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posted by chromas on Wednesday July 15 2020, @04:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the iTouch dept.

Medical Xpress:

When it comes to sex and relationships, the pandemic is creating a situation where people are either living in close proximity (possibly with partners, children or other family members) or are limited in their opportunities to find partners for prolonged periods of time. These circumstances can directly impact our intimacy.

A recent online survey found that a majority of participants in a sample of 1,559 adults reported a decline in the quality of their sex lives (43.5 percent) during the COVID-19 pandemic, while only a minority reported improvements (13.6 percent). Interestingly, however, despite people reporting a decrease in the frequency of sexual behaviours compared to the past year, one in five individuals (20.3 percent) added at least one new activity to their sex life, such as a new sexual position, incorporating pornography or engaging in cybersex. Compared to people who made no change, those who spiced things up were more likely to report improvements in their sex life since the beginning of the pandemic.

"As the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene says: 'You are your safest sex partner.'"

Journal Reference:
Less Sex, but More Sexual Diversity: Changes in Sexual Behavior during the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic, Leisure Sciences (DOI: 10.1080/01490400.2020.1774016)


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Wednesday July 15 2020, @05:55PM (21 children)

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 15 2020, @05:55PM (#1022018) Homepage Journal

    a bunch of old guys and almost no labor force.

    Like in Japan. It's a big problem there, and it's why they are investing heavily into robotics.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by legont on Wednesday July 15 2020, @06:25PM (16 children)

    by legont (4179) on Wednesday July 15 2020, @06:25PM (#1022035)

    Perhaps, the actual reason is they prohibit pretty much all immigration.

    --
    "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
    • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday July 15 2020, @06:34PM (14 children)

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 15 2020, @06:34PM (#1022039) Homepage Journal

      And the fact that young women often don't want to retreat into the home and be separated from the rest of society.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @06:46PM (7 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @06:46PM (#1022043)

        Combine covid with SJWs and nobody screws anymore. We can't be white, black, male, female, Italian, Jewish, christian, shituslim, or anything else without offending someone.

        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday July 15 2020, @07:05PM (4 children)

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 15 2020, @07:05PM (#1022051) Journal

          Dear Mr. Anonymous Coward,

          Just look at your gender and your skin color!

          Not very diverse is it?

          Please change them both to something more diverse, and then come back and re-apply.

          Enclosed is a magic marker you can use to change the latter.

          Thank you

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @07:33PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @07:33PM (#1022061)

            I tried the white magic marker but I looked like MJ.

            • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday July 15 2020, @07:44PM

              by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 15 2020, @07:44PM (#1022065) Journal

              Enclosed is a pair of dull scissors to help correct the other issue.

              --
              People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @04:12AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @04:12AM (#1022271)

            Just look at your gender and your skin color!

            Not very diverse is it?

            Please change them both to something more diverse, and then come back and re-apply.

            You have convinced me!

            Henceforth I now self-identify as a wheelchairbound black muslim transgender lesbian quadriplegic communist.

          • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday July 17 2020, @02:47AM

            by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 17 2020, @02:47AM (#1022710) Homepage Journal

            Nor are the Japanese very diverse. They maintain their nondiversity by very restrictive immigration policies. And it has brought them to a demographic crisis.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday July 16 2020, @12:31AM (1 child)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday July 16 2020, @12:31AM (#1022168) Journal

          Why do you care? You're never going to have sex if this is how you operate, anyway.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @10:59AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @10:59AM (#1022354)

            Azuma back with the victorian comeback. Seriously in this day and age, sex is the cheapest thrill anyone can get.

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @09:39PM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @09:39PM (#1022112)

        Surveys of young women in Japan have repeatedly shown that vast majorities of them insist that any man they marry be a high earner. There aren't enough high earners to go around.

        As well, young men have watched their fathers work themselves to the bone, to come home and hand over all the money to their mother, who then graciously permits her husband a small allowance. Tales are legion of women who, upon their husbands finally getting to retire, bitterly resent that he's around "her" house all the time. Married women don't "retreat into the home", they lord over it like masters whipping their slaves. Young men are declining to be part of such a system.

        This is a large factor as to why so many younger men in Japan are not only not interested in marriage, but not even interested in dating. It's not worth it! Yet everyone blames the men, while women and their expectations are never considered to be even a part of the problem.

        • (Score: 5, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Thursday July 16 2020, @04:15AM (2 children)

          by Magic Oddball (3847) on Thursday July 16 2020, @04:15AM (#1022276) Journal

          The surveys show that around half of the women wish to marry a high wage earner because even though the majority of women hold jobs, in Japan they're also expected to handle most (if not all) of the childcare & domestic work:

          This sounds like a sweeping statement - one that comes close to blaming a generation of women for the problem - but Yamada says it's a conclusion he has drawn after extensive surveys.

          "In Japan working life is very, very hard and there is still a lot of sexual discrimination. Working hours are very long and there's lots of stress," he says.

          Also, the burden of childcare is still firmly on the mother. Long hours, high-stress workplaces and long commutes make life difficult for working mothers. The easier option is to quit - but that's not possible unless your partner earns a certain amount of money. — BBC article [bbc.com]

          Close to 70 percent of women ages 15 to 64 now have jobs — a record. But their careers are often held back by a relentless tide of domestic burdens, like filling out the meticulous daily logs required by their children’s day-care centers, preparing the intricate meals often expected of Japanese women, supervising and signing off on homework from school and afterschool tutoring sessions, or hanging rounds of laundry — because few households have electric dryers.

          While some men say they want to pitch in more and the government has urged businesses to reform the crushing work culture, employees are still expected to devote most of their waking hours to the company, making it difficult for many husbands to participate much on the home front. —NYT article [nytimes.com]

          That's assuming that most Japanese women even find the idea of being a full-time SAHM/housewife appealing in the first place; the interviews in that article suggest that a lot of them don't.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @11:04AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @11:04AM (#1022355)

            Nobody does. Only a handful of people all over the world want to die working. Funny how an issue of men becomes women not being allowed and then women not wanting to.

            There is no getting around to the fact that women WANT high earning men so they can enjoy life on his dime. And equally, men are willing to kill themselves in the rat race for a chance at pussy. Not many men will win the race, and so population is bound to decline.

          • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday July 16 2020, @08:52PM

            by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 16 2020, @08:52PM (#1022569) Homepage Journal

            Not "being a full-time SAHM/housewife" is feasible now if she doesn't get married and doesn't have children. Hence the astonishingly low birth rate, even well below what China tried to accomplish with its one child per family rule.

            The social climate will have to change if they want to maintain a population without *massive* immigration.

            -- hendrik

        • (Score: 2) by legont on Thursday July 16 2020, @05:12PM

          by legont (4179) on Thursday July 16 2020, @05:12PM (#1022481)

          It's true in a way, but has slightly different connotation and applies to the whole Asia; not Muslim part perhaps.
          A women up there is supposed to marry somebody who makes more money than her. Not necessarily a lot, but more. At the same time women's education level became high.
          What's the issue? Getting education takes time. By the time an educated women is ready to marry she is rather, how should I put it, mature. Men who make more than her prefer young and fresh and can afford and get them. Hence there is an oversupply of highly educated women in their 30s, which makes finding sex for similar men a very easy task. This in turn makes the situation for women even more desperate.
          There are funny consequences. All my colleagues who were sent for a long business trips to Japan came back married. Americans are OK with relatively old professionals for wives while women do want to marry.
          BTW, this is similar to black women issue in the USA. It's just their men are in prisons.

          --
          "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @02:17AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @02:17AM (#1022212)

        And the fact that young women often don't want to retreat into the home and be separated from the rest of society.

        In the USofA, they tend to retreat into the home to take hostages & rob the place.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @05:11AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @05:11AM (#1022290)

      Immigration only sounds like a solution until you stop and think about what you're effectively saying: 'Lets bring in a bunch of black and brown people to do all the labor and give most of everything they earn to the old 'yellow' people.' What a great idea...

      Ahhh, but you can just pay them a lot! That's ignoring the very meaning of money. In situations like this, the like of which we've never really faced before, you're looking at a world where the vast majority of the population is simply not producing much of anything - yet consume not only their fair share but likely substantially more due to medical and related service costs. So you can't just pay the producers a lot - the money, and what it represents in particular, simply doesn't exist. This is probably part of the reason that Japan's economy has been in a 30 year stagnation/recession. Their economy today is smaller than it was in the early 90s for those who were not aware.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday July 15 2020, @10:17PM (3 children)

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Wednesday July 15 2020, @10:17PM (#1022122)

    Like in Japan. It's a big problem there...

    I know economists think it's a problem for the Japanese, but do the Japanese think it's a problem?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @01:56AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @01:56AM (#1022210)

      Their government thinks it's a problem, so some of them must.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @05:21AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @05:21AM (#1022292)

      Oh yes. There have been some great (and depressing) documentaries on what's happening over there right now. See Dying Alone [rt.com]. The documentary talks about 'kodokushi' - lonely deaths. A number of companies now specialize in Japan in cleaning up the 'lonely deaths'. It's people who die alone often unnoticed by society until something, such as the smell, causes people to investigate.

      What some people may not consider about things like the lack of fertility is that it gradually results in a society where the vast majority end up alone and lonely. Especially for people who haven't created a family, when your partner dies - it's just you. Let alone for the people today who think they'll just get through life without a husband or wife. All those friends you know today will gradually disappear. So of course you can say these people should just go make new friends, but that is of course not so simple. You can see the same thing in young Americans who are simultaneously more "connected" and more lonely than ever before. And it's *much* easier to meet people when young than when old.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Thursday July 16 2020, @09:03PM

        by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 16 2020, @09:03PM (#1022573) Homepage Journal

        And it's *much* easier to meet people when young than when old.

        As I'm noticing after my wife died a year ago. And it's even harder during coronavirus lockdown. I'm 73 and I estimate that if I catch this disease I'll have a 10% chance of dying. So it's death versus meeting people.

        I have children. The one that used to visit is now avoiding me because her job puts her at risk for catching coronavirus and thus giving it to me if she were to visit asymptomatically. She says she couldn't live with herself if that happened.

        I appreciate that; I also miss her.

        -- hendrik