate a woman could be regarded as monogamous too, so long as a broad definition was allowed, in which
all
the men of a village constitute the tribe's combined manhood, rather than a group of competing males.)

A seemingly peculiar research finding like the mood-elevating effect semen appears to have on women, which makes no obvious evolutionary sense, can also be seen in a certain light to possess a logic of its own. It is rewarding to the male if a woman feels happy after orgasm, as well as advantageous – especially, one might say, if he is not planning to stay for breakfast. Men frequently see their partner's orgasm as a reflection of their virility. It is equally rewarding for women to receive a mild dose of a natural antidepressant at the very après-afterglow moment their mind might be inclined to stray to the possibility of having just become pregnant.

Even committed sceptics on evolution will point to sexual characteristics in humans that they attribute to culture, but that might equally be the product of Darwinism at work. The American orthodox rabbi and prismatic thinker Shmuley Boteach asserts that God has ordained it that womanising men tend to be low-standard lovers because they never have to be imaginative or creative, but instead can rely on just running through the same old sex routine again and again. But whether it be it God or evolution's doing, Morris's or Boteach's theorising, it remains a constant that being good at sex is a surefire way to keep the pair-bond alive.

Morris's theory of the female orgasm is satisfying and inspired. If the likes of both sexes were congruent, we humans would experience a very dull kind of coupling. But in its curiously unbalanced form, each sex has a sufficient interest in and identification with the other's perspective while simultaneously being interestingly different. This makes the coupling fulfilling and, above all, long-lasting, which is the principal reason for it.

And the Morris theory has proved intellectually leakproof enough for some of the West's most brilliant minds. The philosopher Jacob Bronowski, for one, found it a compelling idea. ‘The preoccupation with the choice of a mate by both male and female, I regard as a continuing echo of a major selective force by which we have evolved,' Bronowski wrote. ‘All that tenderness, the postponement of marriage, the preparation and preliminaries that are found in all cultures, are an expression of the weight that we give to the hidden qualities in a mate. Universals that stretch across all cultures and divides are rare and tell-tale. Ours is a cultural species, and I believe that our unique attention to sexual choice has helped to mould it.

‘It is irresistible to speculate on this idea that women's sexual pleasure has been an evolutionary boon. Perhaps its function is to give females a physical incentive to seek out mates who are attentive, and a disincentive to stay with a selfish partner. Distinguishing between partners in this way might prove an advantage in the effort to find a protective, nurturing male who might help to rear the young. Such a mate also benefits in the biological sweepstakes. In short, making women feel good may help men to win the Darwinian contest of supremacy.'

The Morris argument nonetheless came under sustained attack – as did the second, feminist theory of female orgasm -by the postmodern voice of Donald Symons. He thought the Morris case to be a little over-stated and designed, consciously or unconsciously, to provide an evolutionary justification for
the tradition of marriage. Symons derided as wishful thinking the notion that the clitoris is automatically stimulated
to orgasm
(as opposed to simply feeling quite nice) during intercourse. Furthermore, if orgasm were an evolutionary adaptation, there would, surely, be very few non-orgasmic females alive – nor many men suffering from premature ejaculation – because orgasmic females and super-controlled males would long since have been favoured by natural selection.

The second theory, of the sexually insatiable female held back from the chance to orgasm constantly only by patriarchal society, was dismantled with rather more relish by Symons. Morris's ‘pair bond' and Sherfey's ‘insatiable female' theories are contiguous, differing only in their conceptions of the ideal – for Sherfey a paradise of endless sexual indulgence, for Morris a nirvana of sexually intense monogamy.

Both theories, for Symons, exist only in the human imagination. Not only is there, for him, no evidence at all of insatiable, multi-orgasmic women in pre-agricultural peoples, but they are still a rarity today. Even on sexually liberated Mangaia, men are still acknowledged to be more keen on sex than women. Furthermore, Symons argues, a tendency towards sexual insatiability would have interfered with early woman's genuinely adaptive activities of food-gathering and preparation, and childcare. As the celebrated anthropologist Margaret Mead also noted, Symons says, in cultures like that of Samoa, where foreplay is encouraged, all women orgasm; but in cultures where foreplay is forbidden, or you have to be clothed to have sex, or the lights have to be out, or all odours obscured by deodorants, the potentiality for orgasm may be universally untapped. ‘It is important to realise,' Mead concluded, ‘that such an unrealised potentiality is not necessarily felt as frustration.' Or, as Symons noted acidly: ‘The sexually insatiable woman is to be found primarily, if not exclusively, in the ideology of feminism, the hopes of boys and the fears of men.'

Symons mentions, but does not support, two views that the
female orgasm is actually dysfunctional. The first holds that orgasm may lessen the chance of conception. Extreme excitement in the final phase of sex constricts the outer third of the vagina by vaso-congestion; this has the effect of bottling up and retaining semen. But the vaso-congestion relaxes on orgasm; Masters and Johnson accordingly recommended women hoping to conceive
not
to orgasm.

This is not considered to be correct today. Psychologist David Buss of the University of Texas states in
The Evolution of Desire:
‘Women on average eject roughly 3 5 per cent of the sperm within thirty minutes of the time of insemination. If the woman has an orgasm, however, she retains 70 percent of the sperm and ejects only 30 per cent. Lack of an orgasm leads to the ejection of more sperm. This evidence is consistent with the theory that women's orgasm functions to suck up sperm from the vagina into the cervical canal and uterus, increasing the probability of conception.' It might also be noted that if orgasm could reduce the possibility of a successful fertilisation, it would surely follow that it would be easier for women to become pregnant through unsatisfactory intercourse – or even rape – than by means of loving sex. (To be fair, though, there is no data on whether bad sex is more or less productive than good sex.)

The second argument for the proposition that orgasm might be reproductively dysfunctional is this: if the sensation is so pleasurable that it becomes a desire independent of thoughts of child conception or welfare, it could undermine women's reproductive efficiency and the creation of the best circumstances for raising her children. The same might equally – in fact, more accurately – be said of the male orgasm; that pure physical pleasure is not the most appropriate sensation to accompany something as serious and burdensome as the conception of a new life.

If, as such a construction suggests, this meant men had no control at all over their urge for orgasm, it would be a flaw in human design. We would then have to consider whether
the best way to make sure men understand the gravity of what they are doing when they have sex would be to make sexual intercourse painful and unpleasant, and only permissible after fulfilling much irksome bureaucracy and form-filling. But, of course, one of the key features that marks us out from animals is that both males and females know what sex leads to, and that we have, additionally, the sophisticated psychological mechanisms of romance, love and affection come into play to ensure that, to a large extent, babies are wanted by both parents.

The view of female orgasm that Symons favours is that the phenomenon is not an adaptation at all but a relic, a kind of echo of the male orgasm, just as the male nipple is an echo of the female. While the same body cannot be both male and female, the brain can be wired for both potentialities. Kinsey noted in 1953 that there was a marked similarity between the male and female orgasm, but the most telling evidence was Masters and Johnson's discovery that orgasmic contractions in both sexes come at the precise same 0.8 seconds apart.

Symons speculates further that the female orgasm can only have been retained through evolution (having existed in the first place as a functionless throwback like the male nipple) because it was of such importance to men. Female multi-orgasm, he claims, may be an incidental effect of women's inability to ejaculate. It may even be a direct imitation of the pre-adolescent male's orgasm. Boys who masturbate pre-puberty are able to achieve repeated ejaculation-free orgasm (and this is recorded as early as five months) in a short period of time. Their capacity to repeat this ‘dry' orgasm without loss of erection diminishes in adolescence and decreases again in mature manhood. Stephen Jay Gould draws a conclusion from this that many women will find awkward: ‘The reason for a clitoral site of orgasm is simple – and exactly comparable with the non-puzzle of male nipples. The clitoris is the homologue of the penis – it is the same organ, endowed with the same anatomical organisation and capacity of response.'

The Symons/Gould camp, although currently in the ascendant, is far from immune itself to post-post-modernist criticism. Helen Fisher differs from them on the question of female multiple orgasm, and why men do not have the same sublime capacity. Comparing the female orgasm to the male nipple is, for her, invalid. The male nipple, Fisher points out, is inert, whereas the clitoris is a highly sophisticated little instrument that produces a massive physical sensation and emotional experience – an altered state of consciousness, no less. It also has a signalling capacity. Men like women to climax because it reassures them that they have satisfied their partner, and that she is less likely to seek sex elsewhere, and the genetic material he has implanted therefore has more chance of surviving than his neighbour's. ‘Female orgasm boosts the male ego,' Fisher reasons. ‘Why else would women fake orgasms?'

Even woman's notorious failure of orgasm, Fisher says, may have been selected for millennia ago. Women tend to climax when they are relaxed, with attentive and committed partners. That is why, to the moralists' delight, surveys such
Redbook's
tend to confirm that women have better sex with husbands than with secret lovers. Street prostitutes, she adds, are said to climax less than call girls with clients who are prepared at least to mimic ‘real' lovers – confirmation for Fisher, as for Morris, that woman's fickle orgasmic response is a mechanism evolved for her to sort worthy partners from unworthy.