Is this a follow up to another question I’m missing?
I guess maybe I had a different reading of the question, because I would say yes, especially when you include the tags on the question.
Did we mean for individuals or as a species? If we’re talking about individuals, I’m with you guys.
If we’re talking larger than that, I’d say from an evolutionary perspective for most animals that reproduce sexually there’s something in it for them beyond the chance of offspring. For most of them it feels good and that’s a huge evolutionary advantage.
If sex feels good, you do more of it, you have more babies, they have a higher tendency to find sex pleasurable, they do more of it, they have more babies… and so on.
Contrast that with if sex felt “meh”... like sticking your finger in someone else’s ear and wiggling it around… it might happen occasionally but there’d probably be a lot less kids. There almost certainly wouldn’t be arguments over preference, morality, laws regarding who can stick who’s finger in who’s ear, and an entire economy built up around it.
So I’d say procreation ultimately led to sexual pleasure and then the self-pleasuring, foot jobs, birth control and all those other goodies came in later as a result of the pleasure aspect when things got complicated. (~ either that or when the internet was invented ~)
not saying I’m “right”... honestly curious what I’m missing