Australian university students agree with Clinton's definition of sex

Richters, Juliet; Song, Angela

doi:10.1136/bmj.318.7189.1011a

Cited by 36 publications

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“…There was little agreement about whether one could be sexually abstinent and engage in genital fondling, oral-genital sexual activity, and masturbating in the partner's presence just as there was little agreement about whether these behaviors constituted having sex (Pitts & Rahman, 2001;Randall & Byers, 2003;Richters & Song, 1999;Sanders & Reinisch, 1999). On average, participants included eight behaviors in their definition of abstinence, suggesting that most students believed they could engage in at least some of these activities and be sexually abstinent.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

University Students’ Definitions of Sexual Abstinence and Having Sex

2008

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We asked 298 heterosexual Canadian university students about their definitions of the terms abstinence and having sex. For both terms, students were provided with a list of 17 sexual behaviors and indicated whether they would include each in their definition. The majority of both male and female students included activities that did not involve genital stimulation in their definition of sexual abstinence and did not include these activities in their definition of having sex. Conversely, most students did not include bidirectional sexual stimulation (penile-vaginal intercourse or penile-anal intercourse) in their definitions of sexual abstinence but did include them in their definitions of having sex. Students were quite mixed in whether activities involving unidirectional genital stimulation (e.g., oral sex, genital fondling) constituted abstinence, having sex, or neither abstinence nor having sex. However, they were more likely to see these behaviors as abstinent than as having sex. Students were more likely to rate a behavior as abstinence if orgasm did not occur. A canonical correlation analysis was used to examine the patterns of association between a number of predictors and inclusions of behaviors involving no genital stimulation, unidirectional stimulation, and bidirectional genital stimulation in abstinence definitions. The results indicated that male participants who were more involved with their religion and sexually conservative, less sexually experienced, and who had not received sexual health education at home were more likely to define bidirectional genital stimulation and less likely to define no genital stimulation and unidirectional sexual stimulation as sexual abstinence. The research and health promotion implications of these results are discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

University Students’ Definitions of Sexual Abstinence and Having Sex

2008

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“…This is slightly but significantly (p\.01) higher than in the general population, among whom 72% of men aged 16-59 agreed with this statement . Young people are far less likely to regard oral sex as''sex''than the over-40s (Richters & Song, 1999;Rissel et al, 2003).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Consensual Sex Between Men and Sexual Violence in Australian Prisons

et al. 2010

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Estimates of the incidence of sexual coercion in men's prisons are notoriously variable and fraught with conceptual and methodological problems. In 2006-2007, we conducted a computer-assisted telephone survey of a random sample of 2,018 male prisoners in New South Wales and Queensland. Of 2,626 eligible and available inmates, 76.8% consented and provided full responses. We asked about time in prison, sexual experience, attraction and (homo/bi/heterosexual) identity, attitudes, sexual contact with other inmates, reasons for having sex and practices engaged in, and about sexual coercion, including location and number of perpetrators. Most men (95.1%) identified as heterosexual. Of the total sample, 13.5% reported sexual contact with males in their lifetime: 7.8% only outside prison, 2.8% both inside and outside, and 2.7% only inside prison. Later in the interview, 144 men (7.1% of total sample) reported sexual contact with inmates in prison; the majority had few partners and no anal intercourse. Most did so for pleasure, but some for protection, i.e., to avoid assault by someone else. Before incarceration, 32.9% feared sexual assault in prison; 6.9% had been sexually threatened in prison and 2.6% had been sexually coerced ("forced or frightened into doing something sexually that [they] did not want"). Some of those coerced reported no same-sex contact. The majority of prisoners were intolerant of male-to-male sexual activity. The study achieved a high response rate and asked detailed questions to elicit reports of coercion and sex separately. Both consensual sex and sexual assault are less common than is generally believed.

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“…Richters and Song (1999) compared their heterosexual sample with the 5% of their sample who identified themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual (plus any who did not specify). More acts were endorsed by the nonheterosexual group, but this was only significantly more than the heterosexual group for manual-genital contact.…”

Section: Sexual Orientationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These include undergraduate samples from a range of nationalities: Richters and Song (1999) in Australia, Bogart et al (2000) in the United States (using a third-person design), and Pitts and Rahman (2001) in the United Kingdom. In addition, Rawlings, Graff, Calderon, Casey-Bailey, and Pasley (2006) sampled a slightly older sample of HIV-positive Americans.…”

Section: Research Into Definitions Of Sexmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Having Sex” as a Graded and Hierarchical Construct: A Comparison of Sexual Definitions among Heterosexual and Lesbian Emerging Adults in the U.K.

Horowitz

Spicer

2013

Journal of Sex Research

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Research into definitions of "having sex" has tended to employ a dichotomous response design (following Sanders & Reinisch, 1999). However, conceptions of sexual activity may be far less clear-cut (c.f. Faulkner, 2003 ; Peterson & Muehlenhard, 2007). More refinement is also needed regarding the impact of sexual orientation on the construction of what counts as sex. This research employed a continuous response design, asking 124 emerging adults (40 male heterosexuals, 42 female heterosexuals, & 42 lesbians) to judge 13 sexual acts using a graded, six-point scale. Overall, there was substantial agreement that intercourse (vaginal and anal) was "definitely," and kissing "definitely not," sex. However, across the various acts, participants also consistently made use of options between these extremes, such that a clear hierarchy of sexual behaviors emerged. The lesbian group considered a range of forms of genital stimulation to be significantly more constitutive of sex than either heterosexual group, while judgments by male and female heterosexuals did not significantly differ for any listed act. The implications of graded definitions of sex, a hierarchy of sexual behaviors, and the role of sexual behaviors in hetero- and homosexual identity management are explored.

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Australian university students agree with Clinton's definition of sex

Abstract: The diagnosis of male infertility-prospective time-specific study of conception rates related to seminal analysis and post-coital sperm-mucus penetration and survival in otherwise unexplained infertility.

Cited by 36 publications

References 1 publication

University Students’ Definitions of Sexual Abstinence and Having Sex

University Students’ Definitions of Sexual Abstinence and Having Sex

Consensual Sex Between Men and Sexual Violence in Australian Prisons

“Having Sex” as a Graded and Hierarchical Construct: A Comparison of Sexual Definitions among Heterosexual and Lesbian Emerging Adults in the U.K.

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