"The Nana Revolution" vs "The Sexual Revolution"
I am rather sick of opening the New Zealand Herald and reading about how promiscuous New Zealand women are. As my flatmate says, there are more important issues going on in the world than how many sexual partners New Zealand women have had. But as they say, sex sells, even when it’s wrapped up in a Salem witch burning package.
The condom company Durex conducted a survey that found New Zealand women to be the most promiscuous in the world. They claim that Kiwi women on average have 20.4 partners and Kiwi men have 16.8. Dr Dr Albert Makary, a Timaru gynaecologist, quoted these statistics as he urged the media to stigmatise promiscuity, and called for a “Nana Revolution” – his reasons, unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Others claim that New Zealand women are being promiscuous to try and find love and boost their self esteem, and they wind up getting hurt when it doesn’t result in a relationship.
Let’s take a step back shall we?
- The survey was conducted by a condom company: Well blow me down and call me Betsy, but I am pretty sure the participants are ones who use, shock horror, condoms! This tells us two things:
a) The risk of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases is heavily reduced, because they are using protection.
b) People who use condoms as their birth control of choice aren’t usually married or in long term relationships because they need to protect themselves against STDs, and so they in general have more sexual partners than people who are in long term relationships.
A study that tracked 1000 participants born in Dunedin found that half the men had 10 partners or fewer, and half the women had 8 partners or fewer by age 32. A more “respectable” figure some might say...
Dr Makary also said that New Zealand women treat sex as “paddock mating” – This really drips in double standards doesn’t it? It wouldn’t get blown up into gigantic proportions if men were found to be the most promiscuous in the world, and if he said that men treated sex as if they were animals in a paddock – everyone would be like, “no shit Sherlock”.
Is it really that newsworthy that women enjoy sex? And that when we are not in loving relationships we might want to have sex anyway. Not in hope that it will turn into a relationship, but to have sex for sex sake.
As for the comments that women are promiscuous because they want to find love – maybe some ill advised women are, but most of the women I know have a one night stand to get their rocks off. Sorry if I am talking vulgar, but it wouldn’t be vulgar if I were talking about men would it.
Hi Rose,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate where you're coming from when you give the survey a wee bash BUT the fact that Durex paid for the survey doesn't mean that the survey was done on people who use condoms.
http://www.durex.com/en-NZ/SexualWellbeingSurvey/Methodology/Pages/participantsselected.aspx
The survey itself was carried out by a third party and participants were invited using random selection. In addition many respondents did not use condoms. (No numbers provided, only global percentages for age groupings).
Arguably this still leaves the study open to self-selection bias which might strengthen your "it's high because they targeted condom users" argument. However it was not a condom study, instead it was a sexual wellbeing survey. Arguably then the numbers in the durex survey may be higher than those in the Dunedin study as it appealed to people who are more open to talking about their sexual wellbeing. Of course this would also assume that those who are open to talking about their sexual wellbeing are also more sexually active...
A more likely explanation might be that it is probably more salacious for durex to use the highest average available to them (mean, mode etc.) and so they simply picked that.
Finally consider what happens if we allow ourselves to get a little lateral here. At a guess how many male sex workers do you suppose there are in NZ? How many female sex workers do you suppose there are in NZ? Even if we assume there is an equal number which ones do you expect to be busier (i.e. how many partners will these outliers have? What sort of impact will this have on the mean?) If we include sex workers in the survey which mean will increase more?
(On a side note the Dunedin study talked about how most men/women have less than X partners by the time they're 32 years old. Notice that this is NOT a mean but it does describe the average person).
As for the social inequality part of your post I agree. In fact I suspect if you dive into the durex study you might even be able to find some info to back you up.
Hi Bradles,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your very informed comment. You are right that I jumped to the conclusion that participants were consumers of Durex, I should have looked into it a bit further.
Even if some of the participants don’t use condoms, why should women bear the brunt of social ills like unwanted pregnancy and the spread of STDs? Women should take the appropriate precautions to protect themselves, but so should men. So isn’t the issue here, not promiscuous women, but instead unprotected sex?
Why are we condemning promiscuous women, and comparing them to sex workers? (Not saying that you were, but some people have). The sexual exchange between a sex worker and the person who is paying is very different than two people who are not paying for sex. A sex workers job is customer satisfaction, instead of self satisfaction. Whereas, you would hope that two people just wanting to have a bit of (safe) fun, the aim is mutual sexual satisfaction.
Looking at the Durex survey, we may be one of the most promiscuous countries, but we are also one of the countries with a higher rate of sexual satisfaction. 43% of participants said they were happy with their sex lives, the lowest was Japan at 15%. Still – what are Malaysians doing to have 74% of the participants satisfied with their sex lives!
http://www.durex.com/en-NZ/SexualWellbeingSurvey/Fequency%20of%20Sex/Pages/default.aspx
I’m not suggesting that there is a correlation between promiscuous sex, and sexual satisfaction. Still, if women have the words/confidence/experience then a one night stand can be satisfying. Hey, and also, let’s give Kiwi men a little bit of credit, even if they engage in sex without any intention of having a relationship, most of them still want to pleasure their partner, and most appreciate a little direction and education to help them do that.
I just don’t get why we are condemning women for having promiscuous sex, we are in 2011, aren’t we? I also resent the idea that women who engage in promiscuous sex are looking for love, and end up hurt and depressed. Mrs sex therapist is dealing with women that have insecurity issues, and psyche students are always trying to give their peers a diagnosis.
There are women out there that think sex and love can be two separate concepts. Women can have sex without love, and still be good people, and why should women feel guilty about that?