Everyone Engages In Casual Sexual Activity

Zhana Vrangalova encountered a challenge. She was unable to load the website we had met to discuss into her laptop as we sat in a small coffee shop near the New York University campus on a windy day in the early spring. She is an adjunct professor of psychology there. She had not experienced a technical issue; rather, the website had been restricted. In the past ten years, Vrangalova, who is 34 and has a dynamic face framed by thick-rimmed glasses, has studied human sexuality, focusing in particular on the kinds of sexual encounters that don't follow the rules of committed relationships. The casualsexproject.com website she launched in 2014 was initially a modest project supported by personal recommendations, but it has since expanded to receive about 5,000 visitors per day, the majority of whom find the site through natural Internet searches or referrals from articles and social media. Approximately 2200 entries have been made so far, with the gender split being roughly equal. Each submission describes the kinds of practices that, when explicitly stated, may occasionally trigger Internet security filters. The purpose of the website is to encourage open dialogue on one-night stands and other unconventional sexual practices. What drives our casual sex behavior? Do we like it?" Does it help us in any way, or might it possibly hurt us? Who exactly is "we," after all?

Up to 80% of college students claim to have engaged in sexual activity outside of committed partnerships, a statistic that is typically attributed to deteriorating social mores, an increase in alcohol-fueled parties, and a potentially violent fraternity culture. The high rates of casual sex are seen by critics as a sort of "epidemic" that is consuming society as a whole. We've heard that the hookup culture denigrates women and hinders our capacity to build lasting, satisfying relationships.

These alarms have previously gone off. Promiscuity on college campuses drew the ire of novelist Nora Johnson in 1957, who noted that "sleeping around is a dangerous business, emotionally, physically, and ethically." Since then, despite the apparent social liberalization of society, there have been an increasing number of criticisms of casual sexual behavior. The anthropologist Peter Wood said in a piece published in the conservative Weekly Standard last year that even the most meaningless-seeming sex involves a troubling power imbalance. He even went so far as to label the development of casual sex "an assault on human nature."

Others have praised the prevalence of casual sex as evidence of society's advancement. Hanna Rosin recommended women to steer clear of serious suitors in the highly read 2012 Atlantic article "Boys on the Side" so they may concentrate on their own wants and jobs. Rosin, too, appeared to come to the conclusion that casual sex cannot be a worthwhile end goal, despite her apparent confidence in the importance of casual sex as a tool of exploration and feminist thought. For both men and women, she noted, "the urge for a deeper personal connection always wins out."

Vrangalova became frustrated with these and other common narratives about casual sex, which led to the creation of The Casual Sex Project. Vrangalova told me in the café that one thing that bothered her was the absence of diversity in discussions of casual sex. "College students are always represented as engaging in it. Additionally, it's typically viewed negatively, as something that hurts women.

Vrangalova had previously wished to enlarge on a constrained discussion. She was drawn to confront cultural taboos while an undergraduate studying psychology of sexuality in Macedonia, where she wrote her senior thesis on the evolution of homosexual and gay sexual views. Vrangalova began studying casual sex in Cornell's developmental psychology program in the late aughts. In one study, a group of 636 freshmen were tracked for a year to determine how participating in different non-committal sexual behaviors affected markers of mental health, such as depression, anxiety, life satisfaction, and self-esteem. Another study examined more than 800 undergraduates to see whether those who indulged in casual sex experienced greater victimization from others or greater social isolation. (The results are that the first is true and the second is false.) The findings were so fascinating that Vrangalova was given a position at N.Y.U., where she is still today, to continue researching some of the problems relating to the effects of non-traditional sexual practices on those who engage in them.

Vrangalova eventually realized that there was a knowledge gap in both her and the field as a whole. However, the majority of the data collected by her research team—and the majority of the other experimental research she had come across—had been obtained from college students. Casual sex has been extensively discussed in psychological literature. Students are a convenient group for researchers, which is a recurrent issue in psychological research.) There have been sporadic nationally representative surveys, but there are few reliable statistics on other demographic segments. Even the largest national study of sexual attitudes in the United States, which polled nearly 6,000 men and women between the ages of fourteen and ninety-four and included a nationally representative sample, omitted to ask respondents how many of the encounters they had could be classified as "casual."

Sex study has always been constrained by social stigma. Alfred Kinsey, a pioneer in the discipline, spent decades questioning people about their sexual habits. The fact that he, like Freud before him, believed that repressed sexuality was at the core of much social behavior and frequently reached conclusions that supported that view—even when his conclusions were based on less-than-representative surveys—led to widespread criticism of his lack of objectivity. He, too, employed convenient sample populations, such as inmates, in addition to volunteers who were unavoidably at ease discussing their sexual behaviors.

In the 1950s, William Masters and Virginia Johnson took things a step further by asking open questions about sexual preferences and even seeing people engage in sexual activity. It was questioned whether their data was reliable: Could the type of individual who consents to have sex in a lab teach us anything about the typical American? Even more troubling, Masters and Johnson's attempt to "cure" homosexuality exposed a prejudice that might have influenced their results.

In fact, one of the things you immediately realize when looking for information on casual sex is that, for the most part, research conducted outside of academia are the only source of statistics on anyone who is not a college student. When OkCupid conducted a user survey, it discovered that between 10.3 and 15.5% of users preferred casual sex to a committed relationship. In the 2014 British Sex Survey, which was performed by the Guardian, 66% of homosexual respondents (compared to 43% of heterosexual respondents) said they had a one-night stand, which is around half of all respondents (45% of men and 55% of women) (forty-eight per cent). A fifth of respondents admitted to sleeping with someone whose name they were unfamiliar with.

With the Casual Sex Project, Vrangalova intends to create a user base of stories that will eventually serve as the foundation for academic research. She is currently keeping an open mind, allowing visitors on the website to submit comments and answers. I was particularly taken aback by Vrangalova's desire to "challenge standard conceptions and study methodologies with objective ways that allow individuals to make honest, deliberate responses," according to Ritch Savin-Williams, who taught Vrangalova at Cornell.

The end result is what is maybe the world's largest database of data regarding casual-sex practices—not that it has many rivals. The persons who share their experiences range in age from teenagers to retirees (Vrangalova's oldest participants are in their seventies), live in cities and suburbs, are professionals with graduate degrees (approximately a fourth of the sample), and never completed high school (another quarter). Although a little under a third of individuals do identify as at least "somewhat" religious, the bulk of participants are not highly religious. The majority are white, although there are also members of various racial and ethnic groups, including blacks and Latinos. Initially, around 60% of contributions were made by women; today, 70% of them are made by men. (This fits with social standards; men are "supposed" to boast about their sexual prowess more than women.) Anybody can submit a tale along with identifying information about themselves, including their demographics, feelings, personality traits, societal opinions, and behavioral patterns like drinking habits. With drop-down options and rating scales, the data collecting system is standardized.

The website is far from clinical, though. According to the type of sexual experience (blue for "one-night stand," purple for "group sex," gray for the enigmatic-sounding "first of many," etc.), the home page is a colorful mosaic of squares. Each category's pull quotes are underlined, such as "Ladies, go grab yourself a hot, young Latino guy!" Many comments appear to boast, provoke, or exaggerate in order to make a point. Reading it made me feel more like a member of a culture that enjoys titillation than a participant in a research study.

The Casual Sex Project is hardly what you would call an impartial, scientific method of data collection, as Vrangalova is the first to concede. The statistics are not typical of the general population because there are no controls, random assignments, or experimental settings. The results are undoubtedly skewed by the participants' self-selection because people are more likely to write about pleasant events when they take the time to write. Additionally, you are more likely to possess the personality that makes you want to tell everyone about your flings. Another issue with the Casual Sex Project is endemic to much social science research: how can we be sure that respondents are telling the truth rather than what they think we want them to say or what they want us to hear in the absence of external behavioral validation?

Despite these shortcomings, the Casual Sex Project offers an intriguing view into the sexual preferences of a specific segment of the population. Although it might not be sufficient to reach novel findings, it might give assumptions more depth by elaborating, for example, notions about who engages in casual sex or how it affects them. After meeting Vrangalova, I read through the postings and came across one written by a man in his sixties who had recently had a sexual awakening. He writes, "Before this I always said no one can get me off on a bj alone, I was taught better." The Casual Sex Project casts doubt on the widely held belief that changes in social mores among the young are the only cause of casual sex by reflecting the age and demographic groups represented. If such were the case, we would anticipate that older generations who grew up before the advent of "hookup culture" would be reluctant to engage in casual sex. Such hesitation is not apparent.

We might consider three scenarios after being reminded that people of all ages participate in casual sex. First, perhaps what we perceive as the emergence of a hookup culture isn't entirely novel. In the 1960s, dating and free love conventions began to change, and they have never entirely returned. Because that mindset is ingrained in their culture as well, people in their seventies are having casual meetings.

Another, almost opposing explanation is that casual sex has never been commonplace and never will be. There are just always going to be people who look for sexual fulfillment in unconventional settings, regardless of generation.

The third possibility is that people are casually hooking up for a variety of reasons, which is most consistent with the thesis that our culture of casual sex started with college hookups. Some young people engage in casual sex because they believe they cannot afford not to or because the culture around them promotes it. According to Varangalova's preliminary study of the data on her website, young people are far more likely than older people to engage in casual sex while alcohol is present. And the elderly, well, they don't give a damn what society thinks anymore. This feeling of ease may arrive in one's thirties for some, in one's forties or fifties for others, or never or only partially.

This final hypothesis relates to one of Vrangalova's discoveries, which, she admits, surprised her when she initially learned about it. Even among the blatantly biased sample, not all of the casual-sex experiences listed on the website were pleasant. Participants who are female and younger are more likely to report feeling ashamed. An 18-year-old writes that the hookup was unpleasant and that the next day he felt "stressed, apprehensive, remorse and disgust" ("I was on top of him at one point and he can't have forced me to therefore I must have consented... I'm not sure.") Other occasionally upsetting and emotional anecdotes can be found in a topic titled "no orgasm." "Over time, my perspective has become much more balanced," Vrangalova claimed. I'm surrounded by people who, for the most part, have benefited from sexual exploration and experiences, so I have a pretty sex-positive outlook on life. I've gained the ability to see both sides of an issue through studying it.

Uncommitted sex raises the chance of pregnancy, disease, and—more frequently than in a committed relationship—physical coercion. This is true of some of the negative effects. However, many bad experiences with casual sex are actually the result of social norm. Vrangalova informed me, "We've noticed that both genders believed they were subjected to sex discrimination." While women feel stigmatized for having casual experiences, making those they pursue less joyful, males frequently feel judged by other men if they don't have casual sex, and social expectations might detract from the experiences they do have.

The sheer fact that Vrangalova and others are looking for reasons for casual-sex practices implies that our society considers them as noteworthy—something aberrant, rather than normal—so perhaps this shouldn't come as a surprise. Nobody discusses the reasons behind why people feel the need to hydrate themselves, use the restroom, eat supper with friends, or why study groups are "on the rise."

Ultimately, Vrangalova wants her effort to help combat that sense of guilt. "This has made me feel better about myself for seeking casual sex, and not feel ashamed or that what I do is wrong," one respondent to a survey Vrangalova issued to users said. Writing about emotional events can operate as an effective type of therapy, in a way that talking about same experiences may not, according to research conducted over many years by psychologist James Pennebaker. (I'm less certain that people who use the site to brag about their personal experiences will gain anything.) Vrangalova observes that "often there's no outlet for that unless you're launching your own blog." "I wanted to provide individuals a place to share,"

The real value of the Casual Sex Project may turn out to be in enabling such non-judgmental, private chats, rather than in telling us something we didn't already know or at least assume. The dirty little secret of casual sex today like in sex việt nam is not that we are engaging in it, but rather that we are not effectively communicating our experiences. pornsexzone.com