U of Texas: Shocking Study
by Maggie Van Ostrand
What is it about Texas that makes it first in so many things? Even the venerable Chicago Tribune is talking about a study published in the August issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior, whose co-author (with Davis Buss) is Cindy Meston, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Why, questions Professor Meston, do people have sex? Of course the obvious answers are pleasure and procreation, not necessarily in that order. Or that's what we have thought up till now. Meston has found that people also have sex to get rid of headaches (and we thought women had headaches to avoid sex), to celebrate a special occasion (and we thought the special occasion was the wedding), or to get a promotion (and we thought that was called sexual harrassment and was illegal).
Meston also found that people do it to "feel closer to God." That last is a new one on me, unless of course the good Professor also asked Mrs. Billy Graham.
Meston and Buss asked over 400 students to list "all the reasons you can think of why you, or someone you have known, [have] engaged in sexual intercourse in the past." After deleting duplications, the answers were culled to 237.
Then 1,500 other students were asked to rate each of the 237 reasons on a scale from 1 for "never" to 5 for "all the time." The data gathered does not support the "stereotype" that men have sex for physical reasons and women have sex for love. Another stereotype that was slightly dented with facts from this study is that women more than men use sex to obtain special favors. In the Meston-Buss study, men were more apt to use sex for favors. Pardon me while I blush with the names of men I forgot to send fur coats to.
A sex therapist and psychologist at New York University School of Medicine says these findings don't answer the question "Why Humans Have Sex," and adds a titillating sentence, "It's why Texas students say they have sex." Now don't you moms and dads get upset; your UTA son or daughter may well be among the 27 per cent of women and 32 per cent of men who haven't had sex at all. Yet.
Some of the most unusual reasons given by those UTA students who actually have had sex, are "Because of a bet," "It seemed like good exercise," and "I didn't know how to say 'no'." And some have "revenge sex." Whatever happened to "Yes, I have sex but I don't want to tell you about it because I'm a gentleman."
According to the Tribune article about this study, called "YSEX," Professor Meston said, when explaining that people who aren't particularly interested in having any sex or not-very-often sex, "If they learn that they're not so unusual -- that not everyone is having sex because it feels good -- they might find another reason that makes them feel less resentful, like 'Oh, yeah, having sex does make me sleep better.'"
That might account for all the college students nationwide who nod off during class.
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