Intern Katy of Jezebel says
A recent study of 2,000 women from the U.S. shows that 60 percent of the participants had been sexually active in the last three months, and half of them enjoyed it! Should this really be a surprise?
The study, conducted by the University of California at San Francisco, asked women aged 45-80 to report on their sex lives, their sexual enjoyment, and (if applicable), their reasons for abstaining. They found that out of the 60 percent who were currently considered sexually active, half reported “moderate to high” levels of satisfaction, and nearly a third of women 65 or older had engaged in sexual activity in the past three months.
Although it wasn’t mentioned in the report Katie linked to most of those women are probably heterosexual and thus most of the people these older women are having sex with are older men. Which in terms of public discourse is held to be only slightly less of a surprise.
But in fact people who experience sensuous and erotic sensations in childhood, develop sexual selves as teenagers, and continue to experience all that through their twenties and, gasp, even their thirties do in fact continue to have the same muscles, nerves, skin, blood, hormones, and body parts. And, another shock I’m sure, continue to remember how they work, enjoy how they work, and, in fact, often have a great deal of practice making them work. And, just as often, to be pretty darn good at making their partner’s corresponding parts work.
It’s not anyone’s fault that it’s not terrifically obvious. The mostly-male “sexual revolution” didn’t start till the middle 1960s when the approximately Beat Generation authors started getting traction, and the outlines didn’t really start filling in for women as active subjects instead of passive objects till the late 1970s or even early 1980s. Which means the women in that survey, and their male partners, would almost all still remember the days when a) you weren’t supposed to talk about your sexuality and b) you wouldn’t anyway because c) since there really wasn’t any public discourse about it you were pretty sure you were the only one who had tangible, erotic fantasies (and for women desires independent of others.) Which means they’re among the first generations willing to really discuss their sexuality period, let alone discuss it now that they’re “older and wiser.”
So anyway I think it’s seriously great that studies like this are coming out. So much of what we know about human sexuality and sexual relations we know about, basically, young adults. And while the first, say, ten years of our sex lives are interesting and important we tend to be adults for anywhere from forty-five to ninety-two years! Yes, some people continue eat, dress, read, work, think, amuse ourselves, and just generally live the same ways they did when they were 18 or 22, but most of us don’t. Glad the public is getting these little wake-up messages because, as with men in the 1960s and women in the 1970s and 80s, we might be able to expect middle-age and older people to start sharing what they know in time for the rest of us to benefit from what they’ve learned… and continue to learn.
Submitted by 3111 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-08-09 15:21.
Thanks for clarifying; I read it as excluding yourself.
I had a self-interested response, too, even if I was a little miffed at 45 being considered "old." Yeah, I'm a little vain and a lot resistant to considering myself even middle-aged ... which is something *I* need to get over! But it's hard to do that when the culture defines middle-aged women as sexually inert, which I'm really, really not. I appreciated Jezebel (which is otherwise so geared to young women) railing at that.
The details of the study beyond what Jezebel provides were pretty interesting. (I don't recall where I read about it - probably just a Reuters article.) Where physical/health problems interfered with intimacy, the issue was about twice as likely to be the man's than the woman's. Also, a really high number of women (close to 40%, IIRC) reported low desire for sex. I'd like to know how that breaks down - are these women contented? Are they unhappy about their loss of libido? How do their partners feel about it? How is this affecting their relationship?
Another point: A substantial minority of the women didn't have a regular partner. Way more than the demographic imbalance would suggest. So that's an area where it seems like more could be done to increase people's happiness.
[Yes! Yes to everything you've said! It's sort of like the first step to solving a problem is admitting there's a problem that needs solving! And sweet mother of pearl yes(!) if we just go around assuming that everything that's true about men and women's sexuality is still true at 40, or 60, then we're going to miss that little inversion of the famous gendered "libido imbalance." But, it's like there were sex shops, sure, and you could buy vaguely phallic-shaped hard plastic vibrators at Spencer Gifts before, say, Nancy Friday or Shere Hite or Andrea Dworkin but chances are you couldn't buy vibrators *in* sex shops, and there certainly wasn't enough of a market for dozens, and dozens, and dozens of different designs of vibrators for women. Sex for older people could be equally revolutionized (assuming it isn't already and nobody's telling) but we've got to admit it first. Then figure it out what's happening now. And then figure out what we can do. Thanks, Sungold! --fl]
Submitted by 3111 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-08-09 13:50.
Figleaf, you wrote: "we might be able to expect middle-age and older people to start sharing what they know in time for the rest of us to benefit from what they've learned... and continue to learn."
Um, "the rest of us"? The study defined "aging" as 45 and up. Maybe this only applies to women? After all, we know our shelf-life is shorter than men's ... or so we're told all the time. But that means I'm not part of "the rest of us." And unless being male exempts you, or you've discovered the fountain of youth, neither are you, figleaf! We *are* those middle-aged people, however great a kinship we feel with our 20-year-old selves.
This is an ironic juxtaposition to your previous post on "othering." The old folks are always someone else ... until we're 80? Othering takes many forms. And ageism is still underdiscussed, especially online.
[Hi Sungold. Actually I meant the rest of *us older people!* I don't think I solidified the point in my earlier discussion but I was thinking specifically about the reaction to Nancy Friday's "Forbidden Flowers" book about women's fantasies. The reaction I heard from women friends, over and over, to the then very-startling revelation that women have sexual fantasies was "that means I'm not the only one!" In other words my reaction to news of the study is self-interested and my choice of words was (meant to be) was self-inclusive. --fl]