New Sex Survey: Americans Experimenting More with Same-Sex Activities
The link takes you to the home page of a newly published survey of Americans, on their sexual habits:
Findings from the largest nationally representative study of sexual and sexual-health behaviors ever fielded, conducted by Indiana University sexual health researchers, provide an updated and much needed snapshot of contemporary Americans’ sexual behaviors, including a description of more than 40 combinations of sexual acts that people perform during sexual events, patterns of condom use by adolescents and adults, and the percentage of Americans participating in same-sex encounters.
The National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (NSSHB), conducted by researchers from the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University’s School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, is one of the most comprehensive studies on these topics in almost two decades. It includes the sexual experiences and condom-use behaviors of 5,865 adolescents and adults ages 14 to 94.
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You can download the entire Journal of Sexual Medicine issue that is dedicated to the survey by answering a few questions here:
iucsr.qualtrics.com
There are many aspects to this study and certainly much will be written about it in coming weeks.
Yet one of the things that stands out is the increase in the number of young people, compared to older adults, who report some sort of sexual activity that with the members of the same gender.
For example, this table summarizes sexual activity coving a period of the previous 12 months, where 9% of the 20-24 year old women report sexual activity with another female.
As one of the AP reports on this study states:
While about 7 percent of adult women and 8 percent of men identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual, the proportion of individuals who have had same-gender sex at some point in their lives is higher. For example, 15 percent of the men aged 50-59 said they had received oral sex from another man at some point.
Could this non-trivial portion of the American population currently experimenting with homosexual activity or have done so in the past be part of the reason for the gradual gain in acceptance of gay-marriage in the US?
Also from the AP article:
Another intriguing finding - rates of condom usage among black and Hispanic men were significantly higher than for whites. The researchers said this suggested that HIV-AIDS awareness programs were now making headway in those communities, which have relatively high rates of the disease.
This finding seems to support the idea that increasing AIDS awareness and promoting the use of condoms is indeed important. How will the American far-right political groups, which are adamantly opposed to such types of government funded education, respond?
This survey has many facets and certainly is worth exploring in more detail.