In Trainwreck, a huge summer hit from a hot comedy talent, Amy Schumer plays a single woman with a robust libido and vivid sexual history. "Amy" is eventually tamed by a doctor (Hollywood is not known for its subtlety in pathologizing female sexuality), and comes to accept the value of monogamy and family life. All the fun, of course, happensbefore that, as Schumer's character searches out, with the unwavering commitment of a heat-seeking missile, the same holy grail Zipless Fuck that propelled Isadora Wing in Fear of Flying.
Trainwreck is and isn't a departure. As a culture, we have long been profoundly ambivalent about women who cheat, feeling we have to do something with those who engage in "extra-pair copulations" or "non-dyadic sexual encounters," as field biologists and sex researchers, respectively, refer to them. In relative terms, Amy is lucky—she ends up engaged rather than killed by her own son (Clytaemnestra), drowned (Edna Pontellier inThe Awakening), shunned (Hester Prynne), or run over by a train (Anna Karenina). But still, she must be contained.
If all this policing of women's sextracurricular activities seems an overreaction, it is and it isn't. Of course women cheat, and not just in movies and novels. A recent Oxford University study suggests 57% of men and 47% of women are inclined to stray. And in an Indiana University survey of 900 participants, the male and female "cheaters" were separated by a mere four percentage points.One organization provides a stat that 54% of women and 57% of men fess up to infidelity in any relationship they have had. And in the under 35 years of age category, a full 50% of the victims of the recent security hack of AshleyMadison.com—tagline, "Life is short, have an affair"—are women. Women are unlikely to disclose such information honestly, even in an anonymous and confidential interview, due to social pressures like slut shaming, so the actual number of women who stray is likely larger than reported. We're more Amys than Marys, it seems; we're just quieter about it.
The findings of a new wave of women sex researchers who study female desire and arousal, including Meredith Chivers, Marta Meana, and Lisa M. Diamond, suggest that women especially have a deep and normal thirst to step out. Using a small camera that was inserted into
participants' vaginas to detect blood flow, a measure of excitement that does not lie, Chivers discovered that while women said they were turned on by the idea of sex with a partner or friend, they were actually much more excited by the idea of sex with a stranger. A German longitudinal study of thousands of couples found that while men and women in long term committed relationships started off with comparable sex drives, male sexual desire for a partner ebbed slowly over the course of a decade or more. In stark contrast, women's libidos plunged dramatically—after just three years of committed "bliss." It's possible, the research of Chivers and her colleagues suggests, that women struggle with monogamy even more than men do, and that they crave variety and novelty more than their male partners. "I want to have sex all night long," a Catholic woman in her late forties, faithful in her marriage of over two decades, told me not long ago. "Just not with my husband."
participants' vaginas to detect blood flow, a measure of excitement that does not lie, Chivers discovered that while women said they were turned on by the idea of sex with a partner or friend, they were actually much more excited by the idea of sex with a stranger. A German longitudinal study of thousands of couples found that while men and women in long term committed relationships started off with comparable sex drives, male sexual desire for a partner ebbed slowly over the course of a decade or more. In stark contrast, women's libidos plunged dramatically—after just three years of committed "bliss." It's possible, the research of Chivers and her colleagues suggests, that women struggle with monogamy even more than men do, and that they crave variety and novelty more than their male partners. "I want to have sex all night long," a Catholic woman in her late forties, faithful in her marriage of over two decades, told me not long ago. "Just not with my husband."
This idea that women may have a harder time staying true, the possibility that they are skipping sex with their husbands not because they are too tired or mad that he doesn't help with the laundry, but because they find married sex boring, may surprise. For decades, the prevailing view among experts who study sexuality has been that men strive for novelty and quantity, while women strive for exclusivity and quality in the mating game. Men, we have heard over and over, "naturally" want to "spread their seed," while women "naturally" want to be monogamous with a monogamous partner who will stick around and help them raise the baby.
But in the words of anthropologist Robert Martin, author of How We Do It: the Evolution and Future of Human Reproduction, "Cultural influences are so strong that it is by no means obvious what is 'natural' for our own species when it comes to choosing mates." Like the latest sex research, the ethnographic data and the behavior of our closest non-human relatives reveal how female mating and reproductive strategies and motivations turn the notion of "promiscuity" inside out. Even motherhood, it turns out, does not necessarily make females more sexually exclusive or faithful. In fact, the imperatives of motherhood and being female can have precisely the opposite effect.
Thank evolution. Multiple and extra pair copulations were, under certain ecological and environmental conditions, an efficient way for a breeding female to do a lot of important things: maximize the chance of getting high quality sperm; increase the likelihood of becoming pregnant; and game paternal uncertainty, the sweet (if you are female) underside of the conundrum (if you are male) of internal fertilization and concealed ovulation. Sometimes and some places, sex with numerous guys could better the odds of having a healthy baby that not just one but several males might believe was theirs, according to anthropologists including Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and Stephen Beckerman.
If a male thought it was likely enough to have been from him, he'd be more willing to lend a hand to "his" baby's mama. This would give the baby a better shot at surviving and reproducing down the line, and leave mommy more able to forage, rest, lactate, and in time, get pregnant again.
It still happens today, often with broad social support. A number of forager bands in lowland South America hew to a belief called "partible paternity," which holds that children are sired by all the men a woman has sex with close to conception. And missionaries and anthropologists alike have been disconcerted to find that among many other South American tribes, including the Bari of Venezuela and some foraging and horticultural groups in Africa, a woman publicly sanctions sex with numerous unrelated, eligible males in her living group when she discovers she is pregnant. This mating strategy, strange to us, is brilliant in context: more "honorary fathers" (Hrdy's term) equals more helping hands.
Our non-human primate relatives offer instructive parallels when it comes to sex and mating strategies. Female tamarins and marmosets mate with several males, who then assist in raising the offspring. There is compelling evidence that they don't just do it because it is efficient, but because for females, sexual novelty and variety are pleasurable. Among Kim Wallen's rhesus macaques at Yerkes Primate Research Center at Emory University, Journalist Daniel Bergner, author of What Do Women Want, has reported females grow sexually listless and cease copulating with males after being in an enclosure with them for three months. When researchers introduce new males, lo and behold! the females are interested in sex again. Among the same macaques, the very best monkey mother—who carries her offspring around ventrally long after another mother would have stopped, and forages the most diligently to feed it—will, when in estrus, set her infant on the ground unattended in order to literally chase a new male. Once he is cornered, she will tap on the ground in what Bergner describes as Morse code for "Serve. Me. Sexually. Right. Now."
Non-human female primates will also take great risks to get the sex they want, often braving male attempts at coercion and control. Male hamadryas baboons use eye flip threats and neck bites to keep their females in line. Male rhesus macaques in Puerto Rico have been observed
chasing and wounding females who attempt to meet up with lower-ranking males for some copulating. And males of many mammal species use infanticide to bring mothers back into estrus. Consistently, non-human female primates go for the sex in spite of the potential peril.
chasing and wounding females who attempt to meet up with lower-ranking males for some copulating. And males of many mammal species use infanticide to bring mothers back into estrus. Consistently, non-human female primates go for the sex in spite of the potential peril.
Female "promiscuity," it turns out, has a long, prehensile tail. Female primates of manyspecies actively seek out sex with new partners not because it's the best way to have healthy babies, but because it feels good.
We aren't monkeys. Or band foragers. But there is a reason we love Trainwreck and The Affair—and that so many women feel that the idea of sex with someone new is thrilling. "The sexuality of every female Homo sapiens is informed by her ecological and environmental circumstances in concert with both culture and a prehistoric script in which mate choice has been anything and everything but a lifelong commitment. Women aren't the new men. Women are women. And they love getting laid as much as men do, possibly more," says primatologist Natalia Reagan. If the truer and fairer sex were truer to what they actually want, and the world were a fairer place, Trainwreck would have a different ending, there would be little need for female Viagra, and women who currently
just watch "The Affair" would be more likely to have one. A larger proportion of those women than we might think would be women with kids, driven for deep reasons to seek out sexual variety and sexual novelty, even at a high cost. Arguably, that has often been—and may still sometimes be—the best thing for our species.
just watch "The Affair" would be more likely to have one. A larger proportion of those women than we might think would be women with kids, driven for deep reasons to seek out sexual variety and sexual novelty, even at a high cost. Arguably, that has often been—and may still sometimes be—the best thing for our species.
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