Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Degrees of Sexaration
This is amazing. Researchers mapped the sexual activity of one high school over a 6-month period. (Full article here.)
What's noteworthy is that unlike the adult population, which tends to have a few individuals who really get around and act as hubs of contagion, and lots of closed loops within circles of acquaintances, the high schoolers had long chains of indirect connection. Over half of the romantically active students were involved in this big, circular snowflake. So, it would be very easy for a kid to feel they weren't at risk of STDs, because they were only involved with one person, who'd been involved with only one previous person, who somehow linked them into this long chain of relatively non-promiscuous people. How do you wrap your head around needing to be careful with your boyfriend because of someone 37 degrees of separation from you might have?
The map does not show sequence, so you can't tell how many of the people connected to the snowflake were involved with their link to it before that person joined up with the snowflake. However, if this is how linked everyone can get in just 6 months, what would that map look like at the end of four years?
A coworker and I only found two instances of same-sex coupling, one of which might have been a three-way. And although there are a few kids whose number of partners over six months I find troubling (one boy made connections with nine girls!), most of the kids seem to have had only one or two partners. I'm not sure if that's encouraging, because it goes against the media-hyped phenomenon of "hooking up" parties with lots of casual anonymous sex, or if it's discouraging, because it means that many, many kids are at risk for STDs and probably don't believe it, because they're relatively inexperienced and monogamous.
(I found the link thanks to this blog: Making Light.)
What's noteworthy is that unlike the adult population, which tends to have a few individuals who really get around and act as hubs of contagion, and lots of closed loops within circles of acquaintances, the high schoolers had long chains of indirect connection. Over half of the romantically active students were involved in this big, circular snowflake. So, it would be very easy for a kid to feel they weren't at risk of STDs, because they were only involved with one person, who'd been involved with only one previous person, who somehow linked them into this long chain of relatively non-promiscuous people. How do you wrap your head around needing to be careful with your boyfriend because of someone 37 degrees of separation from you might have?
The map does not show sequence, so you can't tell how many of the people connected to the snowflake were involved with their link to it before that person joined up with the snowflake. However, if this is how linked everyone can get in just 6 months, what would that map look like at the end of four years?
A coworker and I only found two instances of same-sex coupling, one of which might have been a three-way. And although there are a few kids whose number of partners over six months I find troubling (one boy made connections with nine girls!), most of the kids seem to have had only one or two partners. I'm not sure if that's encouraging, because it goes against the media-hyped phenomenon of "hooking up" parties with lots of casual anonymous sex, or if it's discouraging, because it means that many, many kids are at risk for STDs and probably don't believe it, because they're relatively inexperienced and monogamous.
(I found the link thanks to this blog: Making Light.)
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
I am a bad feminist.
True, I bought Ms. Magazine today even though I'd already read most of the articles online. But only because the March This Old House Magazine isn't out yet.
