Students participated in “The Dirtiest Sex Talk You’ll Ever Hear” in Academic Building A Monday evening, when the Binghamton University Evolutionary Studies Program (EvoS) hosted speaker Jesse Bering, author of the book “Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?”

Bering’s talk, titled “The Psychology of Lust, Disgust and Moral Reasoning,” focused on human reactions of disgust and lust and their evolutionary significance.

Bering discussed the research of Daniel Fessler, a UCLA assistant professor of anthropology, who found that women are more likely to be disgusted by sexual deviance, which inhibits them from participating in “biologically suboptimal sexual unions,” including extreme age disparities, bestiality and incest.

“Fessler has discovered that when women are at high risk of conception … they are much more easily disgusted and much more readily disgusted by these types of suboptimal unions,” Bering said. “Nature would have given her a helping hand by turning her stomach even more than usual.”

Men, however, are less picky when it comes to choosing sexual partners.

“One of the things that makes male sexuality fundamentally different from female sexuality is that men are not limited in their reproductive success to certain periods of the month,” Bering said. “We produce on average 85 billion sperm per day, that’s in each testicle. If men are too disgusted, too easily grossed out, too picky, when it comes to people to have sex with, this is going to put them at a disadvantage.”

Bering gave examples of what we consider to be disgusting as a society, including the Peters twins, a pair of German porn stars that say they are monogamous with one another outside the porn studio.

“Is anyone familiar with these two gentlemen?” Bering asked the audience, showing a picture of the twins. “You wouldn’t admit it if you were.”

Bering asked the audience if they found a problem with the Peters twins’ relationship.

“It seems a little narcissistic,” said an audience member from the back of the room.

Bering said that he wants people to appreciate the range of sexual impulses within the human species, including sexually deviant attractions like incest, pedophilia and necrophilia.

“I really want to sort of deliver the message that people have completely no control over their sexual attraction,” Bering said. “What’s imperative is to separate the behavior from the orientation.”

Bering said that denying the existence of sexual minorities with urges that we consider “intrinsically immoral” does nothing to eradicate deviant sexual urges.

“It doesn’t make any difference whether you say you ‘accept’ pedophiles or not, they still exist,” Bering said. “Only when we have that scientific information can we make improvements.”

Bering’s talk was part of the EvoS program’s fall seminar series. The seminars are open to everyone, but students enrolled in “BIOL480S: Current Topics in Evolutionary Studies” earn two credits for attending and completing other work outside of the seminars.

EvoS director David Sloan Wilson, a professor in biology and anthropology, said the program brings lecturers to speak on a wide range of topics pertaining to the program.

“It’s wonderful that people can come here and they can listen to such a diversity of talks,” Wilson said. “Every week it’s a new topic, but they all tie together.”

Brian Kirschler, a student enrolled in the class, said he has gained a lot from the seminar lecturers.

“It’s nice that you can look at other fields that you may not have known existed even, and just see what they’re like,” said Kirschler, a senior majoring in biological anthropology. “It’s my favorite class I’ve taken.”

Senior Samantha McInerney said Bering’s talk brought a new light to a topic she learned about in previous classes.

“As a biological anthropology major, I’ve covered a lot of sexual [topics] that we cover more than other classes,” McInerney said. “Seeing it from this perspective and discussed as a kind of disgust mechanism was different.”

McInerney said the audience was more responsive to Bering’s lecture than they were to past speakers.

“There was a lot more engagement with the audience, most of the time it’s more a lecture-type thing,” McInerney said. “This one was much more interactive.”

As for Bering’s conclusion that women are more selective with their sexual partners than men, McInerney was amused by the findings.

“Pretty telling, I guess,” she said.