What are the scientific reasons for having sex?

The Register (UK) ^ | 10 oct 06 | Dr Stephen Juan

[white trash redneck]

What are the scientific reasons for having sex?

Asked by Jill Howard of Alexandria, Virginia, USA

The reasons for not engaging in sex include transmission of diseases, heart attack due to exertion, and many others. The reasons for engaging in sex are numerous. Among these are:

• Sex helps boost the immune system. According to Dr Carl Charnetski of the Department of Psychology at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, people who reported one or two sexual "episodes" per week enjoyed higher levels of Immunoglobin A. This is an antibody that helps fight disease.

• Sex helps boost longevity. In one study cited by Dr Charnetski, men who had more orgasms over a 10 year period boosted their longevity compared with those who had fewer.

• Sex helps ward off cancer. In another study cited by Dr Charnetski, men who had more ejaculations over a 35 year period had 33 per cent less prostate cancer compared to those with fewer ejaculations.

• Sex results in a more youthful appearance. According to a study by Dr David Weeks, a clinical neuropsychologist at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Scotland and co-author of Superyoung (1999), men and women who reported having sex an average of four times per week looked approximately 10 years younger than they really were.

• Sex helps reduce stress. Numerous studies show that it does this through lowering anxiety levels, boosting relaxation, and aiding sleeping.

• Sex helps fight depression. A study by Dr Gordon Gallup of the Department of Psychology at the State University of New York at Albany found that women who regularly engage in heterosexual sex in which they come in contact with semen were significantly less depressed than those women that did not. he causal relationship is unclear. Dr Gallup speculates that "possibly because when absorbed through the vagina, semen may have an effect on mood in women". However, Dr Gallup is quick to point out: "Regardless of the findings, this study does not advocate that people abstain from using condoms. Protecting oneself from an unwanted pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease is far more important."

• Sex helps coping with middle age. This is the inference drawn from research by Dr GA Bachmann at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, New Jersey and published first in 1995 in the International Journal of Fertility and Menopausal Studies and continuing in The Journal of Sexual Medicine in 2006.

• Sex is good exercise. Exercise helps circulation, lowers cholesterol, and releases helpful endorphins.

• Sex helps in losing weight. Well, at least a little. One burns approximately four to five calories per minute or perhaps 300 calories per hour during sex (depending upon how, shall we say, "vigorous" the sex is). About 7,000 to 8,000 excess calories must be burned to lose one kilogram of fat (3,500 to lose one pound). You do the calculations.

Stephen Juan, Ph.D. is an anthropologist at the University of Sydney.

[Eagle Eye]

Geeeze...reading a book doesn't give you the place to say silly ass stupid things and expect any credibility.

Using contraception is NOT in essence the same as converting to Islam.

Your so called logic isn't valid.

So to you a young couple not ready for children are ceding the world to Islam?

Or a couple trying to plan and space their children are ceding the world to Islam?

Or an older couple no longer wanting to raise children ceding the world to Islam?

Or women who risk health consequences from pregnancy and use birth control are ceding the world to Islam?

And anyone who isn't married and doesn't want children are ceding the world to Islam?

With enough of these 'exceptions' to your rule, the rule no longer rules.

[durasell]

Had to be said...

[wideawake]

I don't believe in having babies for purposes of outnumbering my enemies.

Nor do I.

However, I am not ashamed of my culture, my beliefs and my way of life and I think it is a positive affirmation of that culture, those beliefs and that way of life to propagate it physically.

[XJarhead]

Westerners reproduce at below replacement rates, and the USA is the only Western country of any size that is reproducing at a replacement rate.

Did you read that part of your own post?

Europe is being overtaken by Muslims because Europeans are no longer producing enough children to sustain their population.

How about that part?

If you wanted to argue that a European who has a vasectomy is ceding the long term future of his continent to the moslems, I suppose you would at least have the basis of an argument. It's a twisting of Steyn's argument, but at least the germ is there. Though from the perspective of that individual, his personal decision to have a vasectomy won't make any difference at all.

But with respect to this country, you can't even make that argument, because was are not drowning in a sea of hyper-fertile moslems. It's the other continent that's got that problem.

[ArrogantBustard]

I'm talking about having kids purely for numbers...

Yes, that's a bit cold blooded. And it's unlikely that the children would grow up sane. Still, the numbers don't lie. People are born, people die. If on the average, as an aggregate population, they don't procreat enough to at least replace themselves before they die, their civilisation will vanish.

That doesn't mean individuals should be compelled by force to reproduce, nor does it mean that every fertile individual who declines to reproduce is evil. It's just a statement of fact. If the "average person" in a particular civilisation is not replacing himself, that civilisation is doomed and will be replaced by another civilisation in which the "average person" does bother to replace himself.

To have a child for the wrong reason is cruel--- whether to be a field hand, to be an 'heir' to your name or to outnumber your enemy. The kid knows it....

Again, I agree ... but that's kind of beside the point. Again, if a whole generation or two is, on the average, as an aggregate "bad parent" material (or perceives itself as such) and doesn't reproduce, it will disappear and be replaced.

As a matter of personal opinion, I think there are a great many people in the West who have declined to have children who would be far better parents than they give themselves credit for. I further am convinced that the separation of the two purposes of sexual intercourse (union and procreation) in Western popular culture is largely a cause of folks declining to have children. Hence, my tagline.

[Warren_Piece]

You realise it's only a matter of time before the Monty Python "Meaning of Life" pictures and quotes are posted? Oh, what the heck:

[Mr Blackitt making fun of the Catholics across the street and lecturing his wife about Protestantism.]

Mr Blackitt: Look at them, bloody Catholics, filling the bloody world up with bloody people they can't afford to bloody feed.

Mrs Blackitt: What are we dear?

Mr Blackitt: Protestant, and fiercely proud of it.

Mrs Blackitt: Hmm. Well, why do they have so many children?

Mr Blackitt: Beacuse... every time they have sexual intercourse, they have to have a baby!

Mrs Blackitt: But it's the same with us, Harry.

Mr Blackitt: What do you mean?

Mrs Blackitt: Well, we've got two children, and we've had sexual intercourse twice.

Mr Blackitt: That's not the point. We could have it any time we wanted!

Mrs Blackitt: Really?

Mr Blackitt: Oh yes, and what's more, because we don't believe in that Papist claptrap, we can take precautions.

Mrs Blackitt: What do you mean... lock the door?

Mr Blackitt: No, no. I mean, because we're members of the Protestant Reformed Church, which successfully challenged the autrocratic power of the Papacy in the mid-sixteenth century, we can wear little rubber devices to prevent issue.

Mrs Blackitt: What d'you mean?

Mr Blackitt: I mean, if I wanted, have sexual intercourse with you,...

Mrs Blackitt: Oh, yes, Harry.

Mr Blackitt: ...and, by wearing a rubber sheath over my old feller, I could insure... that, when I came off, you would not be impregnated.

Mrs Blackitt: Ooh!

Mr Blackitt: That's what being a Protestant's all about! That's why it's the church for me! That's why it's the church for anyone who respects the individual, and the individual's right to decide for him- or herself. When Martin Luther nailed his protest up to the church door in 1517, he may not have realised the full significance of what he was doing, but… 400 years later, thanks to him, my dear, I can wear whatever I want on my John Thomas.

[He sniffs.]

Mr Blackitt: And, Protestantism doesn't stop at the simple condom! Oh, no! I can wear French Ticklers if I want.

Mrs Blackitt: You what?

Mr Blackitt: French Ticklers! Black Mambos! Crocodile Ribs! Sheaths that are designed not only to protect, but also to enhance the stimulation of sexual congress.

Mrs Blackitt: Have you got one?

Mr Blackitt: Have I got one? Uh, well, no, but I can go down the road any time I want, and walk into Harry's and hold my head up high and say in a loud, steady voice, "Harry, I want you to sell me a condom. In fact, today, I think I'll have a French Tickler, for I am a Protestant."

[El Gato]

I think both Darwin and the Church can agree on one point, if nothing else: The primary purpose of sex is reproduction.

Well, yes. But humans are about the only creatures that have sex when the female is not fertile. Thus, however that came about, sex must fulfill some other role in humans. One role is to help keep parents together, so as to better provide for and raise the offspring, which are more helpless and take longer to mature than those of most other species. Although many birds mate for life without the extra sex, so there may be still more to it for humans.

[Eagle Eye]

Are you telling us that you only have had sex for reproduction and intentional attempts at reproduction?

No, I didn't think so.

[steve-b]

You are evading the issue, which is that cultural replacement and biological replacement are separate phenomena.

[GOP Poet]

Sex helps in losing weight. Well, at least a little. One burns approximately four to five calories per minute or perhaps 300 calories per hour during sex (depending upon how, shall we say, "vigorous" the sex is). About 7,000 to 8,000 excess calories must be burned to lose one kilogram of fat (3,500 to lose one pound). You do the calculations.

Uh, That doesn't make up for that fantastic cold chicken or Chinese food in bed afterward though. :-)

[najida]

I think that one of our great advances is that people now can honestly say "I won't be a parent...I may beat my child to death". Instead of the old world attitude of "It's my duty to have kids, no matter how crazy or evil I am".

Granted, I have a darker view of life and the world. I also know that most predictions I hear and read rarely come to fruition. :)

Just because they're birthin' like bunnies doesn't mean that all their rabbits ain't crazy.

[ArrogantBustard]

I am evading nothing.

[lowbridge]

"Allison. My cousin had a friend who went out with a virgin. And after six months they got married. On their wedding night when the man wanted to consumate the marriage, the woman wouldn't let him. The next morning they found him dead. In the bed. Allison, I don't want to die". -Julio, in the Rodney Dangerfield film, "Easy Money"

[wideawake]

Geeeze...reading a book doesn't give you the place to say silly ass stupid things and expect any credibility.

My claim is not based on my erudition but on empirically observable facts. I referred readers of this thread to Steyn because, being a gifted writer, he makes the same empirical argument far more lyrically and enjoyably than I can.

Using contraception is NOT in essence the same as converting to Islam.

I didn't say that it was essentially no different. I said it was practically no different.

Jumping off a 30 story building intentionally and accidentally falling off a 30 story building are essentially two different actions, but they have the same practical consequence.

Your so called logic isn't valid.

Oh, but it is, as I've explained.

So to you a young couple not ready for children are ceding the world to Islam?

A statement I never made.

Or a couple trying to plan and space their children are ceding the world to Islam?

Another statement I never made.

Or an older couple no longer wanting to raise children ceding the world to Islam?

Another statement I never made.

Or women who risk health consequences from pregnancy and use birth control are ceding the world to Islam?

Another statement I never made.

And anyone who isn't married and doesn't want children are ceding the world to Islam?

Yet a fifth statement I never made.

With enough of these 'exceptions' to your rule, the rule no longer rules.

The issue is people who pathologically prefer creature comforts to having families.

And the consequences thereof.

[longtermmemmory]

Hedonism based study.

The study seems to be based on the ASSUMPTION that feeling good the reward for sex. NOT that procreation is the reward for sex.

Just as leftists want to eliminate children from marriage law, so it seems this study wants to remove continuation of genes from evolution.

All the health benefits mention are to keeping the mother and father alive to ensure they produce more offspring.

[July 4th]

Sex results in a more youthful appearance. According to a study by Dr David Weeks, a clinical neuropsychologist at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Scotland and co-author of Superyoung (1999), men and women who reported having sex an average of four times per week looked approximately 10 years younger than they really were.

I think they've got the cause and effect backwards here.

[El Gato]

Or is there actually a quantitative aspect to this after all?

Of course there is, but quality is a heck of force multiplier too. So you can't just compare raw numbers.

Still failing to keep up at least replacement rates is an eventual losing matter.

[Alouette]

I can give you 9 reasons. I'll bet this silly twit can't even give one.

[RandallFlagg]

Thanks for being the only two who posted pics concerning the topic of this thread. Here's my generous contribution....

[RandallFlagg]

Thanks for being the only two who posted pics concerning the topic of this thread. Here's my generous contribution....