The Nature and Evolution of Female Sexuality
by Mary Jane Sherfey MD.
In a major departure from conventional studies the noted psychiatrist Mary Jane Sherfey argues that there is an insatiable drive in the human female which through the centuries has been forcibly suppressed in order to permit civilization as we know it to evolve.
hardback 1966 (book purchased)
Mary Jane Sherfey MD
based on paper published 1965, just before Masters & Johnson’s book.
student of Alfred Kinsey
Page 26
One wonders if this well-known difficulty women have in reporting their sexual sensations does not stem from the fact that they deceive themselves and us about the nature of these feelings – because they are afraid that what they do feel is not what they should feel.
Page 51
The clitoral system, skin eroticism, and the sexual skin create the extremely high levels of sexual tension which impels females to insist on repeated meetings during estrus. Thus the aggressive female mating pattern with its high level of sexual drive becomes an important factor in primate reproductive success. The hormonal combinations producing the anatomical features which create the strongest, most prolonged sexual drive and highest capacity for sexual pleasure are the same hormonal combinations which produce the greatest fertility, the fewest abortions, the most viable offspring, and the healthiest animals. These are the females most dominant in the female social hierarchy, closest to the dominant male(s), and whose healthy offspring are dominant in the juvenile social hierarchy and most likely to become the dominant males and females when adults.
Page 56
Another obtruding but predictable variable is the fact that many volunteers must go through an orientation period before they can experience arousal in the presence of the photographic and medical paraphernalia and personnel of a complicated research program. The time required seems surprisingly short (to me): it requires an average of three to six sessions of half an hour each for a volunteer to desensitize to the lack of privacy and the many distractions. Of interest is the finding that women desensitize with appreciably greater ease than men: 85% of performance difficulties from this cause occurred in the men.
Page 103
(b) The extremely short foreplay period followed by quite intense orgasms is the usual situation in the higher primates; yet this is very different from most mammals where the long teasing foreplay periods are the rule. In mammalian animals below the primates, the delaying tactics so regularly employed by the females constitute an adaptive device which ensures the Integrity of the reproduction isolation of the species; the delay allows time for full species recognition preventing inadvertent cross breeding.
page 112
Consequently, the more orgasms a woman has, the stronger they become; the more orgasms she has the more she can have. To all intents and purposes, the human female is sexually insatiable in the presence of the highest degrees of sexual satiation.
Page 134
Also, I urge the re-examination of the vague and controversial concepts of nymphomania and promiscuity without frigidity. Until now it has not been realized that regular multiple orgasms with either clitoral or vaginal stimulation to the point of physical exhaustion could be the biological norm for women’s sexual performance. Without undue inhibitions and with prolonged experience even the woman who is not yet born offspring can approximate the high levels of vasocongestion reached by the already reproductive female. It could well be that the ‘oversexed’ woman is actually exhibiting a normal sexuality – although because of it her integration into her society may leave much to be desired.