Monday, October 12, 2009

Spirituality Makes Her Clothes Fall Off

I am not sure if this scientific study is really ripe, but it sure does have an interesting hook.

LiveScience, an MSNBC blog, reports on a study from Jessica Burris at the University of Kentucky on what correlates with sex for a sample of 353 undergraduates. Among other questions, Burris gave them a Spiritual Transcendence Scale measure (with which I am not otherwise familiar). This is the eyebrow-raiser:

For women, however, spirituality was the strongest predictor for the number of sexual partners, the frequency of sex, and the tendency to have sex without a condom.

Burris reads both spirituality and sex as ways women seek intimacy.

I am inclined to think that sexually loose college women get detached from the churches they were raised in, but didn't want to go all the way to atheism, so they stopped at "spiritual."

Either way, I hope someone follows up on this with a fuller study.

10 comments:

Black Sea said...

The existence of a "Spiritual Transcendence Scale" is in itself an eye raiser, in addition to being a hoot. I love the uses to which the scientific method is being put these days.

This could be another way of saying that rather dim and naive women are more likely to sleep around, while neglecting to take precautions against pregnancy or disease. I suspect that to many decidedly "unspiritual" young men, this is not news.

Gruntled said...

Yes, I too thought of the use that sex-seeking young men (but I repeat myself) might make of this information.

It does open the possibility of studying how good an indicator "spiritual but not religious" is of being naive in general.

Unknown said...

I have to agree with both of your comments. My initial reaction was to think of the people (men and women) of the Gen-Y'ers who think of themselves as spiritual. I think many are searching for an identity and a center. If they aren't finding it in religion, it seems logical that they might go looking for it in sex, drugs, etc.

peref said...

In the minds of some the condom equals premeditation which is seen as worse than unprotected sex. As premeditated murder is seen as worse than a crime of passion. I think it is naive.

LMR said...

Could this correspond to the "Red State, Blue State" surveys that showed that women from the most conservative and religiously fundamental states are also less likely to use condoms?

peref said...

Loose women carry condoms.

randy said...

...and church girls just have sex without them. ;)

***********************************

a young lady who is interested in Deeper things, who has at least some sense of the Quietistic; prayer or meditation, who is perhaps more kind and thoughtful than usual...AND who likes sex, who feels free and happy enough with herself to explore sexuality and sensual things as well as matters of the mind and spirit...this is wrong in some way? this is a negative? shoot, send her my way.

burus said...

Randy you sound like a spiritual opportunist. Hope that works out for you.

Anonymous said...

LMR, no I think this corresponds to spooky kooky new age thinking more than to conservative Christianity. Spiritual = susceptible, as Charles Manson et al., can testify.

Anonymous said...

It wouldn't surprise me one bit to learn that Christianity is actually tied to this. As LMR pointed out, those red, religious states have terrible records on condom use and teen pregnancy.

Peref rightly points out, as well, that condoms equal premeditation. To be able to say "it just happened" is far better than "I planned for it" in the minds of some Christian girls (I should know since for a brief while I felt similarly).

Also many Christian girls are taught that their virginity is everything. I knew Christian girls in college who, once they lost their virginity (either to a boyfriend or rape), felt that they had lost the one thing they were supposed to protect and anything that came after no longer mattered.