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[Reason without restraint] Rates of risky sexual behaviors by race and sex in the United States
Reason without restraint is perhaps my new favorite HBD blog. While the topics that he writes about are nothing new (race & IQ, race & crime, etc.), he does a valuable service of marshaling all of the evidence in one place in an easy-to-consume format.
Here, he tackles the topic of racial differences in sexual behavior. He uses survey data taken of high school students where they report on various aspects of their sexual activity. The data starts in the year 1990 and extends to the present day. There are five sections to the article:
(1) Lifetime sexual intercourse (2) Sexual intercourse before 13 years of age (3) Sexual intercourse with 4 or more partners (4) Use of condoms (5) Use of birth control pills
Of the five sections, the first three are the most interesting. Based on the survey data, a couple things stick out:
The young people aren't having sex.
I am a bit, um, obsessed with the "sex recession": the dramatic decline in sexual activity in high school and college-aged people. Sex is perhaps the most human activity there is--the physical enactment of our Darwinian imperative, the raison d'etre of so many hormone-drenched adolescents. And yet: young people aren't having sex. Why?
Based on one of the graphs: in 1990, 65% of white 12th graders report having had sex. While in 2021 only 50% of white 12th graders report having had sex. This drop in sexual activity is not limited to white students, of course. It's a large drop across the board. Why?
Black people used to have a lot of sex but not anymore?
Look, I'm not stupid. At this point, I've had enough experience with the "stereotype literature" to know that, overwhelmingly, stereotypes tend to be true. But even I wasn't prepared for how much sex black teens were having in the 90s. I could cite a lot of different numbers, but just to choose one example: apparently, in 1990, more than 80% of black male 9th graders reported being non-virgins. Over 80%! And even if you rightfully suspect some exaggeration due to male ego, more than 65% of black female 9th graders report being non-virgins.
This is just incomprehensible to me. I'll admit that I grew up sheltered and nerdy, but still: none of my friends were having sex or really even close to having sex in middle school. Maybe the 90s were better after all?
What's interesting though is that there has been a rather dramatic decrease in black sexual activity. By 2021, only 30% of black male 9th graders report having ever had sex. And it's the same story for the other statistics as well: in 1990, black people were way more sexual active than Hispanics and Whites while by 2021, they have mostly converged, especially in the case of black females.
Asians don't have sex.
Not too much to say about this one. Pretty self-explanatory.
Condom usage seems... kinda low?
The survey reports that 60% of teenagers report using a condom during their last sexual encounter. Is that not kinda low given teenage pregnancy rates? I am a prude in real life who dislikes salacious talk, so I haven't talked about condom usage with my friends. So I don't really have a strong intuition here.
Overall, a fun article with lots of great graphs. What do I personally think explains the decline in sexual activity? I basically favor the consensus view as espoused by Jonathan Haidt and others: it's the phones (and social media). I think a lot of sex used to happen because people had nothing to do except each other.
Please tell me that this is pretty much blank, because if I have to contemplate "well we need a survey question on teen sex about them fucking before they're 13 otherwise we won't have all the data", I am going to pray for the sweet meteor of death to strike us all in 2024.
Depending on the phrasing and reading comprehension some of this could have been reporting themselves as non-virgins as a result of being sexually abused.
Which is horribly depressing whatever way you slice it: either the majority of the respondents had been sexually abused in an age range from (?) to 12 years of age, or a bunch of kids are being pressured into sex from the ages of (?) to 12.
How the hell does a 12 year old boy have sex? I know age of puberty is dropping and allegedly adolescents of particular races are more physically developed earlier, but goddamn. A lot of adults out there needed to be put into the stocks for taking advantage of younger partners. Even if it's "I'm 12 and my boyfriend is 15" that's not the greatest, either; where the heck are the parents?
Normally, he finds a 12 year old girl who wants to have sex with him. This is the main challenge. I only knew about two guys like this, but they did exist at my not entirely depraved school.
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I agree that a lot of this sex likely wouldn't pass the modern standards of consent. It's not "12 yo boy falls in love with a 12yo girl, they discuss their relationship and agree that sex is the next logical step in their relationship". It likely happens in extremely offline (to contrast them with extremely online) groups of youngsters of different ages that hang out together. You want to join the cool crowd of "grown-up" kids? Do you swear? Do you drink? Do you smoke? Do you fuck? No? Well, you're just a widdle kid then, go back to your sandbox.
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I think you are highly underestimating how horny 12-year-old boys are. I would gladly have had sex in sixth grade if any of the girls at my school would have let me. I’m sure the sex would have been very awkward and very short, but it certainly would not have been nonconsensual. I knew some kids who were sexually active; we had some very physically-developed kids at my school - both girls and boys - and some of them bragged very persuasively about having had sexual encounters.
I feel like this is an area where your extreme prudishness about the subject is causing you to significantly (and perhaps intentionally) misunderstand the realities of the psyche of (at least some) kids that age.
Look, I understand that the hormones of puberty are now revving up and kids are experiencing sexual sensations which are pretty overwhelming.
But this is not the 16th century, where "okay you're 12, you're old enough to get married and start having babies" was an acceptable attitude, because you had a fair chance of being dead by 40. If kids of that age are having sex, and are fertile, then they're going to get pregnant - unless intervention. And that means getting girls on the pill or hormonal contraception of some kind, getting boys to use condoms, and the whole mess of "you can't get pregnant" which even I agree that a 12 year old having a baby is too damn young.
The same way we wouldn't shrug off 12 year olds smoking tobacco (whatever about weed) or drinking alcohol or "okay leave school, get a job, live independently" because we don't think they are adults yet, the same with sex.
You can have the state of nature, where animals start reproducing as soon as physically capable, or you can have "12 year olds should not be fucking, not even each other". Pick one.
Please point me to the part of my comment where I advocate for letting 12-year-olds have sex.
Your original comment was expressing skepticism that 12-year-olds are even interested in sex, and appeared to even be expressing doubt that they’re even physically capable of having sex. What I’m telling you is that some considerable percentage of people that age do in fact experience sexual desire and are physically capable of acting on that desire. That’s just a fact. What we as a society decide to do in order to erect safeguards to prevent those desires from being fulfilled is a totally separate question. My issue is with head-in-the-sand denialism - “kids are not sexual beings until the precise age where I personally am comfortable with thinking about them being sexual beings!” - of the type that I believe is embodied by your comment.
You misunderstood me, then. I wasn't saying "12 year olds are not sexual" (though I do think the sex-saturated culture around us where kids of that age are accessing porn isn't the best idea), but that if they are actually engaging in sex, this is not a good thing, due to their mental and emotional immaturity, the risks of disease, pregnancy and exploitation, and in short the cutting short of childhood.
Puberty is the big change when your body is developing into its adult form, but you're anywhere near being an adult yet.
Y’all aren’t disagreeing with each other. He’s saying that at least some portion of 12 year old boys are both physically capable and wanting to have sex. You’re saying that it’s a bad thing when they do. These are not contradictory statements; that I would be capable of magdumping an AR-15 into the air in my backyard does not stop it from being a very bad thing if I did so.
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