by Robin Baker
The major problem a man encounters in trying to bolster his reproductive success via casual sex is the difficulty of finding enough women to cooperate with him. Few, if any, men get as many opportunities for casual sex as they are programmed to seek – and hence would like. When such opportunities do arise, they are programmed to let as few pass by without insemination as possible (Scene 28). Using a condom to remove all chance of conception thus negates a man’s fundamental reason for pursuing casual sex. Subconsciously, his body realises the futility of casual sex with no chance of conception – just as, again subconsciously, a woman’s body realises the power of casual sex with no chance of conception. Yet, despite the apparent futility of their actions, men are sometimes prepared to wear a condom on such occasions. Why?
One possibility is that a man’s body is actually fooled by this relatively recent invention into doing something that is against its reproductive interests. It is programmed to assume that when he ejaculates inside a woman the sperm will do their job. Perhaps, despite the evidence from his conscious brain, his body refuses to accept that a condom inevitably negates this assumption.
There is some evidence for this. Men still make all the same topping-up (Scene 4) and warfare (Scene 6) adjustments to the number of sperm they ejaculate during intercourse whether they are wearing a condom or not. They probably ejaculate about 10 per cent fewer sperm if they are wearing a condom, but the adjustments are the same. This suggests that a man’s body still ‘thinks’ his ejaculated sperm may have a job to do – even if it is merely ‘wishful thinking’ that on this occasion the condom may have accidentally come off or burst.
Even if this were an error in the programming of the male body, it would not be so surprising. Relatively few generations of men have been exposed to the use of condoms. Consequently, the generation game of natural selection (Scene 1) has had very little time to re-program the male body appropriately. But even if we found that men actually reduced their reproductive success through their use of condoms, we should expect things to change over the generations to come. Eventually, the human population should become dominated by the descendants of men who used condoms to enhance, not reduce, their reproductive success.
At first, it seems counter-intuitive that condoms could ever enhance a man’s reproductive success. Nevertheless, there are at least three ways in which they might.
One way would be if a man could use condoms to trade opportunities with a woman. He could offer to prevent conception when they first have sex in exchange for the opportunity of unprotected sex in the future (similar to the situation portrayed in Scene 20). He could then use the protected occasions to convince the woman that he really is a suitable mate. As a result, she might consider risking unprotected sex with him at some time in the future.
Another way would be if the greater protection against infection that condom use affords more than made up for any missed opportunities to inseminate. Since the advent of AIDS, the power of condoms to reduce the risk of disease has become widely known. It is possible that a man who uses a condom strategically throughout his sexual life will on average stay healthier and thus enjoy a greater reproductive success than a man who does not.
The third way would be much more devious – to (mis)use the condom to con women into being inseminated in a way that allows some chance of fertilisation. If a hundred couples used condoms properly for a whole year, no more than three of the women should become pregnant. Yet, in practice up to twenty to thirty conceive. This is nearly half the number (seventy-five) who conceive if they use no modern form of contraception at all. The most likely explanation for this relatively high failure rate is that condoms are not used properly during routine sex. Whether the failures are true accidents or whether the men concerned, like the young man in Scene 29, deliberately use condoms carelessly is not known.
Whatever the explanation for failures during routine sex, the failure rate will almost certainly be higher during casual sex. There is little doubt that many men use condoms during casual sex in all three of these ways. On several occasions, the young man in the scene misused them to give himself a chance of fertilisation during intercourse. On top of that, he used condoms to increase his number of casual encounters. Through not having had a condom to hand, he had missed two opportunities at intercourse, and never had another chance to inseminate either of the two girls concerned. With a condom in his pocket, though, he was able to take full advantage of opportunities with six other girls. On one of these occasions, he produced a child which the girl was probably going to be left to raise as best she could. Quite possibly, he would not have had this child or any of his other opportunities had he not offered to wear a condom.
Maybe the young man in the scene is not so unusual. There is an intriguing possibility that on average men are already using condoms to enhance rather than reduce their reproductive success. If so, their bodies’ strategy is as follows. First, try to have unprotected intercourse whenever possible. Secondly, offer to use condoms, as a strategy to increase the number of opportunities for intercourse. Thirdly, while wearing a condom, continue to make all of the necessary topping-up (Scene 4) and warfare (Scene 6) adjustments just in case the condom bursts or comes off. Finally, on occasion, deliberately misuse condoms to achieve ‘sneaky’ inseminations. Perhaps, through this strategy, learned and instinctive dispositions have already combined to allow the men who are prepared to use condoms to achieve a greater reproductive success than men who are not.
Similar arguments can be advanced to explain withdrawal as a male strategy. Of course, as far as casual sex is concerned the offer of withdrawal gives a man far fewer opportunities for insemination than the offer of a condom. As in Scene 29, a woman is far less likely to accept the offer of the former than she is the latter. There are two main reasons. First, withdrawal offers far less protection against getting pregnant than a condom. Secondly, it provides less protection against infection. As far as fertilisation is concerned, once a man has succeeded in penetrating through offering to withdraw, it is far easier for him to inseminate and fertilise than if he uses a condom. This is illustrated by the fact that withdrawal as a means of contraception has an even higher failure rate than the condom. If our hundred couples used withdrawal for a year instead of condoms, only seven would conceive if they used the method properly. In practice, however, up to forty women would conceive. In part, these failures happen because the few sperm that leak out of the penis before the man withdraws are particularly fertile. Mainly, they happen because men often fail to withdraw as promised.
Offering to withdraw rather than to use a condom provides a man with fewer opportunities for intercourse, but a better chance of fertilisation when those opportunities do arise. Quite possibly, the relative success of the two ploys depends primarily on how experienced is the woman. As the young man in the scene discovered, once a woman has realised that she can be deceived by the promise of withdrawal, she is far less gullible. In fact, most women are rarely deceived more than once, either by the false promise of withdrawal or by a carelessly positioned condom. When she has been conned once, she is likely thereafter to keep a close eye on the whole operation.
Although, naturally, humans are the only animals to use condoms, they are not the only animals to use withdrawal. Many apes and monkeys are known to penetrate and thrust without ejaculation. To what extent this behaviour is simply the male using his penis to remove material from inside the female’s vagina (Scene 21), and to what extent it indicates a tacit agreement between the male and the female not to inseminate – as in humans - is not known. Whenever it is the latter, however, we can be certain that from time to time female apes and monkeys are also conned by males, just like their human counterparts.
10
One Way or Another
SCENE 30
Best of Both Worlds
The young teacher looked up from his marking as his two daughters, aged six and seven, skipped over to kiss him goodnight, herded from behind by his partner
like two frisky lambs. One of the girls wished him goodnight in her mother’s native language, one in his. Most of the time the household spoke his language but in moments of tenderness or anger any one of them might slip into the mother’s tongue. When she returned from taking them to bed, he abandoned his marking, switched on the television and sat next to her on the settee. She put her legs over his knees and they sat, eyes on the screen, idly stroking each other’s hands and legs. He looked sideways at her, stomach churning with a fear that had been with him all day. How could he tell her that their whole world might be on the verge of collapse?
‘I am Preggnent and its Yours,’ the scribbled note had said, thrust into his hand during the morning break. ‘My dad says you must giv us sum money or well tell on you.’ The girl was fifteen and only slightly more illiterate than most of her contemporaries at the school. Precocious and from a tough family background she nevertheless had the looks and bearing that would fire most men’s fantasies – until she spoke. She had asked him for a lift one hot summer’s night after school. Foreign languages were his main subject but he doubled as a Physical Education teacher. It was hot that night and he hadn’t bothered to change out of his shorts before getting in his car to set off home.
He should have said no when she asked for a lift. He should have told her to stop when she began to stroke his thigh as he drove. And he should have told her to get out when she took off her knickers. But he didn’t. Instead he drove to waste ground by a disused warehouse, got into the back seat, and allowed her to pull down his shorts and climb all over him. Looking back, he remembered how expertly she had handled his clothes and his genitals and doubted that she was a stranger to sex. He also doubted that he was the father – assuming she really was pregnant, of course. Maybe she had set up other men, other teachers, then tried to blackmail them also. Maybe the threat was hollow and nothing would happen if he ignored it. But maybe she and her father were serious and he would have to either pay up or own up.
The fear gnawing at his stomach grew stronger. He wasn’t yet thirty and his finances were in a terrible state – still not recovered from his years at college, his year abroad, and his year of teacher training. He was still sending money abroad to support the child he had fathered during his exchange year, just before meeting his present partner. Although she had managed to get a part-time job once their youngest daughter had started school, they were still in debt. He wouldn’t be able to pay a blackmail demand. His only option, if the girl was serious, was to deny ever having had sex with her and hope that nobody had seen them that evening.
In truth, it wasn’t the note that really worried him. If it was merely a case of his word against hers he would have little to worry about, financially or legally. Nor was he unduly worried about how his partner would react. Theirs was a free-and-easy relationship and she had the sexually liberated attitude much more typical of her culture than his. She knew of his child in her home country and, despite their financial situation, had never suggested he should not provide its mother with some support. Though she didn’t know the whole story, she knew he had not been totally faithful to her. A combination of bad luck and imprudence had led her to find out about the first of his three infidelities. But she had forgiven him and within a month they were back to normality. He suspected the same would happen again over this schoolgirl, especially if he denied the whole thing completely.
No, his stomach was not churning from fear that his partner would discover his past indiscretions with women and girls. It was churning from fear that she would discover his philanderings with men and boys. His panic was that in defending himself against the girl’s note, he might provoke people who knew the other half of his very active sex life into talking. Even apart from the legal dangers, which were serious, he doubted that his partner would stand by him if she knew the whole story, despite her sexual awareness and understanding.
His homosexual activity went back as far as he could remember. He was about six years old the first time his uncle, his regular baby-sitter, climbed naked into his bed to cuddle him. The games they played were ‘their secret’ which his mother ‘wouldn’t understand’ and which would make her ‘very angry’. In any case, he enjoyed them. He liked the smell and feel of his uncle’s body, the way their genitals reacted to each other’s touch, and the way he could help his uncle discharge. He was ten when he first experienced penetration and twelve when he first penetrated his uncle.
His first homosexual experience with someone his own age was with his cousin. They were both eleven when, playing in his bedroom one day while his parents were out shopping, he had persuaded his playmate that they should take off their clothes and wrestle. Within minutes they both had erections and within the hour he was educating his cousin in some of the techniques he had learned from his uncle. By the time they were thirteen and both able to ejaculate they were meeting at least once a week for mutual masturbation and anal sex.
He was still thirteen when he first had sex with a girl. A young neighbour, the same age as himself, whom he had played with throughout his childhood, had succumbed to his ‘I’ll show you what I can do if you’ll show me what you can do’ routine. And he had a lot to show her. The years of practice with his uncle and cousin had given him a knowledge of the body and a sureness and confidence of touch that most males do not acquire until twice his age. The young girl came back, week after week, to have him stroke and stimulate her, each time allowing him to go just that little bit further. In the end, he was touching and caressing her naked body, anus and genitals with his hands, mouth and penis at such length and so exquisitely that her young body was having its first tingling experiences of orgasm. Each week her climax was just that little bit stronger, and each time they had the opportunity she wanted more of the same. After three months he convinced her that she couldn’t have a baby from anal intercourse and that she would enjoy it, and after several experiments, she did. Before the year was out, she had asked him for vaginal intercourse as well and by the time he was fourteen his sexual education was complete.
At college, four years later, he joined the gay scene, spending many of his evenings in gay bars and clubs. For a year, he lived with another man in a more or less monogamous relationship, though both of them were occasionally unfaithful, mainly with other men but from time to time with women also. There was never any shortage of women around him, many of whom told him how much better a lover he was than his straight contemporaries.
For his exchange year, he went abroad to study the foreign language he intended to teach. The person in the flat next to his happened to be a woman. They were lovers within days, even before he had found the local gay community. And within three months she had conceived – but not before he had been unfaithful to her with the woman who was to become his long-term partner. Before the end of the year, she too had conceived. Even while living with one woman and being unfaithful with another, he still managed from time to time to slip away for casual homosexual sex without either woman knowing. On balance, though, most of his sexual activity while abroad was with women.
When he returned to college to begin his final year of study, he renewed his activities in the gay community. He kept in touch with both mothers of his children by letter, sending what little money he could. After graduation, he moved to a new city to train as a teacher. No sooner had he arrived than the woman who was now his partner turned up on his doorstep with their five-month-old daughter. She moved in with him and they had lived together ever since. Occasionally, he still picked up a casual lover at a gay bar, but his partner had never found out and as far as he knew she had never suspected his bisexuality.
Six years ago, he had landed his job as a teacher in a rough and depressed town with a high level of unemployment. He vowed to himself that he would never do anything sexually that might prejudice his career or make it more difficult for them to get out of debt. And for three years he had managed to restrain himself. But then, in successive years, he had succumbed to the charms of
two student teachers. The first, a young girl, his partner had detected. The second, a young man, she did not. Both affairs lasted only a month. Then, a year ago, he had responded to the tentative advances of another male member of staff and had begun a long-term homosexual relationship, which was still continuing.
Under cover of playing squash, the two men had sex at least weekly in the other man’s flat. It was uncanny how similar his new lover was in his moods, behaviour and responses to the girl he had impregnated within a few months of arriving abroad. In addition to sex with each other, the men would sometimes visit gay bars to pick up other men or explore the streets and toilets for young male prostitutes. For these diversions, they drove to the anonymity of the nearest large city, about thirty minutes away.
The problem that was now haunting him began six months ago. With his male lover, he had visited the city to look for child prostitutes. They had just picked up two boys when they chanced across two thirteen-year-olds from their school who were soliciting. It was difficult to know who was the most unnerved by the encounter. His weekend was tense, as he worried about what might happen. He relaxed a little when, back at school on the Monday, the two boys approached him and said that they wouldn’t tell if the teachers didn’t tell.
Such an alliance might have been stable if the other teacher hadn’t then begun inviting the boys to his flat and paying them for sexual favours. One evening, when he called round on his lover, the two boys were still there. The temptation of such a foursome was too great for him, and he allowed himself to be recruited into their games of sexual musical chairs. From then on, the four had met for group sex more or less weekly. Sensing their increasing ascendancy, the two boys had begun to ask for more and more money. Just a week ago, they had asked for an extortionate amount. When he had refused to pay so much, they had begun to make threats. Now, there was also the note from the girl and he was scared, really scared.