Sexology of the Vaginal Orgasm by Karl F. Stifter Read Free Book Online Page A

are men. Even if in lab experiments women show both physiological and subjective excitation they are less interested in explicitly sexual pictorial mater- ial and depictions of genitals. (Elias & Elias, 1970)
Women are aware of how important their attractiveness is and thus invest their interests and money in it. It is thus no coincidence that most of the contents of women’s journals are devoted to enhancing one’s physical appearance.
The difference to men’s journals is quite obvious in this regard. The latter must cater to issues that revolve around sexual stimuli, sports and status symbols – and this becau- se women are strongly eroticized by male status. Unfortu- nately, many men seem to forget that this alone is not enough…
Male Status
In his study Buss (1989) finds that in 36 of 37 cultures women find the earning prospects of men, their ambitious- ness and initiative more important criteria for selecting a partner than men do. Men with a high status, by contrast, generally wish to marry younger, more attractive women than is the case in men with a lower status.
This fact is not only true for women. In them only the vari- ance in the age span from which they select partners incre- ases with age. The more attractive a woman is the more she is willing to embark upon a relationship with a man who has a higher status. According to the marriage-market the-
ory male status is “paid” by female attractiveness. (Gram- mer, 1992) This reality is reflected in classified ads in the newspaper ads that are placed to find a partner. Given a simi- lar status, women prefer taller men. (Dunbar, 2000) We have noted that this effect is even more pronounced in divorced men. Their second wife should, on average, be ten years young- er than them. The higher the income of the divorced men the less tolerant these men become vis-à-vis women of the same age or older. (Grammer, 1992) Women with a higher status also seek out men who have a higher status but are limited in their wish by the degree of their attractiveness.
The British anthropologist Monique Borgerhoff-Mulder studied the marriage strategies of the Kipsigi , a group of Kenyan shepherd nomads. As in a number of traditional societies it is also common there that men pay for their wives. The amount they are required to pay for a bride is negotiated by the two families, and generally equates to one third of the man’s wealth. The researcher tried to find out which women were paid for more and which less. That is to say, she defined the female´s attractiveness on the basis of their price on the marriage market. The results were clear: for women who had their first period before turning fifteen more frequently higher bride prices were paid than for women who reached sexual maturity later….
The partner behavior of the Kipsigi men has remarkable consequences for the success of reproduction. The analy- sis of life stories showed that the Kipsigi women who reached maturity earlier obtained a greater success in reproduction in significant statistical terms than the ones who reached maturity later. Their reproductive life span was on average longer, their fertility rate (children per cycle) was on average higher, and the mortality of their
children generally lower.
Without being aware of this, the Kipsigi men who were seeking a bride invested their money according to the pro- bability of reproducing their genes. They paid in propor- tion to the reproductive value of the women. Youth, an essential feature of attractiveness and health, has its price on the marriage market. This is something that only men with a high status could pay for.
That this speaks in favour of sociobiological roots is some- thing that also the author was able to confirm in his studies of the Mosuos , a tribe with a matriarchal structure at the Chinese Lugu Lake. People there do not marry in the usu- al sense. Instead, there is “visit marriage”, lasting only for one night. The most beautiful women of the