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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)
(Score: 4, Informative) by deimtee on Thursday July 16 2020, @04:07AM (3 children)
I highly recommend the book "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber. A short but entertaining expansion of this article [strike.coop] he wrote. Especially relevant in these covid times when everyone is bleating about the lack of jobs.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @06:07AM (2 children)
The article seems very myopic. His example is poorly chosen because it makes it so easy to emphasize this. The core example he uses is that there's more demand in society for corporate lawyers than poets. And most corporate lawyers don't like their job. Woe is us. Now let's dissect things:
Why do corporate lawyers exist? Because corporate law exists.
What does corporate law exists? Because corporations exist (and have done some naughty things).
Why do corporations exist? Because people *want* them to exist.
People want food readily and cheaply available, but nobody wants to be the guy picking fruit for pennies a pound. Yet the former leads directly to the latter. A guy may want to be a poet instead of a fruit picker, but people would rather have cheap fruit than listen to his poetry. His article in many ways feels reminiscent of conspiracy theorists who always feel there's some global cabal secretly controlling the world. And indeed there are countless very powerful global cabals, but mostly with a wide array of different motivations and none with some global capture on power. His statement "The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger" is just a slightly more mainstream insane appeal to the Illuminati who 'totally control like everything, dude'.
That's not to say that his observation is false. Indeed one can appeal to the countless variations of "The devil finds work for idle hands." But far from being some conspiratorial contract from the "ruling class", that notion is as old as time. And the particular spin on the quote I chose comes from none other than Henry David Thoreau - a poet. And this [wikipedia.org] is what the inside of our poet's home looked like. Society's current state is driven almost exclusively by consumerism. And nobody is forcing consumerism upon people, but people are stupid. Depending on your skin color you either need your $1000 phone (which is functionally identical to a $50 one for everything you use it for) or $400 sneakers (which are functionally identical to $20 sneakers for everything you use them for).
Getting back to 'simpler' times would require casting aside consumerism and living lifestyles much more akin to that of Thoreau, the poet. And that starts with *you*. Feel free to cast aside consumerism, move into a rural area, and start living a much smaller impact life. Become a mighty buzzard and pass your time fly fishing and shooting the shit (perhaps literally - if you didn't know the etymology of that saying). I'm not even mocking him (or you). It's a wonderful life. But 95% of society wouldn't even consider it. And so we get what we have today with a surveillance state supported by mass harvesting of data under the "innocent" premise of advertising, while people waste their money and time collecting shiny shit that they think will somehow fill their empty lives.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday July 16 2020, @07:12AM
The article was pretty much a rant about wasting time doing bullshit work. It sparked such a response that he wrote the book, which is a much more in depth analysis. The article makes a good hook, but you should read the book.
I don't know if this site is entirely legit copyrightwise, but the entire book is available free here [theanarchistlibrary.org].
One of the many themes is that people doing bullshit jobs(tm) are unhappy compared to those who have jobs that provide a sense of accomplishment. This leads to where productive jobs are paid less than bullshit jobs, because you have to pay more or people will go off and do something productive.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday July 16 2020, @02:01PM
A lot of the city folk don't even know what they're missing. I'm hopeful that more young people are starting to think of the benefits of reduced consumption. You can reduce your consumption while living in the city. In many ways it's being forced upon them anyway through poverty.
The whole rural living-off-the-land lifestyle works best with a lower population though (otherwise the roads and buildings wanted just turn it urban again), so I think the low birth rate needs to be part of it if it were going to work for a big portion of humanity. Either that or we start engineering floating rural islands in the ocean.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?