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

In many species of non-human primates, these scientists discovered, a female will initiate copulations much more frequently than a male does—often by presenting her posterior. But that is only the beginning of her assertiveness. Sitting next to a male she has chosen and giving him a “Let’s get this party started” grimace may be followed, if he is insufficiently ardent, by grooming him. A female macaque, Linda Wolfe and Meredith Small tell us, may then leap on this favored male, rubbing her genital area back and forth over his torso. And Darwin would have blushed at the antics of the lion-tailed macaque female, who will pester a male over and over if he is unresponsive, pulling his hair, screeching, and jumping up and down in front of him. When that doesn’t work, female lion tails have been observed vocalizing and literally writhing on the ground in sexual frustration and impatience, waiting for the male to get a clue and get busy with her already. Female ruffed lemurs, meanwhile, approach and slap males to get their sexual services, while female capuchins will chase males, emitting high-pitched whistling, whining vocalizations and smacking them, once they catch up, to prompt them to mount and copulate. A capuchin female may be so busy soliciting males that she does not eat during her days-long sexual peak. Mating replaces food as the greatest necessity and highest priority in her life. This is the “demure” and “reticent” sex.