Women's roles, experiences, and societal impact

Sexual Promiscuity

The Sociology of Female and Male Sexual Promiscuity

Promiscuity is a sexual behavioral trait which has often been induced with a distinctly negative connotation. As sexual promiscuity tends to contrast the value systems of many culturally religious traditions, as well as related standards of moral turpitude as they relate both to such traditions and to mainstream social imperatives, it has traditionally been characterized negatively. Concordant to this characterization, those engaging in behavior which may be perceived as promiscuous have been often characterized as possessing either conditions of psychological distress or social maladaptivity. A more empirically grounded discourse on sexuality and sexual desire, however, requires us to exact greater balance in coming to understand the subject.

Certainly, biological factors and social context have become more emergent explanations for promiscuous behaviors, or for sexual proclivities in general. And with the broadening nuance of this discussion, it has become increasingly apparent that gender difference does play a meaningful role in sexual desires or behaviors. In our discussion specifically, this observation is manifested in the greater tendency of men toward promiscuity than women. According to a 2003 article by David P. Schmitt, which is features or contextually relevant throughout this discussion, "among those men and women who are actively pursuing short-term mates, over 50% of men (but less than 20% of women) desire more than one sexual partner in the next month." (Schmitt, 14) This is a finding consistent with most empirical studies across cultures and implemented across a wide variance of experimental frameworks. Absent of the moral implications that have often marred this discussion with undue speculation of some character flaw in the sexual promiscuous subject, we will here consider this greater tendency of men toward promiscuity than women in light of a variation of potential explanations, seeking to illuminate the root causes of promiscuity as well as to touch upon some of its potential deterrents.

At the base of a discussion on the relationship between gender difference and a differential in sexual promiscuity is a basic recognition that male and female human's are primarily differentiated by sexual organs and the functions of these organs. A historical product of a reigning patriarchy in sexual science was the common perspective that women could be differentiated from men primarily in their role as the vessel for procreation. It was widely held that where female sex organs were constructed for fertilization and procreation, male sex organs were contrarily designed for the purpose of sexual intercourse. Such is to imply that historically, biologists have generally framed discussions of sexual desire in a context to suggest that such was typically exhibited by men as a product of hormonal instinct, and in contrast to women, who it was believed were likely to be of a more sexually conservative nature by that very same chemical imperative.

This was, of course, a serious subversion of the sexual desires inherently possessed in women. As one article from 1982 notes, "it was . . . not so long ago that Western science still debated the existence, whereabouts, and moral implications of the human female orgasm." (Whitten, 99) With the burgeoning of the feminist movement, the scientific community would come increasingly to recognize that this assumption failed on numerous accounts to satisfy empirical logic. Therefore, at least one theoretical conception of man as being biological more prone to promiscuity would gradually prove biased by cultural realities.

Still, more current studies on the biological implications of promiscuity, now informed by an implicit acknowledgement of female sexual desire, nonetheless retain a tendency to identify promiscuity as being more likely in males. In his 2003 article from The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, sexuality sociologist David P. Schmitt endorses the general biological explanation for the key differentials which distinguish male patterns of sexual desire from female patterns. Specifically, Schmitt addresses sexuality under what he refers to as a pluralistic perspective, asserting that men and women alike exist under a pretense of lifelong alterations in sexual desires and that in both, there may be some degree of inherent tendency toward a wide array of sexual desires across the course of a lifetime. However, the study also notes that even under this precondition, there is consistent and demonstrable empirical evidence to suggest that there is indeed some instinctual drive by the male to desire more than one sexual partner throughout his life than a is present for the female. For the female, sexual intercourse is likely to be more selective and driven by an interest in attaining certain desirable mating or socializing qualities in the partner. In contrast, the male will be more prone to apply broader standards and shorter incubation period before consent to intercourse. (Schmitt, 3) In Schmitt's perspective, there is a quality of species perpetuation that is improved by the notion of male promiscuity, with the desire in men for multiple sexual partners driven by the capacity to improve the propagation of the species. In this pluralistic account, we are given a theoretical endorsement in modern terms of the idea that a biological incentive exists for male promiscuity.

Interestingly, in Gowaty's 2003 article Sexual Natures: How Feminism Changed Evolutionary Biology, our study is given the ideal segue into a discussion of the social factors concerned with the apparent proclivity of men toward promiscuity in comparison to women. Here, Gowaty presents the argument that biological conceptions of the female as lacking sexual desires and thus likely driven to promiscuity only by virtue of emotional disturbance would be disrupted by the rise of the feminist movement. This accounts for a gradual alteration in our understanding of differentials between male and female sexuality. (Gowaty, 901) In the coming section, we will see that these differentials may have less to do with our biological make up than with the conditions imposed upon genders by society.

According to a 2003 study on the subject, which sought to draw connections between social characteristics and sexual proclivities, some of the psychologically driven suggestions as to what might instigate promiscuity did not actually hold up to scrutiny. Specifically, the study found on this subject that "forms of risky sexual behaviour were generally unrelated to neuroticism . . . across cultures." (Schmitt1, 201) Though such psychological instability was measured by the study, no connection between this condition and sexual promiscuity could be established, undermining assumptions that promiscuity could be classified specifically as relating to some pattern of emotional distress.