I’m in my office with a big stack of summer grading to do, and thus little time to post. I’m scatterbrained more than usual, perhaps knowing that once I’m done grading, my real vacation begins!
I’m reflecting this morning on several things, including the deaths of Ingmar Bergman and Bill Walsh. When I was in college, I watched (at my mother’s insistence) a tape of the former’s “The Seventh Seal”. I was transfixed and moved and stunned, and more than two decades later, it remains one of my favorite films ever made. I’m not a movie buff, and most of the rest of the Bergman oeuvre leaves me cold, but I watch “The Seventh Seal” at least once a year.
Bill Walsh coached the 49ers throughout my adolescence; I was raised a loyal Niner fan and followed them obsessively throughout the 1980s. My interest in professional football began to diminish just as Walsh retired in 1989. I don’t think I can name more than three current players on the 49er roster; I can still recall — without prompting — the names of each player in the marvelous 1984 secondary (Wright, Lott, Williamson, Hicks.) Walsh was my coaching hero, and though he was a head coach at Stanford, my fellow Cal alums know that long before he served in Palo Alto, he was an assistant coach at Berkeley in the early 1960s.
But in addition to thinking kind thoughts about these two very different influences on my adolescence, I’m also struck by this New York Times article on The Whys of Mating.
…thanks to psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin, we can at last count the whys. After asking nearly 2,000 people why they’d had sex, the researchers have assembled and categorized a total of 237 reasons — everything from “I wanted to feel closer to God” to “I was drunk.” They even found a few people who claimed to have been motivated by the desire to have a child.
Here’s the good part:
The results contradicted another stereotype about women: their supposed tendency to use sex to gain status or resources.
“Our findings suggest that men do these things more than women,” Dr. Buss said, alluding to the respondents who said they’d had sex to get things, like a promotion, a raise or a favor. Men were much more likely than women to say they’d had sex to “boost my social status” or because the partner was famous or “usually ‘out of my league.’ ”
Dr. Buss said, “Although I knew that having sex has consequences for reputation, it surprised me that people, notably men, would be motivated to have sex solely for social status and reputation enhancement.”
Well, it may have surprised the good doctor, but it isn’t a surprise to any of us who do gender studies. I’ve often praised Michael Kimmel’s use of the term “homosociality”. Homosociality is the notion that many heterosexual men engage in sexual activity as much to earn status with other men as for sexual pleasure itself. Having sex with women (particularly those who are perceived as “high-status” in the eyes of male peers) is as much about increasing the measure of one’s own manhood as it is about private satisfaction or erotic and emotional connection with another human being.
The study cited in the Times was done on students at the University of Texas, Austin. The men surveyed were generally of college-age, a time in men’s lives when they are particularly susceptible to homosocial pressures to win status. This study is a helpful reminder of the ubiquity of those pressures — and of the damage that homosociality inflicts on men and women alike. For those of us committed to working with teens and young adults, it’s still more incentive to focus our efforts on deconstructing young men’s desperate, heart-breaking, soul-destroying desire to win favor in the eyes of their male peers.
Challenging homosociality is near the top of the priority list for me in my men’s work. For those of us who want to be genuine egalitarians, what matters is not merely what we profess. Men who want to be real change agents need to treat women (and speak about women) the same way when they are “alone with the guys” as when they are in “mixed company.” Many women know what it’s like to have a boyfriend who is sweet and charming when she’s alone with him, but a jerk when he is surrounded by his friends (this is usually her bitter introduction to homosociality.) The great challenge is to be radically consistent, to be the same man always — with the brothers of Delta Kappa Epsilon, with one’s grandmother, with one’s girlfriend, with one’s teachers. I’ve seen young men achieve this time and time again, but rarely without colossal effort, and rarely without earning scorn from their peers. But there’s tremendous value in matching one’s language and one’s life. The damage that not doing so creates is equally tremendous, and the fact that women often bear the brunt of that failure is difficult to deny.
Hugo - Perhaps a fault of the reporting, but you need to peel back the onion before making certain claims.
First, the “n” was not 2,000 - “A total of 1,549 undergraduate students (503 men, 1046 women)”
Second, the study used a ranking scale (so it wasn’t a yes or no I had sex for this reason)
“None of my sexual experiences (1), A few of my sexual experiences (2), Some of my sexual experiences (3), Many of my sexual experiences (4), and Allof my sexual experiences (5).”
From the study -
Table 2 presents the 50 most **infrequently ** endorsed reasons for having sexual intercourse out of the possible 237 reasons. The least frequently endorsed reasons for having intercourse could be categorized into five broad themes. One theme involved wanting to harm another person, ither a partner (e.g., ‘‘I was mad at my partner, so I had sex with someone else’’), a rival (e.g., ‘‘I wanted to hurt an enemy’’) or a stranger (e.g., ‘‘I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease (e.g., herpes, AIDS)’’. A second theme involved attaining resources such as a job, a promotion, money, drugs, or gifts. A third common theme revolved around enhancing social status (e.g., ‘‘I wanted to be popular’’; ‘‘I wanted to have more sex than my friends’’). A fourth theme centered on having sex as a means to a seemingly unrelated end, such as getting rid of a headache or menstrual cramps, and a fifth theme involved having sex out of duty or pressure. (NOTE - Four percent of the women and 2% of men were married. Six percent of women and 5% of men were living with a sexual partner)
Yes, the study did say there was a “statistical” difference between men and women about having sex for ’status’ gain. However, the mean numbers were the following:
I thought it would boost my social status
Women: Mean - 1.07 SD - .35
Men: Mean - 1.20 SD- .61
So, even within that narrow range, going to the extremes of 1 SD, most UT undergraduate men (and women) reported that none to “a few” of their sexual experiences were for social status.
The closest you get to over 2 (so into the “some” range) — and just barely at 1 SD are
The person was famous and I wanted to be able to say I had sex with him/her (** and what does “famous” mean?)
Women : 1.10 .44
Men: 1.26 .79
I could brag to other people about my sexual experience
Women - 1.14 .53
Men - 1.30 .76
I note the NYT did not report this one that perhaps could also be a “stereotype” myth –
I wanted to please my partner
Women - 2.79 1.32
Men - ** 3.11 ** 1.35
I thought the good part was the following:
The most frequently endorsed reason why both men and
women reported engaging in sexual intercourse was because
they were attracted to the person. As can be seen in
Table 1, out of a pool of 237 items, 8 of the top 10, and 20
of the top 25 reasons given for engaging in sexual intercourse were similar for men and women..
and that items such as “to give a STD” or “initiation rite” was at the most infrequent end of the reasons.
Col Steve, I think he’s counting the 400 who originally generated the list, as well as the ones who rated the listed reasons. Thanks for looking up the details.
That’s not a study of why people have sex, it’s a study of why college students, specifically at UT Austin, have sex. For a lot of us the sexual culture in college was different from other times in our lives, and even from university to university there can be differences.
I think it’s interesting, definitely, but with the narrow demographic they survey I see it as an interesting pilot study, basically.
Metamanda — Agree the survey was a narrow demographic (narrower than the group that compiled the reason). My point in criticizing the NYT article, and to a lesser degree Hugo’s use of the article to make a claim about the “ubiquity” of homosociality, is that the survey does not really support the notion of homosociality (using Hugo’s definition).
If anything, the “good” part of the study was the commonality among men and women for the main reasons to engage in sex — and I’ll go out on a limb that most people would claim those reasons as “appropriate” (for lack of better term at the moment). However, that point barely rates more than a sentence in the article.
Now, whether the survey population support making any broader claims is a good point — a point that cuts both ways in looking at the data to make more generalized statements.
Well, one useful thing about that study: to hear some MRA types tell it, women frequently trade sex for money or power. So it’s nice to see that it’s actually not done that much, and it’s not done more by women than men. (With caveats about the narrow sample, etc. etc.) The NYT article tended to give some of the less common reasons a lot of page space, proportionately.
I do think that a list of clipped, one-sentence reasons will not adequately explain a nuanced social phenomenon like homosociality. Take the “pleasing your partner” reason, for example. Amongst some guys I knew in college, pleasing their female partner was important partly (I assume not wholly) because they bragged to each other about it. If subjects were questioned further on their one-sentence reasons for having sex (say, a semi-structured interview instead of just a survey) further rationale based on homosociality might or might not come up for lots of those reasons.
I think I agree with you. The survey doesn’t strongly support the notion of homosociality. The reasons listed in it lack depth, so I don’t think they’d support many social theories of sexual behavior at all. If I were a researcher on that project and still had some grant money left over, though, homosociality would probably be a fruitful area for further study to clarify some of the survey findings.
When I was 21 and better fit the cultural ideal of beauty and pleasantness, men wanted to date and marry me who really didn’t even know me. I think some of the men weren’t even attracted to me. I sensed that I fit some acceptable level of the ideal they had in their head, and the idea that their desire for status played into it as well makes a lot of sense.
metamanda said: “That’s not a study of why people have sex, it’s a study of why college students, specifically at UT Austin, have sex.”
Nope, it’s not even that: It’s a study of what students at UT Austin report about why they had sex. As far as I could tell there was no internal or external validation conducted in order to judge the veracity of the responses.
Junk in, junk out. And so it goes.
Mr. Bad: “Nope, it’s not even that: It’s a study of what students at UT Austin report about why they had sex.”
Here, here. As I’ve said before, I can think of few things people are more likely to lie about than a study of their sexual habits. Yes, even an anonymous one. Some truths people don’t want to face, even if only with a piece of paper.
Heh. Which is why we have men and women’s reported number of sex partners with such a wide gap. SOMEBODY’s lyin’.