Human sexuality
Category archives for Human sexuality
Is my penis too small, too big, or just right?
Posted by Greg Laden on March 5, 2015 
And by “my” penis I mean “your” penis, of course. This is a perennial question. For some reason, which I do not understand, the feminist perspective (note: I’m a feminist) is often to belittle the question, but really, that isn’t fair. It is not that difficult to imagine how anyone would come to a question…
Catching Fire. The other one.
Posted by Greg Laden on November 24, 2013 
Catching Fire is apparently a very popular book and/or movie that everyone is very excited about. But Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human is a different a book about some interesting research I was involved in about the origin of our genus, Homo. You can pick up a copy of our paper on this…
Penis Size: Does it matter and why?
Posted by Greg Laden on April 10, 2013 
A study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explores the question of penis size and female preference in humans. The study involved making a set of 3D models of human males of various relative body sizes, and fitting them out with various size flaccid penises. These were shown to a…
How Do You Get Sexual Orientation and Gender in Humans?
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2013 Humans appear to have a great deal of variation in sexual orientation, in what is often referred to as “gender” and in adult behavior generally. When convenient, people will point to “genes” as the “cause” of any particular subset of this diversity (or all of it). When convenient, people will point to “culture” as the…
The Kiss
Posted by Greg Laden on February 5, 2013 
Valentine’s Day is coming up, so it is time to think about kissing. Pursuant to this, Sheril Kirshenbaum, author of “The Science of Kissing,” has made the Kindle version of her excellent book available at a discounted price through February 18th. The book is here: The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us.…
Pornography Actresses: Testing the Damaged Goods Hypothesis
Posted by Greg Laden on December 3, 2012 
A study has just come out in the Journal of Sex Research comparing various psychological and lifestyle measures of women who act in pornographic films with matched sets of women who do not. There is a pretty clear association between negative attitudes towards pornography and negative assessments of the quality of life for actresses in…
Falsehoods: Human Universals
Posted by Greg Laden on January 26, 2011 There are human universals. There, I said it. Now give me about a half hour to explain why this is both correct and a Falsehood. But first, some background and definition.
What is the most important human adaptation?
Posted by Greg Laden on October 22, 2010 Human infants require more care than they should, if we form our expectations based on closely related species (apes, and more generally, Old World simian primates). It has been said that humans are born three months early. This is not accurate. It was thought that our body size predicted a 12 month gestation, and some…
Why do women shop and men hunt?
Posted by Greg Laden on October 12, 2010 Or, when the hunting season is closed, watch teh game (the guys), or when there are no sales, admire each other’s shoes (the gals)? This is, of course, a parody of the sociobiological, or in modern parlance, the “evolutionary psychology” argument linking behaviors that evolved in our species during the long slog known as The…
Sex at Dawn
Posted by Greg Laden on August 9, 2010 From Skeptically Speaking: We talk to author Christopher Ryan about his new book Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality. We’ll discuss the most recent science and theories, and how social norms compare to our biological impulses. This Friday. Details here. I may have to read this book.