CarnalNation

Clipped from: blog.iwhc.org (share this clip)

We wade through an awful lot of bad news every day, including every variety of homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and puritanism you can think of, so when we come across news this good, we have to report it: according to a new report published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, youth under the age of 18 are using condoms at a rate four times that of adults over 40. In asking 3,457 people aged 14 to 94 whether they had used condoms in their last ten acts of intercourse, the study found that:

Nearly 80% of boys and 60% of girls under the age of 18 said that they had used condoms during sex. That’s nearly twice the rate at which young adults used condoms, and nearly four times that of adults over 40.

From blog.iwhc.org (share this quote)

Clipped from: www.nationalsexstudy.indiana.edu (share this clip)

Among other things the study found that:

• Adults were just as likely to consider intercourse with a condom a positive experience as without one;
• "Normal" sex covers a lot more ground than the media would have you believe. Even the researchers were suprised at how many different activities people engaged in, and people also had widely divergent definitions of sex:

The surprise we found in this survey is the variability and diversity of the way people conduct their sex lives," said Logan Levkoff, a sexologist at New York University...

From edition.cnn.com (share this quote)

"For some masturbation is sex," Levkoff said. "For others, (it's) oral sex or a combination of all of those, plus vaginal intercourse ... Sex has a whole new meaning."

From edition.cnn.com (share this quote)

• Although only 7% of women and 8% of men considered themselves lesbian, gay, or bisexual, the number of people with a history of same-sex encounters is much higher. (This may come as no surprise to many of us, but it's nice to have it confirmed.)

The survey is the largest and most comprehensive about sexuality since 1994, and covered a total of 5,865 people. The supplementary issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine can be downloaded here.