Humans Are Sexual Omnivores

Sexuality evokes really strong opinions and most people have very definite preferences for what turns them on and what turns them completely off. It’s easy to take our own personal preferences and assume that they reflect some deeper truth about which sexual acts are better or worse—not just for us personally, but for everyone. Therefore, people who have different interests are at best missing out, but possibly misguided or even troubled. And since there is no shortage of public opinions about sexuality, you won’t have to look that far to find someone who agrees with your position.

I would take the counter-position that humans are sexual omnivores with a wide range both across and within groups. In other words, no sexual acts are inherently superior (or inferior). Our individual preferences are based in an interaction between genetic predispositions, cultural influences, and individual experiences. More broadly, I would take the position that humans are generally omnivores, in multiple domains, and therefore it makes sense that we are also sexually omnivorous, at least as a population. We are genetically wired to be flexible and this has been the key to our survival. Humans live in freezing mountain ranges, steamy river valleys, and scorching deserts. These environments could hardly be more different and involve unique survival challenges, yet humans thrive all across the globe. Some people are vegans while others subsist mostly on hunted meat. The human palate is incredibly wide. Delicacies in one culture can be revolting to those who grew up eating something else.

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When it comes to entertainment, we have a huge range of interests, from jumping out of airplanes to silent meditation retreats. Our media options are seemingly endless or at least effectively limitless since even the single platform of Netflix has more choices than any one person could watch in an entire lifetime. And the big porn aggregator sites seem to have just as many choices, some of which will appeal far more to any one person than most of the others will. If our favorite TV shows are incredibly varied, why shouldn’t our sexual preferences also be?

There is also the fact that sexual norms evolve over time within a culture, so it’s hard to say that there are certain kinds of sex that are superior when the group averages keep moving, based on the cultural norms when someone grows up. For example, a nationally representative study published in 2017 (Herbenick et al) found that 40.7% of 25-29-year-old guys had ever been tied up or tied up a partner as part of sex, compared to 8.2% of guys 70+. For women, it was 30.8% versus 5.2%. In other words, the younger folks were five to six times as likely to have engaged in rope play. What makes these differences even more significant is that the older folks had had 40 more year to try it out. It’s also worth noting that this was hardly an uncommon activity, so if there really are ways of having sex that are more right, then how is it that a third of these younger folks are potentially getting it wrong?

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Even if we look at the most “standard” of sexual practices, vaginal intercourse, even then we don’t have 100% of the sample having done it at some point in their lifetime. For men, 93.2% of those 60-69 and 87.4% of those 70+ had had vaginal intercourse. For women, 96.1% of those 70+ had done it. Some respondents were gay/lesbian, asexual, or for other reasons had never done it. Even this supposedly de facto sexual activity was not a universal, even among those who had had more than 50 years of adulthood to try it out at least once. Apart from oral sex and looking at porn, none of the other 23 sexual activities the researchers asked about came anywhere close to this frequency. So there is a wide range of activities that people engage in, with most people doing some things more than others. Given this diversity, how can we say that some specific activities are somehow more right than others?

Reproduction Doesn’t Have Preferences

The survival of the species merely requires that a sufficient number of sperm and eggs meet. What leads up to that moment doesn’t matter that much, as long as enough of the children survive to also reproduce. Unless something has a direct negative impact on a population’s survival, it can exist and persist.

Given that only a very small percentage of intercourse leads to pregnancy, even when a couple is trying, sex is much more about recreation than procreation. Most of the time, its primary purpose is to increase social bonds. We are highly social creatures and survive much better in groups than on our own, so sex is one of the ways that we strengthen relationships. People can do lots of different things sexually and accomplish that same goal of connection. Given that eating is one of the most basic needs and we exhibit a huge range of habits there, why should sex be more constrained?

To Each Their Own

It’s easy to assume that the way we each grew up or our preferences are the better way. This is fine as long as we remember that these preferences only apply to ourselves, but that others may feel differently. It’s not a competition and we aren’t responsible for anyone else’s desires. Even if we may sometimes really struggle to understand why someone else has the preferences that they do, the flipside to that acceptance is that then we don’t need to defend our own preferences. It can be hard enough to figure ourselves out sometimes; why make life more complicated by getting into others’ business?