Friday, June 24, 2011

Womanly virtues Friday ...

The take away: any time you hear someone use the term "sex positive" it means they're full of crap
Courtesy of Instapundit we have the curious case of the "surprising" story that isn't that surprising at all. Cosmo runs it under this headline:
A Surprising Divorce Predictor You've Never Heard
And what is the predictor? Early sex.
Sociology professors at the school found that women who first had sex before age 16 were more likely to get divorced than those who had waited till after turning 16.
And the difference was not subtle:
How much more likely? Of the female subjects who'd had intercourse at 15 or younger, 31 percent divorced within five years of marriage, and 47 percent split up within 10 years. While the women who had waited till at least 16 had divorce rate of 15 percent at five years, and 27 percent at 10 years.
That is one huge difference.

But is this surprising? Well, it's not even news. Something else, however, was surprising and very interesting and I'll get to that.

This study merely confirms what a number of other studies have already determined. Early sex is a powerful marker for poor impulse control and poor risk assessment skills both of which are traits that predict failure at, well, practically everything including marriage.

Cosmo, shockingly enough, doesn't want to know why this may be and prefers to ask its readers what they think. If we go to the actual study, we learn that having multiple partners and getting pregnant before marriage are also divorce predictors. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that having a tattoo is also predictor of divorce and having multiple tattoos is even more so.

The real news
Now, when I said poor impulse control you might have thought that the impulse in question was these women's desire for sex. It isn't. The really explosive bit of news in the study was this:
Only a small percentage of women who had sex before age 18 said it was completely wanted.
Even 21 percent of women who have their first sex after 18 report it wasn't completely wanted.

This lines up with other recent studies that suggest that women tend to pay a far higher price for sex than men do. Having sex leaves a woman emotionally vulnerable or, to put it another way, it can never be just about the sex for women.

So why would a girl have sex that wasn't completely wanted at such an early age? I was discussing the study with my friend Laura and she nailed the issue immediately, "These girls are the ones who are terrified of not seeming cool."

And that's the impulse they can't control. If you want further evidence, go read the seduction techniques that the creeps who talk about having "game" and being pick up artists use. They don't play on building up a woman's sexual excitement, they play on her need for acceptance. Establish your alpha credibility and then ignore her is the main strategy.

And it works on a surprisingly large number of women. (When I was in high school, there was a guy who went after a girl with a reputation for being "a good girl". His technique? He called her (and I apologize for the term) "cockteaser" in front of all her friends. And I thought, "What a jerk; like she is going to have sex with him now just to prove him wrong". I was wrong. She did exactly that.

Sex positive?
Now, I want to call your attention to an odd disconnect here. This study tells us that the actual act of having sex is a really momentous thing for a woman to do. It tells us that having early sex has powerful effects on a woman's ability to successfully connect with a marriage partner later in life*. In short: it tells us that women's caution about sex is entirely justified. So what do the researchers worry about? They worry about being sex positive.
"The results are consistent with the argument that there are down sides to adolescent sexuality, including the increased likelihood of divorce," Paik said. "But there's also support for the 'more sex positive' view, because if a teen delays sex to late adolescence and it is wanted, that choice in itself doesn't necessarily lead to increased risk of divorce."
I think Anthony Paik means there are downsides to adolescent sex and not adolescent sexuality as being sexual does not require having sex. You can be an adolescent and not have sex but I don't think it's metaphysically possible to be an adolescent and not be sexual. But how surprising is this? Would it come as a shock to you to learn that there are downsides to adolescent driving? Or adolescent drinking? Would you be shocked to learn that there are downsides to  getting married in your teens? Why would we be shocked that taking up an adult activity in your teens carries serious risks?

And we might note that there is all sorts of people getting worked up about outward ways that girls can display their femininity. There is no evidence at all that dressing like a princess when you are a little girl does you any harm and there is no evidence at all that dressing "like a slut" does you any any harm when you are a young woman but there are legions of people trying to stop girls and women from doing these things. There is evidence that suggests that having sex before you are really comfortable with it is not good for you and we have people worrying that they aren't being sex positive enough.

But if you are waiting for someone to hold "Not until" I'm ready marches, you're going to wait a long, long time. But if you really cared about girls, that is what you would push for.

Explaining men to women
Now I would remind you that the people who are so concerned about being "sex positive" here are the writers at Cosmopolitan and academics at the University of Iowa. I remind you lest you be tempted to blame these attitudes on men. For this study actually vindicates some typical male behaviours that are often decried as selfish and irrational.

That guy who never called back after that night of sex? He has merely reached the conclusion that you aren't good relationship material. If anything, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that he'd already concluded you weren't relationship material before the sex and that was why he pushed for sex last night. If he wanted a relationship, he'd have gone slower and more cautiously.

And note that playing hard to get is not the solution. The point is to actually be hard to get.



*Lest I be getting too traditional for anyone here, it does not indicate that remaining a virgin until marriage improves the success rate of marriage although it does indicate that the number of partners before marriage does have a negative effect. You don't need to be pure but you do need to be able to control and restrain myself.

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