A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire (30 page)
Authors: Ogi Ogas,Sai Gaddam
BOOK: A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire
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Human Psychological Cues
You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy.
—John Calvin
G
eladas are a peculiar and little-known species of monkey that science has largely overlooked. They live in large troops in the towering Simien Mountains of northern Ethiopia. They have golden manes that are the stuff of shampoo commercials, and burning red eyes. They graze on grass, but have vampiric canines. But what’s particularly interesting is a very special patch of skin on their chest shaped like an hourglass.
eladas are a peculiar and little-known species of monkey that science has largely overlooked. They live in large troops in the towering Simien Mountains of northern Ethiopia. They have golden manes that are the stuff of shampoo commercials, and burning red eyes. They graze on grass, but have vampiric canines. But what’s particularly interesting is a very special patch of skin on their chest shaped like an hourglass.
On males, this hourglass indicates its owner’s social status. The color ranges from a meek eraser pink to a fiery red for alphas. Gelada society is broken into harems. Each harem is composed of an alpha male, between two and twelve females, and their young. Even though the male is in charge, the females expect to be well taken care of. Otherwise, they may turn on their leader.
There are always bachelors with bright hourglasses—though not as bright as alphas’—who skulk around the edges of harems, testing for weakness. Often the alpha will scream and kick up dust, demonstrating his dominance. But sometimes his display is unconvincing. Then a bachelor may attack.
Biological anthropologist Jacinta Beehner remembers one fight that lasted three days. It appeared to be a stalemate until a treacherous female edged away from the harem. As her champion looked on, she sidled up to the bachelor. The former alpha “didn’t even try to prevent it,” Beehner recalls. “He just quit.”
A deposed leader may be allowed to stay with a harem, where he cares for the young. Of course, he loses mating rights and must take on a sort of avuncular role. Within a few months of being dethroned, the flaming redness of his chest patch subsides to an anemic pink.
We conclude our survey of sexual cues with a Siamese twin pair of psychological cues that is found in both men and women:
sexual domination
and
sexual submission
. In the male brain, only the gender cue (whether you’re attracted to men or women) is more basic and influential. The sexual submission cue is also fundamental to the female brain.
sexual domination
and
sexual submission
. In the male brain, only the gender cue (whether you’re attracted to men or women) is more basic and influential. The sexual submission cue is also fundamental to the female brain.
But first, we need to make a distinction between
social
dominance and
sexual
dominance. Though not much studied by science, social dominance and sexual dominance appear to involve different parts of the brain. Social dominance specifically involves social status and is almost exclusively a male trait. Social dominance in the geladas is indicated by the redness of the male hourglass. (Female geladas also have an hourglass, but its redness indicates the status of her ovulatory cycle.) Sexual dominance has to do with one’s physical role in sex. In rats, intromission is the sexually dominant role, and lordosis is the sexually submissive role. Similarly, tops and bottoms among gays correspond to the sexually dominant and sexually submissive roles. Social dominance and sexual dominance are related but distinguishable.
social
dominance and
sexual
dominance. Though not much studied by science, social dominance and sexual dominance appear to involve different parts of the brain. Social dominance specifically involves social status and is almost exclusively a male trait. Social dominance in the geladas is indicated by the redness of the male hourglass. (Female geladas also have an hourglass, but its redness indicates the status of her ovulatory cycle.) Sexual dominance has to do with one’s physical role in sex. In rats, intromission is the sexually dominant role, and lordosis is the sexually submissive role. Similarly, tops and bottoms among gays correspond to the sexually dominant and sexually submissive roles. Social dominance and sexual dominance are related but distinguishable.
We’re going to start with a discussion of social dominance. We saw in Chapter 5 how male dominance is a potent cue for the Detective Agency, with Miss Marple valuing alpha males, dominant voices, dominant scents, dominant gaits—if it suggests dominance, women like it. In fact, social dominance in most mammals is exclusively a male domain. As we saw in Chapter 7, male social dominance is mediated by testosterone. This “male competition hormone” provides the redness for the male gelada hourglass.
Testosterone levels are associated with aggression. Superior fighting ability and a will to fight typically increase a male’s social status. When the rage center of a monkey’s brain is artificially stimulated, the monkey will rise swiftly up the dominance hierarchy, by virtue of frequently fighting other monkeys. Testosterone levels are associated with many physical qualities in males, including greater musculature, deeper vocalizations, and various skin coloration.
There’s a very important fact to understand about male social dominance. No man is born dominant. He must strive for it—and he may fail. The male brain is designed to go through life shifting between dominant and submissive states. Though a man might be born with physical and personality traits that facilitate an easy rise to dominance—height, vigorous upper-body strength, a deep voice, an aggressive temperament, an indomitable will—dominance must still be attained through social interactions with other males. In other words, social dominance is fluid and flexible, not hard-wired into the male brain.
The Sandra Bullock movie
The Blind Side
(based on the book by Michael Lewis) tells the true story of Michael Oher, one of the best offensive tackles in the NFL. He is a mountain of a man at six feet four inches and 304 pounds. But despite his size, he started out as a “gentle giant”—timid and submissive. It took time and experience to build up his confidence until he became a dominant All-Star left tackle for the Baltimore Ravens.
The Blind Side
(based on the book by Michael Lewis) tells the true story of Michael Oher, one of the best offensive tackles in the NFL. He is a mountain of a man at six feet four inches and 304 pounds. But despite his size, he started out as a “gentle giant”—timid and submissive. It took time and experience to build up his confidence until he became a dominant All-Star left tackle for the Baltimore Ravens.
Social dominance influences a man’s financial success. It also influences his attractiveness to women. But male dominance also has another consequence: it directly influences his sexuality. The link between social dominance and male sexuality is most apparent in one of the oddest mammals on Earth, the naked mole rat.
The naked mole rat is what biologists call a
eusocial
creature. Like the ant or the termite, naked mole rats have separate behavioral castes, including a sterile caste. There is a naked mole rat queen that has unlimited reproductive privileges. There are “worker” naked mole rats, called subordinates. What’s interesting is that the subordinates are asexual. The male and female workers are almost indistinguishable, in both body and brain. They do not breed, just like worker ants or worker termites. Their life mission is to serve the greater good of the colony, digging and finding food and caring for young. They obey and serve the queen without question. In contrast, a small set of naked mole rats are “breeders.” They get to have sex.
eusocial
creature. Like the ant or the termite, naked mole rats have separate behavioral castes, including a sterile caste. There is a naked mole rat queen that has unlimited reproductive privileges. There are “worker” naked mole rats, called subordinates. What’s interesting is that the subordinates are asexual. The male and female workers are almost indistinguishable, in both body and brain. They do not breed, just like worker ants or worker termites. Their life mission is to serve the greater good of the colony, digging and finding food and caring for young. They obey and serve the queen without question. In contrast, a small set of naked mole rats are “breeders.” They get to have sex.
But naked mole rats are not genetically predetermined to become a breeder or a subordinate. The naked mole rat brain is designed to become either one. There are specific hormones responsible for the change: androgens, a class of hormone that includes testosterone. If the androgen levels rise in a subordinate, some remarkable changes occur. Suddenly, the rat develops prominent sexual characteristics. But just as dramatic are the changes in the brain. New neurons form, the receptors on existing neurons change, and the brain’s wiring changes. No longer is the subordinate deferent and asexual. Now it claims its role as a dominant member of society—and its main reward is sex.
Though the relationship between social dominance and sexuality in humans is not quite as dramatic as in naked mole rats, socially dominant humans do share one essential quality with socially dominant members of all mammal societies: an increased sex drive. The more dominant a human male becomes, the more testosterone he produces, which in turn increases his sex drive. Men with high levels of testosterone lose their virginity earliest, have the most sexual partners, and convince women to have sex the fastest. Alpha males have the greatest sex drive of all.
In the television series
Breaking Bad
, the high school chemistry teacher Walter White learns that he has lung cancer. The doctor tells him he only has a few months to live. He decides to “break bad” and become a crystal meth dealer. He ends up killing another drug dealer. Later, he blows up the headquarters of a vicious gang leader, a true alpha male. After each of these incidents of unexpected male dominance, he returns home and has fervent sex with his wife, who is overwhelmed by his unprecedented levels of lust.
Breaking Bad
, the high school chemistry teacher Walter White learns that he has lung cancer. The doctor tells him he only has a few months to live. He decides to “break bad” and become a crystal meth dealer. He ends up killing another drug dealer. Later, he blows up the headquarters of a vicious gang leader, a true alpha male. After each of these incidents of unexpected male dominance, he returns home and has fervent sex with his wife, who is overwhelmed by his unprecedented levels of lust.
In the beautiful documentary
Man on Wire
, tightrope walker Phillipe Petit accomplishes an extraordinary feat: he illegally strings a cable between the twin towers of the World Trade Center and performs 120 floors above the ground without any kind of safety equipment. He is arrested, but is quickly released because of the outcry of the public, who claims him a hero. He triumphantly walks out of the police station to an adoring crowd. A woman rushes up to him, clearly enamored of his newly attained alpha status. Though Petit’s team is waiting for him—as well as the media—Petit immediately ignores them to return to the unknown woman’s apartment and has hours of passionate sex with her.
HEADS OR TAILSMan on Wire
, tightrope walker Phillipe Petit accomplishes an extraordinary feat: he illegally strings a cable between the twin towers of the World Trade Center and performs 120 floors above the ground without any kind of safety equipment. He is arrested, but is quickly released because of the outcry of the public, who claims him a hero. He triumphantly walks out of the police station to an adoring crowd. A woman rushes up to him, clearly enamored of his newly attained alpha status. Though Petit’s team is waiting for him—as well as the media—Petit immediately ignores them to return to the unknown woman’s apartment and has hours of passionate sex with her.
In primates, social dominance is a complex cognitive process that appears to be partially managed by regions in the frontal cortex. This conscious part of the brain is responsible for evaluating the social ranking of others and whether there is enough social support to make a move to increase one’s own status.
In contrast, sexual dominance and sexual submission appear to be entirely managed by subcortical processes, mediated by several nuclei in the hypothalamus. These subcortical circuits control very physical processes, such as hip thrusting or passiveness. As we saw in Chapter 7, both males and females in several mammal species appear to possess both sexual dominance and sexual submission circuitry. Female dogs sometimes mount other males or even mount the legs of humans, an act controlled by sexual dominance circuitry. Both types of circuits are wired to the pleasure centers of the brain. It’s rewarding for a female rat to perform lordosis or for a male rat to perform intromission. Since heterosexual female macaques mount other females, and heterosexual male bonobos allow themselves to be mounted by other males, it’s reasonable to presume that they also feel pleasure from switching over to the other side.
Domination and submission are usually cast together like the two sides of a coin, which can show heads or tails but never both. Though the vast majority of gay men have a clear preference, they can and do shift flexibly between the top and bottom roles. But this flexible switching isn’t the sole domain of gay men. Consider the AOL search history of Mr. Panties:
any bondage
daddy gets excited so much wearing daughter’s pink panties
daddy was forced by his boss to start wearing daughter’s
panties
kidnap a very pretty girl for fucking her in every tight hole
watching your teenage daughter being fucked
you’re all tied up and forced to watch your daughter being
fucked
so slip your panties now little girl i’ve got something for
you to suck
Some of Mr. Panties’ searches take a dominant point of view, some take a submissive one, demonstrating that a single individual can derive satisfaction from either a sexually dominant or sexually submissive role. One thirty-three-year-old male performer who has appeared in many “fetish shows” and adult movies also switches between dominant and submissive roles. “Sometimes I like to dress up like a blond girl, with high heels, a wig, miniskirt, makeup, the works. It’s very empowering. But most of the time I just like to tie girls up and whip them. The feeling of power, that’s a real rush.”
When combined together,
domination and submission
is the sixth most popular category of sexual search on Dogpile. Since any act of sexual dominance requires an act of sexual submission by the partner, sometimes it was difficult to determine whether a particular search was better categorized as
domination
or
submission
. For example, one forty-two-year-old gay top reports that he enjoys watching sexual submission Web sites like Straight Hell and Frat Hazing because he identifies with the dominant men in the videos. That’s why we did not separate
domination
and
submission
into separate search categories.
domination and submission
is the sixth most popular category of sexual search on Dogpile. Since any act of sexual dominance requires an act of sexual submission by the partner, sometimes it was difficult to determine whether a particular search was better categorized as
domination
or
submission
. For example, one forty-two-year-old gay top reports that he enjoys watching sexual submission Web sites like Straight Hell and Frat Hazing because he identifies with the dominant men in the videos. That’s why we did not separate
domination
and
submission
into separate search categories.
Nevertheless, despite the ambiguity in determining whether specific searches were better categorized as
domination
or
submission
, when viewing individual search histories on AOL, it was clear that most people prefer one or the other. There were a minority of people like Mr. Panties who appeared to flexibly shift between the two. But most were focused on one or the other, as illustrated by the sexual submission content preferred by Mr. Diapers:
domination
or
submission
, when viewing individual search histories on AOL, it was clear that most people prefer one or the other. There were a minority of people like Mr. Panties who appeared to flexibly shift between the two. But most were focused on one or the other, as illustrated by the sexual submission content preferred by Mr. Diapers:
diaper punishment stories
sissy diaper stories
forced to be a girl at school
femdom at school
sissy slut cartoons
prison slut stories
adult babies in wet diapers pictures
On the other side of the coin is Mr. Gardens:
rape stories
forced seduction
forced deepthroat
female oral humiliation
botanical gardens
throatfucking
Heterosexual domination porn involves the male coercion of a female partner. The man is always in the dominant role. One subcategory of domination porn is financial exploitation—where men persuade women to have sex for money. Exploited Teens, Black Girls That Need Cash, or College Teens Book Bang are popular examples—the last one featuring college women (actually actresses) who have sex in exchange for textbooks. (These parallel gay Web sites such as Twinks for Cash, Gay 4 Cash, and Paid to Play Gay.) Another subcategory is psychological exploitation, including sites featuring sex with drunk girls (Drunk Chix, Free Drunk Bitches, and Only Drunk Porn), hypnotized girls (Hypnogirls, Smart in Hypnosis, and HypnoKing), and tricked girls (Chick Tricks, The Nasty Cop, and Teens Porn Casting). There’s also physical domination sites: Smack My Bitch, Forced Witness, and Forced Sex Scenes.
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