By Sangeeth Sebastian

Aspiring moaners in ancient India could choose from—the cries of a dove, cuckoo, green pigeon, parrot, bee, nightingale, goose, duck and patridge—during mating. (It may be valid to ask if women in fourth century India were also part-time ornithologists.)

Working independently, University of Chicago researcher Gauri Pradhan too found that higher levels of female promiscuity predicted more frequent copulation calls.

So, where does that leave Pinker and his claims about sex being dirty “in all societies”?

The sex Pinker is familiar with seems to be essentially a by-product of centuries of Christian ertophobia that gripped the West, and later effectively transplanted to the rest of the world, through Colonialism, missionaries and “well intentioned” Inquisitions—a benign act of slaughtering people who believes in ideologies other than Christianity, sanctioned by the Pope— and not something that is rooted in either biology, evolution or even cultural traditions.