Title: A Billion Wicked Thoughts

Author: Ogi Ogas & Sai Gaddam

Year Published: 2012

Kind of Book: Psychology/Evolutionary Biology

Personal Rating: 8/10

Date Read: cira 2018

My Review: What we know about our sexual fantasies, fetishes, and desires has largely been based on the findings of questionnaires and personal surveys conducted over the last century. As it turns out, people aren’t extremely truthful when you sit them down in a room and ask them to reveal their deepest darkest sexual fantasies to a team of researchers they've never met…Clearly another way of collecting data needed to be found….In 2011 a pair of researchers (Dr. Ogi Ogas and Dr. Sai Gaddam) came along and said, "why don't we just look at online databases to see what kinds of pornography people are searching for?" This book reveals their surprising findings… Fair warning: like any evolutionary psychology book some of the claims/theories presented in this book seem impossible to prove and are therefore unfalsifiable.

What question is the author trying to answer?

  • What can evolutionary psychology and the internet tell us about people's sexual fantasies and fetishes?

Big Ideas

  • Today, the medical profession discourages surgical sex reassignment in newborns,

  • In Sambian culture one man performing oral sex on another is not a sign of homosexuality, but rather an initiation ritual

  • The Sambian culture (in Papua New Guinea) believe that semen is the essence of manhood and that ingesting semen makes men strong

  • Men prefer women with small feet

Because

  • Women's feet sometimes grow 1/2 to 1 full shoe size during pregnancy

  • Men evolved to prefer women who are fertile (and not currently pregnant)

Also

  • Estrogen limits the growth of foot bones

  • A woman with small feet is likely to have high estrogen levels (and be more fertile)

  • Many women report lubrication and/or orgasm during unwanted or coercive sex

  • Many heroes in romance novels are tough men (alphas) who learn to be nice/sweet/caring to her

  • Women are attracted to tough men who learn to be nice/sweet/caring to just them

  • Women desire men who desire them

  • Testosterone is the hormone that sexually arouses both men and women

  • If a man is not in a relationship women tend to question whether or not he is a high value man

  • When an alpha male hero falls in love with a heroine in a Romance book/book it is a deflowering akin to the heroine's loss of virginity

  • Men are more easily fooled into thinking that a woman's pleasure is real during sex

  • Women are more easily fooled into thinking that a man's love is real in a relationship

  • Men tend to be especially curious about how many men their girlfriend/wife has slept with

  • Women tend to round the number of men they have slept with down, when asked by a male partner

  • Women tend to be especially curious about how many women their boyfriend/husband has been in love with

  • Women tend to focus on whether or not their man is emotionally authentic (eg. Is he really in love or faking it? Is he Really an Alpha or a Beta who learned a few tricks)

  • Men tend to focus on whether or not their woman is physically authentic (eg. Is she really that young or just trying to look young? Are her boobs real or fake?)

  • Japanese anime porn is to men what paranormal romance novels are to women (ie. Both superstimuli aimed to excite their arousal response)

  • All humans are descended from men who took chances

  • There is an evolutionary advantage for men who take chances

  • All humans are descended from women who played it safe

  • There is an evolutionary advantage for women who don’t take chances

  • What a man is attracted to remains fixed after his sexual imprinting during adolescence

  • Danger excites many people sexually

  • Because

  • Out sympathetic nervous system is responsible for our fight-or-flight response and also controls orgasm (this is likely a by-product rather than an adaptation)

  • More men search for porn where a black man cuckholds a white woman

  • Because

  • Black men are frequently perceived as more dominant than white men

  • When men watch another man (especially a Dominant man) having sex with their partner, it activates their sperm competition cue (ie. They produce more sperm and/or ejaculate more semen during the next session of intercourse as a way to compete with another man's sperm)

  • When a man has reason to believe that someone else has had sex with his partner, he is likely to have sex with her quickly and vigorously

  • Squirting is popular in porn

Because

  • Squirting is an unfakable sign of female pleasure.

  • Men are attracted to authentic signs of female pleasure

Because

  • Men are wired to pay attention to whether or not their partner is enjoying themselves during sex

Because

  • If a man's partner is not enjoying herself during sex it may be a sign that someone else is pleasuring her in bed

  • If a man doesn't pleasure his partner during sex she is may go elsewhere to receive sexual pleasure

  • If a man doesn't pleasure his partner during sex she may gossip about it to other women (and potential mates)

  • Men's penises evolved to be shovel shaped to scoop rivals sperm out of a woman's vagina during sex

  • Men have long refractory periods after ejaculating

  • Because

  • If men were to have sex with a woman right after ejaculating into her, his penis might shovel out some of his semen (and decrease the chances of impregnating her)

  • However

  • Men's refractory periods are much shorter if/when they are offered sex with a different woman

  • The submission cue is fundamental to the female brain

  • For most mammals, males are socially dominant

  • Social dominance is fluid and flexible in a male's brain (ie. Men can switch between being dominant or submissive depending on their position in the heirarchy)

  • Women generally prefer sexual submission (but are flexible)

  • Men generally prefer sexual domination (but are flexible)

  • Many fans of BDSM are socially dominant who prefer to be sexually submissive (eg. Powerful CEO who has a dominatrix)

  • Social Dominance increases a person's sex drive

  • BDSM play is usually not aimed at generating an orgasm

  • Some men prefer to be sexually submissive

Because

  • Some men are born with a stronger connection between the hypothalamic submission circuitry and the subcortical reward system than other men

  • Gay men are more attracted to man’s body with a vagina than female body with penis.

  • Many women are just as turned on by watching two guys sexually satisfy each other as men are watching two women satisfy each other.

  • Many women are attracted to Vampires

Because

  • Vampires tend to have strong desire for the women they are seducing/biting

  • Vampires tend to be alphas

  • Reducing our sexual desires to a set of biological cues does not eliminate the magic of sex

  • By identifying the biological cues which trigger our desire we can liberate ourselves from any shame we have of our fetishes/fantasies

 

Things that Surprised Me

  • most behavioral scientists are women.

  • 96% of people in psychological experiments are WEIRD western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic.

  • The most popular term users search on PornHub (this doesn't mean Mom videos are the most watched) “Mom”pg27

  • “Women’s feet typically grow during pregnancy, sometimes a half or even a full shoe size

  • Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men.

  • “The average length of the gay penis is 6.32 inches. The average length of the straight penis is 5.99 inches.”pg128

  • “Two Thirds of American gay men who seek casual sex prefer the more submissive role.”pg145

  • “In Richard Lippa’s BBC survey, he found that bisexual women have a higher sex drive than either heterosexual women or lesbians.”pg169

  • “Cuckold porn is the second most popular heterosexual interest on English-language search engines.”pg180

  • The audience for transformation fiction (man trapped inside a woman’s body and having sex with men) is mostly heterosexual men.

 

Unknown Terms

Squicks: an online slang expression, especially common within fandom groups, as well as BDSM forums. The term refers to a feeling of disgust and discomfort caused by something. 2)term for kinks that gross you out.

Objectum Sexualis: Sexual or emotional fetishes for inanimate objects (eg. Falling in love with the Berlin wall)

Bull: a term for the cuckolder ie. Man who is having sex with another man's wife/partner

Hotwife: a term for the cuckoldrix  ie. The wife/girlfriend who has sex with another man other than her partner.

Cuckold/Cuck: a term for the man whose wife/partner is having sex with another man and/or a man who is raising another man's child with his partner.

Yaoi or boy-love: a genre on anime popular in Japan in the 90s which depicts to heterosexual man involved in sexual activities. The genre in popular amongst heterosexual women