Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free

by Wednesday Martin

Bonobos are also what we might consider indiscriminate about the sex of their partners. Adult male bonobos copulate with any number of females every day but are just as happy to massage the penises of other adult males in their troop or another troop, or stand rump to rump and rub their scrotal sacs together. Younger bonobos, both male and female, are fond of French kissing and fellatio. Adult female bonobos, for their part, enjoy being mounted by males and not infrequently mount them as well. Females equally or even more eagerly practice what primatologists term (rather uninspiredly) “G-to-G contact,” which is just an easier way of saying “genito-genital contact.” Lying on top of each other, or facing each other while lying on their sides, the females press and grind their vulvas together in pursuit of pleasure. Which they find. Their clitorides—which are larger than a human female’s and more externalized—become engorged, and they often shriek as they rub against each other. It feels good enough that they do it roughly every two hours on average. In fact, field scientists have documented many instances when female bonobos ignored the overtures of males in order to indulge in this type of girl-on-girl action.