IMPROBABLE SEX: Did Lesbians Evolve to Please Men?

From the not-yet-published book "Improbable Sex"

Read the INTRODUCTION to the series "Improbable Sex"

Did Lesbians Evolve to Please Men?

Menelaos Apostolou and his team sought evidence that lesbian yearnings and doings arose mainly, through evolution, as a way to inflame and satisfy men's sexual desire. They found that evidence, they explain in a study called "The Evolution of Female Same-Sex Attraction: The Male Choice Hypothesis," published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Apostolou and three colleagues—Marios Shialos, Michalis Khalil, and Vana Paschali—at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus, used the internet to probe the sexual psyche of 1509 individuals (613 men and 896 women), all of them "Greeks and Greek-Cypriots" who said they were "attracted exclusively or predominantly to the opposite sex."

Apostolou, Shialos, Khalil, and Paschali asked questions, in a pair of surveys. The 1509 individuals each answered one or one or the other survey.

Some participants "were asked to indicate their preference for the statement 'I would prefer as mate an individual who is attracted.' " The survey offered five possible answers:

· 'Only to members of the opposite-sex'

· 'Predominantly to members of the opposite-sex but occasionally to members of the same-sex'

· 'To both sexes equally'

· 'Predominantly to members of the same-sex but occasionally to members of the opposite-sex'

· 'Only to members of the same-sex' "

Other participants answered slightly different, but not all that different, questions. "Study 1 examined male preferences for partners with same-sex attraction. The purpose of Study 2 was to examine whether these preferences differed for short term and long-term mates."

Some answers were about desires:

"Evidence from [the] two independent studies indicated that men were more likely than women to desire as mates individuals who were heterosexuals but occasionally experienced same-sex attraction."

Some answers were about desires and excitements:

"[It] was found that, in response to an incidence of infidelity, men were more sexually excited than women by the same-sex infidelity of their partners, and men desired, more than women, their opposite-sex partners to have sex with same-sex individuals."

Some answers, when tallied, made it possible for Apostolou, Shialos, Khalil, and Paschali to calculate exciting statistics about the desires and excitements:

"... about 15% of men preferred their long-term mates to experience same-sex attraction and to actually have sex with other women. About 30% of men preferred their short-term mates to experience same-sex attraction and to actually have sex with other women. About 30% of men would get sexually excited by their long-term mates having sex with another woman, and about 45% if their short-term mates did so."

The researchers saw a subtlety, in those statistics, that they emphasize: "Finally, participants' preferences were contingent on the seriousness of the relationships, with same-sex attraction to be preferred more in short-term than in a long-term partner."

MORE WOMEN, MORE BENEFITS

Apostolou, Shialos, Khalil, and Paschali begin their study by saying "women who experience some degree of same-sex attraction are almost double (20%) the amount of men who experience such attraction (12%)."

Having said that, the team tells why they did the study.