Nancy Sherwood writes:

 About a year ago there was a series on Public TV in the States
>called "The Human Animal" presented by Desmond Morris.   His theories on
>human sexuality were interesting.

Desmond Morris is a zoologist, and knows very little about humans.  He has
made a ton of money from his popular books, but is held in extremely low
regard by anthropologists.

  He pointed out that humans are the only
>mammals that have prominent "breasts" (do we call them breasts in other
>species), before gestation and birth.

In fact, it is only well-nourished humans who have prominent breasts, due to
the fat content.  They are handy storage depots for fat, which can then be
quickly mobilized to the milk.  A more likely explanation of the "somewhat
more prominent breasts than other primates" in humans is that of Gillian
Bentley (a physical anthropologist like myself) who thinks it has a whole
lot to do with the much reduced face/snout of humans -- if a human baby was
trying to nurse from a chimpanzee breast for example, it wouldn't be able to
breathe.  A chimp baby has a more prognathic (sticking out) nose and mouth.


  He  suggested that this makes the
>female more attractive because it is natural to be attracted to one of your
>species that outwardly exibits its ability to sucessfully procreate.  In
>other words, a man wants to mate with a woman with breasts because the men
>who mated with women that didn't have breasts didn't produce any offspring
>(at least that survived).  I know that there are flaws in this argument, but
>I kind of see what he means.

One of the big flaws is that attempting to procreat is energetically very
inexpensive for a man -- take only a few minutes of his time and a few
ounces of fluid.  So a man has very little to lose mating with any woman at
all.

 Also he says thet a womans breast cleavage is
>meant to mirror the "cleavage" of her buttocks simce apes and other primates
>who are on all fours look at the hind quarters of the female of the species
>as the "sexy" part.   My problem with this is that I don't think that
>cleavage is "normal".

Not only is cleavage not "normal" but most human cultures don't view the
breasts as sexy, and Morris argument is predicated on the assumption that
all humans have sex in a face-to-face position and all non-humans have sex
doggy style.  Neither of these are true.  In many cultures, almost all sex
is back to front with both partners laying on their sides, or doggy-style.
Some cultures, like the industrial west, usually have sex front-to-front,
but it isn't due to any natural positioning of the parts, or anything.
Also, pygmy chimpanzees (also known as bonobos) have sex face-to-face, but
don't have prominent breasts.


 I can accept that there are cultures that
>don't find breasts especially erotic (though my husband refuses to believe
>it).

Why is this so threatening to men, to learn that it is cultural?  Most
people get threatened when you tell them something is genetic/biological --
like mental illnesses.  They prefer to think they are cultural/learned/under
their own control.  But when it comes to breasts, they find it threatening
to think that something they feel so strongly in their guts was learned.


But hey, what's wrong with breasts being sexual.

At the risk of boring you all with repetition -- what's wrong is the
thousands of women who mutilate their bodies in pursuit of larger breasts,
and the thousands more who feel bad about their bodies not being close
enough to the cultural ideal, and the thousands of babies who don't get
breastfed in public or don't get breastfed at all, or mothers who are
accused of sexually abusing their kids by nursing them and lose their kids
in custody battles with vindictive ex-husbands......that's what wrong with it.


I think that in a sexual contexts breasts are very
>nice.  But I don't think that should mean that we cant appreciate the beauty
>of the breast and its ablitiy to nurture and nurish our young.

But many people do.  For them, if breasts are for sex, then they're for the
husbands, not the kids, and if you nurse a two year old or a four year old
then you are engaging in sex with your children.

   Shoes
>protect your feet, but that doesn't make it wrong to want your shoes to look
>good too.

But what about all those women who have destroyed their feet and spend years
of their life in agony wearing pointy-toed high heels.  When the idea of a
"nice fashionable" shoe is physically harmful to the woman, then even shoes
become instruments of oppression (Oh my God, I'm starting to rant.  Down girl.)

As for why womens breasts are on front of their
>chests- my husband says "they'd look silly if they were between your legs".
>(That's meant to be funny.)

The "milk line" runs along both side of the ventral (belly) surface of all
mammalian bodies.  Animals like dogs and cats that have big litters have
retained functioning mammary glands all along that line.  Animals that
usually have only one or two babies have reduced the number of functioning
glands (to twice the normal number of offspring -- so two in humans and all
other primates, four in goats and other ungulates who often have twins, two
in horses, two in elephants, etc.).  In some species with only a few left,
the functioning pair is the last pair, down between the hind legs.  In other
species with only a few left, the functioning pair is the first pair,
between the front legs (arms).  Humans and other primates are in this group,
as are elephants.  All primates spend a lot of time "sitting" upright, with
infant in their lap, and when in that position, baby's mouth is juxtaposed
to mom's breasts, just like humans.  For cows and goats and horses and
elephants, it probably doesn't matter, they don't need to be up front, but
can be (elephants).  In marine mammals such as seals and walruses, they are
the first pair, up high on the chest (sort of in the armpit), so they can
nurse while in the water with both mom and baby's heads above water to
breathe.  Whales express their milk into the water and baby eats it out of
the water -- presumable they couldn't keep theirs and baby's heads above
water to nurse because their heads are so huge, and their blowholes for
breathing are on top of their heads.

Kathy Dettwyler

P.S.  For Nancy Williams -- well, OK, it's pleasurable for the men for the
two minutes that it takes, and maybe some of them enjoy the power display,
but as you said, it's a far cry from our ideas of "The Joys of Sex" both
because it is so brief and because it is devoid of "romantic love" and all
the emotional joys of "making love" with someone you love.