Evolution of Normal Human Sexuality: A Journey Through History

Abstract

Internet, newspapers, magazines, journals, dating advice websites and blogs are rife with information on human sexuality. Some draw reasonable conclusions. Others draw some pretty drastic and ghastly ones. The implication is the same across all of them; human sexual behaviour is pre-ordained, and men or women who deviate from it are either psychologically dysfunctional or are denying their instincts for the sake of power and dominance. It’s time we understood human sexuality in an integrative, evolutionary light. Given the central importance of sexuality to the evolutionary imperative, reproductive success, there is strong theoretical impetus for understanding how evolution has shaped human sexuality in the past, and how the influence of past selective forces continue to manifest in the present. Sexuality has always provoked comment and debate, curiosity, speculation and analysis, artistic and erotic interest, and it is easyto assume that sexual lives are an unchanging universal phenomenon of human life. However, sexual cultures and customs vary substantially between countries, and over time. Developments in the late 20th century have fundamentally and perhaps permanently changed our views on human sexuality.