[1] Lloyd was born in Morristown, New Jersey, and earned her BA in science and political theory from University of Colorado, Boulder in 1980, summa cum laude.
[3] Her 2005 book, The Case of the Female Orgasm, was widely discussed in the scholarly and popular press, including Isis, Nature and The New York Times.
Lloyd goes on to argue that the available evidence, such as from sexology studies, is far more supportive of a neutral "byproduct" explanation put forward by Donald Symons, under which female orgasm is the result of orgasm developing as a species trait due to its critical role in males for procreation (akin to explanations for why nipples, which are required for nursing in females, are also present in males).
The book received so much attention that it was lampooned on an episode of Saturday Night Live because its title sounds like a racy version of a Hardy Boys novel.
Lloyd had been working on the subject for two years, when a discussion with Stephen Jay Gould in 1986 led to her providing the basis for his 1987 essay in Natural History titled 'Freudian Slip',[5] which was reprinted in 1992 as 'Male Nipples and Clitoral Ripples.