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<v Faith Liddell>I'm Faith Liddell and welcome to the Festival of Ideas.</v>

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And this session is on marriage and sex,

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not sex at dawn, as in the title of Chris Ryan's fabulous book,

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but sex at 10:30 AM,

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which it may seem still a little early to be talking about such intimate

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matters, but these are not just intimate matters.

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They are also essential ones in our lives and the powerful evidence and

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arguments you're about to hear me well,

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change the way you think about your own sexuality,

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your relationships and your attitudes about received wisdom air.

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Chris Ryan is literally a qualified to write about the science of

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human sexuality with a BA in English and American literature,

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and then an Emmy and a PhD in psychology from Seabrook university in San

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Francisco.

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He's an international consultant in hospitals around the world and a lecturer at

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the university of Barcelona medical school,

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but he's also lived and worked in a variety of cultures

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and social settings from teaching English to prostitutes in Bangkok and

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self-defense to land reform activists in Mexico to managing

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commercial real estate in New York and working with the women in community

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service in San Francisco. He's a well rounded man,

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a well-rounded man with a mission drawing from these

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multicultural experiences.

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His research has focused on trying to distinguish the human from the

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cultural exploring the prehistoric roots of human sexuality.

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This is a festival about planning in uncertainty and Chris Ryan is a

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man,

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the richly researched and compelling new narrative about us as

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sexual beings that through a certain enduring and he would see damaging

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assumptions. Some of them, in some cases into the air,

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in some cases out of the window,

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he throws up new questions for us.

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He basically casts us all into new uncertainties,

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but I think also as you'll discover a,

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also provides us with new kinds of freedom to Chris Ryan.

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Thank you.

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<v Christopher Ryan>Thank you. Good morning. Am I on good?</v>

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I wasn't sure how to begin this morning's presentation until about four

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30 this morning when the couple in the room next door started

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going at it and,

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and I was awakened to the sound of a woman in ecstasy,

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and I thought isn't that ironic? So interesting.

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So let's begin with a discussion of what scientists called female cops,

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dilatory vocalization.

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It's a very dry phrase for something that we,

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we all know in love. Show of hands, if you dare,

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how many of you have heard a heterosexual couple having sex in the hotel

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room? The neighbors, God help us, our parents just about everyone. It seems.

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Okay. and how many of those cases was the man making more noise than the woman?

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Not a one. Very interesting. Isn't that?

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Now this is just one of many different pieces of data that we we recount in our

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book that point to the notion that human females are every

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bit as a little bitterness and sexual as the male,

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despite what we've been told for thousands of years you know, the stent,

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what we call the standard narrative in the book,

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posits that women are the discerning passive on interested

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part of the equation and what they're doing is sitting back and she was saying

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the best provider from among their potential suitors.

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Whereas the men are running around trying to you know, hump every leg.

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They can find like little dogs. In fact,

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what you find, if you look at the,

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the animal kingdom is that the human female is one of a very few

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number of species in which

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she is willing and able to have sex throughout her menstrual cycle and

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throughout her life cycle,

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whether or not that sex could possibly lead to pregnancy. In fact,

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if you think of the number of times you've had sex and divided by the number of

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children you have, if you're the least bit lucky,

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you're going to find a ratio of a thousand to one or more

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most animals, the gorilla, for example, a closely related primate,

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the females have sex 10 to 15 times per birth. No more than that.

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Most animals only have sex when the female is ovulating.

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So we can begin with this insight into the

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nearly unique nature of human sexuality,

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particularly as it pertains to female ability and

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readiness to engage in sexual acts,

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the only other there's only a handful of other animals that share this quality

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with humans, chimps, Bonobos, and dolphins,

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all of which are highly intelligent, highly social beings,

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which further reinforces the thesis in our book,

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which is that for human beings and these other species sex is not

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primarily about reproduction. You ask most people why we have sex.

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They say to have babies,

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but only 1% or less of our sex acts result in babies.

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And I'm sure all of us can think of some types of sex acts that can't possibly

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result in babies, right. And we engage in them with,

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with great enthusiasm. Okay. So these are,

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this is the the U S hardcover and paperback version.

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We've got the Australian version outside.

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Let's talk about the standard model. All right,

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the standard model, which is a story,

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all heard the standard narrative of human sexual evolution,

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posits that at the heart of male,

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female interaction is an economic exchange.

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Men are trading something, meat, shelter,

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protection status to a woman in exchange for her

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fidelity, her sexual exclusive access to her sexuality.

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And that's how men can assure their paternity of any children that resolved.

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Now, according to the standard narrative,

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this is something that's always been at the heart of human nature,

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this male obsession with female sexual behavior,

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as a way of controlling a paternity assuring paternity,

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what Casella and I argue in our book is that this obsession with female

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sexual behavior that we still see today,

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where women are being stoned to death in the desert for the crime of having been

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raped, right?

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It's still with us or shamed in high school because you wore a skirt

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that's a little too high,

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or because she had a boyfriend that somebody didn't approve of,

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we still see this happening.

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But what we argue in the book is that this isn't human nature.

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This is a response to a particular economic situation that our species found

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itself in no more than 10,000 years ago. With the advent of agriculture,

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it's very difficult for us to understand how radically our society's changed

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with the advent of agriculture pre agriculture.

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We're living in hunter gatherer bands no more than 150 people.

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Everyone knew each other quite well.

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And the central organizing principle of the hunter gatherer band,

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whether we're talking about Aboriginal Australia or the

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Amazon or the Inuits and Alaska is sharing,

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there's an African expression that cause Hilda told me the best place to stay to

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store extra food is in your friend's stomach, right?

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This is a common,

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nearly universal trait of hunter gatherer societies. Now,

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you might think that I'm making the argument that our ancestors were noble

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savages, this old tired argument. I'm not,

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I'm not saying that they shared things because they were inherently more

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generous than you.

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And I I'm saying that they shared things because it simply made more sense.

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It's a more efficient,

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effective way of organizing societies and a pre agricultural world in the

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post agricultural world, where you have accumulated resources,

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you have a harvest that has to be stored in protected and distributed.

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You have a house that you've spent years building.

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You have livestock that you've spent your life cultivating and growing the herd.

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You want to make sure that those things pass on to your children.

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So that's when it becomes important to control your wife's sexual behavior.

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It's not human nature. It's an economic response to agriculture. That's why,

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if you look in the old Testament, the line,

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we all know they'll shop in our covet, thy neighbor's wife, right?

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Seems like it's saying respect your neighbors marriage.

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But if you read it in context, it says nor his house,

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nor his servants, nor his is, she asks,

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I think is the actual word in the king James version nor his livestock.

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So it's about not coveting thy neighbor's stuff.

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It's not about respecting his marriage.

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So that's the standard narrative that we argue against in the book

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we people often say, well,

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how can you possibly know how our ancestors sex lives functions?

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There are no fossils of sexuality. So we look at four different areas.

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We look at primatology, particularly chimpanzees and Bonobos,

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which are equally related to humans. They're by far the closest related to us.

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In fact,

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they're more closely related to humans than the Indian elephant is to the

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African elephant. Okay?

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Very in terms of DNA and genetic drift,

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we're very closely related to them. Now you'll often hear about chimpanzees,

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particularly in a discussion of the primate origins of violence and things like

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this. And you know, whether or not warfare goes back into free history,

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but it's intellectually illegitimate to discuss these

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issues.

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Only mentioning the chimpanzee often termed our closest primate

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relative. It's not, as I was saying in a few minutes ago in the green room,

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it's like,

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if you have a brother who's in prison for murder and another brother who's

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working in, in Sudan, helping refugees and the completely selfless,

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wonderful guy. And when people talk about you,

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they only mention your brother in prison, right? Chimpanzees are violent.

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There's warfare, there's rape, there's infanticide.

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There's all sorts of nastiness in chimpanzee societies,

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but Banabos in over 40 years of observation in the wild and in captivity,

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not a single case of infanticide rape, murder,

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or lethal combat between groups has ever been witnessed. Now,

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I think that's relevant. But when you read about these things,

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you'll often hear chimpanzees our closest relative.

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There's a very political element to these discussions.

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So I hope all of you will remember that, but novos are equally relevant.

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Anthropology.

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We look particularly at societies that live presumably more or

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less the way our ancestors did because they're pre agricultural.

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There aren't many of them left,

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but we access as much of the information about those societies as we can.

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And we also look at first accounts from travelers and Jesuit missionaries and

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whatever sources of information we have,

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what you find is that they tend to be pretty relaxed sexually.

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And we can talk about that a little bit later in the Q and a,

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if you want some examples of those societies,

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we look at comparative primate anatomy, physiological response,

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which we'll talk about in a few moments,

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particularly if there's anyone here who's easily embarrassed.

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I won't be bothered if you get up and leave,

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because this could be pretty embarrassing if discussion of testicles and things

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like that bothers you. And then psychosexual reality.

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What turns us on what of pornography are we interested in?

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What sort of issues do people come to when they go to

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relationship counselors and things like that? Okay.

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So here, as I was saying, The,

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the line leading

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To chimps and Bonobos split off from the human line about seven, well,

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five to 7 million years ago, these things are very approximate.

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And then the chimps and Bonobos split one to 3 million years ago.

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So you can see any other sort of we have the, the gorilla down here,

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which is a harem based alpha male system and the

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orangutan, which is dispersed and the Gibbon, which is the only monogamous age.

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[inaudible] No a little bit more about bonobo social life.

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We know about the Chimp life. We've all read Jane Goodall and seen these,

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the documentaries on television.

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The bonobo social life is very different. It's female centered.

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You could even say female dominated, but interestingly,

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the way females wield power is different from the way males wield

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power,

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which leads to confusion in anthropological studies when anthropologists claim

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that there are no matriarchal societies in the world and there never could be.

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And it's absolutely impossible. A lot of that is because

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They're expecting a matriarchy to be a mirror image of a patriarchy.

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They're expecting to find women dominating men with their feet on their necks,

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the way men tend to dominate women.

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But what you find is that in societies where women have a lot of status equal,

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or even greater than male status, as in Bonobos, this society doesn't,

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isn't organized around dominance,

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it's much more collaborative and collective.

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And the males are in general,

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far better off in such societies,

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both human and animal. Yes. Do I have some applause there?

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I did it. I did an interview the other day for men's health magazine.

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And at the very beginning, I don't know if you're familiar with the magazine,

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but it sort of centers on how to get laid, I think is the main and the,

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at the beginning of the interview, the journalist said, look, I'm really sorry.

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You know, I have to tell you from the get go,

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this is going to be about how to use your book to get laid. I said, all right,

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we can work with that. So the whole article, I kept hammering the same nail,

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which is guys, if you want to get laid, make women feel safe,

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comfortable, relaxed, you know,

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just because she's dancing provocatively doesn't mean she wants to be with you

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just that, you know, the way she dresses, she's not sending you any messages,

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just chill out and things will work out fine.

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I don't know if they'll hear the message, but I sent it okay. So,

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but although society's very low stress,

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very high sex the great private tologist friends Deval

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put it succinctly.

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He said that chimpanzees use violence to get sex Bonobos use sex,

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to avoid violence.

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So there are two paths that that are our close relatives have taken

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very differently. No infanticide in murder, as I said,

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and no sexually exclusive pair bonding.

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Now you do find that among Bonobos, we use them we're promiscuous in our book,

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but we don't mean promiscuous in an uncaring casual sort of sense.

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What we mean is the original sense of the word, which is mixing.

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It doesn't mean unfeeling and Bonobos are extremely

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emotional, extremely soulful animals.

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So in no way, do we mean to say that Bonobos or the anthropology,

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the anthropological studies that we discuss?

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We're not saying there's unfeeling sex.

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Remember these people have known each other their whole lives.

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So they've gotten multiple sexual partners,

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but they're very deeply connected to all of them.

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And there can be unique relationships pair bonding.

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We're not arguing that pair bonding doesn't happen in our species,

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so that there's anything wrong with it when it does.

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But we're saying it's not necessarily sexually exclusive in societies that don't

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demand that now Bonobos sexuality features face-to-face sex.

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One of the only other species that, that do this, certainly one,

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one of the only primate species,

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other than us often female induced females are quite,

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libidinous all possible combinations except mother son.

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That's the only combination you won't see. But interestingly,

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the mother son relationship is the most enduring,

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profound relationship among Bonobos. In fact,

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a males status in the male ranking.

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Isn't determined by how big he is, how strong he is,

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how dominant he is over the other males.

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It's determined by where his mother's rank was or his and his mother's

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rank is determined by how much the other females like

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it's very interesting.

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So sex is used as an antidote to stress and conflict, as I said,

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and the ratio of sex acts of sex acts to birth is 500 to one

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or more. All right,

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now this is where easily embarrassed people need to leave or cover your eyes at

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least because we're going to see

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what happens when you throw some food into a group of Bonobos,

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particularly apples, which they very much love when you throw as a comparison.

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If you throw some food into an enclosure of chimpanzees,

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what happens is the dominant male will,

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or the males will take control of the food and share it with their

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henchmen. And maybe if there's an ovulating female around,

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she might get some because she's smelling pretty good.

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And depending on how much there is,

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it might a little bit might filter down to the babies and the other females.

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That's what happens when you throw some food into enclosure of chimps,

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we're going to see now what happens when you throw some food into an enclosure

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of Bonobos.

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<v 3>[Inaudible].</v>

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<v Christopher Ryan>But oboe handshake is a book written by an Australian woman named Vanessa woods,</v>

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which I'd recommend to you. If you're interested in knowing more about Bonobos,

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00:19:19.680 --> 00:19:24.390
her husband is a very well known primatologist and

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she knew nothing about Bonobos or primates in general when she

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agreed to marry him and move with him to Congo,

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which is that's love. And and she wrote a book about her experience,

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living with him there and working with the Bonobos. It's very interesting book.

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And she provided that, that film as well. Okay.

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Darwin was very interested in this question and, and, you know,

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the original title of our book when I was working on the manuscript was with

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Darwin, didn't know about sex.

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And the idea was to talk about how Darwin's the paucity of sexual

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experience in his life.

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Allowed him to have some pretty Victorian views of female sexuality.

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He married his cousin first cousin.

308
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And as far as anyone knows is the only woman he ever had

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Congress with. And I think it's the way you can say that.

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So he certainly didn't have a lot of experience and, you know,

311
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he had the chance, he was all around the south Pacific,

312
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but when the other men went on shore and Tahitian, whatever,

313
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he stayed on the boat and, you know, wrote his notes.

314
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But he was very interested by sexual swellings in chimpanzees and

315
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Bonobos at the time Darwin was writing.

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No one knew a difference between the two because

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it made him question the,

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the central assumption that females are not interested in sex and would never

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provoke sex that they're just sitting back, waiting for the men to fight it out.

320
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And then maybe making some sort of decision because the sexual swelling is

321
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obviously an invitation to sex.

322
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It's it provokes the males and that didn't fit into his

323
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understanding. So he was you know,

324
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our book is not at all a trashing of Darwin or arguing against him or

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insulting him in any way. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if he were alive today,

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he'd be the first to reassess his theories in light of all the information

327
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that's come to light since he wrote in 1860s.

328
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He was always very dependent on data and very interested

329
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and very willing to throw over his theories if,

330
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if new information presented itself. So,

331
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and he knew about some of the alternative theories at the time from Lewis,

332
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Henry Morgan and others,

333
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which you'll see if you read our book now sexual swellings,

334
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you know, if you're like me,

335
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which I hope you're not for your sake you look around and you just see horny

336
00:21:56.621 --> 00:21:59.290
primates everywhere. And I'm looking at you.

337
00:21:59.291 --> 00:22:02.680
I see a room full of horny primates here. You know, some of you are in denial,

338
00:22:02.681 --> 00:22:06.520
some less. So but you know,

339
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I look at something like this. I see chimpanzee sexual swellings,

340
00:22:10.480 --> 00:22:14.890
and it's not just in a Victorian society. I,

341
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this still exists today. I Beyonce. Does anyone know who Beyonce is?

342
00:22:19.690 --> 00:22:23.490
Or what was the other one is famous for her, but sorry,

343
00:22:25.500 --> 00:22:29.850
J lo J-Lo to Sylvia's daughter was visiting us.

344
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She's she's an adult. She was she's 23. Now she was 21,

345
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I think a couple of years ago I was working on the, And

346
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She's very curvy. And of course, as her stepfather,

347
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I'm not supposed to notice that.

348
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But at one point she said something, she was,

349
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she lives in Africa with her father and Mozambique,

350
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and she said something about how she was dancing. And people said,

351
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she looked like J-Lo. And I thought she said, jello.

352
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I said, you look like jello when you dance. I don't know.

353
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Is that an African thing? I don't know. No,

354
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J-Lo not jello anyway.

355
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That's neither here nor there.

356
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But here we have the butt bra.

357
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Now this is available online or in any fine lingerie distributor what

358
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is the point of this? Why would a woman wearable bra, you know,

359
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or get what are they, you know, butt implants.

360
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I don't even know what they're called, but they exist right now.

361
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What is that appealing to, if not this primitive sexual swelling

362
00:23:36.090 --> 00:23:39.750
You know, We can say, oh, it's just fashion. Well, but what is fashion?

363
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You know, dig, dig, dig, and you find chimpanzees and Bonobos.

364
00:23:46.070 --> 00:23:46.311
You know,

365
00:23:46.311 --> 00:23:51.080
why do women have what scientists insist on calling pendulous breasts,

366
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pendulous? There there's no,

367
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there's no reason that we have women have to have the fat cells in the

368
00:24:00.701 --> 00:24:04.600
breast. Lactation does not depend on the presence of those fat cells.

369
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It's completely separate.

370
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There's really no convincing explanation for the presence of the female breasts

371
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other than as a signaling device, a sexual signaling device.

372
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So when I hear women say, you know, men shouldn't look at my breasts,

373
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they're about giving them to babies. They're not about actually, no,

374
00:24:25.180 --> 00:24:28.540
I'm sorry. They are about attracting the attention of men.

375
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And they're very effective at that.

376
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The theory is that when our ancestors went from being on all fours or knuckle,

377
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walking as chimps and Bonobos,

378
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where the sexual swelling was behind and became upright,

379
00:24:41.620 --> 00:24:45.880
the sexual swelling shifted to the visual field where you're looking at someone

380
00:24:45.881 --> 00:24:49.780
who's upright, which is why the cleavage looks an awful lot, like a butt crack.

381
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I'm sorry, but it's true. All right.

382
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The, Now,

383
00:25:01.090 --> 00:25:04.630
first of all, I have to say, the Italian in question is a good friend of mine,

384
00:25:04.631 --> 00:25:09.250
and he permits me to use this photo and he lives in

385
00:25:09.251 --> 00:25:10.870
India. So he'll never know. Anyway.

386
00:25:12.460 --> 00:25:15.580
you might think that gorillas have huge testicles. In fact,

387
00:25:15.581 --> 00:25:18.520
a gorilla's testicles are about the size of kidney beans,

388
00:25:18.610 --> 00:25:20.890
and you can't even see them here. That's a gorilla.

389
00:25:20.891 --> 00:25:25.510
I photographed in Holland on a warm spring day, lying out in the sun.

390
00:25:25.900 --> 00:25:29.320
And if they're ever going to be visible, that's the time.

391
00:25:29.920 --> 00:25:32.620
And there's nothing there. They're about the size.

392
00:25:32.650 --> 00:25:35.620
They're very small and they're inside. They're tucked up in the body.

393
00:25:35.621 --> 00:25:39.970
They don't descend the way they do in chimps and humans and Bonobos the

394
00:25:39.971 --> 00:25:42.700
bonobo. I don't know if you, how well you can see,

395
00:25:42.701 --> 00:25:47.290
but a bonobo and a Chimp have testicles about the size of an extra

396
00:25:47.291 --> 00:25:49.870
large chicken. They're massive.

397
00:25:50.410 --> 00:25:53.650
And humans are somewhere in between Italians,

398
00:25:53.651 --> 00:25:58.120
closer to the banaba end of the scale. Apparently. Now this,

399
00:25:58.121 --> 00:26:00.030
the reason this is my favorite chart is it's,

400
00:26:00.031 --> 00:26:04.030
it's the only chart I've ever made that I have any,

401
00:26:04.570 --> 00:26:09.280
I'm not visually talented particularly,

402
00:26:09.640 --> 00:26:13.690
but this chart is full of information. Now, first of all,

403
00:26:13.990 --> 00:26:17.380
you'll note in the gorilla, the male is much bigger than the female.

404
00:26:17.410 --> 00:26:20.770
Same with the orangutan, roughly double the size of a female.

405
00:26:21.490 --> 00:26:26.260
The reason for this is that it's in species where the males fight each

406
00:26:26.261 --> 00:26:28.570
other for access to the females.

407
00:26:29.740 --> 00:26:33.640
The evolutionary pressure is on size and ferocity of the male.

408
00:26:33.641 --> 00:26:35.920
So they grow bigger and stronger over time.

409
00:26:37.930 --> 00:26:42.460
Whereas in strict more or less a monogamous

410
00:26:42.780 --> 00:26:45.930
species like the Gibbon, you'll see they're exactly the same size

411
00:26:47.870 --> 00:26:50.270
humans, chimps Bonobos,

412
00:26:50.300 --> 00:26:53.600
about 15 to 20% difference in body size.

413
00:26:54.260 --> 00:26:57.560
Now this indicates a promiscuous promiscuity.

414
00:26:57.561 --> 00:27:02.360
There's some competition between males, but not really much. In fact,

415
00:27:02.390 --> 00:27:07.250
the evolutionary pressure shifts from the individual male to the

416
00:27:07.280 --> 00:27:09.950
spermatic capacity of the male.

417
00:27:09.951 --> 00:27:13.610
And that's why the testicles grow much larger and evolve to be stronger.

418
00:27:13.611 --> 00:27:17.690
And that's why male humans produce so much more sperm than we can ever use.

419
00:27:19.340 --> 00:27:23.720
And the testicles are outside the body. As you see here, here and here,

420
00:27:23.750 --> 00:27:25.340
but inside the body here, here,

421
00:27:25.341 --> 00:27:28.400
and here you'd want them to be inside the body to protect you.

422
00:27:28.401 --> 00:27:30.440
When you're having all these fights with the other gorillas,

423
00:27:30.441 --> 00:27:32.390
you don't want your guys swinging in the breeze,

424
00:27:32.780 --> 00:27:37.310
but here it doesn't matter if they're outside because there's not that much

425
00:27:37.311 --> 00:27:41.720
conflict between males and they need to be outside the body in any case,

426
00:27:41.750 --> 00:27:46.640
because the lower temperature allows the sperm spermatozoa to last longer.

427
00:27:46.910 --> 00:27:47.930
So, as I say in the book,

428
00:27:47.931 --> 00:27:52.280
having external testicles is like having a special refrigerator in the garage,

429
00:27:52.310 --> 00:27:55.160
just for beer. You know,

430
00:27:55.161 --> 00:27:58.400
you're the sort of guy who expects a party to break out at any time.

431
00:27:58.401 --> 00:28:03.230
And you want to, you ready? Yeah.

432
00:28:03.231 --> 00:28:04.550
So what else do we have here? Here?

433
00:28:04.551 --> 00:28:07.550
We see the sexual swelling and the human female is here.

434
00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:11.030
And the Chimp and bonobo is here in the gorilla orangutan.

435
00:28:11.031 --> 00:28:14.540
And given there is no sexual swelling, right? Again,

436
00:28:14.541 --> 00:28:17.300
another indication of a permissive hewas species,

437
00:28:17.301 --> 00:28:21.320
or as primatologists referred to as multi male, multi female species.

438
00:28:21.960 --> 00:28:26.660
Also, you see here that chimps humans, chimps are human and Bonobos, sorry,

439
00:28:26.690 --> 00:28:30.470
face each other, having sex. The others are all rear entry.

440
00:28:31.100 --> 00:28:33.590
So there's also this sort of intimacy if,

441
00:28:33.830 --> 00:28:36.260
and also Bonobos they French kiss,

442
00:28:36.470 --> 00:28:40.310
which is grosser to me than the sex thing we saw earlier.

443
00:28:41.090 --> 00:28:44.360
They hold hands, they kiss each other's fingers and toes.

444
00:28:44.540 --> 00:28:49.220
They're extremely affectionate sweet animals. Okay.

445
00:28:49.250 --> 00:28:53.300
Now you know,

446
00:28:53.301 --> 00:28:57.110
this was just to show that it's not only primates that have external testicles,

447
00:28:57.111 --> 00:29:01.460
but it's also to remind myself that my life has come to a point where I'm

448
00:29:01.461 --> 00:29:05.870
showing slides of squirrels with and it's not just

449
00:29:05.871 --> 00:29:09.470
animals that have these external testicles. It's also

450
00:29:11.270 --> 00:29:13.160
Cars, At least in the United States.

451
00:29:13.550 --> 00:29:16.910
I don't know if you have this yet in Australia, but it's a, if not,

452
00:29:16.911 --> 00:29:19.100
it would be a wonderful import export opportunity.

453
00:29:22.550 --> 00:29:26.630
And so the last thing I want to say, you know,

454
00:29:26.660 --> 00:29:30.500
Arthur Miller had this great line about an era is over when its basic illusions

455
00:29:30.501 --> 00:29:31.430
have been exhausted.

456
00:29:32.270 --> 00:29:35.420
I guess what I want to leave you with is I want to make sure everyone

457
00:29:35.421 --> 00:29:39.560
understands that our book is not an argument against monogamy at all.

458
00:29:39.620 --> 00:29:44.020
My parents have been married for one years. Monogamously as far as I know.

459
00:29:44.021 --> 00:29:45.640
And if not, I don't want to know.

460
00:29:48.070 --> 00:29:52.630
We are in as much as I, as I'm arguing that we're a highly sexual species,

461
00:29:52.631 --> 00:29:57.280
perhaps the most sexual species on the planet, we're also a very loving species.

462
00:29:57.730 --> 00:30:00.910
And for some people,

463
00:30:00.970 --> 00:30:04.990
sex and love are necessarily part of the same package for other people.

464
00:30:04.990 --> 00:30:08.860
They're not, but wherever you fall on that spectrum

465
00:30:10.420 --> 00:30:15.280
it's important to understand that sexual long-term sexual monogamy comes

466
00:30:15.281 --> 00:30:19.990
as naturally to our species as vegetarianism. If you look at our teeth,

467
00:30:20.050 --> 00:30:23.470
you look at the chemicals in our saliva, you look at our digestive system.

468
00:30:23.500 --> 00:30:26.080
It's clear that we're omnivores.

469
00:30:26.290 --> 00:30:30.850
There's really no question that our ancestors evolved eating both meat and plant

470
00:30:30.851 --> 00:30:31.684
material.

471
00:30:33.220 --> 00:30:37.450
We're every bit as omnivorous in terms of sexuality,

472
00:30:37.600 --> 00:30:40.150
as we are in terms of our diets.

473
00:30:40.750 --> 00:30:45.040
So the fact that you choose to live as a vegetarian,

474
00:30:45.070 --> 00:30:48.460
doesn't make you an herbivore. It makes you an omnivore.

475
00:30:48.580 --> 00:30:51.820
Who's choosing to live as a vegetarian, as an herbivore.

476
00:30:52.180 --> 00:30:55.540
So making the choice to be a vegetarian,

477
00:30:55.541 --> 00:31:00.070
it doesn't mean that barbecue suddenly stopped smelling. Good, right?

478
00:31:00.370 --> 00:31:05.350
So our message isn't that you should go out and become swingers or have

479
00:31:05.351 --> 00:31:08.530
an open relationship or whatever our message is,

480
00:31:08.531 --> 00:31:12.760
simply choose whatever path you're choosing with knowledge,

481
00:31:12.790 --> 00:31:13.810
with compassion,

482
00:31:13.960 --> 00:31:16.930
and with the understanding that you're going to face certain challenges.

483
00:31:17.080 --> 00:31:20.590
If your decision conflicts with your evolved design,

484
00:31:21.500 --> 00:31:22.990
I'll leave you with that thought. Thank you.

485
00:31:28.320 --> 00:31:31.500
<v Faith Liddell>Nope. We've got some people leaving venues for breakfast.</v>

486
00:31:31.650 --> 00:31:32.970
We're obviously a little bit off putting,

487
00:31:34.140 --> 00:31:37.440
and now there's a microphone just here,

488
00:31:37.441 --> 00:31:39.510
near the front and then up at the back.

489
00:31:40.260 --> 00:31:44.430
So don't be shy just if you could start to prepare and come up to my phone and

490
00:31:44.431 --> 00:31:48.930
just to get us started, I thought I'd just ask you, you know, the philosophers,

491
00:31:48.931 --> 00:31:50.730
evolutionary psychologists,

492
00:31:51.870 --> 00:31:56.820
the primatologists you've kind of knocked quite a lot of them off their perches,

493
00:31:57.180 --> 00:32:00.930
a in the process of kind of coming up with this alternative narrative.

494
00:32:00.931 --> 00:32:05.550
I just wondered how they have reacted to your your book-in.

495
00:32:05.940 --> 00:32:06.600
Well.

496
00:32:06.600 --> 00:32:10.230
<v Christopher Ryan>That's a good question. Unfortunately, most of them haven't reacted at all.</v>

497
00:32:11.460 --> 00:32:15.480
I was kind of hoping we'd get into a big dispute with Steven Pinker in the New

498
00:32:15.480 --> 00:32:19.890
York times or something, but not yet. I keep, I keep provoking him.

499
00:32:19.891 --> 00:32:24.150
He hasn't responded, but I'll tell you a lovely story about this,

500
00:32:24.151 --> 00:32:27.380
which is that just before maybe two,

501
00:32:27.381 --> 00:32:29.590
two or three months before the manuscript was,

502
00:32:29.591 --> 00:32:34.140
was finished Kilda and I were talking about this

503
00:32:34.141 --> 00:32:36.330
question, like, how are people going to respond to this?

504
00:32:36.480 --> 00:32:38.940
And of course we didn't know, the book was going to be a bestseller.

505
00:32:38.960 --> 00:32:41.690
We're completely unknown. It's our first book.

506
00:32:42.150 --> 00:32:45.890
We were just happy that it was being published. We had no expectations at all.

507
00:32:46.880 --> 00:32:51.270
But I did feel, you know, cause Hilda says, you know, w what about friends,

508
00:32:51.860 --> 00:32:52.910
Deval and Helen Fisher,

509
00:32:52.940 --> 00:32:56.540
who are two people that we don't criticize them personally, of course,

510
00:32:56.541 --> 00:32:58.490
but we disagree with some of their conclusions,

511
00:32:58.670 --> 00:33:03.290
but we use a lot of their research to build our own arguments. Right.

512
00:33:03.890 --> 00:33:06.950
And they're both primatologists she's an anthropologist,

513
00:33:06.951 --> 00:33:09.920
he's a primatologist and he's actually an, a fault ethnologist,

514
00:33:09.921 --> 00:33:14.900
but he works with primates. And so I thought,

515
00:33:14.901 --> 00:33:16.730
well, you know, I want to, I'm going to write to them.

516
00:33:16.731 --> 00:33:18.680
So I wrote to both of them and I said, look,

517
00:33:18.681 --> 00:33:22.730
we've got this manuscript coming out. We very much respect your work,

518
00:33:22.790 --> 00:33:24.800
but we do disagree with some of your conclusions.

519
00:33:25.070 --> 00:33:29.360
So I'd be happy to send you the material that's relevant to you,

520
00:33:29.361 --> 00:33:30.650
where we talk about your work.

521
00:33:30.950 --> 00:33:34.640
And if you think we're being unfair or we're missing something,

522
00:33:35.060 --> 00:33:39.200
I'd love to hear it. And, you know, I don't know if that's ethical. I mean,

523
00:33:39.201 --> 00:33:42.710
I don't really know whatever some people have said that was dishonest of me to

524
00:33:42.711 --> 00:33:45.920
do that. I don't really know why, but anyway, so I sent it off.

525
00:33:45.950 --> 00:33:48.650
Helen Fisher was too busy. She said, thanks. But I don't have time.

526
00:33:49.100 --> 00:33:52.010
Friends live all wrote back. And he said, okay, well,

527
00:33:52.011 --> 00:33:54.860
this is pretty interesting, but I think you're missing this. And you know,

528
00:33:54.861 --> 00:33:56.930
what about that? And then I wrote back and we, yeah,

529
00:33:56.931 --> 00:33:58.700
we looked at this and what about that study?

530
00:33:58.701 --> 00:34:03.050
And we went back and forth a few times and then he said, well,

531
00:34:03.110 --> 00:34:05.300
I don't know. You might be right. You might be wrong,

532
00:34:05.301 --> 00:34:06.740
but it's certainly an interesting book.

533
00:34:06.770 --> 00:34:11.120
And this is the sort of discussion we need to have and good luck.

534
00:34:11.750 --> 00:34:16.430
And I said, could I quote you publicly? And he said, sure.

535
00:34:16.790 --> 00:34:18.770
So on the back of the U S edition,

536
00:34:18.771 --> 00:34:21.560
there's a blurb from friends of the wall saying what might be right.

537
00:34:21.561 --> 00:34:25.430
Might be wrong, but it's a hell of an interesting book. And to me, that science,

538
00:34:25.640 --> 00:34:27.380
you know, he's not personally invested.

539
00:34:27.381 --> 00:34:31.010
He doesn't care if he ends up being right or wrong about every little thing he's

540
00:34:31.011 --> 00:34:35.130
written, what he cares about is moving the discussion forward. And,

541
00:34:35.360 --> 00:34:40.160
and that's the approach that I hope I'll always take as well. Yes.

542
00:34:40.550 --> 00:34:41.350
Question. Thank.

543
00:34:41.350 --> 00:34:42.610
<v Faith Liddell>You. That was really fabulous.</v>

544
00:34:43.420 --> 00:34:47.380
I'd like to hear what you've learned about the face-to-face six and the thing of

545
00:34:47.381 --> 00:34:50.360
feelings and six and what, what,

546
00:34:50.370 --> 00:34:54.880
what you've understood about that space of intimacy and sexuality. You know,

547
00:34:54.881 --> 00:34:58.870
it's a very vexed question between men and women about women always clamoring

548
00:34:58.871 --> 00:35:00.610
for more feeling. And, you know,

549
00:35:00.640 --> 00:35:04.480
men are pretty strong on quickies and everybody cooperates and, you know,

550
00:35:04.481 --> 00:35:05.860
transacts around all of that,

551
00:35:05.890 --> 00:35:09.190
but often not with enough satisfaction about the end.

552
00:35:09.191 --> 00:35:11.290
So what have we learned from the Bonobos,

553
00:35:11.291 --> 00:35:14.740
or what have you come to understand from your study of this area about that

554
00:35:14.741 --> 00:35:17.380
feeling of that space of six and feeling?

555
00:35:18.640 --> 00:35:23.200
<v Christopher Ryan>That's an interesting, interesting question. Not, you know,</v>

556
00:35:23.201 --> 00:35:27.880
obviously we can't really know what Bonobos are feeling, right.

557
00:35:28.300 --> 00:35:30.940
Just we're looking at them from outside.

558
00:35:31.990 --> 00:35:35.590
But there does seem to be in bonobo societies.

559
00:35:36.490 --> 00:35:41.490
And I say advisedly friends of all writes very much about the culture of

560
00:35:41.491 --> 00:35:42.930
Bonobos and chimpanzees.

561
00:35:43.590 --> 00:35:48.300
And I think they deserve to be considered cultured beings because they do

562
00:35:48.301 --> 00:35:52.050
transmit knowledge through the generations. There are many examples of this

563
00:35:54.210 --> 00:35:57.120
you know, in, in bonobo societies, you see

564
00:35:59.100 --> 00:36:04.080
deep affection that sometimes relates to sexuality and sometimes

565
00:36:04.081 --> 00:36:08.850
doesn't, and I think that carries over into our species as well.

566
00:36:08.851 --> 00:36:13.740
And in the book I write that sex and love are like wine and

567
00:36:13.741 --> 00:36:17.550
cheese. You know, they go great together, but if you're really hungry,

568
00:36:17.551 --> 00:36:19.260
a piece of cheese is pretty good, you know?

569
00:36:19.710 --> 00:36:24.510
And and I don't think there's anything shameful about that. I think we've,

570
00:36:24.540 --> 00:36:29.280
we've been indoctrinated with a lot of teachings that really don't have

571
00:36:29.281 --> 00:36:31.470
our best interest at heart.

572
00:36:33.000 --> 00:36:37.950
It's been very interesting to see the responses from women readers to the

573
00:36:37.951 --> 00:36:40.080
book, because I mean,

574
00:36:40.081 --> 00:36:43.080
the whole response to the book is completely different from what I expected.

575
00:36:43.110 --> 00:36:47.580
I expected 50% irate screaming, conservative,

576
00:36:47.610 --> 00:36:48.930
you know, how dare you.

577
00:36:49.980 --> 00:36:54.840
It's been about 5% anger, 95% positive.

578
00:36:56.610 --> 00:37:01.230
I expected a lot of men saying, Hey, yeah, man, right. You know,

579
00:37:01.530 --> 00:37:05.220
this is, this is why I'm a horny dude. And most women saying, oh,

580
00:37:05.221 --> 00:37:08.550
this is just a, you know, an agenda male agenda, whatever. In fact,

581
00:37:08.580 --> 00:37:13.230
we've gotten more emails from women thanking us for the book than for men we've

582
00:37:13.231 --> 00:37:18.000
even gotten emails more than one from women saying I had to stop and every 10

583
00:37:18.001 --> 00:37:21.560
pages, seriously,

584
00:37:22.310 --> 00:37:26.210
that one blew my mind. Because it's,

585
00:37:26.260 --> 00:37:30.710
it's not really a sexy book. I mean, there's no, you know

586
00:37:35.210 --> 00:37:39.170
could be you're not getting back to some of these women saying, you know,

587
00:37:39.171 --> 00:37:43.970
w what's your phone number? No, no saying, I'm saying, Y you know,

588
00:37:43.971 --> 00:37:45.020
what, what was sexy?

589
00:37:45.070 --> 00:37:49.820
And they S they said that it would just felt liberating that they thought there

590
00:37:49.821 --> 00:37:53.450
was something wrong with them. They, you know, that there, they felt like, oh,

591
00:37:53.480 --> 00:37:56.840
I'm much more near than a woman's supposed to be. And that, you know,

592
00:37:56.850 --> 00:37:59.780
just sort of brought it out and left them feeling liberated.

593
00:38:00.170 --> 00:38:03.980
So I didn't talk about other societies and the anthropological stuff,

594
00:38:04.010 --> 00:38:07.850
but there are some fascinating studies of other cysts of a hunter gatherer

595
00:38:07.851 --> 00:38:12.680
societies in which women are not shamed. And they feel, in fact,

596
00:38:12.681 --> 00:38:13.910
there's a wonderful,

597
00:38:14.000 --> 00:38:18.530
I don't know how much you're okay with finding there's a ritual we

598
00:38:19.130 --> 00:38:23.900
describe, and I think it's the kulina in Brazil where the women

599
00:38:24.530 --> 00:38:28.940
will get up in the morning and the men are just lazy bastards as, you know,

600
00:38:29.060 --> 00:38:32.630
whatever society we're lazy and they're lying around in their hammocks.

601
00:38:32.630 --> 00:38:33.830
And the women will say, okay,

602
00:38:34.730 --> 00:38:37.150
we need guys to go hunting because it's been a while.

603
00:38:37.350 --> 00:38:39.670
And so they'll get together at Dawn.

604
00:38:39.700 --> 00:38:44.200
And they go around in the village from hut to hut and they sang very suggestive

605
00:38:44.201 --> 00:38:49.150
songs, which basically translate to, we want meet you lazy guys,

606
00:38:49.151 --> 00:38:52.120
never give us enough meat, go, you know, bring us some meat, blah, blah, blah.

607
00:38:52.150 --> 00:38:54.040
And while they're singing the song,

608
00:38:54.140 --> 00:38:58.900
a woman will go up and bang on a man's hut or on the post where his

609
00:38:58.901 --> 00:39:02.920
hammock is strong. Meaning that if you come back with me today,

610
00:39:02.921 --> 00:39:07.330
I'll sleep with you tonight. Right? And you can't bang on the hotter, the,

611
00:39:07.390 --> 00:39:11.050
or the post of the man you're sleeping with at the time, your normal partner,

612
00:39:11.051 --> 00:39:13.690
it has to be someone new right. To motivate them.

613
00:39:14.050 --> 00:39:18.370
So then the men will get up and grumble and complain. And by the way,

614
00:39:18.371 --> 00:39:21.640
if a man doesn't want to have sex with that woman, he'll pretend he's ill.

615
00:39:22.720 --> 00:39:26.200
So no one's feelings get hurt, bad stomach.

616
00:39:27.400 --> 00:39:30.070
But anyway, so then the men, we'll, we'll all complain and they'll,

617
00:39:30.100 --> 00:39:32.920
they'll leave the village together.

618
00:39:33.730 --> 00:39:37.300
But they hunt dispersed because they make too much noise and they have a better

619
00:39:37.301 --> 00:39:39.430
chance, but before they disperse, they agree.

620
00:39:39.431 --> 00:39:42.610
They'll meet at a certain point at a certain time of day before they go back

621
00:39:42.611 --> 00:39:45.790
into the village. So then they'll spread out, they'll go out. These people,

622
00:39:45.970 --> 00:39:49.150
hunt monkeys, mostly a couple of them will kill monkeys. And most of them won't,

623
00:39:49.360 --> 00:39:51.550
they come back, they cut up the monkeys.

624
00:39:51.640 --> 00:39:56.200
So every man has a piece of meat when they go back to the village and the women

625
00:39:56.201 --> 00:39:59.440
don't know who killed what, and they'll sling the meat down.

626
00:39:59.590 --> 00:40:02.080
And that we quote directly from the anthropologist cause his,

627
00:40:02.230 --> 00:40:06.610
his account is so funny. It's very dry academic, but he, you know,

628
00:40:06.611 --> 00:40:11.110
they sling the meat down with smug expressions and then the women will cook it

629
00:40:11.111 --> 00:40:12.540
and everyone eats. And then they'll,

630
00:40:12.541 --> 00:40:16.510
they'll go off into their various places and have sex. And at the end,

631
00:40:16.511 --> 00:40:20.350
he says the kulina engage in this ritual quite often.

632
00:40:20.351 --> 00:40:21.580
And in quite good humor.

633
00:40:24.780 --> 00:40:28.410
<v Faith Liddell>Well, one of the myths you just don't bust is women's need for intimacy,</v>

634
00:40:28.411 --> 00:40:32.310
but we might come back in a minute to erotic plasticity in women as well.

635
00:40:32.820 --> 00:40:34.650
Do you want to ask your question? Yeah.

636
00:40:34.830 --> 00:40:37.950
So I was wondering if you would comment on pornography and its growth on the

637
00:40:37.951 --> 00:40:38.784
internet.

638
00:40:39.420 --> 00:40:43.110
<v Christopher Ryan>Yes. Well, porn not, we talk about pornography a bit in the book.</v>

639
00:40:44.100 --> 00:40:45.900
Pornography has driven

640
00:40:47.610 --> 00:40:52.410
virtually every one of these technical advances in communications

641
00:40:52.470 --> 00:40:54.420
in the last few decades.

642
00:40:54.421 --> 00:40:57.840
There's a book called the erotic engine that talks about this in detail,

643
00:40:58.610 --> 00:40:59.443
that the advent of,

644
00:40:59.490 --> 00:41:03.690
of VHS home movie recording you know,

645
00:41:03.990 --> 00:41:08.460
watching tapes at home the well even projected and

646
00:41:08.461 --> 00:41:11.760
projecting, you were talking about early 20th century pornography.

647
00:41:12.120 --> 00:41:16.680
The money for these new technologies initially comes from the porn industry

648
00:41:17.130 --> 00:41:19.380
and then Hollywood comes in afterwards.

649
00:41:21.240 --> 00:41:25.920
So the internet was driven in its early years by this hunger for porn and

650
00:41:26.161 --> 00:41:30.090
and the huge amount of money to be made there. I,

651
00:41:30.170 --> 00:41:32.430
I see it as yet. Another

652
00:41:34.010 --> 00:41:38.990
of just how sexual we are, how libidinous we are as a species.

653
00:41:38.991 --> 00:41:43.070
And yet we've got these social institutions that are, you know,

654
00:41:43.071 --> 00:41:47.720
trying to keep a lid on it. And when, you know, when you repress these energies,

655
00:41:47.960 --> 00:41:49.340
they're going to be expressed.

656
00:41:49.370 --> 00:41:53.630
The problem is that they're expressed in perverted twisted

657
00:41:53.840 --> 00:41:57.740
destructive ways. But they will come out. And I, you know,

658
00:41:57.741 --> 00:41:58.930
I think I look at the,

659
00:41:58.931 --> 00:42:02.540
the scandal in the Catholic church that's been going on for thousands of years.

660
00:42:02.541 --> 00:42:05.660
It's come delight in the last couple of, you know, the last decade or two,

661
00:42:06.230 --> 00:42:11.120
but this is what happens when you take an extremely sexualized

662
00:42:11.121 --> 00:42:11.954
animal,

663
00:42:12.050 --> 00:42:16.220
an animal that experiences at sexuality to its toes,

664
00:42:16.250 --> 00:42:21.080
literally to its toes, our toes curl when we have orgasms. That's the one way,

665
00:42:21.380 --> 00:42:25.850
gentlemen, if you want to know if she's faking, look at her toes now, of course,

666
00:42:25.851 --> 00:42:28.490
I've just ruined it for you. If you're with a woman in this audience,

667
00:42:28.491 --> 00:42:30.560
because now she'll do it on purpose. But

668
00:42:33.170 --> 00:42:37.430
the reason our toes curl is it goes right back to our ancestors in the trees

669
00:42:37.431 --> 00:42:40.250
millions of years ago, if you're having an orgasm,

670
00:42:40.251 --> 00:42:42.080
the last thing you want to do is fall out of the tree.

671
00:42:44.390 --> 00:42:47.360
So you grab on you, hold on till it's over.

672
00:42:49.370 --> 00:42:54.130
<v Faith Liddell>Can you say a little bit about male reactions and female reactions to</v>

673
00:42:54.131 --> 00:42:57.910
pornography as well? I think it's, I think that's a really interesting,

674
00:42:57.940 --> 00:42:58.361
and again,

675
00:42:58.361 --> 00:43:02.590
going back to our kind of prehistoric roots about what men are compelled by,

676
00:43:02.591 --> 00:43:05.710
and then actually the range of what women are compelled by. Well.

677
00:43:05.710 --> 00:43:08.470
<v Christopher Ryan>Women are, women are fascinating.</v>

678
00:43:08.471 --> 00:43:12.310
I say that as a scientist and as just a regular guy.

679
00:43:14.260 --> 00:43:19.060
For example I think you're referring to the studies by Meredith chevres where

680
00:43:19.090 --> 00:43:19.923
she,

681
00:43:21.010 --> 00:43:25.360
she got straight and gay men and women

682
00:43:25.870 --> 00:43:30.820
hook them up to genital blood flow monitors. Okay. So these are,

683
00:43:30.850 --> 00:43:34.840
these are devices that actually measure the diversion of blood flowing into

684
00:43:34.841 --> 00:43:35.980
your, your genitals,

685
00:43:35.981 --> 00:43:40.420
which tells you how physiologically excited you are by something.

686
00:43:40.870 --> 00:43:42.400
And then they also on the table,

687
00:43:42.401 --> 00:43:46.510
they had a dial where they would indicate on the dial, how turned on.

688
00:43:46.511 --> 00:43:48.100
They were by whatever they were watching.

689
00:43:48.610 --> 00:43:53.470
And she showed these people gay porn, gay, male porn, lesbian porn,

690
00:43:53.471 --> 00:43:58.420
straight porn hot men and women just walking down the beach or

691
00:43:58.421 --> 00:44:01.540
working out in a gym. So sort of like sec, make me, you know,

692
00:44:02.380 --> 00:44:06.070
attractive people been in a non-sexual setting.

693
00:44:06.400 --> 00:44:08.200
And she also showed them bonobo porn.

694
00:44:09.250 --> 00:44:13.660
And and what she found was that the men

695
00:44:13.930 --> 00:44:18.910
both gay and straight and the lesbians all were turned on by what

696
00:44:18.911 --> 00:44:22.450
you would expect. So the gay men were turned on by the gay porn,

697
00:44:22.451 --> 00:44:26.620
but not really by the lesbian porn the straight porn, you know,

698
00:44:26.621 --> 00:44:29.080
when the guy came into the room, the gay guys like that, you know?

699
00:44:29.081 --> 00:44:32.640
And so it sort of fell where you would, it did, and also their,

700
00:44:33.300 --> 00:44:36.690
their indicators on the dial matched what was happening in their genitalia.

701
00:44:37.140 --> 00:44:41.100
The straight women would indicate what you would expect, you know, oh,

702
00:44:41.101 --> 00:44:43.860
I like the straight porn. I didn't like that. I liked that. I liked that,

703
00:44:43.890 --> 00:44:46.110
but their genitalia showed they were turned on by everything.

704
00:44:48.500 --> 00:44:51.950
Mm we're. Consciously aware of it. It's not that they were lying.

705
00:44:51.951 --> 00:44:56.900
It's just that there's a disconnect in particularly in straight women

706
00:44:57.230 --> 00:45:01.580
and nominally straight women, because actually the,

707
00:45:01.581 --> 00:45:06.470
the sort of logical conclusion from this is that a lot of women

708
00:45:06.471 --> 00:45:10.160
who consider themselves to be straight are actually bisexual. That,

709
00:45:10.190 --> 00:45:15.140
that a woman's sort of more typical point on the Kinsey

710
00:45:15.141 --> 00:45:19.160
scale is like in the middle. Whereas men tend to separate out there.

711
00:45:19.430 --> 00:45:24.130
There are fewer truly bisexual men, you know, with men, the,

712
00:45:24.131 --> 00:45:27.080
the curve would look like this. Whereas with women, it looks like this.

713
00:45:29.270 --> 00:45:29.691
And other,

714
00:45:29.691 --> 00:45:34.610
a convergent example is someone gave testosterone shots

715
00:45:34.880 --> 00:45:37.610
to gay and straight men and women.

716
00:45:38.030 --> 00:45:41.990
And they found that the gay men, when they got the testosterone,

717
00:45:41.991 --> 00:45:46.760
surge became more focused on men, the straight men became more focused on women.

718
00:45:47.090 --> 00:45:50.660
That lesbians became more focused on women and the straight women became more

719
00:45:50.661 --> 00:45:51.650
focused on everybody.

720
00:45:55.250 --> 00:45:58.310
<v Faith Liddell>Next question. Fascinating. Thank you, Christopher.</v>

721
00:45:58.550 --> 00:46:01.880
I believe you said that Gibbons are the only monogamous apes,

722
00:46:02.210 --> 00:46:06.920
what differing selection processes were there compared between the

723
00:46:06.921 --> 00:46:09.890
Gibbons and compared with the other apes, you mean evolutionary.

724
00:46:09.890 --> 00:46:12.680
<v Christopher Ryan>Selection pressures. That's a very good question, which,</v>

725
00:46:12.710 --> 00:46:17.300
which I haven't considered, honestly. The Gibbons are the only Asian ape,

726
00:46:17.780 --> 00:46:20.660
which could have something to do with they live in Southeast Asia.

727
00:46:20.930 --> 00:46:25.460
And in fact since the book was published just a year

728
00:46:25.461 --> 00:46:30.440
ago some researchers have started to

729
00:46:30.441 --> 00:46:35.420
indicate that some subspecies of given aren't actually monogamous with it's very

730
00:46:35.421 --> 00:46:39.590
difficult to study Gibbons because they live up in tree tops.

731
00:46:39.650 --> 00:46:41.540
They're in very small social groups.

732
00:46:42.080 --> 00:46:46.940
It's just a male female in there and they're young and they're very quiet.

733
00:46:46.970 --> 00:46:49.340
They don't make any noise at all when they have sex.

734
00:46:49.341 --> 00:46:51.020
So you can't even spot them that way.

735
00:46:52.730 --> 00:46:57.500
In fact of the hundreds of species of primates primates around the

736
00:46:57.501 --> 00:46:58.370
world,

737
00:46:59.210 --> 00:47:03.800
do you know how many social group living primates are

738
00:47:03.801 --> 00:47:07.880
monogamous that is in living in groups with more than one male?

739
00:47:08.060 --> 00:47:12.800
So not like gorillas where there's one male and not one,

740
00:47:14.000 --> 00:47:15.590
not one except us,

741
00:47:15.650 --> 00:47:20.240
if you believe the propaganda or their propaganda, I guess my books,

742
00:47:20.241 --> 00:47:24.440
propaganda too, but it's extremely,

743
00:47:24.441 --> 00:47:28.130
extremely rare or, or doesn't exist at all.

744
00:47:29.080 --> 00:47:32.620
So yeah, I, I can't really tell you what the selection pressures were,

745
00:47:32.650 --> 00:47:35.010
but yeah, it's, it's,

746
00:47:35.011 --> 00:47:38.890
it's interesting and they may not in fact be monogamous it. Yeah.

747
00:47:40.110 --> 00:47:41.590
<v Faith Liddell>Great. Yes. Thank you.</v>

748
00:47:42.580 --> 00:47:44.230
<v Christopher Ryan>How come all the questions are from women?</v>

749
00:47:46.730 --> 00:47:49.770
<v Faith Liddell>And just start by saying, it's interesting that we're everyone speaking so far,</v>

750
00:47:49.771 --> 00:47:53.460
it's women, I'm probably the oldest woman to have spoken as yet though,

751
00:47:53.820 --> 00:47:55.650
significantly older than you are.

752
00:47:55.651 --> 00:48:00.360
I would think one thing that hasn't been touched on is the extreme

753
00:48:00.870 --> 00:48:05.640
change in sexual habits and so on since I was a

754
00:48:05.641 --> 00:48:10.470
child and since I was, you know, extremely horny as a teenager,

755
00:48:10.530 --> 00:48:14.760
and you couldn't do anything because you were so incredibly scared about getting

756
00:48:14.761 --> 00:48:18.720
pregnant, that was what stopped us now, of course,

757
00:48:19.050 --> 00:48:22.770
our teenagers and so on, very promiscuous.

758
00:48:22.771 --> 00:48:25.740
Do you think this is going to have any law? You know,

759
00:48:25.920 --> 00:48:28.620
how do you see that from your point of view?

760
00:48:29.700 --> 00:48:33.720
<v Christopher Ryan>Well, I, I, I certainly,</v>

761
00:48:33.840 --> 00:48:36.120
I don't know how masturbation was seen.

762
00:48:36.750 --> 00:48:41.250
<v Faith Liddell>That was also considered to be rather wicked, but also much less satisfactory.</v>

763
00:48:43.440 --> 00:48:46.890
I was not that I was able to experience the real thing.

764
00:48:47.640 --> 00:48:50.640
And when I did, of course, I got pregnant straight away. So.

765
00:48:52.140 --> 00:48:56.460
<v Christopher Ryan>There you go. Well, you know, I think that</v>

766
00:48:58.080 --> 00:49:02.790
first of all, I need to say, I don't have children. So to get that on the table,

767
00:49:02.791 --> 00:49:05.220
it's very easy for someone to talk about how to raise kids.

768
00:49:05.340 --> 00:49:08.070
There's never had kids, right? So I want to admit that.

769
00:49:09.030 --> 00:49:12.810
But I think that if you look at the United States,

770
00:49:12.811 --> 00:49:17.160
you look at the parts of the country that have sex education programs and the

771
00:49:17.161 --> 00:49:21.000
parts of the country that have what they call abstinence only programs.

772
00:49:21.180 --> 00:49:25.470
They call it sex ed, but essentially the message is just, don't just, don't,

773
00:49:25.710 --> 00:49:26.543
don't, you know,

774
00:49:26.700 --> 00:49:30.390
they don't talk about why they don't talk about ways to get around it.

775
00:49:30.391 --> 00:49:34.650
They don't talk about ways to have sex that other than intercourse, you know,

776
00:49:34.651 --> 00:49:37.170
they just don't, they're all embarrassed and they don't talk about it.

777
00:49:38.610 --> 00:49:41.790
Those are the parts of the country that have the highest rates of STDs,

778
00:49:41.820 --> 00:49:43.440
the highest rates of teen pregnancy,

779
00:49:43.441 --> 00:49:46.620
the highest rates of sexual violence against girls and so on.

780
00:49:47.100 --> 00:49:51.810
So I think it's quite clear both looking at regions of the United States and

781
00:49:51.840 --> 00:49:56.430
looking internationally places like Holland, Sweden, Finland,

782
00:49:56.431 --> 00:50:01.290
and so on, where they have extensive sex education programs in the schools,

783
00:50:01.291 --> 00:50:05.310
they have condoms available easily available for free, you know,

784
00:50:05.400 --> 00:50:08.910
kids don't have to go into the drug store and feel embarrassed and so on.

785
00:50:09.600 --> 00:50:14.460
Those are the places that have the fewest number of problems for kids

786
00:50:14.490 --> 00:50:16.770
facing these things. Now,

787
00:50:17.100 --> 00:50:22.080
whether or not the kids are emotionally prepared for this is

788
00:50:22.081 --> 00:50:25.440
something that, that I can't answer. But again,

789
00:50:25.441 --> 00:50:30.110
it seems that in societies that have less shame and more

790
00:50:30.111 --> 00:50:34.580
openness about these discussions, the kids mature more quickly.

791
00:50:34.581 --> 00:50:39.320
I was reading an article recently about how common it is in Holland

792
00:50:39.830 --> 00:50:41.420
for 14,

793
00:50:41.421 --> 00:50:45.260
15 year old girls to have their boyfriends over and actually sleep in the house

794
00:50:45.261 --> 00:50:50.000
with them because the parents approach is, look, they're going to do it anyway.

795
00:50:50.240 --> 00:50:53.150
I want to know this guy. I want to meet him.

796
00:50:53.450 --> 00:50:57.890
I want to be part of this, you know, make sure everything's okay.

797
00:50:57.950 --> 00:51:01.250
And you know, they're gonna, they're going to do it upstairs in her room,

798
00:51:01.251 --> 00:51:03.050
or they're gonna do it in the car,

799
00:51:03.051 --> 00:51:06.140
or they're going to do it at some friend's house. And if they're doing it here,

800
00:51:06.320 --> 00:51:09.170
at least I'll know the person. And, and you know,

801
00:51:09.980 --> 00:51:14.600
it won't require breaking my contact with my daughter or son

802
00:51:15.020 --> 00:51:17.030
for them to take this step into adulthood,

803
00:51:17.031 --> 00:51:19.400
which frankly they're going to take whether we like it or not.

804
00:51:19.880 --> 00:51:23.450
So I do think there's something to that. We also, sorry, just quickly,

805
00:51:23.451 --> 00:51:28.070
we also talk in the book about a study done by James Prescott that

806
00:51:28.071 --> 00:51:32.870
shows that the more freedom there is in adolescent

807
00:51:32.871 --> 00:51:37.400
sexual behavior, the less violence there is in societies across the board.

808
00:51:38.030 --> 00:51:39.320
So there's a connection between.

809
00:51:39.320 --> 00:51:42.730
<v Faith Liddell>The two. Thank you. Now we've got very little time.</v>

810
00:51:42.910 --> 00:51:47.050
We've got two more questions and three more questions. Oh, can we,

811
00:51:47.080 --> 00:51:49.750
can we take them in a row and then quickly answer, all right,

812
00:51:49.780 --> 00:51:50.860
can you manage three at a time?

813
00:51:50.980 --> 00:51:51.813
<v Christopher Ryan>We'll just.</v>

814
00:51:53.290 --> 00:51:55.410
<v Faith Liddell>I'll try and remember them if we can make them quick so we can get through.</v>

815
00:51:55.510 --> 00:51:57.430
And we have a man as well, which is great.

816
00:51:58.090 --> 00:52:02.860
So let's take them all in a row and we'll try and answer them. Well,

817
00:52:02.890 --> 00:52:06.880
my question was with interbreeding in hunt together as societies,

818
00:52:07.420 --> 00:52:09.730
and if you don't know who your father is or your brothers are,

819
00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:11.350
how does nature get around this?

820
00:52:11.770 --> 00:52:12.670
<v Christopher Ryan>That's a good question.</v>

821
00:52:12.910 --> 00:52:16.690
Humans Bonobos and chimps are all what are known as female,

822
00:52:16.810 --> 00:52:21.700
like saga MIS species, which means that upon reaching sexual maturity,

823
00:52:21.701 --> 00:52:23.890
the female generally leaves her,

824
00:52:23.950 --> 00:52:27.460
her natal group that she was born into and goes into another group.

825
00:52:28.420 --> 00:52:32.860
So now these groups would get together typically

826
00:52:32.861 --> 00:52:37.660
seasonally for festivals like in Edinburgh and

827
00:52:37.661 --> 00:52:41.800
that's where the females would normally leave their group and join other groups.

828
00:52:42.010 --> 00:52:44.380
So that's, that's generally how it was handled.

829
00:52:47.260 --> 00:52:50.950
Always intrigued me is why is the particular way in which how society chooses to

830
00:52:50.951 --> 00:52:55.180
distinguish the fixes and the way in which it does the girls,

831
00:52:55.181 --> 00:52:57.040
for example, wear dresses and skirts,

832
00:52:57.041 --> 00:53:00.730
whereas guys tend to wear traditionally the same sort of clothes that I'm

833
00:53:00.731 --> 00:53:05.470
wearing at the moment. Women wear my cup guys, generally don't,

834
00:53:05.471 --> 00:53:09.400
although there had been some societies where they are suddenly Gilt hair,

835
00:53:09.401 --> 00:53:14.020
long guy's hair short. Can you, can you say anything about that? I can't,

836
00:53:14.021 --> 00:53:15.190
other than that, it's,

837
00:53:15.240 --> 00:53:19.720
it's clearly cultural and somewhat arbitrary because there are plenty of

838
00:53:19.721 --> 00:53:22.600
societies around the world where men's hair is long,

839
00:53:22.990 --> 00:53:25.230
the Italian with the big balls there, you know,

840
00:53:26.160 --> 00:53:30.030
he's there are too many societies around the world where those things are

841
00:53:30.031 --> 00:53:34.080
completely variable. So it's not, there's nothing biological about that.

842
00:53:34.081 --> 00:53:37.520
I don't believe next. Sorry. Debrief. Okay.

843
00:53:38.000 --> 00:53:42.080
when you treat women as controllable resource packets, you allow

844
00:53:43.640 --> 00:53:44.600
first of all, they're winnable,

845
00:53:44.630 --> 00:53:49.100
which means that while it might be worse for the average man, the best man,

846
00:53:49.280 --> 00:53:53.900
it's actually better having that. And also an argument against,

847
00:53:54.080 --> 00:53:57.410
well also that means in war as well as our civilization.

848
00:53:57.980 --> 00:53:59.150
Also if you

849
00:54:01.100 --> 00:54:04.160
an argument against for monogamy is male

850
00:54:05.660 --> 00:54:10.640
does desiring female youth, because if you're going to have to pick a partner,

851
00:54:11.000 --> 00:54:14.000
the younger, they are the longer they can bear children,

852
00:54:14.390 --> 00:54:18.200
because I don't think that matters if you're have multiple, have you.

853
00:54:18.380 --> 00:54:21.680
<v Faith Liddell>Got that comment? Great. Thank you. Next. Thank you.</v>

854
00:54:22.880 --> 00:54:26.390
So refer to where you were talking about when you showed straight women,

855
00:54:26.391 --> 00:54:29.090
do you want to speak into the microphone? Oh, sorry. Thank you.

856
00:54:29.300 --> 00:54:33.530
Just pull it down a bit. Yes. Okay. Yep. Straight women,

857
00:54:34.160 --> 00:54:36.680
titillating material and their mind.

858
00:54:36.710 --> 00:54:39.830
They said it wasn't doing anything for them, but their body,

859
00:54:40.040 --> 00:54:43.520
their biology showed differently. I was really interested in that.

860
00:54:43.670 --> 00:54:45.860
Cause I thought that's a cultural thing.

861
00:54:46.220 --> 00:54:50.930
That's mind to me mind over matter. And I don't, even though,

862
00:54:50.931 --> 00:54:53.840
as you were discussing earlier, things have changed sexually.

863
00:54:54.890 --> 00:54:59.750
They haven't changed radically. I find because you get this same statement,

864
00:54:59.751 --> 00:55:03.680
unfortunately from women. Oh, he's only, you know,

865
00:55:03.690 --> 00:55:07.220
about their husband generally. Oh, he's only interested in one thing.

866
00:55:07.280 --> 00:55:11.240
That's what you know, and they, they must've had joy and pleasure in sex,

867
00:55:11.241 --> 00:55:15.770
but they've lost it. And I think that is really sad because especially me,

868
00:55:15.771 --> 00:55:20.420
you know, I'm 70, I don't, perhaps I'm too old,

869
00:55:20.421 --> 00:55:23.810
but I don't feel, thank you for your comments.

870
00:55:23.811 --> 00:55:25.190
Do you want to just comments really?

871
00:55:25.191 --> 00:55:29.270
But do you have any quick responses to either of those or if you wanted,

872
00:55:29.480 --> 00:55:31.580
shall we, should we continue the conversation? Well,

873
00:55:31.610 --> 00:55:35.780
if we're on a tight deadline one minute. Yes.

874
00:55:38.330 --> 00:55:41.720
<v Christopher Ryan>I'm not sure what, I don't know what that last company.</v>

875
00:55:41.900 --> 00:55:46.730
<v Faith Liddell>I agree. Individual conversations outside. I'm sure you'd be happy to chat. Oh</v>

876
00:55:48.350 --> 00:55:49.400
yeah. Yes, yes.

877
00:55:50.840 --> 00:55:52.700
<v Christopher Ryan>Yes. You're right. It's very cultural.</v>

878
00:55:52.701 --> 00:55:57.440
And one of my big complaints about sex research is that almost all of it is

879
00:55:57.441 --> 00:56:02.360
focused on American undergraduate students because it's done by American grad

880
00:56:02.361 --> 00:56:06.770
students. And those are that's the subject pool that's at hand. So, you know,

881
00:56:06.771 --> 00:56:11.660
you've got 18 to 22 year old American girls answering some

882
00:56:11.661 --> 00:56:15.290
question in their psych 1 0 1 class under fluorescent lights at eight o'clock in

883
00:56:15.291 --> 00:56:16.100
the morning.

884
00:56:16.100 --> 00:56:20.090
And that's taken to be indicative of female sexuality around the world.

885
00:56:20.600 --> 00:56:23.350
You know, I afraid you'll read, you know,

886
00:56:23.650 --> 00:56:27.760
40% of women never have an orgasm. I asked a,

887
00:56:28.090 --> 00:56:32.440
in Mozambique, how many women never have orgasms? She said, none.

888
00:56:33.580 --> 00:56:34.930
Everyone has aura. There's no problem.

889
00:56:34.931 --> 00:56:37.720
There's no women are going to the doctor complaining that they're not having

890
00:56:37.721 --> 00:56:42.090
orgasms. And in that part of Africa anyway it's very cultural.

891
00:56:43.200 --> 00:56:45.870
Yes. So we're all going to Mozambique.

892
00:56:47.070 --> 00:56:48.510
Let's all go to Mozambique.

893
00:56:50.880 --> 00:56:52.890
<v Faith Liddell>Let's all. Give a big,</v>

894
00:56:52.920 --> 00:56:56.010
thanks to Chris Ryan for his fantastic.