Sex research has thrown up some odd but interesting facts, and many that go against the perceived wisdoms of the day
SEX. WELL that got your attention. That's nature doing its business, sex providing, as it does, both the origin of the species and quite a lot of fun.
And yet for a generally free activity (remarkably useful during a credit crunch), that is fundamental to human happiness, it seems that we are less interested than ever in putting our money where our mouths are, and funding scientific research into human sexual physiology and behaviour.
Some of the research that has actually filtered out from behind laboratory doors only serves to underline the significance of sexual relations to our physical and mental welfare.
Did you know, for example, that an orgasm is actually good for you?
Well, of course you did, but here's the scientific proof you were grasping for. According to The Science of Orgasmby Barry Komisaruk and Beverly Whipple of Rutgers University in the US, people who have regular orgasms experience less stress and enjoy lower rates of heart disease, breast cancer, prostate cancer and endometriosis.
They also appear to live longer. British researcher G Davey Smith and two colleagues calculated that over a span of 10 years the risk of death among men who had two or more orgasms a week was 50 per cent lower than among those who had them less than once a month.
They reported in the 1990 Journal of Sports Medicinethat Catholic priests have higher rates of early death than their non-celibate Protestant counterparts.
Not that it has ever been easy, uncovering the secrets of sex. It seems our approach has not matured much since ancient times. Take the clitoris, for example. Yes, why not? The ancient Greeks knew a thing or two about the clitoris.
Well, some of them did. Hippocrates, the famous Greek "Father of Medicine", was a friend to the clitoris, championing the since-disproven view that clitoral stimulation leading to female orgasm prompted conception.
However, well-known Greek killjoy Aristotle made a meal of pointing out that female orgasm was not needed to ensure conception. A case of keep your philosophies off our ovaries, I would suggest. Fortunately no one listened to Aristotle's orgasm theory, meaning it was the Hippocratic version of events that prevailed for centuries - an imperial physician to the baby-hungry, 18th-century Habsburg empress Maria Theresa advised vulval stimulation for some time before intercourse. She went on to have 16 children and was, presumably, quite happy.
Yes, it's funny how we keep forgetting, isn't it?
The clitoris has suffered, like a lost continent of comic-book proportions, from century-long cycles of suppression and discovery. In some ways, like sex research itself, the clitoris has fallen victim to the vagaries of prevailing political and social trends and beliefs.
In her entertaining book Bonk: The curious coupling of sex and science, author Mary Roach unearths the prejudices that have governed our own journeys of sexual self-discovery - and those of the brave pioneers who knew, even when they were being told they were wrong, that sexual happiness really matters.
From Egyptian doctor Ahmed Shafik, who has made a robust contribution to our knowledge of ejaculation, and who currently conducts his sex research inside a strict Muslim country, to some of the more famous names such as Alfred Kinsey, there have been many who have struggled against the vagaries of human prejudice in an attempt to tell it how it is.
They haven't always succeeded, of course, but they have tried. Conservatism and society's own sexual hang-ups are always there, censoring what scientific research can be done and interpreting what research is done. We're still pumping money into dodgy erections, while passing over the clitoris. Viagra anyone?
This scientific and social preoccupation with boys' bits is joined by our tendency to dwell on heterosexual reproductive sex over all else. Some 95 per cent of Roach's book is devoted to boy-girl action. No matter. Seven pages at the end are compensation enough for anyone who might have felt excluded by the scientific community.
In 1979, William Masters and Virginia E Johnson, who pioneered research into the nature of human sexual response, published Homosexuality in Practice. Their study produced results that are surely the raison d'être for sex research - namely that it should help us to have amazing sex.
For five years Masters and Johnson observed and compared the laboratory sexual encounters of straight, gay, bisexual and "ambi-sexual" (everything goes) couples. Some had sex with their partner, some were put in pairs by the researchers. The best sex (and let's face it, this is the nub of the matter) going on in Masters and Johnson's lab was between committed gay and lesbian couples. Not because they were doing something uniquely homosexual, but because they "took their time".
Masters pointed out that heterosexuals were at a disadvantage because they did not benefit from what he calls "gender empathy". The guys knew what the guys wanted, and the women knew what their female lovers wanted.
The empathy gap is not insurmountable, however - one has only to speak one's mind. Another difference between straight and gay couples was that the gay and lesbian couples communicated better - right down to what they wanted in bed.
Masters and Johnson did rather ruin the liberating element by suggesting later in their book that homosexuals could be converted to the straight life - however, the message is not diminished. After all that research the lesson, to paraphrase the Spice Girls, is simply this . . . "just tell them what you want, what you really, really want".
Bonk: the curious coupling of sex and scienceis published by Canongate Books