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Promiscuity
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Promiscuity refers to sexual behaviour of a man or woman who either casually or regularly has sex with several partners.
Human promiscuity
What sexual behaviour is considered socially acceptable, and what behaviour is "promiscuous", varies much among different cultures. In some cultural contexts, a woman who copulates with a man or men other than her husband is considered promiscuous, while in another culture a married or unmarried man's extra- and pre-marital like behaviour may not be considered promiscuous.
Accurately assessing people's sexual behavior is difficult, since there are strong social and personal motivations, depending on social sanctions and taboos, for either minimizing or exaggerating reported sexual activity. Extensive research has produced mathematical models of sexual behaviour comparing the results generated with the observed prevalence of STDs to statistically estimate the probable sexual behavior of the studied population.
A person's numbers of sexual partners, both in a lifetime and concurrently, varies widely within a population. In the U.S., seven women is the median number of lifetime female sexual partners; four men is the median number of male partners for women; 29 percent of men and 9 percent of women report to have had more than 15 sexual partners. Studies of the spread of STDs consistently demonstrate that a small percentage of the studied population have more partners than the average man or woman, and a smaller number of people have fewer than the statistical average. An important question in the epidemiology of venereal diseases is whether or not these groups copulate mostly at random (with sexual partners from throughout a population) or within their social groups.
A 2006 comprehensive global study (analysing data from 59 countries worldwide) found no firm link between promiscuity and sexually transmitted diseases. This contradicts other studies.
Male promiscuity
The words womaniser, wencher, playboy, philanderer, libertine, rounder, debauchee, player, wolf, mack daddy, stud, ladies' man, skirt-chaser, tomcat, cad and rake (rakehell) refer to a man who (depending on the individual's sexual orientation) has love affairs with women or men he either cannot or will not marry or commit himself to. Typically, the love affairs are sexually motivated, with slight emotional connection and attachment. The names of real and fictional seducers have become eponyms for such promiscuous men. The most famous are the historical Casanova (1725-1798), the fictional Don Juan who first appeared in the 17th century, Lothario from Nicholas Rowe's 1703 play The Fair Penitent, How I Met Your Mothers Barney Stinson, and perhaps most famously, Ian Fleming's literary and film character James Bond.
During the English Restoration period (1660-1688), the words rake hell and rake were used glamorously: the Restoration rake is a carefree, witty, sexually irresistible aristocrat typified by Charles II's courtiers, the Earl of Rochester and the Earl of Dorset, who combined riotous living with intellectual pursuits and patronage of the arts. The Restoration rake is celebrated in the Restoration comedy of the 1660s and the 1670s. After the reign of Charles II, and especially after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the rake was perceived as negative and became the butt of moralistic tales in which his typical fate was debtor's prison, permanent venereal disease, and, in the case of William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress, venereally-caused insanity and internment to Bedlam.
Female promiscuity
Since at least 1450, the word slut has been used to describe a sexually promiscuous woman and also historically referred to an unhygienic woman who is personally dirty and unkempt.
Nature versus nurture controversyEvolutionary psychologists propose that a conditional tendency for promiscuity is inherited from our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Male promiscuity, they say, was advantageous because it allowed males to father more children. Female promiscuity, on the other hand, is said to have allowed female ancestors to have children with superior genetic potential. Those who oppose evolutionary psychology, such as those in the radical science movement, propose that humans are born with no significant dispositions for or against promiscuity, or for or against any number of other social behaviors.
In the animal worldIn the animal world, some species of animals, including birds such as swans, once believed monogamous, are now known to engage in extra-pair copulations. Although social monogamy occurs in about 90 percent of avian species and about 3 percent of mammalian species, investigators estimate that 90 percent of socially monogamous species exhibit individual promiscuity in the form of extra-pair copulations.
See also
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