Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
by Mary Roach
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The View from the Sexual Research Frontier (2008-04-16)
“I think by now you know how science is”, says a researcher to Mary Roach. “You think you know a lot until you start to ask some really basic questions, and you realize you know nothing.” That’s perhaps a koan-like exaggeration, but it is certainly true that good research answers questions only to turn up more questions. This might be even more true in the arena of sexual research, the topic of Roach’s enormously entertaining and informative _Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex_ (Norton). Roach has before written books about scientific evaluation of the physical and spiritual afterlife of the dead, and if she could make such macabre topics engaging and funny, you can count on a lively treatment of how science investigates sex. Part of the reason this book is so interesting is, of course, that everyone is interested in sex, and there is a great tangle of complicated hormones, engorgements, and reflexes that operate to give us sexual joy and we cannot even feel many of them operating. Another reason is that we got a late start in the scientific evaluation of the subject. Kinsey and Masters & Johnson were pioneers in a sphere where few others had gone before, because of a taint of naughtiness. Another reason the book is so interesting is that you can read all the books on chemistry, physics, or cosmology you want, and you will never find experiments as funny as those of the Egyptian researcher who monitored the coital rates of rats who wore polyester pants. And that’s just one example of the experiments here.

Roach loves her subject, which she says is “as good as science gets” because it involves researchers who display “a mildly outrageous, terrifically courageous, seemingly efficacious display of creative problem-solving, fueled by a bullheaded dedication to amassing facts and dispelling myths in a long-neglected area of human physiology.” She certainly gets into the spirit of the effort by recruiting her good-sport husband to be the first couple scanned in coition by 3D sonography.”For the still images, we must hold still for several seconds, like Victorians posing for a tintype, only not like Victorians posing for a tintype.” Roach reports on most of the other research without participating in it, like a paper from five years ago called “The Human Penis as a Semen Displacement Device”. Not only did our male evolutionary forebears want to deposit their own semen into vaginas, they wanted to scoop out any semen from predecessors, and it turns out the shape of the glans at the end of the penis is just right to do this. This experiment involved no humans except for the experimenters. They used artificial semen (the recipe is given in the book), an artificial vagina from California Exotic Novelties, and three different artificial phalluses, one of them a control without a glans. The lifelike phalluses expelled 91% of the standing semen, while the cylindrical control expelled only 35%.

Roach has an appealing jocular prose, and her subjects in one chapter after another are, well, the sorts of scientists that would study such things, so they make for entertaining interviews. This does not keep her book from being packed with information, some of it at the cocktail-chatter level and some decidedly deeper. Here is the vaginal photoplethysmograph probe, and to balance that, the nocturnal penile tumescence monitor. Here is how Danish pig farmers stimulate sows so that artificial insemination has a better chance of success. Here is a report of the “inside-out” maneuver performed during surgery on the penis. Here are reflections about how doing sexual research was almost forbidden in the fifties, and then it became acceptable and fundable, but now in an era of “just say no” it has become difficult again. Here are explanations of how victims of paraplegia, who ought not to have sensation below the waist, can get orgasms. Here is evaluation of the famous upsuck theory of female orgasm, and an admission that studies comparing conception rates of women who have sex with orgasm and those who have sex without have simply not been done. Here are descriptions of sexual quackery from the past, including during the witch craze when witches were busy collecting men’s penises by magic and putting them in the nests of birds who helpfully kept them alive with a diet of oats and corn. Here is the shorthand code used by the San Francisco Fire Department for sex toy emergencies. And here are some results from a forgotten study that issued from the lab of Masters & Johnson. The most fulfilling sex seems to have been that between committed gay and lesbian couples. Roach says, “Not because they were practicing special secret homosexual sex techniques, but because they `_took their time_.’” They moved slowly and lingered over each other’s pleasure. They teased. They talked. Well, perhaps Roach examined research with more revolutionary lessons, but nonetheless, it might be practical to put this one into action.

Quirky, Banally Funny, Not Life Changing (2008-04-14)
ARE YOU IN THE MOOD FOR IT?

In her new book, Bonk: The Curious Couple of Science and Sex, Mary Roach approaches the subject of sex research with the same wit and curiosity present in her previous books- Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, on the science of death, and Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, a look at what happens after we die.

In Bonk, Roach describes the evolution of sex research: from studies by Alfred Kinsey and the lesser-known Robert Latou Dickenson, to the Egyptian doctor Ahmed Shafik, who dressed rats in polyester pants.

The 1920s were a curious decade for sex research. During that era, Dickenson, a Brooklyn-based gynecologist, became the first to take a laboratory-based approach to examining what happens physiologically when people have sex. Dickenson used test tubes to see what happened inside a woman during sexual intercourse and debunked theories that the penis locked on to the cervix during intercourse.

Dickenson later inspired Kinsey to conduct his famous experiments.

A history of scientific research is not that interesting, even if it involves the racy subject of sex. In Bonk, Roach has tried to infuse a dull subject with wit and humor. I agree with the reviewers that have commented Roach’s banality gets old quick, but I don’t know what other intriguing approach Roach could have taken to this topic. I concluded that as bored as I was with the post-modernist, sarcastic writing, it’s probably the only approach Roach could have employed to write a book on sex research that you- presumably not a scientist and not a Cosmo or Playboy devotee-would have read.

Part of the problem is that this genre may be getting old. In the last decade I’ve read books that have dug up the quirky history of everything imaginable-the writing of the Oxford-English dictionary, orchid growing, bibliophilia, and china (as in china vases, not the country). It’s clever, and at the time, I was happy to learn something about such idiosyncratic subjects, but this type of reading doesn’t really satiate innate curiosity. You probably haven’t read about sex research, because, well, let’s face it, you probably don’t care. I read history to learn about the present-the “Those who don’t know history are bound to repeat it”-type of approach. Knowing that someone stuck polyester pants on a rat back in the day doesn’t really tell me anything about my life now. It’s interesting in a navel-gazing sort of a way, but not that fulfilling.

If you are in the mood for history, I think a People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn is probably the most interesting history book I’ve read. But it’s serious. When I was a kid I read the Guiness Book of World Records and learned that Napoleon’s small sex organs were kept in a glass jar after his death. They are now “in the hands of” a private collector who paid around $10,000 dollars for them. That’s interesting right? You’ll get the same sort of information from Bonk. Decide for yourself whether or not you’re “in the mood” for it.The morning after… (2008-04-11)
I enjoyed reading Mary Roach’s earlier book, “Stiff”, which was an entertaining and informative romp through the history of scientists’ uses of cadavers. Granted, it was informative in the way that trivia questions are - fun to discuss over cocktails, but not really helpful to know. Still, it is interesting to pause and think about aspects of life - or death - that usually are beyond our concern. So, I was intrigued by “Bonk”; I expected Mary Roach would easily rise to the challenge.

She never quite got it up. Sure, it was informative. But after reading about one too many sex experiments involving primates, the thrill was gone. Since the subject became dull rather quickly, Roach filled the text with too many jokes - and some of them fell flat. (Some of them were downright nasty, such as the footnote in chapter 9 about a young boy being killed in an MRI machine. What could possibly be funny about that?) After a while, the forced humor and repetition of sex talk reminded me of 5th grade locker room conversation.

She also tried to make the story interesting by giving the reader portraits of the scientists involved in the research. The caricatures were either too silly or too scary; for the latter, she had to repeatedly make an effort to defend them as real scientists, not voyeurs. Adding these characters to the locker room talk and lame humor hardly made for an entertaining read.

You can only try to be funny about body parts for so long, before the reader just starts wishing Roach would hurry up and finish. The stories that could have been interesting, such as when she relates her own involvement in some of the more tame experiments, are about as titillating as a cold shower. Worse than that, the book doesn’t seem to go anywhere. The reader is up to the eyeballs in scientists and genitals, but there seems to be no point to the story, except to say that there have been some scientists that have been interested in genitals. Well, isn’t that a thrilling thesis?

In the end, I was reminded of something that Raymond Chandler wrote, comparing alcohol to love: “The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl’s clothes off.” In “Bonk”, the preface - entitled ‘foreplay’, of course - draws you in. You’ll read a chapter or two, but then you’ll wish you’d said, “Not tonight, dear; I have a headache.” It’s just routine - and if the author isn’t going to try to make it interesting and new, then the reader might as well just roll over and get some sleep. At least you’ll still respect yourself in the morning.Very funny and understandable (2008-04-11)

About: A rundown of the scientific study of sex.

Pros: Funny and well written, Roach has a knack for putting scientific jargon and concepts into very understandable terms. Interesting and you’re guaranteed to learn something. Also includes recipe for simulated human semen (Mix 7 ml room-temperature water and 7.26 g cornstarch, stir for 5 minutes and you’ll get one fake ejaculate). Bonus fact: One study found 351 slang terms for penis but only 3 for clitoris.

Cons: I was surprised that John Wayne Bobbit was not mentioned when the concept of cutting off penises was brought up. I also expected Dr Kellogg, the inventor of Corn Flakes who was very against masturbation to get at least a nod. One nitpicky thing: In the chapter on boar sex, boar 433 gets referred to once as boar 443 (pg. 89).

Grade: B+The funniest science book ever written (2008-04-10)
Here’s to Ed! Author Mary Roach’s husband Ed must be the world’s most agreeable husband, seeing as he agreed to have sex with his wife in a 20-inch-diameter MRI tube. While she takes notes. And an observing doctor makes chit-chat.

I actually laughed out loud while reading this book. Often. At the rec center where I work out, I kept getting the giggles while pedaling on the stationary bike. I took off the book jacket with the giant word “Bonk” on the cover (and the tiny, um, “bonking” ladybugs) so it wouldn’t be obvious what I was reading.

I learned a great deal. For example, did you know that Victorian gynecologists treated women without looking at them? Or that using most homemade sex machines of that era was “like dating a corn dog”? Or some people thought that witches collected penises and put them in boxes, where they moved around on their own and ate oats and corn?

Mostly I learned that I need to get Mary Roach’s other books. She’s a gem.

Here’s the chapter list:

1. The Sausage, the Porcupine, and the Agreeable Mrs. G: Highlights from the pioneers of human sexual response

2. Dating the Penis-Camera: Can a woman find happiness with a machine?

3. The Princess and Her Pea: The woman who moved her clitoris, and other ruminations on intercourse orgasms

4. The Upsuck Chronicles: Does orgasm boost fertility, and what do pigs know about it?

5. What’s Going On in There?: The diverting world of coital imaging

6. The Taiwanese Fix and the Penile Pricking Ring: Creative approaches to impotence

7. The Testicle Pushers: If two are good, would three be better?

8. Re-Member Me: Transplants, implants and other penises of last resort

9. The Lady’s Boner: Is the clitoris a tiny penis?

10. The Prescription-Strength Vibrator: Masturbating for health

11. The Immaculate Orgasm: Who needs genitals?

12. Mind Over Vagina: Women are complicated

13. What Would Allah Say?: The strange, brave career of Ahmed Shafik

14. Monkey Do: The secret sway of hormones

15. “Persons Studied in Pairs:” The lab that uncovered great sex