This study examines the relationship between unionization and environmental attitudes and behaviors in two national surveys. We begin by comparing the responses of union versus nonunion respondents to sixteen environmental questions in the General Social Survey for various years between 1993 and 2010. Overall, union members are, on average, slightly more likely than the general population to display pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors-having moderately greater mean values for ten of the sixteen pro-environmental items and displaying no difference on the remaining six items. Next, we look at three environmental questions in the American National Election Studies in various years between 1980 and 2012 and find union members on average to be more likely to support environmentalism than the general population for all three items. Finally, we conduct a robustness check by reducing the sample to just employed workers for each of the surveys and find the results to be substantively similar to those for the general population. This study contributes to the ongoing "jobs vs. the environment" debate as well as discussions about the ability of the labor and environmental movements to work together as a broad-based progressive movement for social change.
Recent research suggests possible health benefits of sexual activity. Sexual arousal appears to increase testosterone levels in males. (Related effects in females have not been studied.) This article shows that increased testosterone has a number of health-promoting effects and that good sexual functioning is a health issue not only in itself, but also in its effects on general health as well. Both clinical and experimental evidence indicates that stress disrupts the normal sexual response. Combining this with the previous evidence, a general model of reciprural inhibition between sexual and stress effects is proposed, with the implication that sex may be an antagonist to the deleterious health effects of stress. If stress disrupts sex, the result is likely to be indirect negative effects on health. Three basic types of stress which frequently disrupt sexual functioning are described, and it is argued that sex therapy techniques are effective in large part as a result of their ability to reduce these forms of stress. The kinds of stress that lead to sexual dysfunction have clear social roots. A variety of etiological factors are identified. It is argued that movements promoting social change may in fact perform sexual preventive medicine, which may indirectly augment general health as well.
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