You might not know it, but you’re thinking about sex right now. Don’t look so embarrassed, my collegiate constituency. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.
In fact, you can’t help it.
The fact is, we’re wired to think about sex subconsciously at any given moment. To get a sampling of how many areas of the brain are finely attuned to seeking out the best potential mates for your future progeny, watch the Discovery Channel documentary, “The Science of Sex Appeal.” The film is an interesting — if slightly unnerving — dissection of human “sexiness,” what makes someone sexy and how we rate the opposite sex in terms of viability as partners.
It turns out we are biologically hardwired, emotionally programmed and culturally trained to think about sex in an almost nonstop capacity.
Dr. Terri Fisher of the Ohio State University at Mansfield recently conducted an experiment in which college-aged students counted on a golf tracker the number of times they thought about sex per day. Men aged 18-25 think about sex an average of 34 times per day. Women of the same age range averaged nearly 19 times per day. The article also points out that, in a separate experiment, food and sleep were thought about almost as frequently.
Almost as frequently; that means of our three most basic, primal tendencies, sex takes the number one position.
When do most of us think about food? When we’re hungry. And when do we think about sleep? When we’re tired. But we think about sex all the time. Are we not getting enough of it?
Hardly. The Kinsey Institute reports that people aged 18-29 have sex, on average, 112 times per year. That’s over twice a week. So why is it that this biological need keeps popping up in our heads throughout the day? Is it that twice a week isn’t enough? Is it that reproduction is one of those needs that can never be satisfied? Possibly.
The medical journal Pediatrics reports that 42 percent of Internet users aged 10-17 have been exposed to pornography in the past year. Two thirds of the time, that was unwanted exposure. And that’s just the explicit stuff. Think about all of those Fanta commercials, perfume ads and overheard “adult conversations” you accumulated as a kid, and it starts to make sense.
Of course we’re going to think about sex all the time. Before we can even make a conscious decision to seek it out, it’s slapping us in the face on television, in movies, comics, Internet pop-ups and schoolyard rumors.
Now let me be clear: I am not anti-sex, at all. And I’m against censorship completely. I’m just posing the questions: Have we perhaps gone too far with the in-your-face sex thing? Do I want to be thinking about sex 20 times a day? And, more to the point, do I really have a choice in the matter?
Reach the columnist at arimmeli@asu.edu
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