Sex and Atheism
Offline I read a study a few years ago that concluded that college educated people tended to be more sexually adventurous than non-college educated people. It quoted statistics such as the likelihood to have engaged in oral sex, anal sex, bondage, homosexual activities, S&M, role-playing, threesomes, and group sex, all of which were apparently greater among the college educated. (I can't seem to locate the article now so if anyone stumbles across it please provide me a link.) The study cited influences such as exposure to different types of people, an atmosphere that encourages intellectual and creative freedom and curiosity, and removal from the environments they grew up in and therefore the traditional and cultural restraints that may have existed in those neighborhoods and communities, as possible reasons for this difference. This of course got me to wondering. Are atheists more sexually adventurous? It would certainly make sense. Sinnce most sexual taboos are religious taboos the absence of religion should lead to greater sexual freedom, but has it? What do you think? Are atheists more likely to have engaged in oral sex, anal sex, bondage, homosexual activities, S&M, role-playing, threesomes, and group sex? Or have we shrugged off the trappings of religion while retaining the same puritanical religion-based sexual hang-ups?
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion."
- Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize-winning physicist
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I mean this in the nicest way possible. You need to work on reading what people write. You put a lot of your own interpretation into things. Please go back and reread my posts. Pay particular attention to the parts like this one:
"There are lots of human mating strategies:
* Monogamy
* Monogamy with cheating
* Serial monogamy
* Mild polygamy
* Strong polygamy
* Open marriage
* Homosexuality
* Bisexuality
* Celibacy
Of these, strong polygamy and open marriage are the least stable."
We're heading for the deep end of the pool again. Please find the place where I said that swinging makes someone superior to someone else. After you realize that it isn't there, come back and keep reading.
(Jeopardy tune playing)
Ok. Now that you're back, let's talk rationally about this and leave the reactionary emotions aside, shall we? Sexual liberation (in this context) is twofold. First, it is the realization that one's own sexual preferences and practices are part of a very big spectrum of preferences and practices, all of which are equally "normal." Where they fall on the bell curve doesn't address anything other than the number of people involved. Second, it is the implementation of one's own desires where they are safe and morally justifiable within context. It is not sexually liberated to indulge in one's desire for prepubescent children since this is demonstrably unfair to the children involved. It is sexually liberated to tell your husband that you want to try having sex with a girl sometime, and then to do it when the right girl comes along.
If I were trying to pry into your personal life, I'd want to know why you define sexual liberation negatively. It's curious that your main concern over sexual liberation is which bedrooms I'm avoiding. Most of us who consider ourselves sexually liberated view sex as a positive thing to be enjoyed and celebrated. Might it be that Maury is showing his ugly mug again? Actually, let me turn the snark machine off for a second and just say what I mean. You are a nurse, and you work in a prison, right? In other words, that bell curve you spoke of is not part of your life when you work. All you see is the very farthest edge of the bell curve, and sometimes maybe you forget that 98% of the population are genuinely good people who are generally concerned for other people's happiness and welfare.
You're right that sexual liberation isn't about who or how you screw, at least not directly. It's about how you view sex. I'm going to suggest to you that maybe some introspection would be beneficial. Everything you've said about sex in this thread has been about what people shouldn't do or aren't doing. Don't you think we've had enough people tell us who not to screw already? Yes, there will always be fringe elements who will end up in jail for rape or child porn, but the vast majority of us are just normal people who could benefit from a lot fewer school marms shaking their fingers at us telling us to keep our weiners in our pants.
A good psychologist would be making a little note in the notebook and nodding approvingly right now...
Careful, please. Around here, we like our facts to be actual facts, not folk lore:
From a recent study:
Always using a condom during sex can reduce a woman’s risk of acquiring the virus that causes cervical cancer by up to 70%, suggests a new study.
A vaccine against cervical cancer has just been approved in the US, but people will still need to use condoms to protect themselves against the illness, say researchers. This is because the vaccine only protects against some of the strains of human papillomavirus (HPV) that cause cervical cancer.
Less than two weeks ago, the US Food and Drug Administration announced the approval of Gardasil, made by pharmaceutical firm Merck, after tests showed it to be “nearly 100% effective” in protecting against certain high-risk strains of HPV.
There are more than 100 different strains of HPV, and most appear relatively harmless. Gardasil targets four strains of HPV – types 6, 11, 16 and 18 – but there are other strains that can cause cervical cancer.
By the age of about 50, at least 80% of women will have acquired genital HPV infection, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency also estimates that each year about 6.2 million Americans get a new genital HPV infection.
Until now, the effectiveness of condoms against HPV has been unclear. In fact, some studies have suggested that condoms do not offer protection against the virus. But now the most detailed study of condom use and HPV to date finds that they do markedly reduce the risk.
Abstainer pressure
Proponents of sexual abstinence until marriage and others have recently put the FDA under pressure to add a warning to condom labels about a potential lack of protection against HPV transmission.
“We’re hoping the findings of the paper will dissipate this pressure,” says Markus Steiner of Family Health International in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, US, who co-wrote a commentary accompanying the study published in New England Journal of Medicine.
The new study analysed data from 82 sexually inexperienced female university students who kept journals about their daily sexual behaviour. Seventy-four of the women said they had never had sex before the study began; the remaining eight reported their first experience of sex within two weeks before it started. Because the women had had little or no sex before the study they were highly unlikely to have been infected with HPV.
However, all the women were tested for HPV at the start of the experiment and at subsequent four-month intervals for an average of 34 months. These regular checkups provided much-needed data, as HPV infection is sometimes cleared up by the body’s own defences. Previous studies addressing the same question have not followed participants so closely.
Rachel Winer of the University of Washington in Seattle, US, who led the study, notes that the virus appears to take at least 20 days after exposure to become detectable. Tests also found potentially dangerous lesions - caused by HPV - as soon as 51 days after likely infection.
Unprotected skin
At the end of any given eight-month period, women who reported 100% condom use by their partners were 70% less likely to be diagnosed with HPV than those whose partners used condoms less than 5% of the time. And none of the women whose partners always used condoms developed dangerous cervical lesions during the study.
Exactly how some women acquired HPV if their partners always used condoms remains unknown. In fact, all of those in this particular group also reported no genital contact without a condom.
“There are all kinds of potential explanations that are impossible to pinpoint,” Winer says of this result. She suggests that, for example, HPV may be transmitted through contact with unprotected areas of skin even with perfect condom use, or the women may have misreported genital contact during sex.
Winer stresses that even if the vaccine against cervical cancer becomes widely available, condoms may still offer protection against high-risk HPV strains for which there is no proven vaccine protection.
Journal reference: New England Journal of Medicine (vol 354, p 2645)
From another recent study:
Condoms May Help Protect Women from Contracting Herpes
(19 Jul 2001)
Condoms appear to reduce significantly women’s risk of contracting genital herpes but may not be so effective in men, a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed.[1]
The news that condoms could offer women significant protection against herpes infection should be warmly welcomed by women, who appear to contract genital herpes more easily than men (in the USA, 26% of women have genital herpes compared with only 18% of men). However, Dr Anna Wald, from the University of Washington Virology Research Clinic, who led the study, warned that this particular finding may be no more than a statistical fluke.
‘While health officials have long advised condom use, this is the first study to confirm that condoms offer protection against genital herpes,’ stated Dr Wald.
Scientists do not know why condoms would offer less protection against herpes to men than to women. One theory is that condoms do not shield men from the entire genital area from which women can pass on the virus.
The study, conducted in the USA, involved 528 monogamous couples where one partner had genital herpes. Around half the infected partners were women. Thirty-one people, 26 women and five men, contracted genital herpes during the study. Despite being advised to use condoms, only 61% of the couples said they had done so. Among the couples who did use condoms regularly, only two, both men, acquired herpes.
If you are in a relationship where one of you has genital herpes and want to find out more about how to reduce the risk of transmission, see our information leaflet, Genital Herpes: What it Means for Partners.
Reference:
1. Wald A, Langenberg AG, Link K, Izu AE, Ashley R, Warren T, Tyring S, Douglas JM Jr, Corey L. Effect of condoms on reducing the transmission of herpes simplex virus type 2 from men to women. JAMA 2001;285:3100–3106.
Yes. I know a lot about probability. Have you read any of my articles? You can find them under RRS authors on the left sidebar. Many of them are about human sexuality and human nature. I'm very well versed in the subject.
Again, I'd like to make a couple of very pointed observations. First, I'm pretty sure everyone who has the brain power to reason out the basic logic to realize that god does not and cannot exist also has the brain power to deduce that more sexual partners equals more chance of STD infection. Just for shits and giggles, anyone reading this thread who DIDN'T know that more partners increases your risk of STDs, please speak up.
See how silly it looks in this context? I'm not trying to make you feel foolish -- I'm trying to show you your own bias. You work with people who have been failed by the education system, their parents, society, and Maury Povich. I agree with you that tons of people in prison and on the fringes of society make some pretty dumb decisions, and that has an effect on the rest of us. But the rest of us are grown ups who know very well how to use basic logic and weigh risk versus reward. Even though you probably know that, you're still going to a lot of trouble to hold up the sign warning us to be very scared of STDs. Out of curiosity, how many 45 year old affluent swingers do you see in jail? None? How much do you know about the rate of STD transmission among educated couples with open relationships? Could it be that you're imposing your experience with one element of society onto another without any justification? These are questions I'd really like you to ask yourself honestly.
The second observation I need to make is that most STDs, if treated properly, are not the end of the world. A few years ago, the American Social Health Association estimated that around 75% of sexually active people will contract at least one strain of HPV in their lifetimes. Civilization has not collapsed, and I haven't noticed 3 out of every 4 people around me sobbing into their beer every night. There are well over 100 HPV strains. Around ten percent of them are considered high risk. This means that IF LEFT UNTREATED, the risk of cervical cancer (and to a lesser degree anal cancer) jumps significantly after contracting the virus. Among women who get regular Pap smears, the reduction in cervical cancer is around seventy percent.
Even herpes is not the worst thing ever. Yeah, I'm sure it sucks to have open sores on your privates, but again, there are very promising treatments in the works, and some pretty good ones already. Famciclovir, when administered within a relatively short period after the initial outbreak, reduces the rate of six month recurrence of outbreaks to well under ten percent. Valaciclovir is widely used and has shown significant efficacy at reducing the severity and duration of outbreaks.
I did some quick google research and discovered something rather startling about herpes. I don't often recommend Wiki for facts, but this statement from the Wiki page on herpes sums up a really interesting supporting argument for my position:
Notice anything about that? The psychological and social effects are caused by fear of discussion and openness. What is it that I'm trying to get people to do? Oh yeah.... be open and honest about sex.
Ok, so all the kids are happy, healthy, and well cared for, and the pill failed, and where's the problem? Or, perhaps are you being a little overly politically correct? On the one hand, you want us to be scared that we're going to knock up somebody we don't want to marry (or get knocked up by someone we don't want to marry) but then you're making certain to assure me that the children are loved and wanted, and that everything's fine.
I'm a student of the science of humanity. It's ok to admit that some people regret having kids and that many kids are NOT doing great after being conceived and born under less than ideal conditions. That's part of what happens. In lower socioeconomic groups, it happens a LOT. It's too bad that in our country, we can't have open and honest discussions about condom use, the pill, ABORTION (oogey-boogey-boo!!!) or other ways to not have babies. It's too bad that we are all so enslaved by the religious dogma insisting that women who get pregnant owe it to the bundle of cells in their uterus to ruin their lives by having unwanted babies instead of getting a morning after pill or an abortion. It really sucks that people who voluntarily don't have kids are looked at as somehow deviant or maladjusted. For some reason (Be fruitful and multiply?) we as a culture seem to think there's something magical and sacrosanct about an egg and sperm getting together, even though we can clearly see that it's happened at least 6 billion times just in the last generation.
Ok. Now you're talking my language. Children should be taught that sex is normal, fun, and good for you. I hope you're going to show your kids the statistics that demonstrate clearly how much healthier people are when they have sex at least once a week. They should know that STDs are out there, and that having sex with anyone at all puts you at risk. They should know that their life won't be a total waste if they get an STD, but that it's much better to not get one. Condoms, the pill, dental dams, spermicidal foams, IUDs, diaphragms, and all other forms of birth control ought to be covered by insurance as preventative medicine. Condoms ought to get passed around at high school proms.
Like I've said before, I'm not trying to make it seem like you're wrong about everything. I think we're on nearly the same page, but for my life, I can't figure out why 95% of everything you've posted has been negative. My first impression of you is that you have mostly negative feelings about sex. That may be completely wrong, but I'm telling you so that you can examine the image you're presenting. Are STDs the first thing you think of when someone starts talking about sex? If so, is that healthy? Do you think it's the worst thing ever if one of your kids gets herpes or HPV? If not, are you certain that you're going to send the message that prevention is the best course, but if prevention fails, they'll still be ok?
Prisonnurse, there's a lot of bad press around sex. Either we're being told not to have it, to only have it with one person, or to be terribly afraid if we do decide to have it with multiple partners. This thread is about looking at sexual practices and attitudes without the yoke of religion, but I'd suggest that we might also need to examine the stigma of STDs as well. Maybe when we look at them objectively, we'll discover that the same people who are rational about their atheism are also rational about their sex lives...
I want to make sure that I'm being clear about something. I did some quick math just a minute ago, and I figured that I've probably had sex about five thousand times in my life. I doubt that I'm particularly exceptional. All five thousand times, it was consentual, and that's just me. My neighbor and his wife are about twenty years older than me, and have probably put me to shame with the number of times they've done it. Between two houses on one street, there's probably 15,000 consentual sexual encounters without one rape. Likewise, among women who have been raped, that rape is one of thousands of times they'll have sex in their lives. So, when I say that 9,999 out of 10,000 sex acts are consentual, this is what I'm talking about.
To be sure, I'm not trying to make light of rape. It's one of the worst things that can happen to a woman psychologically, not to mention the fact that there are women who have contracted HIV from a rape. I am the first person to stand up and decry the incidence of rape in the U.S. It's abhorrent.
I will point out that countries with very liberal cultural attitudes towards sexuality have far fewer rapes per capita than those with strict religious notions about sex. Enough said.
I would also like to point out that 1 out of 3 women report having been sexually assaulted. I'm curious to know if you've ever read the studies that produced this figure. If you have, (I have) did you notice the way the numbers were bunched together to make it sound like women need to be afraid to open their deadbolt? The reality is that a very large portion of reported sexual assaults occur within monogamous relationships! Sexual assault includes unwanted ass grabbing on the bus. It includes children pulling each others' pants down on the playground. The legal definition of sexual assault is very broad depending on the state, and going on reported figures doesn't give us any indication of how many women in the total population are experiencing the kind of sexual violence that immediately comes to mind when we say "sexual assault."
Again, I'm not trying to make light of the situation. I'm trying to point out once again that our cultural beliefs and attitudes are shaped largely by our belief in monogamy as the only course. I wonder what kind of sexual assault numbers there would be if, as a culture, we encouraged young people to be open and experimental with their sexuality, and never to feel pressured to have a baby they didn't want, and never to get married unless they were absolutely sure it's what they wanted. What if we treated "vanillas" as if they were just one part of a big spectrum, and didn't look down our noses at divorcees? What if we didn't have a national cow every time we discovered that a politician had sex with an intern? What if we stopped watching Maury?
Same thing as above. You're even backing me up on this. Sexual assault is most often associated with... guess what... enforced monogamy. Just as a little mental experiment, do you think people would be more or less likely to put up with sexual assault if they believed that sex was just sex, and that there was no moral reason to reserve one's sexual favors for anyone in particular?
To be extraordinarily clear, I am not saying that everybody ought to have multiple partners, particularly at the same time. Most people want monogamy or very limited polygamy. The thing that monkeys with the works is the belief that it's the only proper way to do things. If we had a culture where sex became separated from religion and dogma, and everyone realized that "vanilla" is just one of many options, most people would still be serially monogamous with a little cheating on the side. That's human nature. The thing is, we treat sex as if it's bad. It's not. People who believe sex is bad are much, much more likely to do bad things sexually. You find me a serial rapist with an egalitarian, liberated, honest view of sex and I'll give you a Nobel Prize. Really. I'll find you a Nobel Prize. Somehow.
What I'm trying to get across is that most problems with sex will solve themselves if we take off our religious goggles and admit that it's just sex. It's not that big a deal. Everybody does it. Everybody wants it. Every man wants to have a threesome with two beautiful women. Every married man fantasizes about his secretary. Every married woman wishes somebody would sweep her off her feet, the way they did before she got the ring. Openness, honesty, and a strict refusal to accept any moral judgment without justification -- these are the keys to reducing STDs, violence, sexual assault, and unfulfilled sex lives.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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