Scientists Believe They Know Why Women Evolved to Like Giving Blowjobs
They’ve looked to the animal world and the ingredients in sperm to find the answers.
I love giving head. I get off on the sensation of a man’s erect penis sliding back and forth between my lips. I adore the feeling of a man fucking my face. Giving up control is exciting to me. I’ve just never wondered why I like sucking cock so much.
I can’t get pregnant from it. There’s no biological benefit for human females evolving a literal taste for going down on men.
So why do I and other women have this affinity, evolutionarily speaking?
Scientists think they have the answers.
Where did they look for their evidence first? The animal world, of course.
Bonobo females perform fellatio on their male mates.
Bonobos are a type of chimpanzee that humans share up to 98% of our DNA with. We are thought to have evolved from bonobos.
The thing that differentiates bonobos (and us) from other animals is that they “have a lot more sex and a lot more different kinds of sex than all their nonhuman cousins,” Jack Hitt writes in his essay, “Our Orgiastic Future,” on Lapham’s Quarterly.
“And they have it outside the hormonal and biological command of estrus, the periodic season of heat that signals to most mammals that it is time to rut. This sense of freedom is what really puts them in a category quite different from the other primates and, like us, from so much of nature.”
Besides enjoying a lot of lesbian sex, female bonobos also commonly perform oral sex on their male mates. This has led some scientists to believe that human females evolved to like giving blowjobs for the same reasons our evolutionary ancestors, the bonobos, do it: for the fun of it.
Female fruit bats also perform oral sex on their male mates.
Scientists believe that the human penchant for blowjob-giving can also be understood by studying the mating practices of a particular species of fruit bat.
The female of this species is known to lick their male partners’ penises during the mating process.
According to the study “Fellatio by Fruit Bats Prolongs Copulation Time,” published in Plos One, female bats carry out this fellatio in a very specific way. While the glans tip of the male penis is inserted inside her, she reaches her mouth down to lick the base of his shaft.
A predilection for giving head is imprinted in our mammalian DNA.
Researchers hypothesize that female fruit bats do this to prolong the duration of the male’s erection, their spit also helping to increase lubrication.
Though human females obviously lack the same flexibility as fruit bats, scientists believe that we may have evolved to enjoy giving head for the same reasons.
According to Jason G. Goldman, a science journalist and blogger at the Scientific American:
“…all of these explanations could still explain the perseverance of oral sex in humans, either because they still provide similar benefits, or because they are sort of evolutionary leftovers.”
In other words, a predilection for giving head is imprinted in our mammalian DNA.
Swallowing sperm promotes healthy pregnancies.
Researchers also believe there’s a genetic benefit to fellatio beyond helping to increase lubrication or the duration of an erection.
A study published in the Journal of Reproductive Immunology found that semen contains the same “antigens” that immune systems fight off when a patient has an organ transplant, which leads their bodies to reject it.
When a woman gets pregnant, it’s a little like getting an organ transplant. Her immune system attacks the father’s antigens in the same way and this can lead to various pregnancy complications.
Scientists, therefore, believe the more a woman swallows a man’s semen before she becomes pregnant by him, the more accustomed her body becomes to his antigens.
This helps her to build up a tolerance so her immune system will be less likely to attack the pregnancy once it occurs.
Sperm tastes bad because it’s not supposed to end up inside a woman’s stomach.
But wait. There’s a problem with this theory. For as many women out there who love swallowing cum, there are just as many who hate it.
These women would rather spit. Male sperm has a terrible reputation for tasting awful.
This is why evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution Is True, theorizes that women were never meant to swallow sperm. If they were, Coyne says natural selection would have caused semen to evolve to taste better.
He hypothesizes instead:
“Natural selection maintains the repugnant taste of semen so that a man’s sperm will wind up in the appropriate place: the vagina and not the stomach.”
He adds that those men whose semen taste like “honey” would have been naturally selected out because they wouldn’t have reproduced offspring.
The patriarchal nature of our culture benefits when women feel ashamed about sex.
While I appreciate that scientists have taken stab at trying to explain why women have evolved to love (or hate) performing fellatio, their conclusions are conflicting and loosely gathered.
Do I like sucking cock because a fruit bat does? Hmmm — not sure.
Instead, I believe I like giving head because my partner loves receiving it. I experience pleasure when he does. I know he adores watching me swallow his sperm, and that gets me off.
Science can’t explain these emotional benefits.
I feel no shame in giving head and swallowing cum on a frequent basis.
I also believe that though sex is a natural part of our life, it’s often infused with guilt and shame. The fact some women abhor giving blowjobs or swallowing semen might have more to do with social conditioning.
The patriarchal nature of our culture benefits when women feel ashamed about sex. If enjoying sex means we’re “sluts,” we’re less likely to stray from our male lovers.
An aversion to fellatio or sperm-swallowing is, therefore, a human construct that our evolutionary ancestors, the bonobos, are lucky not to share.
Fortunately, I disabused myself of such mental boundaries a long time ago, liberating myself from such sexist rules. I feel no shame in giving head and swallowing cum on a frequent basis.
All I know is that when I make my partner feel amazing that makes me feel satisfied. For me, that’s enough evidence to explain why I love giving blowjobs.
