Orgasm
Fertility

There are theories that the female orgasm might increase fertility. For example, it has been suggested that the 30 percent reduction in the size of the vagina could help clench the penis (much like, or perhaps caused by, the pubococcygeus muscles), which would make it more stimulating for the male (thus ensuring faster or more voluminous ejaculation). The British biologists Baker and Bellis have suggested that the female orgasm may have a peristalsis or "upsuck" action (similar to the esophagus ' ability to swallow when upside down), resulting in the retaining of favorable sperm and making conception more likely. They posited a role of female orgasm in sperm competition.

The observation that women tend to reach orgasm more easily when they are ovulating also has led to the suggestion that it is tied to increasing fertility. Evolutionary biologist Robin Baker argues in Sperm Wars that occurrence and timing of orgasms are all a part of the female body's unconscious strategy to collect and retain sperm from more evolutionary fit men. This theory suggests that an orgasm during intercourse functions as a bypass button to a woman's natural cervical filter against sperm and pathogens, and that an orgasm before functions to strengthen the filter.

Desmond Morris proposed that orgasm might facilitate conception by exhausting the female and keeping her horizontal, thus preventing the sperm from leaking out. This possibility sometimes called the "Poleaxe Hypothesis" or the "Knockout Hypothesis", is now considered unlikely. A 1994 Learning Channel documentary on sex had fiber optic cameras inside the vagina of a woman while she had sexual intercourse. During her orgasm, her pelvic muscles contracted and her cervix repeatedly dipped into a pool of semen in the vaginal fornix, which might ensure that sperm would proceed by the external orifice of the uterus, making conception more likely.

Evolutionary psychologists Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, in their discussion of the female orgasm, address how long it takes for females to achieve orgasm compared to males, and females' ability to have multiple orgasms, hypothesizing how especially well suited to multiple partners and insemination this is. They quote primate sexuality specialist Alan Dixson in saying that the monogamy-maintenance explanation for female orgasm "seems far-fetched" because "females of other primate species, and particularly those with multimale-multifemale mating systems such as macaques and chimpanzees, exhibit orgasmic responses in the absence of such bonding or the formation of stable family units." On the other hand, Dixson states that "Gibbons, which are primarily monogamous, do not exhibit obvious signs of female orgasm."

The female promiscuity explanation of female sexuality was echoed at least 12 years earlier by other evolutionary biologists, and there is increasing scientific awareness of the female proceptive phase. Though Dixson classifies humans as mildly polygynous in his survey of primate sexuality, he appears to have doubts, when he writes, "One might argue that... the female's orgasm is rewarding, increases her willingness to copulate with a variety of males rather than one partner, and thus promotes sperm competition." Ryan and Jethá use this as evidence for their theory that partible paternity and promiscuity was common for early modern humans.
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