The Sex Researchers

Series 1 Episode 1
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First Broadcast: Thu 16 June 2011

This episode looks at how sex researchers have tried to understand how the opposite sex works.

One sex researcher in Canada believes men and women are turned on in very different ways. Her experiment shows heterosexual men respond to straight sex: no surprise!

But women it seems are aroused by images of any kind of sex, from gay men to bonking monkeys; but they don't necessarily know their body is responding. Is sex in the mind or in the loins? And are men and women fundamentally different?

Then there's the orgasm. For men it's clearly linked to making babies - but for women? What was its purpose?

In the 1950s, gynaecologist Bill Masters teamed up with his secretary Virginia Johnson to take a more rigorous look. Together they recorded 10,000 orgasms in their laboratory, and concluded that, for women, orgasm was simply for pleasure.

Their book, perhaps unsurprisingly, was a best seller, and they became sex research superstars.

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