It seems like most Americans are fairly conservative in their attitudes towards sex, at least, according to this survey (found here).
As Longtime Readers know, I tend to look at most surveys with a jaundiced eye, and towards sexual surveys with even more cynicism, because a.) people who are prepared to answer surveys about sex don’t mind talking about it and are therefore more likely to be sexually liberal (as opposed to the many who think that some stranger asking about their sex lives requires showing them the door, with a shotgun as a persuader); and b.) because people lie like Democrats about their sex lives anyway.
All that said, this was a fairly large sample (which can eliminate much of the nonsense above) and I was somewhat gratified to see little nuggets such as the percentage of people who had sex parties / group sex (less than 10% — although I should point out that in a nation of about two hundred million adults, that’s still nearly twenty million swingers, most of whom, I suspect, are of the coastal habitat).
I liked the fact that among Americans, our sex lives involve innocent things like wearing sexy lingerie (75% of women) and lifetime masturbation and “ordinary” sex rated at 80%. (I suspect that if we took out the sexually-indifferent, e.g. married Jewish women, feministicals and several ex-wives of my acquaintance, the latter percentage would probably be a lot higher. [humorous stereotype alert])
I’m not going to go into more detail, because this is a family website* and you can read the salacious details for yourselves. Instead, let’s just look at something related to the topic, i.e. Claudia Cardinale:
*I’m kidding. Maybe the Corleone Family.
I annoy and amuse my wife by lunging for the telephone when it rings during and after the dinner hour. Sales calls get the brush off, but government surveys, that’s where I lie as colorfully and imaginatively as I can.
Commercial surveyors are told they need to offer me money for my valuable data, and if they don’t they don’t get it. They never do, cheapskates, except Home Depot of all people. My little contracting operations buys a lot from them and they asked me to do an hour long survey at a local store for $100. Not much but since I was astonished and intrigued I did it – kinda fun.
Political surveys are even more fun! When you get them to question the questions they’re asking (“Why is the question worded the way it is? How valid is your survey if the question is designed to elicit a specific answer?”) you can almost hear their heads explode!
They are worded that way because what the alleged pollster is doing is called “Push Polling” and they really don’t care what your response is. The idea is to subliminally plant a lie, in the guise of asking a question. i.e. “Do you support President Trump in spite of his engaging in golden showers?” The golden showers accusation is stated as though it has already been proven true, and by posing the question as supporting President Trump, the truth of the original story isn’t questioned, and more importantly, you’ll (hopefully) not think question it. Or you’ll remember hearing something about the story in the news, and the question merely provides further confirmation of the story.
Going further, the pollster hopes you’ll not support President Trump, or at least question your support for him, and that is the real objective of the “pollster”. To try to influence or change your opinion.
Another example off the top of my head. “Do you support the coal-fired power companies as they produce CO2 that is contributing to Global Warming?” Again, there are a number of unproven assertions in that statement, and the idea is to try and slide it by you without you becoming aware of it.
Related to the blog post, it sound like the pollster actually tried to get people’s real opinions, but as Kim noted, you have to question how honest people would be in responding.
$100 for an hour of answering questions? Not bad, actually.
> …although I should point out that in a nation of about two hundred million adults, that’s
> still nearly twenty million swingers, most of whom, I suspect, are of the coastal habitat).
Anecdotal data suggest otherwise, unless you consider Chicago, St. Louis and Boise to be “coastal”.
And no, my wife and I don’t swing, or have a sex life that would be interesting to anyone, including us, but we’ve had *weird* friends in the past (at one time our social circle included a “professional submissive”. She worked for a dominatrix who would supervise clients whipping/beating her. She was not the weirdest one.)
There are swinger groups all over. I heard of one that would have a “convention” every year in Boise, but they’d register as some sort of farming event so as not to scare the squares. A FOAF in Chicago had quite the portfolio of his wife getting >ahem< by other men — sometimes several at once. He would only shoot the pictures on real film and print them himself because he didn't want them getting on the internet where *members of his church would see them*.
Denver has the Scarlet Ranch, and St. Louis…shudder.
That said, I believe that 10% figure, and I do expect it to tilt more towards larger cities not just the coast.
Wouldn’t ten percent of two hundred million be twenty million?
Yes it would. I thought twenty, wrote two. I’m on sabbatical, and not to be trusted with large numbers, or heavy machinery. Duly changed, thankee. [/1984]