"Sex in America, the Definitive Study" is perhaps more useful.[1] This was done in the 1990s. They selected about 3000 people in the US at random, using proper random selection techniques. Each person was both surveyed and interviewed. They tried hard to convince the selected people to participate, so as not to unbalance the survey. They went to a lot of trouble to get good results. The results are thus more meaningful than self-selected surveys and surveys of college students.
The results are unsurprising, but interesting. The New York Times has a summary.[2]
The article discusses candid interviews (~2,200) volunteered to an NYU psychology professor's (Zhana Vrangalova) website (https://casualsexproject.com).
Nope. Promiscuity is not so frequent as can be attested to in the generally prevalent pattern of monogamous relationships.
If promiscuity were to increase over a number of generations, that would be more on account of increased safety practices and/or improved immunological methods.
The most embarrassing of this whole topic is that research about it has only just started. Sometimes I really feel like we are living in the dark ages.
I understand the idea but I worry that perspective doesnt account for the reality that we live in today.
With studies and experiments you have to ask yourself : who is doing the work? who is funding the work?
The people who are doing the work may have biases ranging from "how do I get published?" To "how do I get paid". Additionally, a sample size for a test costs money. How many samples does it take to consider it worthy of repeating? How many times should a single experiment be repeated?
Usually people funding think, "how does this help me?" Which can range from "I have cancer" to "I'll make a profit". The gov on the otherhand may be more lenient but how much of your taxes do you want to use on experiments that may be useless?
The concept of "dark ages" doesnt consider what our climate really is. There are limited resources and few people with those resources believe they should be stolen to fund projects they dont care about. There is plenty Id like to be studied such as
- is education memorization or pattern recognition?
- at what degree does exercize enable / prevent education
- what is the zone and how do minds get put into the zone?
But Im fairly confident these will never be studied because nobody wants to do the work and funders See cern and mars as more interesting ventures
If both of you can separate the emotional from the physical and are open with your true intentions, then casual sex can be a nice way to avoid the emotional effort involved in a healthy relationship
please, don't mistake this genuine question as an attack on your opinion - why have you made this decision? do you feel as though this benefits you some way? if so, how?
again, i'm not trying to debase you/your beliefs/opinions, i'm just curious.
Risks: disease, child support, being viewed as "used goods" and otherwise debased, wasting high-value years that could go to raising a family (why buy the cow if you're getting the milk for free?), increased severity of a broken heart, wanting to avoid falling for used goods (increased divorce risk, awkward comparisons...), greater chance of false rape accusation...
Note that even non-broken condoms do a poor job of protecting against herpes and warts. You can somewhat treat them, but there is no cure.
Casual sex doesn't require that one be promiscuous, it's certainly possible to have repeated casual sex with a close friend with whom you have no romantic attraction.
And even virginity can be a gray area, I once dated a virgin who was willing (and eager) to do pretty much anything except vaginal intercourse. So she could still have casual (non-intercourse) sex without giving up her virginity.
>Casual sex doesn't require that one be promiscuous, it's certainly possible to have repeated casual sex with a close friend with whom you have no romantic attraction.
Wha...? I'm having a hard time imagining this person.
"Yeah, I had sex with that person, and only that one person, and I'm trying to stick to that...but no, they're not special."
In the situation I'm familiar with it was a girl in school that wanted to have a sexual relationship, didn't want to devote the time or emotional effort into a serious relationship and didn't want to have a series of short-term partners. So she hooked up with a friend regularly (and he was free to see other people (and did)).
My point in saying this is to say that not everyone believes in casual sex. I am a living counter example. What you think about what promiscuity means does not contradict that.
Since I do not want ambiguity in my description of my non-existent sex life, I will say that I use the medical definition of sex. That means any contact with gentialia is sex and that is what I thought I was saying when I said promiscuous.
My point is that people have differing views on what they call "promiscuity" and even how they define virginity.
Granted, using your own definition of what constitutes "sex", no one would ever say that you're engaging in "casual sex" or are "promiscuous", since you not willing to have any sexual contact at all.
But in the wider societal view, it's still possible to have regular casual sex with a single partner without also being branded as "promiscuous". And since "virginity" doesn't have a single definition, even possible for one to engage in some sexual activity while remaining a virgin.
That’s the number of Gen Next Americans (18-25 year olds) who say today’s youth are more likely to have casual sex than were young people 20 years ago. Only 7% of Nexters say their generation has less casual sex and 17% say they have about the same amount. Gen Nexters offer some other fairly harsh assessments about how their behavior and lifestyle compare with the generation that preceded them."
I down-voted this entire thread. Not because I didn't chuckle, but because thid is exactly the low-quality reddit style conversation HN has been able to successfully avoid so far. The risk isn't the isolated comment, it's every thread becoming a gag.
i tried it once too. The program crashed in the middle. I tried a restart, pressing the three nearest buttons for control alt delete, but that seemed to only make the situation worse.
For next steps, i conducted user testing on porn hub. They were unable to replicate the error.
My own A/B testing revealed that sometimes fitting the thingy into the thingy does not go as seamlessly as desired. Suggest bigger apparatus more prominently displayed. Bright colors should be used to attract the eye. Labels with san serif fonts should be placed on key parts.
Your reply seems both patronizing and critical of the researcher's personal qualities, without apparently any objective reason other than puritanical "sex is bad". I am really surprised seeing a comment like this on HN.
i very infrequently wish i could down vote posts, but i'd make an exception here. this contains so much ad hominem and vitriol as to make me feel awkward for even reading that.
The results are unsurprising, but interesting. The New York Times has a summary.[2]
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Sex-America-Edward-Laumann/dp/0446671... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/07/us/sex-in-america-faithful...