> CB: However, there is a lot of free time for fun on the weekends. And
> if you
> don't have to be to work until 9, you don't have to go to bed until
> 12:00
> or 1:00. I'm kind of skeptical about the working class doing it less
> than
> college students. Maybe you could get some stats on condom sales. As
> for
> U.S. working class social life in general, I don't know, There are lots
> of
> bars that stay in business. I'm not persuaded of what you guess here.
Good points. I also find it interesting that the general tenor of this discussion so far suggests an assumption is being made that good, healthy, vibrant sex necessarily means lots of temporary encounters with a wide range of partners. Fidelity is prima facie evidence of a stale, pitiable, nearly worthless sex life, it seems.
This sounds like a rather phallocentric view to me.
Don't want to come off sounding like a Judeo-Christian fanatic (I'm not). Just challenging the orthodoxy hereabouts a bit. :-)
BTW, I don't think referring to our own experiences and those of our own social circles (or what they tell us, if we can believe them -- some folks have been known to boast even to their friends!) helps much, either. I think we're dealing with the well-known problem of the blind people describing an elephant. It's a real epistemological black hole -- no one really knows, or can know, what a whole country's sexual behavior is like, until some method of mass key-hole viewing is perfected. (Or maybe it already has been?)
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org ______________________________ If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.-- Isaac Newton If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.-- Hal Abelson, MIT professor