Re: [Marxism] The History of Female Orgasm

["Carlos A. Rivera" <cerejota@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>


> "The History of Female Orgasm":
> <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/06/history-of-female-orgasm.html>


Stephen Jay Gould has to be the single greatest loss that contemporary
leftist anthropologist have suffered, made the worse because there isn't
apparently anyone to cover for him.

Yoshie is right on the homologous nature of the female orgasm, and that it
has been culturaly cultivated by human women for human women more than in
any other species. Which doesn't mean other species don't have the female
orgasm, just hey haven't developed a culture for it.

The implications, then, it not just of a male-dominated evolutionary
science, but also of a anthropocentric view on the development of the orgasm
and a methaphysical view on pleasure and reproduction. I have a hunch that
pleasure, at least in mammals, didn't develop simply as a tool of survival
and reproduction, but as a way to keep the brain active during long
intervals between key survival and reproduction events (explaining the
widespread existance of homosexual and masturbatory conduct in mammals not
connected to reproduction). I think the view of pleasure as a "reward" for
reproduction is a culturally formed one that doesn't hold up to scrutiny in
many places, ranging from S&M practices to grooming to cats requesting in no
uncertain terms that they be petted.

Now, I am far from a scientist, but this is my hunch...

The two extremes, the views that want to elborate evolutionary theory as if
complex forms of life such as mammals, reptiles and birds were nothing more
than glorified and sexual Amoebas, and the views of human (or hominoid)
evolutionary supremacy and uniqueness, strikes me as bad science similar in
form but not content to "intelligent design": they are shrouded in
scientific language and structure but in reality expose the preconcived
biases of the authors.

On the one hand the socio-biologists, on the other the anthropocentrics. I
think SJG tried to operate outside of both.


sks


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