Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Cough, Cough. Oh dear.

Like heart disease, anxiety and depression, scientists discovered in a study of 1,397 pairs of female twins that there is a genetic basis to female orgasm.

Why is it that this study worries me? Because nobody's doing a male equivalent?

Probably, it's this sentence:

But Spector said orgasm is a very complex process which is poorly understood. Little research has been done because it is still a taboo subject.

Yea.

2 comments so far. What are your thoughts?

Anonymous said...

I amused myself by doing a Google news search on this (search words "female orgasm genetic" if anyone wants to replicate), yesterday. I found, at that time, 125 articles. The amount of different interpretations/presentations by the reporters spanned everything from "finally, men can't be blamed that women don't make it in bed - it's genetics, not performance" (wrong: figures were quite different for sex and for masturbation, so performance in bed is definitely a factor) to "now we can finally get genetic therapy" (wrong: they have not found an "orgasm gene", only assumed that all statistical differences btw mono- and dizygotc twins depends on genes - it may be another 10 or 50 years before someone pinpoints what is the influence). Overall, it is prejudice galore out there right now.

Especially the assumption that all difference in ability to orgasm is due to the genetic difference is interesting, because it rests on the assumption that monozygotic ("identical") twins are genetically identical, according to the article abstract. Well, for female twins that is not always the case - there is a thing called X chromosome inactivation that is supposed to ensure that women do not get a double dose of X genes. I am not an expert in genetics, but I did some quick research on this yesterday and it seems that the "choice" of which X to inhibit can be different between monozygotic twins (i e they will not be abolutely similar after all). It galls me to no end that I do not have a subscription to Biology Letters so that I can read the article and see if the corrected for this.

Oh my, this grew quite a bit longer than I expected. Sorry. I'll stop here and write about it at my own blog (with links, I promise) instead.  

Posted by Darjeeling

Anonymous said...

Umm pardon me but didn't this become a moot point when they were finally able to take certain special appliances 'off the mains'? Genetic or not, your ability to achieve a decent 'O' can always be enhanced by the expenditure of about $25-30, some batteries and a little self discovery & patience.

There's a genetic basis for much but this did not prevent a life long chronic under achiever from holding the world hostage with a series of aggressive, pointless wars...Wait is'nt that the plot for 60% of all SF movies from the 50's-70's???

But I digress. I'm waiting for them to find that 'money' gene that will ascribe our current oligarchy to 'good breeding', that's about when we can expect a new man in a trench coat to leave the Finland Station to start the next Revolution.  

Posted by VJ