I’m telling you. You want to take the time to read this. A dear eFriend of mine is well versed in the world of sexuality. I mean, the girl is a genius, and then she knows a lot about sex. Not just where you put it, how you put it, but the real metrics behind the deed. I asked her to write for me because I wanted to spice things up. Can’t always have people with the same thoughts as you in your circle. I introduce my eFriend: Rooks- Her “Untitled Sex Post”

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I’m a little obsessed with discrediting sexual myths, where “a little” = “a metric fuckload,” so when JG* asked me to stop by onefourthrandom and give some perspective on the bennies of sex and sexual health in general, I was entirely honored.  Thanks, sweetie!  She even said I could disagree with her ‘n’ stuff, and as such I’d like to start roughly where “Can we break the double standard?” left off, and we’ll see if she lets me come back to play.

So, and I realize I’m totally bucking conventional wisdom here, but I’m gonna go way the hell out on this limb and say that there’s nothing, not a thing, inherently wrong with having a large number of sex partners, no matter your sex/gender, provided everyone’s being as safe as possible (protected and tested frequently) and respectful of all involved parties.  There’s no secret rule about how many or how few sexual partners one should have, just like there’s no secret amount of sexual activity people should or shouldn’t have. Whether you’re the next Sister Delores or a diehard member Freak of the Week fanclub, so long as you’re happy, consensual and safe, I say, “Do you.”  Clearly, this doesn’t mean that everyone has to go get their Energizer Bunny on; I fully understand if folks’ religious convictions or personal preferences keep their sexual partners few or far between.  There’s a big difference, however, between individual choice and the commonly accepted assumptions undergirding “The Number” debate.

Now, back in the day (like 1800s, not like Erykah or Missy or even Ahmad,

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many subscribed to the notion that an excess of sexual activity was bad for people.  Not just morally.  Physically.  This shift in how sexual activity was socially stigmatized coincided with science’s rise to authority over religion in regards to most sexual matters, a shift that, all evidence to the contrary, we’re still reacting to today.  Don’t believe me?  If you woke up tomorrow with a sexual problem (not infidelity), who’d be your go-to source for advice:

a) a medical doctor or therapist
b) an advice column or the internet
c) a friend who knows a lot about sex
d) your pastor/priest/imam?

Mmhmm, exactly.  That’s not a commentary on anyone’s religious practices – it just typifies the change in perceived sexual authority that’s happened over the last hundred plus years.  And yes, I say all this despite the fact that there are a number of churches with quality (and not so quality) sex-ed programs, not to mention numerous sex manuals with a religious or spiritual focus; however, barring the confessional (and apparently C Street ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO4gWfCM8os ) ), the church has, for the most part, taken the backseat as a source for sexual info.

Why is this relevant?  Because many prominent 19th century doctors and scientists, early sexologists like William Acton or Richard von Krafft-Ebing, pioneers of their time regardless of their (flawed) views, disseminated a reading of sex that yet permeates American culture, one that incorporated religious morality into scientific dogma, problematizing sexual issues by providing “scientific” reasoning based on Industrial Revolution ideas, right down to the sexual individual being likened to a machine or the capitalist economy.  Seriously – robber barons and cotton gins, all up in your undies.

Yes, I swear, it’s really this deep.

The Sex Machine analogy essentially stated that your body is a machine, and machines have limited energy input and output, therefore any energy going towards sex, be that alone or with partner(s), is being diverted from some other activity, and will therefore negatively impact your mental and physical functioning, up to and including reproduction.  Sexual Economy, on the other hand, relied on the fact that “in industrial production-oriented capitalism, saving and investment were highly desirable” so one wanted to save one’s sexual energy (as opposed to “spending,” which was – and still is, at least in romance novels – a synonym for getting one’s rocks off) and “reinvest” it in other facets of your life, lest you be forced to confront “scarcity and ruin.”  Since there was no such thing as a sexual bail out, at best, according to these guys and others, “excess” sex could simply put you off your game, but it might also kill you and cripple your children.  Youch.  Krafft-Ebing felt that sexual “perversions” were the nigh-on incurable result of “weak” nervous systems, and that those weak nervous systems were probably the hereditary result of bad breeding (y’all know what that’s code for) or possibly just your pervy-ass forebears’ overindulgence of their own . . . perversions.  (Krafft-Ebing was seriously hung up on the word perversion, but since he did coin this particular usage, we can probably let the man slide.) William Acton went so far as to hypothesize that women’s sexual proclivities were based on economic class – does anything about this sound kinda familiar?:

“I should say that the majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind. [...] I admit, of course, the existence of sexual excitement terminating even in nymphomania, a form of insanity which those accustomed to visit lunatic asylums must be fully conversant with; but, with these sad exceptions, there can be no doubt that sexual feeling in the female is in the majority of cases in abeyance…and even if roused (which in many instances it never can be) is very moderate compared with that of the male [...] Young men form their ideas of women’s feelings from what they notice early in life among loose or, at least, low and vulgar women…(but) the best mothers, wives, and managers of households, know little or nothing of sexual indulgences.  Love of home, children, and domestic duties, are the only passions they feel.” – William Acton

Dude said that mess in 1857 – GTFOH, Willy.  You’ve done enough damage.  (Unsurprisingly, ethnic and racial minorities of the day, as well as anyone who had the nerve to be poor, were those most often targeted as “vulgar” – much of the particular stigmatization of Black sexuality would come to the fore in the US a bit later historically, during and after Reconstruction, in what many historians think was a reaction to emancipation.)  It didn’t help matters that these dudes (the early sexologists were basically all dudes, writers like Ida Craddock, Margaret Sanger and Marie Carmichael Stopes notwithstanding) were bestselling authors to boot – sex sells, even in Victorian America.  As such, and despite the fact that much of our society has abandoned the more blatantly wackadoodle aspects of this and other old-timey views on sex, it’s unsurprising that some variation on the “too much” sexual activity stigma persists to this day, especially for women.

As it happens, they were wrong as hell.

Beyond the obvious question (“Doesn’t practice make, if not perfect, potentially somewhat better?”), and despite problems securing research funding and huge disparities in the amount of sex research on men as opposed to women (there’re roughly between two-three publications about men for each one focusing on women), apparently more and more scientific studies are popping up that demonstrate that sex, and even more notably orgasm, is actually physically good for you.  No lie.  This isn’t exactly a new idea – doctors used to manually masturbate women to what we would recognize as orgasm as a cure for “hysteria” (or “wandering womb”) before the medical community invented the vibrator to save time.  (Have you ever seen a steam-powered vibrator? Amazing.)  Now, again with the disclaimer: any health benefits conferred via fucking might well be negated by any infections transmitted via fucking, so please keep it covered.  Further, in some few of these studies, masturbation counts as sexual activity, so no partner(s) necessarily required, unless that’s your bag.

See, the early sexologists had it all messed up from jump – the “overall best predictor” of how much sex you’ll have towards the end of your life, research now suggests, is how much you have in the middle (say your 40s, roughly).  Despite a natural ebb of sexual interest or response some people experience as they get up there in years and hormone levels shift or nearly drop off entirely, regular sexual activity (including all by your lonesome) is, as it happens, a renewable resource – our bodies aren’t machines with a fixed output or complex economic systems. We use it or we lose it.  Hell, sexual activity might even keep you alive – one study (of men) in the U.K. found an inverse relationship between orgasm frequency and likelihood of death.  Yep, the more frequently study participants got theirs (frequent was 2x or more orgasms per week), the less likely they were to die, to the tune of 50% less likely to croak (no, I’m really not kidding) than study participants who only got off once a month, even controlling for major factors like age, class or smoking.

But maybe going out itself doesn’t worry you so much as how you go out?  S’ok, you can still benefit from getting busy.  (Ok, ok, in fairness, bear in mind the notable exception of the incredibly small percentage of people who have heart attacks in the sack – despite how frequently it seems to happen to politicians in movies, some researchers suggest that the odds of sex triggering heart attack are about one in a million for your average healthy individual, though, interestingly enough, the odds aren’t quite as good if you’re cheating.  Extra stress, maybe?) Here’s a quick rundown on numerous studies of some of the less-obvious potential side-effects of your sex life:

Your heart <3’s good sex -  Sexual dissatisfaction in women had a significant correlation to history of heart attack (female only study), while DHEA, a hormone produced at orgasm, has been linked to a reduction of risk for heart disease (male only study).

On the other hand, cancer thinks good sex blows -  DHEA and oxytocin, another hormone released during arousal and orgasm, are thought to be linked to a reduction in risk of cancer in both men and women.  Frequency of orgasm has an inverse relationship with the occurrence of prostate cancer and breast cancer in men (yeah, it happens).

Sex helps reproduction . . . ok, besides the obvious -  Women who have more sexual activity (even sex without orgasm or orgasm without sex) during menstruation were less likely to have endometriosis; women who have more sexual activity (again, even sex without orgasm or orgasm without sex) during pregnancy are more likely to carry their babies to term.  There’s also quite a bit of debate as to whether female orgasm boosts fertility via a phenomenon called “upsuck”; it’s not as offputting as it sounds . . . well, maybe it’s exactly as offputting as it sounds.  (Contrary to popular opinion, and though orgasm might aid fertility, the human orgasm isn’t actually necessary for reproduction – the male orgasm isn’t physiologically reliant on ejaculation or vice versa.)

Other Cool Stuff -  Orgasm and sexual activity can (though they don’t always) help people sleep, provide pain relief (think cramps, headaches/migraines), and reduce stress.  Of course, this means that, if you’re trying to avoid sexual activity, you should probably stop using these problems as an excuse not to do the Do.

I mean seriously, do you wanna side with your heart or cancer?  Rather than worrying about some mystical, magical number, it’s way more important for folks to have (or not have) as much consensual safer sex as keeps them happy and satisfied, whether they fly solo or with a co-pilot (or with a full flight crew plus baggage handlers – I won’t hate).  Forget breaking the double standard – there’s a reason there’s no consensus on what number is too high. No such number exits.  Outside religious dictates, no right number exists.  Why?  Because there’s no real all-encompassing reason women should have less sex and/or men should have more, same as there’s nothing that dictates that women should have more sex and/or men should have less.  Simply put, the standard is fake.  There is no spoon.  Emperor?  Nekkid.

One way to break the cycle is by being less nosy – yeah, I said it – as well as less judgmental of both ourselves and others.  As long as someone has been tested and is using protection, a number is functionally useless anyway, at most a fun piece of your sexual trivia you can pull out during a rousing game of “Never Have I Ever.”  It’s like in Clerks

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- if someone says, “I’ve had sex with 10 people,” what does that even mean?  Does it include oral? Anal? The nebulous sexual no-man’s land known only as “third base”?  What about batting for another team?  Or batting for all the teams?  Was this person a virgin last week, or is this more like one sexual partner per year? The Number is essentially meaningless; without context, standing alone, it doesn’t actually say much of anything.  So screw it (or, you know, forget it, if you’re not that type of person).  Just have the (safer, consensual) sex life you want to have, no ifs, ands, or numbers about it.

Want more info? Check out:
The Science of Orgasm - Komisaruk, Beyer-Flores, Whipple
Bonk - Mary Roach
Nymphomania, A History – Carol Groneman
Psychopathia Sexualis – Richard von Krafft-Ebing
The Functions and Diseases of the Reproductive Organs – William Acton

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