Researchers at Exeter University have compiled a study looking at attitudes towards sex among people aged between 18 and 59 years.
The research was compiled in order to understand levels of sexual satisfaction and attitudes towards issues surrounding the subject.
The study found that people who expressed religious faith were more likely to express contentment with regard to the sexual aspect of intimate relationships, both within and outside marriage, compared to those who felt lesser or no religious sentiment, or those who thought it was ok to engage in ‘casual sex’ or ‘sex without love’.
The study was published in the Journal of Sex Research, with researchers stating that “religious individuals are more likely to view sexual intimacy within marriage as having divine properties, this is likely to enhance both frequency and quality of sex among married religious people.”
These findings were in line with a previous study from 2018 by Hernandez-Kane and Mahoney, which found that “greater sanctification of marital sexuality around the first year of marriage predicted higher sexual frequency as well as greater sexual and marital satisfaction”.
The study showed that attitudes held by religious people are inline with holding higher expectations of commitment from and towards intimate partners as well as increased efforts to invest in existing attachments.
Cranney (2000) found that unmarried religious individuals reported higher levels of satisfaction from sex life than non-religious ones” which the study says, “could be partly attributed to differential expectations of non-marital sex within each group.”
“Despite having less frequent sex than their non-religious peers, they are more likely to express higher sex life satisfaction.” it says.
”Higher religiosity has been found to be associated with delayed initiation of sexual intercourse, reduced likelihood of engaging in casual sex , and having fewer sexual partners”.
Although, perhaps unsurprisingly, men had overall a more positive attitude to ‘casual sex’ and ‘sex without love’ than women, both sexes reported greatly increased satisfaction in sex lives within the confines of committed relationships.
Author and New Statesman columnist, Louise Perry, recently published a book titled ‘The Case Against the Sexual Revolution’, which goes against the notion, held by many who ascribe to modern feminism, that women can and do enjoy casual sex and hook up culture in much the same way as men.
Perry, who describes herself as a post radical feminist, says her academic principles originated from her education at a “very left wing” university, but that aspects of her research and experience has led her to reach conclusions that are more inline with many conservative values.
The book includes the chapter headings: ‘sex must be taken seriously’, ‘men and women are different’, ‘some desires are bad’, ‘loveless sex is not empowering’, ‘violence is not love’, ‘people are not products’, ‘marriage is good’, ‘consent is not enough’, and, ‘listen to your mother’.
Perry says the feminist ideals of the 60s and 70s to attain rights like access to employment and the ability to take out loans, made an “error’ where at a “social and cultural level” women were encouraged to “aspire to sameness” and “to live as men do”, adding this “translates very often into women aspiring to be more like men”, and “to have sexual lives very much like men’s”.
Women, says Perry, have been led to abandon many of the traditional aspects of femininity and historically female pursuits in order to “desperately try to be more like men in every possible way”.
She says our “current sexual culture” does not serve the interests of women en masse.
She speaks of how societal shifts “on a material level” like the introduction of the contraceptive pill, and the economic shift from industrial to knowledge and service based economics – meaning that the value of male physical strength has become less vital in the workplace – have perhaps led to a poignant lack of recognition and understanding of the many differences between men and women.
Perry continues saying how monogamous marriage is a really good system for society and how this is exemplified in how it doesn’t act in the interests of “elite men” who historically had sexual access to numerous wives, concubines, and slaves.
She spoke of how marriage and rearing children lowers men’s testosterone levels thereby “taming them” and how powerful men, no longer able to invest in the pursuit of multiple wives instead pursue business investments driving the economy.
“It turns out that this 2000 year old tool is really effective in ways we didn’t really expect.” she says.