language-icon Old Web
English
Sign In

Female promiscuity

Promiscuity tends to be frowned upon by many societies, expecting most members to have committed, long-term relationships with single partners.On the field of pleasure she was never defeated. Often she would go picnicking with ten young men or more, in the flower of their strength and virility, and dallied with them all, the whole night through. ... and even thus found no allayment of her craving ... And though she flung wide three gates to the ambassadors of Cupid, she lamented that nature had not similarly unlocked the straits of her bosom, that she might there have contrived a further welcome to his emissaries.Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. / There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.We believe that it is fundamentally a radical political act to deprivatize sex. So much oppression in our culture is based on shame about sex: the oppression of women, of cultural minorities, oppression in the name of the (presumably asexual) family, oppression of sexual minorities. We are all oppressed. We have all been taught, one way or another, that our desires, our bodies, our sexualities, are shameful. What better way to defeat oppression than to get together in communities and celebrate the wonders of sex?Laws against adultery based upon the idea that woman is a chattel, so that to make love to a married woman is to deprive the husband of her services. It is the frankest and most crass statement of a slave-situation. To us, every woman ... has ... an absolute right to travel in her own orbit. There is no reason why she should not be the ideal hausfrau, if that chance to be her will. But society has no right to insist upon that standard. It was, for practical reasons, almost necessary to set up such taboos in small communities, savage tribes, where the wife was nothing but a general servant, where the safety of the people depended upon a high birth-rate. But to-day woman is economically independent, becomes more so every year. The result is that she instantly asserts her right to have as many or as few men or babies as she wants or can get; and she defies the world to interfere with her. More power to her! Promiscuity tends to be frowned upon by many societies, expecting most members to have committed, long-term relationships with single partners. Most societies have historically been more critical of women's promiscuity than of heterosexual men's. Among women, as well as men, inclination for sex outside committed relationships is correlated with a high libido, but social and cultural factors have also been observed to influence sexual behavior and opinion. Studies have related sociosexual orientation to sex drive, especially in women, where the higher the sex drive the less restricted the sociosexual orientation, or interest in sex outside committed relationships. Nevertheless, pertaining to the nature and nurture debate, there is some data emphasizing cultural factors, more so for women than for men. One review assessed that sociosexuality was affected almost equally by heredity and environment unshared with siblings; shared environment had relatively little effect. Men tend to have higher sociosexuality scores and be more unrestricted than women across a variety of cultures. However, there is more variability in scores within each gender than between men and women, indicating that although the average man is less restricted than the average woman, individuals may vary in sociosexual orientation regardless of gender. Body esteem in women showed a significant positive correlation with sociosexual unrestrictedness. So did hip-to-waist ratio and two measures of virilization. Finally, still in the same study, alcohol consumption correlated, too, but it is unclear whether the latter promoted the former or vice versa, or if a third variable was at play. Bisexual women tend to be less restricted in their sociosexual attitudes than both homo- and heterosexual women. In sociosexual behavior also, bisexual women reported being more unrestricted, followed by homo- and then heterosexual women. Social power has been popularly associated with sexual infidelity among men; experimental psychologists have linked power with sexual infidelity among women also. A Dutch study involving a large survey of 1,561 professionals, concluded that 'The relationship between power and infidelity was the same for women as for men, and for the same reason. These findings suggest that the common assumption (and often-found effect) that women are less likely than men to engage in infidelity is, at least partially, a reflection of traditional gender-based differences in power that exist in society.' Church-attending women score lower on promiscuity than other women, while men appear to lack this correlation. A 2010 study published in Journal of Marriage and Family found that there was a correlation between female pre-marital promiscuity and higher rates of divorce. The research, conducted by Jay Teachman, found that women with 16 or more sexual partners prior to marriage had an 80% rate of subsequent divorce.

[ "Offspring", "Mating system", "Sperm competition" ]
Parent Topic
Child Topic
    No Parent Topic