(Added: See THIS write up of the original research)

But a twin study showed that when one twin claimed whether or not to have a g-spot, the other twin did not make the same claim at the frequency one would expect if the g-spot was the expression of a genetic trait with straight forward Mendelian inheritance.

Therefore, the scientists conclude, the g-spot does not exist. At all.

How can this be? How can 56 percent of the women in a study claim that they have one, but there simply isn’t one?

There are several possibilities, including:

1) There is no g-spot and these 900 or so women only think they have one. But they don’t.

2) The g-spot is not a simple Mendelian genetic trait, but rather, exists because of some combination of genetics and environment. This is a family blog so we won’t discuss what is meant here by “environment.”

3) The g-spot is a thing … trying to be not specific here about what it is … that is real, but does not exist in any way because of genetics.

What do you think?

My source is this press report, hat tip to Virgil Samms, who noted that perhaps it is just that twins don’t have g-spots.

“Bonk” author Mary Roach delves into obscure scientific research, some of it centuries old, to make 10 surprising claims about sexual climax, ranging from the bizarre to the hilarious. (This talk is aimed at adults. Viewer discretion advised.)

In short, the study found:

Emotional intelligence was not associated with … age and years of education, nor did we find a significant association between emotional intelligence and potential risk factors for [female orgasmic disorder] FOD such as age, body mass index, physical or sexual abuse, or menopause. We found emotional intelligence to be positively correlated with both frequency of orgasm during intercourse … and masturbation …. Women in the lowest quartile of emotional intelligence had an approximate twofold increased risk of infrequent orgasm … Low emotional intelligence seems to be a significant risk factor for low orgasmic frequency. Consideration of this behavioral risk factor may need to be incorporated into research into FOD and possible treatment approaches.

This is interesting, and probably a valid finding in that it appears to be statistically demonstrable that there is a correlation between measured emotional intelligence and orgasm frequency. The correlation is positive, modest (between 0.13 and 0.23 Spearman’s, and confirmed with logistical regression), and statistically significant.

What I find even more interesting than this finding (which is important if somewhat unsurprising) is that one can even do a study using matched pairs of twins and have a statistically significant difference in both emotional intelligence measured by standard tests and patterns of orgasm frequency.

Emotional intelligence is a brain thing and we might expect to see it vary for a number of reasons. Here we have evidence that genetics is not the only factor in this variable. I expect that among genetically typical individuals without pathologies, there would be almost no genetic effect, but the presumption of genetics is so strong that I fear most people don’t get that. Patterns of sexual behavior and physiology, which relates to orgasm frequency and distribution, may be very closely related to reproduction (though for reasons you may not expect). Again, we have measurable and (possibly) meaningful variation that is not genetic.

Burri, A., Cherkas, L., & Spector, T. (2009). Emotional Intelligence and Its Association with Orgasmic Frequency in Women Journal of Sexual Medicine DOI: 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2009.01297.x

Don Ingber, MD, PhD, and Robert Mannix, PhD, of Children’s program in Vascular Biology, in collaboration with Mara Prentiss, PhD, a physicist at Harvard University, devised a way to get tiny beads – 30 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in diameter – to bind to receptor molecules on the cell surface. When exposed to a magnetic field, the beads themselves become magnets, and pull together through magnetic attraction. This pull drags the cell’s receptors into large clusters, mimicking what happens when drugs or other molecules bind to them. This clustering, in turn, activates the receptors, triggering a cascade of biochemical signals that influence different cell functions….”This technology allows us to control the behavior of living cells through magnetic forces rather than chemicals or hormones,” says Ingber. “It may provide a new way to interface with machines or computers in the future, opening up entirely new ways of controlling drug delivery, or making detectors that have living cells as component parts. We’ve harnessed a biological control system, but we can control it at will, using magnetic forces.”[source]

Always be careful when you hear words like “We can control it at will…”

In a demonstration involving mast cells (a kind of cell in the immune system), Ingber and Mannix showed that the beads, when bound to cell receptors and exposed to a magnetic field, were able to stimulate an influx of calcium into the cells.

Do you know what that means? If you can do this selectively, you can control muscle movement, you can control thought, and so on. But the easiest things to control (because of the spatial distribution of neurons) will be the most visceral things. You could create the ultimate torture device, you could create a machine that would eliminate anxiety, or cause fear, or, if you were a good scientist rather than an evil scientist, you could create Woody Allen’s Orgasmatron.Here is the Orgasmatron in action, but in French (there are no English copies available):And, as long as we are on the subject of the movie Sleeper, I thought you might enjoy this as well: