approved sildenafil citrate (marketed as Viagra), the first oral pill to treat male impotence.
But we have been sexy in different ways at different times. Evidence that human sexuality is a completely different thing when you compare, say, Ancient Rome, Renaissance Florence and 1980s San Francisco, implies that the orgasm is effectively a cultural artefact, and that the sexual urge is shaped as much by society as by hormones. As the scientist and philosopher Jacob Bronowski wrote in 1969, in his book
The Ascent of Man:
âSex was invented as a biological instrument by (say) the green algae. But as an instrument in the ascent of man whichis basic to his cultural evolution, it was invented by man himself.â
Unlike when palaeontologists find a bone or archaeologists an arrowhead, anthropologists and historians have no access to the cultural artefact of orgasm, to peopleâs actual experience of it. We have contact only with the edifice of text and artwork surrounding the artefact, which is not quite the same thing; a Princeton University scholar, Professor Lawrence Stone, has explained that even when data does survive on historical love-making, it is highly selective. Few historical letters or diaries allude directly to sex, and those that do â like some of the earthy British seventeenth- and eighteenth-century diaries of men like Pepys and Boswell â give an entirely male perspective. Assessing womenâs experience of sex in these circumstances is extremely difficult. We, the modern and post-modern Western cultures, have accordingly âcreatedâ the orgasm in the same very real sense that we have âcreatedâ radio from naturally existing but disorganised electromagnetic waves.
But the orgasm is, additionally, the principal example of the extraordinary human genius for intellectualising and making a pleasure for its own sake of natural phenomena that happen to be necessities of life. From the need to eat and the resultant discovery of cooking food, we developed gastronomy. From the need to communicate and the resultant evolution of language, we developed poetry. From the requirement to keep warm and the resultant clothing, we developed fashion. From the need to keep fit for hunting and fighting, we developed sport. And from the need to reproduce, we have honed the by-product of our reproductive act, the phenomenon of orgasm, into a leisure pursuit which we follow for the sheer enjoyment of it. Even medical science, with fatal diseases still unconquered, has found time to concern itself with differentiating between pleasure and reproduction.
Not all the evidence for orgasm being a cultural construct is to be found in literature or art, however, nor even in the peculiar moral blanket with which myriad cultures and religionshave attempted down the years to smother orgasm and try to suppress or kill it off altogether. The most telling way in which we have built a cultural superstructure on the foundations nature gave our species is to be seen in the manner in which we have succeeded, through contraception, in separating the natural coincidence between sexual climax and babies.
It is remarkable that today heterosexuals barely think about squalling, puking, doubly incontinent infants when they have sex. Sex is primarily seen as being about romance, glamour, pleasure, good living, happiness â almost anything other than nappies, sleepless nights and teething rings. To the straight couple having wild sex in the dunes or simpering at one another in an expensive restaurant, it might even seem âunnaturalâ and strange that what they are doing has the slightest connection with baby production. This interest in pure eroticism, in sex as a leisure pursuit, is fundamentally human â a primary symptom of civilisation in the way it presupposes that basic survival needs have been taken care of, and that there is now time and energy to spare for fun for funâs sake.
Professor Richard
But we have been sexy in different ways at different times. Evidence that human sexuality is a completely different thing when you compare, say, Ancient Rome, Renaissance Florence and 1980s San Francisco, implies that the orgasm is effectively a cultural artefact, and that the sexual urge is shaped as much by society as by hormones. As the scientist and philosopher Jacob Bronowski wrote in 1969, in his book
The Ascent of Man:
âSex was invented as a biological instrument by (say) the green algae. But as an instrument in the ascent of man whichis basic to his cultural evolution, it was invented by man himself.â
Unlike when palaeontologists find a bone or archaeologists an arrowhead, anthropologists and historians have no access to the cultural artefact of orgasm, to peopleâs actual experience of it. We have contact only with the edifice of text and artwork surrounding the artefact, which is not quite the same thing; a Princeton University scholar, Professor Lawrence Stone, has explained that even when data does survive on historical love-making, it is highly selective. Few historical letters or diaries allude directly to sex, and those that do â like some of the earthy British seventeenth- and eighteenth-century diaries of men like Pepys and Boswell â give an entirely male perspective. Assessing womenâs experience of sex in these circumstances is extremely difficult. We, the modern and post-modern Western cultures, have accordingly âcreatedâ the orgasm in the same very real sense that we have âcreatedâ radio from naturally existing but disorganised electromagnetic waves.
But the orgasm is, additionally, the principal example of the extraordinary human genius for intellectualising and making a pleasure for its own sake of natural phenomena that happen to be necessities of life. From the need to eat and the resultant discovery of cooking food, we developed gastronomy. From the need to communicate and the resultant evolution of language, we developed poetry. From the requirement to keep warm and the resultant clothing, we developed fashion. From the need to keep fit for hunting and fighting, we developed sport. And from the need to reproduce, we have honed the by-product of our reproductive act, the phenomenon of orgasm, into a leisure pursuit which we follow for the sheer enjoyment of it. Even medical science, with fatal diseases still unconquered, has found time to concern itself with differentiating between pleasure and reproduction.
Not all the evidence for orgasm being a cultural construct is to be found in literature or art, however, nor even in the peculiar moral blanket with which myriad cultures and religionshave attempted down the years to smother orgasm and try to suppress or kill it off altogether. The most telling way in which we have built a cultural superstructure on the foundations nature gave our species is to be seen in the manner in which we have succeeded, through contraception, in separating the natural coincidence between sexual climax and babies.
It is remarkable that today heterosexuals barely think about squalling, puking, doubly incontinent infants when they have sex. Sex is primarily seen as being about romance, glamour, pleasure, good living, happiness â almost anything other than nappies, sleepless nights and teething rings. To the straight couple having wild sex in the dunes or simpering at one another in an expensive restaurant, it might even seem âunnaturalâ and strange that what they are doing has the slightest connection with baby production. This interest in pure eroticism, in sex as a leisure pursuit, is fundamentally human â a primary symptom of civilisation in the way it presupposes that basic survival needs have been taken care of, and that there is now time and energy to spare for fun for funâs sake.
Professor Richard