Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2010
Introduction
Our interest in the psychological properties of semen arose as a byproduct of an initial interest in menstrual synchrony. In reviewing that literature we discovered several articles (Trevathan, Burleson, & Gregory, 1993; Weller & Weller, 1998) reporting that lesbians who live together fail to show menstrual synchrony. Since the evidence suggests that menstrual synchrony is mediated by the exchange of subtle olfactory cues among cohabitating women (Preti et al., 1986, Stern & McClintock, 1998) this struck us as peculiar, because lesbians would be expected to be in closer, more intimate contact with one another on a daily basis than other females who live together. What is it about heterosexual females that promotes menstrual synchrony, or conversely what is it about lesbians that prevents menstrual synchrony? It occurred to us that one feature that distinguishes heterosexual women from lesbians is the presence or absence of semen in the female reproductive tract. Lesbians have semen-free sex.
Human semen is a very complicated mixture of many different ingredients. If you extract the sperm from semen, what is left is called seminal plasma. We speculated that there may be chemicals in seminal plasma that, through vaginal absorption, affect female biology and triggers the release of pheromones that function to entrain menstrual cycles among cohabitating women. Some of the components in semen pass through vaginal epithelial tissue, and within an hour or two after intercourse heightened levels of certain seminal chemicals can be detected in the female bloodstream (Benziger & Edelson, 1983).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.