Thursday, May 30, 2019

The majority (94.5%) of women indicated having masturbated at least once in their life; reported masturbating 2 or 3 times a week (26.8%) or once (26.3%); it is not “a partner substitute”, but rather is a stress coping & relaxation strategy

Masturbatory Behavior in a Population Sample of German Women. Andrea Burri, Ana Carvalheira. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, May 30 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2019.04.015

Abstract
Background: Human masturbation is and has been a very heatedly and controversially discussed topic in human sexuality. Studies investigating aspects of human masturbatory behavior and female sexual pleasure remain scarce. This lack of knowledge opens the door to further controversies and misconceptions.

Aim: To conduct an explorative study on female masturbatory behavior to gain more insight into this nonreproductive sexual behavior and provide an empiric basis for future research.

Methods: A total of 425 German women (mean age 26.6 years), 61.4% of whom were in a committed relationship, completed a comprehensive 76-item online survey consisting of study-specific, self-constructed questions and validated and standardized questionnaires.

Main Outcome Measure: Correlation and comparative analyses were performed. Results are presented numerically as means and percentages.

Results: The majority (94.5%) of women indicated having masturbated at least once in their life, with a mean age at first masturbation of 14 years. 85.9% of women described masturbation as “genital self-stimulation until reaching orgasm.” The majority of women reported masturbating 2 or 3 times a week (26.8%) or once a week (26.3%). Factors independently associated with masturbation frequency were relationship status, orgasm frequency, openness to new experience, and body acceptance. Almost all women (91.5%) reported masturbating also when in a relationship. For the 5.5% of women who had never engaged in autoerotic stimulation, the 2 main reasons were “I hardly every feel sexual desire” and “sex is a partner-only thing.” 7.6% reported never experiencing an orgasm during masturbation, whereas 50.3% indicated that they always reached orgasm during autostimulation. The reasons cited for engaging in masturbation were manifold, ranging from sexual desire to relaxation and stress reduction. The most common fantasy included the partner; however, 20.7% fantasized about being “defenseless,” and 8.7% thought about a “disturbing” scenario that they chose not to elaborate further.

Clinical Implications: For many women, masturbation does not represent “a partner substitute” to seek sexual pleasure, but rather is a stress coping and relaxation strategy.

Strengths & Limitations: This is one of the very first studies to provide more in-depth insight into a variety of aspects related to female masturbation. The representativeness of the data is limited to this particular sample of German women.

Conclusion: Our findings highlight the huge diversity in terms of masturbation frequency, motivations, styles, and preferences that can be observed in this particular population sample of German women.

Valkyries: Was Gender Equality High in the Scandinavian Periphery since Viking Times? Evidence from Enamel Hypoplasia and Height Ratios

Valkyries: Was Gender Equality High in the Scandinavian Periphery since Viking Times? Evidence from Enamel Hypoplasia and Height Ratios. Laura Maravall Buckwalter. Economics & Human Biology, May 30 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2019.05.007

Highlights
•    Frequency of linear enamel hypoplasia is used as an indicator of gender equality.
•    This indicator allows us to measure the health of men and women over two millennia.
•    Scandinavian women had better relative values already during the Viking era.
•    Medieval Scandinavian women were also healthier than contemporary women elsewhere.

Abstract: Scandinavian countries currently have very high values of female autonomy. Was this already the case in Viking Times? In this study, we trace the roots of gender equality in the Scandinavian periphery over the past two millennia. We evaluate and recommend a new measure of early gender equality: relative enamel hypoplasia values of males and females. This new indicator allows us to trace relative health and nutritional equality, using archaeological evidence. We find that Scandinavian women in the rural periphery already had relatively good health and nutritional values during the Viking era and the medieval period thereafter. The corresponding value is 0.8 equality advantage for Scandinavian women, whereas in the rest of Europe most values fall in a band around 1.2 ratio units. This suggests that the currently high gender equality had a precedence during the Middle Ages.

Self‐employed males are more likely to be attractive & more attractive self‐employed males have higher incomes; differences in income from IQ declined as attractiveness increases; no differences for females

In the eye of the beholder? The returns to beauty and IQ for the self‐employed. Pankaj C. Patel, Marcus T. Wolfe. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, May 24 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/sej.1323

Research summary: Using a two study approach, we examine the relationship between attractiveness and key aspects of self‐employment. In Study 1, in which individuals rated the attractiveness of participants at the beginning of the interview, our results indicate that self‐employed males are more likely to be attractive and that more attractive self‐employed males have higher incomes. In Study 2, our findings indicate that at low levels of attractiveness, higher IQ self‐employed males have higher incomes in 1974; however, differences in income from IQ declined as attractiveness increases. We do not find differences for either outcome for females in either study.

Managerial summary: This research investigates the relationship between attractiveness and self‐employment. The results indicate that self‐employed males are more likely to be considered attractive than their female counterparts, and that attractive self‐employed males have higher incomes than self‐employed males who were not considered attractive. Additionally, our results reveal that IQ is positively associated with income for less attractive self‐employed males, however this relationship decreases in strength as attractiveness increases. Interestingly, our results do not indicate that attractiveness influences either the likelihood of self‐employment, or performance within self‐employment, for females. Our findings highlight the importance that attractiveness can play within the self‐employment process, as well as the relevance of considering the role that social norms regarding gender might have in determining who pursues, and is successful in, self‐employment.

Reworking Trauma through BDSM: Sadomasochistic reenactments of lived trauma, informed by queer-of-color critique, feminist performance studies, and psychoanalysis, may reconfigure such trauma

Reworking Trauma through BDSM. Corie Hammers. Signs, Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Volume 44, Number 2 | Winter 2019. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/699370

Abstract: As part of a much larger ethnographic study of lesbian/queer sex publics, this essay focuses on a particular erotic practice—sadomasochistic reenactments of lived trauma. Informed by queer-of-color critique, feminist performance studies, and psychoanalysis, this essay explores the necessary queer conditions enabling such returns, by which I mean the reenacting through BDSM of one’s own lived trauma in order to reconfigure it. This queerness, as an embodied erotics fed by durational—as opposed to impersonal and anonymous—ties, rides on the relational. That is, it is our fleshy entanglements and shared dependencies that enable these returns, returns that refuse and reconfigure lived trauma. The site of lesbian/queer sex publics thus offers critical reworkings, somatically generating as it does alternatively embodied futures.

Visual Attention to Sexual Stimuli in Mostly Heterosexuals: Differences between mostly and exclusively heterosexual profiles in men depends on a pattern of response that was found to be mediated by reduced disgust

Visual Attention to Sexual Stimuli in Mostly Heterosexuals. James S. Morandini. Archives of Sexual Behavior, May 29 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-019-1419-4

Abstract: Individuals who report mostly heterosexual orientations (i.e., mostly sexually attracted to the opposite sex, but occasionally attracted to the same sex) outnumber all other non-heterosexual individuals combined. The present study examined whether mostly heterosexual men and women view same- and other-sex sexual stimuli differently than exclusively heterosexual men and women. A novel eye-tracking paradigm was used with 162 mostly and exclusively heterosexual men and women. Compared to exclusively heterosexual men, mostly heterosexual men demonstrated greater attention to sexually explicit features (i.e., genital regions and genital contact regions) of solo male and male–male erotic stimuli, while demonstrating equivalent attention to sexually explicit features of solo female and female–female erotic stimuli. Mediation analyses suggested that differences between mostly and exclusively heterosexual profiles in men could be explained by mostly heterosexual men’s increased sexual attraction to solo male erotica, and their increased sexual attraction and reduced disgust to the male–male erotica. No comparable differences in attention were observed between mostly and exclusively heterosexual women—although mostly heterosexual women did demonstrate greater fixation on visual erotica overall—a pattern of response that was found to be mediated by reduced disgust.

Keywords: Mostly heterosexual Sexual orientation Disgust Visual attention Sex differences



There is a tendency to willfully & actively forget details about their own moral transgressions but not about their own morally praiseworthy deeds; when not forgotten, people foster a perception of moral improvement over time

Moral Memories and the Belief in the Good Self. Matthew L. Stanley, Felipe De Brigard. Current Directions in Psychological Science, May 29, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419847990

Abstract: Most people believe they are morally good, and this belief plays an integral role in constructions of personal identity. Yet people commit moral transgressions with surprising frequency in everyday life. In this article, we characterize two mechanisms involving autobiographical memory that are utilized to foster a belief in a morally good self in the present—despite frequent and repeated immoral behavior. First, there is a tendency for people to willfully and actively forget details about their own moral transgressions but not about their own morally praiseworthy deeds. Second, when past moral transgressions are not forgotten, people strategically compare their more recent unethical behaviors with their more distant unethical behaviors to foster a perception of personal moral improvement over time. This, in turn, helps to portray the current self favorably. These two complementary mechanisms help to explain pervasive inconsistencies between people’s personal beliefs about their own moral goodness and the frequency with which they behave immorally.

Keywords: ethics, moral, autobiographical memory, self-enhancement, identity


Sex differences of political interest: At age 15, there is already a gender gap of 20 pct points in the probability of respondents reporting being politically interested; in the following 10 years the gap grows by 10 additional pct points

Tracing the Gender Gap in Political Interest Over the Life Span: A Panel Analysis. Marta Fraile, Irene Sánchez‐Vítores. Political Psychology, May 29 2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12600

Abstract: Despite recent advances in gender equality in political representation and the availability of resources, this article shows that there is a persistent gender gap in declared political interest over the life cycle. Using evidence from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), we track the gender gap through the life span of citizens. At age 15, there is already a substantial gender gap of 20 percentage points in the probability of respondents reporting being politically interested, pointing to gendered socialization processes as the key explanation for such differences. In the following 10 years, as people develop into adults and unravel their political orientations, the extent of the gender gap continues to grow by about 10 additional percentage points. Following these formative years, attitudes crystallize and so does the gender gap, remaining at the same size (around 30 percentage points of difference between women and men) over the life course. These findings suggest that the development of gender roles during early childhood is a crucial phase in the source of the gender gap, deserving further attention from scholars.