Tag Archives: Contraception

News

New studies shed light on the expected outcomes of sexual behavior

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This is a guest post by Mathetes entitled “Reasonable expectations of risky sexual behavior”.

One of the enlightening, and sobering, aspects of being an informed Christian is knowing how the world works, and then seeing a world that behaves oppositely. It is like watching an accident as it occurs, knowing how it happened, what objects collided, who was at fault, and yet being unable to stop the carnage.

In our country the social carnage is most often carnal. We see the lives of others being disordered because of stupid sexual choices. And the consequences of these choices can be known by those who are willing to step back and examine the evidence.

Case in point. Risky sexual behavior is present in most places where feminism and the sexual revolution has taken a firm footing. A study in New Zealand highlighted the sexual behavior of students.

The study found that students aged 17 to 24 displayed “low condom use, multiple sexual partners and unintended pregnancies.”

Our intrepid researcher is Rebecca Psutka, and she informs us that: “Sexual health is an integral, but often neglected component of overall wellbeing, but if there is very little information it is difficult to set priorities for improvement and to monitor progress.”

Oh Rebecca, if only you knew. She operates out of a mindset where more information will supposedly change behavior. But this behavior that she decries is not a result of too little information. If there’s one thing the students know, it’s how to know one another.

Of the 2922 students who responded, 69 per cent said they were sexually active. The average age they lost their virginity was 17.

One in five said they had three or more sexual partners in the past year and almost one-third said they had been drinking the last time they had sex.

And what message does the student welfare vice-president, Rory McCourt, have to say to this eminently useless waste of a college education. Not much, besides the normal platitudes that one would expect from a college administrator. Rory’s solution is one that would make every educator proud. He and his ilk have tried their best to make sure that “messages on safe sex and drinking responsibly were circulated around campus.”

So yeah, the adults are particularly clueless about the whole sexual education business. Rory tells us that “There’s literally thousands of stories out there about it. It’s something that we have to tackle.”

So, they have to tackle the problem of unsafe sex by making sure the thousands of stories that are already out there will somehow become more noticeable. What’s that definition of insanity again? Oh, yeah, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.

I know what you’re thinking. The solution is easy. Say it with me: more condoms!

Ms Edmond said there had not been a major public campaign on condoms or contraception for many years. ‘We obviously have some sexual education happening in schools, though that’s a bit haphazard and inconsistent. As a country, New Zealand doesn’t have an up-to-date sexual and reproductive health strategy, and that’s something we’d like to see.’

Yeah, that’s the reason. Students don’t know enough about sex and how to stop pregnancies. Sure. Unfortunately there’s that annoying fact that the students do indeed know how to stop unplanned pregnancies:

The study found one in 20 students had, or had contributed to, at least one unintended pregnancy.

Of those pregnancies, 74 per cent of women and 72 per cent of men reported that it was aborted, while a further 19 per cent of men did not know the outcome.

What about that mysterious 19 per cent? Well, unless the girl moved away, or she was placed in an underground dungeon, and the guy never saw her again, we can guess the outcome … adoption, right?

So actually, the students know all about birth control, and how to get rid of a pregnancy.

Now, given that this might be classified as bad behavior, perhaps the students realize what’s happening and will try to end these coital escapades. Not likely.

“No-one has sex unless they’re drunk,” said Stella Blake-Kelly, 21.

“The university can ply them with as many brochures about sexual health as they want – drinking the way that young people do, a lot of your common sense just goes out the window,” Ms Blake-Kelly said.

Harry Evans, 20, agreed. “I know very few people who haven’t had a dumb, alcohol-fuelled sexual experience.”

Molly McCarthy, 21, said students were more likely to have unprotected sex when they were “wasted”.

“When else do you think it’s appropriate to go home with someone you’ve just met?”

First-year students living in halls of residence were particularly likely to take risks, she said.

“You’re in such close confines. You’ve gone out drinking together, you come home together – all the ingredients are there.”

And there we are. The students know what’s going. We see what’s going. Our educators are dim-witted enablers. And the behavior goes on.

Seeing that these casual encounters are taking place, what effect are they likely to have on adult relationships? Or put another way, what’s going to happen to all these students as they search and try to maintain adult relationships?

A US study “found those who waited to have sex were happier in the long-run.”

“Women particularly benefited from not leaping into bed at the first opportunity. Marriage also seemed to make them happier than co-habiting.”

The researchers note that:

“Courtship is a time for exploration and decision-making about the relationship, when partners assess compatibility, make commitments and build on emotional and physical intimacy.”

“The rapid entry into sexual relationships may, however, cut short this process, setting the stage for “sliding” rather than “deciding” to enter co-habiting unions.”

“Around a third of the men and women said they’d had sex within the first month of dating, while about 28 per cent waited at least six months, the Journal of Marriage and Family reported.”

“Analysis of the data clearly showed the women who had waited to have sex to be happier. And those who waited at least six months scored more highly in every category measured than those who got intimate within the first month. Even their sex lives were better.”

“The link was weaker for men. However, those who waited to get physically involved had fewer rows.

The researchers said couples may benefit from taking things slowly.

‘A strong sexual desire may thwart the development of other key ingredients of a healthy relationship such as commitment, mutual understanding or shared values,’ the report said. ‘Good sex is sometimes confused with love; some couples overlook problematic aspects of their relationship that ultimately matter more in the long run.’”

So we see the end result of the risky student behavior. The students are setting themselves up for long term relationship pain and failure. And this goes along with what we know about biological bonding – the more sexual partners you have, the more difficult it is for you (especially the woman) to bond with your mate. In practical terms, studies have shown that the more sexual partners you have the more likely you are to divorce.

So our bright students are doing the exact things that will set themselves up for future relationship failures.

I work with my church’s youth group quite often, and I’ve always dreamed of giving a Sunday school lesson titled: “Your worst life now and forever: how to fail at life”. Joel Osteen might not preach it, since it wouldn’t sell well, but it would make for a good talk.

First step: sleep with random people, when you’re young, while you are drunk, so that your conscience and biology will be dulled and you’ll be more likely to have casual encounters as you get older.

Further steps would include: don’t use birth control, abort your pregnancies (to ensure an increased risk of breast cancer and moral guilt and anguish), have children out of wedlock, and divorce your mate.

It’s a perfect plan – for disaster. And it’s one that students have already mastered.

News

How do prostitutes stay in business in an era of hook-up sex?

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WARNING: This is one of those posts that feminists and egalitarians should just not read. Stay away from this post, it will offend you. Also, if you read it, then know that when I talk about “women”, it is a shorthand way of saying “women who accept the tenets of third-wave gender feminism”. I don’t mean all women, I mean third-wave gender feminists. If you are a married woman, or if you are a chaste single woman who is prepared to care for and support her future husband, then I don’t mean you.

From Stuart Schneiderman, a reversal of expectations.

The sexual revolution pushed by feminists encouraged women to abandon traditional female goals (marriage and children) and traditional men (provider, protector, moral and spiritual leader) and to instead prefer anonymous hook-up sex fueled by binge-drinking – so that they can pursue careers.

He writes:

Here’s a question for the behavioral economists: How do prostitutes stay in business?

With the sexual revolution and the hookup culture and young women making love like porn stars, how can a hooker make a living?

If you are charging money for something that people can get for free, eventually it will impact your business.

In the old days nice girls didn’t. Without specifying what nice girls wouldn’t do, men who wanted “it” sought out prostitutes.

Nowadays, there is precious little that nice girls don’t do. Thanks to a certain social movement nice girls are liberated. They will do just about anything, and will refuse to allow a man to pay for them.

Many of them won’t even want to see him in the morning.

Free love has come to mean giving it away for free. No one knows how prevalent the practice is, but nice girls are marrying later and are avoiding encumbering alliances. If we assume that they are sexually active during their twenties, then clearly they have crowded the market in non-committal sex.

Young women who are out making their way in the world today will avoid relationships, but they will happily engage in all kinds of sexual gymnastics… They do not want to be tied down, just yet. (At least not in the metaphorical sense.) No man’s man’s emotional demands will get in the way of their career advancement.

[…]The marketplace being what it is, prostitutes have now adapted. They continue to offer something that nice girls no longer offer, but it isn’t kinky sex. It is emotional attachment: love, romance and a maybe even a relationship, with a little sex on the side.

Nowadays it’s called the girlfriend experience. It’s the ultimate in sex work, considerably more difficult and better paid than common fellatio.

Strange as it seems, if you are a young man today you often have to pay a woman to act like she’s your girlfriend.

Even the term “escort” which is commonly taken to be a euphemism for prostitute, has traditionally referred to a woman who would accompany a man to a social or cultural event. She was a stand-in girlfriend.

In the old days prostitutes used to know how to do things that nice girls had never even heard of. Today, prostitutes know how to do things that nice girls do not know how to do: that is to conduct relationships.

Young women today are proficient at being sex kittens. Many of them become expert in the art of dating. Fewer know how to conduct a relationship with a man.

I grew up with a non-Christian mother who was very distant and focused on her career, wealth and health. So, I always expected a lot more from women in terms of affection, attention and approval. I knew perfectly well that what I wanted in a woman was someone to be involved with my education, career and hobbies, and most important of all, with my Christian faith. That is what I missed growing up as a visible minority in a predominantly white city. That’s probably one of several reasons why I am chaste. Sex is not the primary thing that I am looking for from a woman. Instead, I want to be the traditional man who is needed as a provider, protector and moral/spiritual leader, and who gets affection, attention and approval for fulfilling those roles (and only those roles).

There were a lot of times when I was growing up when it would have been easy for me, having hit six figures of net worth at age 26, to focus on getting sex in the quickest way possible. All I would have had to do was to stop being an open and authentic Christian. If I had stopped talking about objective morality and exclusive theological claims, and just made no demands on any women to grow into the roles of wife and mother, it would have been easy. But that would not scratch the itch that I have. I get a lot of joy from seeing a woman learn about my plan and my goals. I enjoy providing her with books, debates and lectures to learn about the things that I care about. I enjoy protecting her from lies and labor by building up her knowledge and character and performing acts of service for her. I enjoy leading her – through study and persuasion – to grow in her understanding of moral, theological and apologetic issues. And I enjoy when a woman makes an effort to be a supportive helper and a companion. Nothing is better than seeing a woman accept your goals as her own, preparing to achieve those goals and then achieving them. I would rather be a leader – that’s what men really want.

Women today use sex as a way of pacifying men who want them to grow into the roles of wife and mother. They want to focus on their careers, on playing the field and on having a good time. Marriage is something they fall back on much later, when they are in their 30s. In order to get marriage-minded men to pay attention to them during their 20s without having to commit, women offer men sex. Men take the sex, and they stop trying to perform the traditional male roles, especially the role of being the moral and spiritual leader. And it’s a very easy thing to see. Just take a typical woman and ask her to read “The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands” and “Stupid Things Parents Do To Mess Up Their Kids“, or similar books. They won’t do it, because they have been taught by third-wave feminism to be selfish and to avoid caring about others in relationships. But you can have all the recreational sex with them that you want (especially after they get drunk, so that they don’t feel responsible) as long as you are good-looking and fun. They have been told that they must always be having a good time, and to not prepare to care for men or children. They think that they can live happily ever after by pursuing their own happiness at every moment.

Everyone complains that men are no longer interested in marriage, but the truth is that there are very few marriage-capable women left to marry. Most women today are just not ready for marriage, because they are often neither chaste nor supportive. Men and women have to be chaste, because it is a guarantee that you offer to your spouse that you can be faithful. So, marriage-minded men are being forced to choose between selfish, promiscuous feminists and prostitutes. That’s no choice at all. And that’s why men who start out with noble aims of life-long married love and self-sacrificial commitment quickly learn to settle for recreational sex from a series of temporary partners – and sometimes very temporary partners in the case of hook-ups on college campuses.  Marriage is just not there for us to achieve anymore, because most women haven’t made the right decisions that will allow them to be supportive and faithful to their husbands. They aren’t ready to step into the roles of wife and mother.

News

Does legalized abortion reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies?

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Here’s economist John R. Lott to explain.

First he points out what happened around the time that abortion was legalized:

  • A sharp increase in pre-marital sex.
  • A sharp rise in out-of-wedlock births.
  • A drop in the number of children placed for adoption.
  • A decline in marriages that occur after the woman is pregnant.

Then he writes this: (links removed)

Many of these changes might seem contradictory. Why would both the number of abortions and out-of-wedlock births go up? If there were more illegitimate births, why were fewer children available for adoption?

For the first puzzle, part of the answer lies in attitudes toward premarital sex. With abortion seen as a backup, women as well as men became less careful in using contraceptives as well as more likely to have premarital sex.

There were more unplanned pregnancies. But legal abortion did not mean every unplanned pregnancy led to abortion. After all, just because abortion is legal does not mean that the decision is an easy one.

Academic studies have found that legalized abortion, by encouraging premarital sex, increased the number of unplanned births, even outweighing the reduction in unplanned births due to abortion.

In the United States from the early 1970s, when abortion was liberalized, through the late 1980s, there was a tremendous increase in the rate of out-of-wedlock births, rising from an average of 5 percent of all births from 1965 to 1969 to more than 16 percent two decades later (1985 to 1989).

For blacks, the numbers soared from 35 percent to 62 percent. While not all of this rise can be attributed to liberalized abortion rules, it was a key contributing factor, nevertheless.

With legalization and a woman not forced to go through with an unplanned pregnancy, a man might well expect his partner to have an abortion if a sexual encounter were to result in an unplanned pregnancy.

But what happens if the woman refuses — say, she is morally opposed or, perhaps, she thought she could have an abortion but upon becoming pregnant decides she can’t go through with it?

Many men, feeling tricked into unwanted fatherhood, likely will wash their hands of the affair altogether, thinking, “I never wanted a baby. It’s her choice, so let her raise the baby herself.”

What is expected of men in this position has changed dramatically in the last four decades. Evidence shows that the greater availability of abortion largely ended “shotgun” marriages, where men felt obligated to marrying the women.

What has happened to these babies of reluctant fathers?

The mothers often raise the children on their own. Even as abortion has led to more out-of-wedlock births it has dramatically reduced adoptions of children born in America by two-parent families.

Before Roe, when abortion was much more difficult, women who would have chosen an abortion but were unable to get one turned to adoption as their backup. After Roe, women who turned down an abortion also were the type who wanted to keep the child.

But all these changes — rising out-of-wedlock births, plummeting adoption rates and the end of shotgun marriages — meant one thing: more single-parent families. With work and other demands on their time, single parents, no matter how “wanted” their child may be, tend to devote less attention to their children than do married couples; after all, it’s difficult for one person to spend as much time with a child as two people can.

From the beginning of the abortion debate, those favoring abortion have pointed to the social costs of “unwanted” children who simply won’t get the attention of “wanted” ones. But there is a trade-off that has long been neglected. Abortion may eliminate “unwanted” children, but it increases out-of-wedlock births and single parenthood. Unfortunately, the social consequences of illegitimacy dominated.

Children born after liberalized abortion rules have suffered a series of problems from difficulties at school to more crime. The saddest fact is that it is the most vulnerable in society, poor blacks, who have suffered the most from these changes.

[…]Liberalized abortion undoubtedly has made life easier for many, but like sex itself sometimes, it has had many unintended consequences.

You can read more about it in Dr. Lott’s book “Freedomnomics“, which is a response to the popular leftist book Freakonomics.