The Case of the Female Orgasm: Critical Review, Summary of External Critical Review, and Works Cited for BA at UWF

 The Case of the Female Orgasm:
Critical Review, Summary of External Critical Review, and Works Cited

Critical Review:

Elizabeth Lloyd could bring in accounts of how other evolutionary biology adaptationist accounts are flawed or effective to further explain how the 18 adaptationist accounts of the female orgasm were mistakenly generated. It would also be interesting to see a feminist perspective from feminist standpoint epistemology as to why adaptationist points of view were created in conflict with existing data. The reasons for illogicality in science and how to best confront extremist points of view in science, especially misogynistic assumptions about the female orgasm, could be explored further in another book. Although adaptationists claim that Symon's account is chauvinistic, this is illogical because if anything the manipulation and disregard of data present in nearly all the adaptationist accounts points towards problems in reasoning that do not serve science or women positively. It also reflects a tendency to ignore natural variation in human sexuality which many people who identify as LGBTQ experience.  One of these underrepresented sexualities is asexuality, which is often explained and understood as a hormone imbalance. This conception of human sexuality and even early primate sexuality as being directed by hormones is inaccurate and pernicious to accounts of not just female orgasm, but to our understanding of underrepresented minorities. There is a scientific Duty of sexologists and scientific professionals to question underlying assumptions and  prevent the formation of biases, not just as individuals, but as a scientific community. One wonders how studies not supported by evidence made it into peer reviewed journals, and perhaps more perniciously, were written by scientists trusted to be experts by the general public. 

Summary of External Critical Review:

Dr. Milam from the University of Wisconsin makes a valuable point in her discussion of the book “The Case of the Female Orgasm”  Dr. Milam’s argument states that a distinction must be drawn between the behavior due to female physiology and the actual incidence of orgasm as reported in the statistics. It is questionable whether this claim is supported by the book, given that Elizabeth Lloyd only calls orgasm a physiological trait twice in the entirety of the book and it is questionable whether an increase in orgasm would be observed if women were given the chance to achieve maximum physiological stimulation through enhanced positioning, manual stimulation, etc. 

Works Cited

Milam, Erika Lorraine. “Sometimes an Orgasm Is Just an Orgasm.” Metascience, vol. 15, no. 3, Dec. 2006, pp. 399–405. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s11016-006-9032-2.

Lloyd, Elisabeth Anne. The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution. Harvard University Press, 2006.