Abstinence-only worshipers have long made a fetish out of what they call the “love hormone” oxytocin. Women and to a much lesser extent men produce it when they have an orgasm. And it really does seem to be present during post-orgasmic cuddling. Wingnuts say this weakens women terribly because, you know, women who have too much sex, especially, with too many partners just completely lose any ability to love anyone ever again. Especially, their subtext goes, the man who, eventually, is supposed to have complete legal custody of her.

Never mind that women’s bodies regularly produce great huge gouts of oxytocin during, oh, say, childbirth or while nursing. Nevermind that really whopping amounts of the artificial version of oxytocin, Pitocin, are routinely given to women to induce labor. And yet despite the oxytocin receptor exhaustion thesis you never hear of women who’ve given birth becoming incapable of loving their husbands, or moms and dads, or subsequent offspring.

Nope, to hear the ‘wingers talk (including Bush Administration family-planning czar and occasional licensed physician Eric Keroack) this evidently happens only when the oxytocin in question involves fiddling with lady parts. To climax. Which, I might add, suggests a touching faith on ‘winger’s parts that most women climax regularly during intercourse.

But I digress…

I really just wanted to mention that back in January Lynn Gazis-Sax of Noli Irritare Leones wrote a really great post about oxytocin that begins

Oxytocin: The Cuddle Hormone?

It’s actually my mother, not me, who is the oxytocin expert, so, Mom, if you happen to read this on Facebook and see that I get anything wrong, feel free to let me know in Facebook comments. But destinyinprogress, at Alexandria, asked me a question about oxytocin in reply to one of my posts, so, here is what I know, and my thoughts about what I’ve read.

My mother did research on oxytoxin, when I was a teenager, and wrote articles with titles like Oxytocin analogs with oxygen-containing side chains in position 3.

From dinner table conversation when I was young, I learned a few basic facts…

She said it here.

Lynn’s got the details. Bottom line: it does seem to facilitate bonding but not as much as abstinence kooks wish, there’s not much evidence of “exhaustion” from it, even though men don’t produce as much as women do it seems to have similar results. And finally, from Lynn’s somewhat more sexually conservative position, the oxytocin dodge is sort of a red herring anyway since even if it were true (and it’s not) there might be better, um, reasons to strive for monogamy and fidelity. And better explanations than “love hormone” exhaustion for why one might not.