Promiscuity

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"Promiscuous" redirects here. For other uses, see Promiscuous (disambiguation).

For other uses, see Promiscuity (disambiguation).

Promiscuity is the practice of making relatively casual and indiscriminate choices. The term is most commonly applied to sexual behavior, where it refers to a person who does not limit their sex life to the cultural norm, typically one partner, or to the framework of a long term monogamous sexual relationship. Because of the popularity of this usage, the remainder of this article discusses sexual promiscuity. It is worth noting that people who are called "promiscuous" under this usage, may in fact be quite selective in their choice of sexual partners.

Sexual promiscuity carries with it a higher risk of contracting sexually transmitted disease. It has been shown that, in some cases, excessively promiscuous behavior is caused by sexual addiction or alcoholism and substance abuse.^{[citation needed]}

Promiscuity is discouraged by conservative modern day religions. However, some sects, cults, and religious orders have a place for promiscuous behavior. For example, there were special examples of religious prostitution in ancient Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome.

1 Human promiscuity
2 In the animal world
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Human promiscuity

What is considered socially acceptable sexual behavior, and what behavior is regarded as "promiscuous", vary widely among different cultures. In some contexts, a woman who has sex with any man other than her husband is considered promiscuous, while the term may not be applied to a man from the same culture likewise having extramarital sex. In other cultures, the term may be applied to anyone who has more than one lover at the same time. In some sections of industrialized societies, it is likely to be used only when describing people, usually women, who have large numbers of sexual partners with a seeming lack of discrimination. In those cases, there is no set number of partners that would be considered excessive, meaning that what some might consider to be a high number of sexual partners, others might not.

It is difficult to accurately assess people's sexual behavior, since there are strong social and personal motivations to either minimize or exaggerate reported sexual activity, depending on social sanctions and taboos. The best statistics of human sexual behavior are derived from research into sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Extensive research has been conducted to study different mathematical models of sexual behavior and to compare the results generated with the observed prevalence of STDs to try to estimate the probable actual sexual behavior of the population.

People's numbers of sexual partners, both over their lifetime and concurrently, varies widely within any population. Studies of the spread of STDs have consistently shown that a small minority of the population have more partners than the average, and a small minority have less than the average^{[citation needed]}. One important question in STD epidemiology is whether these groups have sex mostly within their groups (so-called assortative mixing) or at random.

[edit] In the animal world

Main article: Animal sexuality

In 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.^[1]^[2]^[3]

[edit] References

^ Reichard, U.H. (2002). Monogamy—A variable relationship. Max Planck Research, 3, 62-67.
^ Barash, D.P. & Lipton, J.E. (2001). The Myth of Monogamy. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman and Company.
^ Research conducted by Patricia Adair Gowaty. Reported by Morell, V. (1998). Evolution of sex: A new look at monogamy. Science, 281, 1982-1983.