Sex Is Not Just Sex—It's Baby-Making

I recently wrote a post about “second-wave," or 1970s, feminists being absolutely pro-sex, pro-pleasure, and pro-freedom. Author and journalist Michelle Goldberg wrote three articles about how this “sex-positive feminism” has been falling out of fashion.^1,2,3 Goldberg cites one of the original sex-positive feminists who says that the sexual libertarianism that evolved out of this pro-sex stance failed women. The sexual libertarianism of this era also has been used by men to equate the desire for love and commitment as repressive and to exalt sex without emotion or attachment as the ideal. These articles are good reads about women continuing to figure out what sex means to them.

What did come with the feminist revolution of the '70s was an increasing number of women scientists interested in women’s sexual desire, sexual pursuit, and performance.

Women Scientists Set the Record Straight About Women’s Sexuality

The feminist revolution did bring a critical mass of women scientists into the male-dominated field of human sexuality. Women like Teri Conley and Sari van Anders lead research teams that challenge the received view of human sexual response, which was thought to apply to both men and women but was closer to how men describe their sexual experience.

Conley’s research introduced both methodological and conceptual insights into female sexuality.⁴ Van Anders took a deep dive into the functioning of testosterone in male and female sexuality.⁵ Meredith Chivers and Lori Brotto took on the challenge of sexual desire and arousal in women laying to rest the old raps about women having “low sexual desire” and misunderstanding about female sexual arousal because of misapplying the male model to women.⁶

The good news is that we no longer must view women’s sexuality in terms of a male model of sex. However, “sex-as-just-sex,” i.e. the animal model of sex we have inherited from the evolutionary theorists still prevails. This view undervalues or even devalues the interpersonal quality of human sexuality.

To challenge this view, we need a paradigm shift in understanding human sexuality. And we have it. Read on.

Sex Is Not Just Sex—It’s Baby-Making

Evolutionary scientists, particularly evolutionary psychologists, have a theoretical box for human sexuality: animal mating. For these scientists, sex is just sex, which is true for most animal species. Not so for human beings.

Holly Dunsworth and Anne Buchanan have introduced a paradigm shift in the way to think about sex between human beings.⁷ They argue that for humans, sex is about baby-making. What?

Human beings are uniquely aware that sex makes babies. This awareness upends all the mostly evolutionary psychology stereotypes that dominate our thinking about sex between humans. Dunsworth and Buchanan identify this awareness as reproductive consciousness. Reproductive consciousness, which we humans probably figured out about 100,000 years ago, is based on two things human beings can do that no other animal can do:

• We understand the link between insemination through intercourse and the arrival of a baby nine months later.
• We can do this because we alone among all animal species can reason about unobservable events—all the processes that link insemination with the birth of a baby.

By the way, since we can reason about the relationship between sex and babies, we also have figured out how to have sex without making babies. We have come to know that sex is pleasurable in its own right—a wonderful human discovery.

So, sex is really a partnership about making babies. This is a startlingly different way to think about sex. This does not mean that sex only occurs in committed partner relationships. That’s not the point. A sexual partnership can be defined in any number of ways. It can be a one-time encounter. Every single sexual encounter is a partnership. This partnership is not a business partnership, which is a transactional relationship. It is a personal partnership in which the people involved are engaged in a baby-making activity even if they do not want to make a baby.

Sex-Is-Just-Sex Is Still Embedded in the Way We Think About Sex

Consent Is Supposed to Make It Better

The #MeToo movement drew attention to the sexual violence against women of color, evolving into women of all colors to tell their stories—speaking up.⁸ Not only did this movement validate women’s speech, but it also became almost mandatory for women to speak up about their experiences.

Sex Essential Reads

Is Sex Definitely (Not) Binary? It's Complicated

The Power of Gentle, Whole-Body Touch

Speaking up about women’s sexual experience along with the growing literacy about women’s sexual experience began to influence ideas about what it takes for women to have good sex: consent and self-knowledge.⁹ Consent and sexual literacy were supposed to cure the ills of our sexual culture. It hasn’t. Women’s consent and sexual self-knowledge do not change the animal paradigm for sex as “sex-is-just-sex” that we continue to live with. The old paradigm still conceives of sex as transactional. Consent and self-knowledge have not changed that.

Porn Promotes Transactional Sex

Porn is transactional sex from the perspective of male sexual desire, which demands satisfaction. Traditional porn Is conventional “erotic” porn, which mirrors Hollywood’s storytelling style, having a conventional male focus. “Gonzo” porn depicts a sexual performance in which a male actor appears to harm a female performer during sex acts that no actual woman would want to engage in.¹⁰

Unfortunately, today’s teens have internet access to a virtual buffet of porn.¹¹ And, it has been the most-mentioned “helpful” source of information about sex for 18-24-year-olds.¹²

The problem with pornography as it is currently created is not that it is about sex. It is a problem because it reinforces stereotypical ideas about human sexuality as animal sex. It is a problem because it depicts sex as transactional. It is a problem because it elevates male sexual desire and satisfaction over the quality of the relationship that is occurring.

Sexual Partners Negotiate Sex

Partners negotiate their sexual relationship and the sexual activity in the context of the relationship that is happening. The negotiation between sexual partners is not the transactional kind that is based on the obligation you incur, e.g., "I perform fellatio on you and you owe me cunnilingus." This is the business model that we have inherited from the idea that sex-is-just sex—it’s like animal sex. Historically, it's about male “need.” Now, it is also about female “need." These so-called “needs” are exchanged in a sexual transaction.

In contrast, human sexuality is defined in terms of the kind of relationship you have with a partner—even if that “partnership” is a one-time encounter. What you want sexually is not a static thing. It will change from time to time with the same partner and will change from partner to partner. You must work it out each time in the context of the relationship that it is happening.

Good, partnered sex can be had with:¹³

• Partners who are fully committed to the autonomy of each other.
• Partners who can hear "No."
• Partners are willing to negotiate cooperatively independent of personal social power and/or physical power.
• Partners who both want to have sex and feel excited about it.
• Partners who can let go of stereotyped views of male and female sexuality.

Negotiating sex in a truly partnered sexual encounter is a new exploration of what each of you wants each time you have sex. Do you want sex for pleasure? Do you want sex as an intimate relationship encounter? Do you want sex because you are feeling lonely, anxious, etc.? Do you want sex because you adore your partner?

Partners talk to each other, every time, about why sex Is important to them at that moment. And, they also talk about the way in which you want to have sex. You can make the negotiation about sex fun. You can make the negotiation about sex an adventure.

Reproductive Consciousness Leads to Understanding the Meaning of Sex for Human Beings

Let’s pledge to get rid of the idea that sex between human beings, whatever form it takes, is like animal sex. Human sex can be about emotional connection, love, kindness, giving to a partner, or commitment. It is whatever you and your sexual partner decide together as equal participants what it will be. Sex is not performance art, it is the art of being together intimately in the way you choose to be as two equal human beings.