A Quinn Martin Production
Starring Captain
Spaulding
EVERYTHING
YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX (BUT WERE
AFRAID TO ASK YOUR DEMOGRAPHIC ANALYST)
To paraphrase a
great poet, of the making of sex surveys there is
no end. Among the myriad peculiarities of human
sexuality is the fact that while most people are
afraid of being anything other than normal in
this realm, they also want to appear to either be
very good at it or very prolific at it (or both).
For this
reason--and a host of others related to social
stigmas, issues of modesty, and just plain
confusion--demographic data on human sexuality
usually isn't worth the green bar paper it's
printed on.
Subject
truthfulness is a dodgy bit of precondition even
for such mild scientific studies as spending
habits or lower back pain; where sex is
concerned, all bets are off. The only way to get
an honest sampling is either to force all the
respondents to take lie-detector tests or to do
what Masters and Johnson did--personally observe
the subjects in action.
Since few human
sexuality researchers have the moxie to hook up
electrodes to Mr. and Mrs. Split Ranch and watch
them go at it from behind a two-way mirror, it's
safe to say that most of what you read in the way
of sexual demographics is pure hokum.
But our crack team
of researchers at Hooray For Me! University is
always eager to know the "why" behind
the "what", and hokum is just as
observable under a microscope as anything else.
With that in mind, we turn to the latest sex
survey to hit the media pipeline.
Its results were
released in a January 15 Washington Post
article written by Barbara Vobejda entitled,
"Tune In, Turn On? Public Television Viewers
Lead National Sex Survey". What follows are
excerpts from the article, interspersed with the
analytical commentary of our demographic analysts
at HFM! U.:
People who
watch a lot of public television have more
sex than those who don't. Same with people
who work more than 60 hours a week. But,
according to a study in the February issue of
American Demographics
magazine, Americans with the most education
are having the least sex.
The
findings, compiled by two researchers based
on a national survey of nearly 10,000 people,
show that, for the most part, there's a lot
less sex going on than you might guess. On
average, people reported 58 sexual
"episodes" a year, just more than
one a week.
Journalists. Leave
it to them to inject their own spin into raw
data. What does "than you might guess"
mean, if not "than what I think is
normal"? We live in a society that has an
unprecedented population of single people, both
by number and by percentage of adults. Single
people almost invariably get it less than married
people, as Vobedja herself says later on. With
that in mind, does one-plus session per week for
the average American adult seem that
unreasonable?
But all
Americans are not equal when it comes to
sexual activity. Indeed, just 15 percent of
adults are having half of all the sex.
This is our
national paradigm; we find sex distributed in
about the same sort of unequal proportion as we
find wealth distributed. Of such skewed balances
arises the American Dream.
The study
by John Robinson of the University of
Maryland and Geoffrey Godbey of Pennsylvania
State University is drawn from the General
Social Survey, a comprehensive set of
interviews conducted annually by the National
Opinion Research Center at the University of
Chicago.
This bit of
reference data screams, "Don't take this
survey seriously!" In addition to two
earnest men in white lab coats, we are introduced
to the fact that the score for all of this
bedspring music was composed by the University of
Chicago. No one has had sex at the University of
Chicago in generations. Just ask Playboy.
The scientists at the U. of C. should stick to
economic theory and discovering new subatomic
particles, and leave the whoopie-tracking to the
researchers at hedonistically-minded campuses
like Chico State U. in California or Southern
Illinois University.
The
interviews show that, in general, sexual
activity correlates highly with age and
marriage. Married people have more sex
because they have a constant, available
partner. But married or not, people have
significantly less sex as they get older.
Robinson
and Godbey report that the frequency of sex
declines in the late thirties. "Sexually
active senior citizens are the exception, not
the rule," according to the article.
Look on the bright
side, Grandpa. Every time you get a little randy,
you up the curve for your entire generation.
Edward
Laumann, a sociologist at the University of
Chicago and co-author of an earlier study of
sexual practices, said this and other
research confirms that very few adults in
this country have highly active sexual lives
with multiple partners.
Very few adults at
the University of Chicago have highly active
anything with partners other than their library
books.
"The
vast bulk report they are fairly satisfied
with moderate levels of activity," he
said.
The vast bulk of
our crack Hooray For Me! University team reported
responses to this statement which are not
printable in a family column.
Some of
the findings, he argues, are not so
surprising. Those who spend many hours at
work are more likely to have frequent sex
because they are generally healthy, active
people, Laumann said.
Not surprising?
Everyone who has to burn the midnight oil at the
office who has seen this statement has insisted
that Laumann ladled on an extra helping of hokum
here. People who work overtime are bedraggled,
exhausted, and grumpy when they come home--hardly
the picture of the healthy sexual dynamos Laumann
says that they are.
And the
statistic that shows highly educated people
have less sex is largely driven by women with
graduate school degrees, who have deferred
marriage and relationships to concentrate on
their studies, he believes. That is less true
of men, he said, because they feel less
obligation to juggle their studies and
household duties, often relying on their
partners to do the latter.
If Laumann had any
guts he'd say that the more educated a woman
gets, the less likely she is to find men to be
fit company. The fact that male grad students
won't take out the garbage for wifey because
they're saving themselves for sex after they
close the books for the night bears out the
suspicions of these highly-educated women.
Still, the
authors don't know what to make of some of
the results--including the finding that PBS
watchers have more sex than those who like
prime-time drama.
That's because the
authors only watch PBS themselves. If you had to
slog through Part Fourteen of the latest BBC
production of Thackeray's Vanity Fair,
you'd be easily distracted, too. The fine
prime-time sitcoms brought to you by the major
networks are far too brief and absorbing to allow
your attention to wander. And not even a
University of Chicago sociologist could start and
finish a sexual encounter during the three-minute
commercial breaks.
"Who
would have thought that National Geographic
specials or Ken Burns's history of baseball
could get people in the mood?" they
wrote.
Hey, those nature
programs can get pretty explicit. And who doesn't
get turned on by a sepia photo of Honus Wagner in
baggy flannel knickers?
Also, jazz
fans have more sex. After accounting for age
and race, the researchers found that people
who say they have a strong preference for
jazz are 30 percent more sexually active than
the average American. Not so for rock and
rap.
Out of this
survey's demographic slice of 10,000 people there
are probably, what, about eight jazz fans? With a
cross-section that small, the sociologists may as
well have told us that most jazz fans have moles
on their right shoulders, or prefer Tang to
fresh-squeezed o.j. at the breakfast table.
Catholics
are more sexually active than Protestants,
but neither group is as active as Jews and
agnostics.
As any Catholic
will tell you, there is no greater aphrodisiac
than guilt. Protestants have less sex because
they panic and start hunting for all-night
convenience stores if there's no birth control
devices in the house. Jews still believe the
biblical admonition in Genesis 1:28 to "be
fruitful and multiply", and agnostics have
their Sunday mornings free to stay in bed.
And those
who describe themselves as political liberals
have more sex than moderates and
conservatives. Self-described "extreme
liberals" have the most sex, but
"extreme conservatives" are more
sexually active than average.
No surprises here.
Liberals can have more sex because they don't
breed, either in the wild or in captivity. And
moderates have less sex than conservatives
because they have to think through every
position.
Other
findings from the survey on sexual practices
among Americans: The richest Americans have
the most sex, but only about 5 percent more
than the average.
No kidding. Rich
people can afford the fine clothing, impeccable
taste, cosmetic surgery, affairs,
call-girls/gigolos, trips to exotic ports, flirty
servant girls, and trophy wives that up the
sexual ante. And everyone else wants to have sex
with the rich in the hopes that there will be
some sort of payoff in it for them down the road.
Sexual
activity is most frequent among people with
some college education, but declines for
college graduates and those who have attended
graduate school.
First rule of
college--everyone's horny. Even if it has been
years since you darkened the doors of an
ivy-covered building, just thinking about your
college days makes you horny. College dropouts
are more likely to have found some sort of
distraction that superseded an education...and
the distraction in question may have been a total
hot-to-trot wowser of a spouse. And grad students
are notoriously unappetizing and
worn-out-looking.
Sexual
activity is higher among people who attend
concerts and sporting events and among those
who own guns.
Rock-n-roll stirs
the juices. People who can afford season tickets
to the Forty-Niners, center-court mezzanine Bulls
seats, or Super Bowl ducats fall into the
everyone-snuggles-up-to-the-rich category. And
it's common knowledge that guns are primo phallic
symbols, even more so than cigars and
motorcycles. Plus, pointing a gun at someone of
the opposite sex removes "No!" from
their vocabulary in a hurry.
People who
smoke and drink report having almost twice as
much sex as those who do neither.
Smokers tend to be
habitual cravers, prone to the obsessions that
drive people to pursue a one-night quickie at any
cost. Plus, they are less predisposed to go along
with society's conventions for acceptable
behavior, which adds up to more sex in certain
environments. Speaking of which, the sex lives of
drinkers can be summed up in two words: Beer
goggles.
People
expressing lack of confidence in the
presidency have more than the average amount
of sex.
Very easy to
explain, says the crack team of HFM! U. scholars.
Rather than perpetuate the usual ideological tilt
of right vs. left, the current administration
often seems bent upon beating the Republicans at
their own game. Thus, the animosity is one of
oneupsmanship rather than opposition. Clinton
downsizes government, and the G.O.P. says that
they could downsize it even more; the Republicans
get tough on Saddam Hussein, and the Chief
Executive embargos Iraq; the right double-dares
Clinton to end welfare as we know it, and he
takes them up on it. And so on.
Therefore, since
the current occupant of the White House has a rep
for getting it on the side, his political
antagonists are no doubt out there getting it on
the side even more. Jealousy, and not the moral
high ground, drives the Paula Jones and Gennifer
Flowers brouhahas.
The crack team of
demographic analysts from Hooray For Me!
University would like me to inform you all that
they are available for weddings, funerals, bar
mitzvahs, and other social occasions for a modest
fee.
Captain Spaulding
E-Mail CaptainSpaulding
Previous
Mountaintop Experiences with Captain
Spaulding:
Hooray
For Me #1-- One Margarita Too Many?
Hooray
For Me #2-- Spitting at the Generations
Hooray
For Me #3-- The One-Eyed Spokesmodel
Hooray
For Me #4-- Semisardonic Over Semisonic
Hooray
For Me #5-- Bury My Brain at Wounded Knee
Hooray
For Me #6-- Tempest in a B-Cup
Hooray
For Me #7-- Princess Diana
Hooray
For Me #8-- Get Back, Honky Cat
Hooray
For Me #9-- Mother Teresa
Hooray
For Me #10-- Selling Johnny Cash
Hooray
For Me #11-- Is the Male Ego a Hairy Beast?
Hooray
For Me #12-- Why America Gets No Kicks from
Soccer
Hooray
For Me #13-- O Canada! Who Stands on Guard For
Thee?
Hooray
For Me #14-- Suicide is Painless, but Loss of
Creative...
Hooray
For Me #15-- Synergy for the Devil
Hooray
For Me #16-- Of Hissy Fits and Human Freedoms
Hooray
For Me #17-- Naked Raygun's Hook Back in Anger
Hooray
For Me #18-- Trees 2, Celebrities 0
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