Tapsearch Com EditorSex news roundup!
September 28th 2007 01:19
Some people have made a lot of noise about Durex's new sex partners survey. Worldwide, on average, it found straight men have had 13 partners, straight women seven, gay men 108 and gay women 11. Problem number one is that it was conducted via online interviews, and even in the most developed countries, Internet access and use varies significantly by demographic.
Two, as various math-types have pointed out before, it's not possible for straight men and straight women to have a different average number of partners (save for whatever small effects bisexuals, the fact there are slightly more women than men in the world, partners dying, etc., have). Every time two people have sex who haven't had sex with each other before, each adds one to their total partners, so the gender balance stays the same. I would suggest both women and men are lying -- women underestimating, men overestimating -- and the true number is around 10.
(Men and women could, of course, have a different median number of sex partners. I would guess there's a sort of female dichotomy, with some women quite loose and others quite modest. Men probably cluster more closely around the mean.)
Also, Foreign Policy has a quite-terrible summary of the study. It claims to debunk the notion that "married couples are more cautious," as if unprotected sex between spouses is remotely comparable to unprotected sex between strangers. It also claims gays, straights and bisexuals have "comparable rates of unprotected sex" -- when the difference between gays and straights is substantial (58 vs. 46 percent unprotected) and gays (at least gay men) have somewhere around nine times as many sex partners as straights do. Even if gays and straights both had 50 percent unprotected sex, gays would be doing it with 54 partners, straights seven.
***
In other sex news, Slate.com has a series about it. The site asks sex experts what they still don't understand about it. Most respond, "How can I be so smart about sex and everyone else so stupid?" Um, because you spent your whole life studying it.
Then there's an argument that the HPV vaccine doesn't promote promiscuity:
Much less understandable, though, is the position taken by many opponents: namely, that a cervical-cancer vaccination would "promote promiscuity" among teenage girls. Implicit in this argument is the assumption that good girls don't get cervical cancer; only "loose" ones do—and they may get what they deserve.
Yeah...no. No one says the promiscuous "deserve" cancer.
What they're saying is that (A) HPV is sexually transmitted, so it's pointless to force prudes to get a $300 shot, (B) HPV is one risk of promiscuity, so eliminating that risk makes promiscuity more attractive, however slightly, and (C) a parent who takes a child in for an STD vaccination communicates the assumption that the child will be sexually irresponsible. All these arguments are pretty much true on their face. One can argue the benefits outweigh these costs, but these are in fact costs.
And not to mention (D), the vast majority of cancer-causing HPV cases are contracted at ages much older than the girls being vaccinated by law are. The vaccine is proven effective for such a short time that it will wear off before most cancer-causing cases take place.
Two, as various math-types have pointed out before, it's not possible for straight men and straight women to have a different average number of partners (save for whatever small effects bisexuals, the fact there are slightly more women than men in the world, partners dying, etc., have). Every time two people have sex who haven't had sex with each other before, each adds one to their total partners, so the gender balance stays the same. I would suggest both women and men are lying -- women underestimating, men overestimating -- and the true number is around 10.
(Men and women could, of course, have a different median number of sex partners. I would guess there's a sort of female dichotomy, with some women quite loose and others quite modest. Men probably cluster more closely around the mean.)
Also, Foreign Policy has a quite-terrible summary of the study. It claims to debunk the notion that "married couples are more cautious," as if unprotected sex between spouses is remotely comparable to unprotected sex between strangers. It also claims gays, straights and bisexuals have "comparable rates of unprotected sex" -- when the difference between gays and straights is substantial (58 vs. 46 percent unprotected) and gays (at least gay men) have somewhere around nine times as many sex partners as straights do. Even if gays and straights both had 50 percent unprotected sex, gays would be doing it with 54 partners, straights seven.
***
In other sex news, Slate.com has a series about it. The site asks sex experts what they still don't understand about it. Most respond, "How can I be so smart about sex and everyone else so stupid?" Um, because you spent your whole life studying it.
Then there's an argument that the HPV vaccine doesn't promote promiscuity:
Much less understandable, though, is the position taken by many opponents: namely, that a cervical-cancer vaccination would "promote promiscuity" among teenage girls. Implicit in this argument is the assumption that good girls don't get cervical cancer; only "loose" ones do—and they may get what they deserve.
Yeah...no. No one says the promiscuous "deserve" cancer.
What they're saying is that (A) HPV is sexually transmitted, so it's pointless to force prudes to get a $300 shot, (B) HPV is one risk of promiscuity, so eliminating that risk makes promiscuity more attractive, however slightly, and (C) a parent who takes a child in for an STD vaccination communicates the assumption that the child will be sexually irresponsible. All these arguments are pretty much true on their face. One can argue the benefits outweigh these costs, but these are in fact costs.
And not to mention (D), the vast majority of cancer-causing HPV cases are contracted at ages much older than the girls being vaccinated by law are. The vaccine is proven effective for such a short time that it will wear off before most cancer-causing cases take place.
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