Preaching Like a Virgin

While I was away, researchers at New York's Guttmacher Institute released a study saying that, not only do most Americans today have premarital sex, but so did our parents and grandparents. I mention this because I just got off the phone with my mother, who decided to spend our long-distance minutes telling me how girls and young women today are fooling themselves thinking that they can "just go out and have sex like the boys." Then, as my eyes hit the back of my skull, she started telling me about this enzyme "they've found" that gets released by the female body when it has sex and how that makes the woman become immediately and irrevocably (yes, tragically) attached to "the man" she's had sex with (please... I didn't even attempt to get into what happens if it's another girl). So, in memory of my grandparents, whom I know for a fact were doing all sorts of things in back of the dancehall before they were married, I decided to mention how the Guttmacher researchers found that, for every generation over the past 80 years, 35% or more of people may have said premarital sex was wrong, but those same people were going out and having premarital sex at a rate of 90 to 95%. The only major difference over the last 50 years is that the average age of first intercourse has dropped from 20 to 17.5 years old. (Not surprisingly, the average age of a girl's first period has fallen about three years in the same span of time.) Anyway, it was about that point in the call that my mother started telling me about all the rain they've been having down South and how she thinks there's a possum living under the house again.

* I was hoping Scienceline would dispel the myth as they answered the question, "Why do guys get sleepy after sex?" I've become such a nightowl that I usually get up out of bed after sex, even if it's after midnight. If I've done a good job, she's usually asleep before I've made it down the hallway to get some water.

* Today's fine art recommendation is the online portfolio of a French digital artist who goes by the name Calirezo. Fans of anime will love what she does with the eyes of the photographs she adapts, paints, alters with Photoshop and her graphics tablet. I liked the group of images based on the work of Gustav Klimt. For kicks, poke around in her links section.

Comments:

• This just confirms what I already knew. Several times, my grandmother, now 84 years old, took me into her confidence (I use this loosely) to try to scare me out of having sex before I was married. This woman has told me so many tales of men she was with before she married my grandfather… it’s a bit frightening. One of these tales featured an unwanted pregnancy, and jumping off of a roof after drinking a bottle of whiskey to try to cause an miscarriage. Ai yi yi…

  Posted by Debra  on  01/05/07  at  04:43 AM
  
  

• Yikes! And there’s that gender thing, too. My grandfather, once I was in my late teens, started telling me to just go out and fuck something—girl, boy, sheep, whatever—and quit wasting valuable time. My grandmother didn’t disagree. She just reminded me that my grandfather grew up on a farm and did fuck sheep when he was a lad. Oddly enough, I value those somewhat warped attempts at advice more than what my mother was saying. Go figure.

  Posted by Prospero  on  01/09/07  at  02:49 AM
  
  
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