The share of Americans not having sex has reached a record high | Hacker News Reader

The share of Americans not having sex has reached a record high

washingtonpost.com

20 pointshirundo22 comments

"One particularly disturbing study, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism in 2007, indicated that men’s testosterone levels plummeted 17 percent from 1987 to 2004—and that’s controlling for health and lifestyle factors, such as obesity and diabetes, that are known to affect T levels. The study found not only that individual men were losing testosterone as they aged (which is fairly normal), but that same-age men from later eras had substantially lower T than their predecessors: a man who turned 65 in 2002, for example, had much lower T than a man who turned 65 in 1987." [1]

While I don't doubt that social and economic pressures have a lot to do with decreased occurrences of sexual relations in the US, it's quite possible that decreases in average testosterone levels are also a factor. Low testosterone is highly correlated with a decreased sex drive.

[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-mystery-of-declining-test...

Could this be related to less manual labor and less exercise in consequence?

I suppose, but they did say that they accounted for health and lifestyle factors, so I'm pretty sure that means that it's another cause they hadn't pinned down at the time of the study.

From what I understand, the current theory is chemicals used to make plastic more pliable ended up being endocrine inhibitors, which decrease testosterone production. BPA, and other similar chemicals.

Also, reports that many flame retardant chemicals do the same thing. The law requires that furniture with fabric and curtains and things like that have those chemicals to lower risks of fire. But, those chemical treatments physically break down into dust and we get exposed to them.

There are probably other contributing factors too.

We also see a steep decline in testosterone in dogs. Sure, we could be seeing two unrelated phenomena operating at the same time, but for the moment, we should operate under the assumption that the testosterone declines in dogs and men have a common etiology. If we do so, we rule out a ton of prospective causes.

This seems to indicate a winner-takes-all hierarchy emerging within the sexual market place. As the data in this article shows, fewer men are having sex than women. That would indicate a group of men have multiple female partners while a large chunk of men remain unemployed living with their parents. They’ve been selected out of the sexual market place. I don’t have time right now to dig up sources, but throughout history this has been the norm.

This has been speculated about for a while: how the rise of online dating and hookup services (Tinder et al), in addition to the growing connected-ness over large distances, will result in a convergence of male dating pool. In essence, women are less likely to "settle" for an average dude when "above average" guys are easily reachable and available.

Are you talking about prostitution? That's a sexual marketplace. This article isn't talking about people buying and selling sexual encounters. People deciding to have sex with one another doesn't mean that there exists any sort of bartering or trade. The overwhelming majority of sex is because it feels good and all people involved want to feel good. Living in your parent's basement isn't sexy, but not because one isn't rich, but because it indicates that one cannot make it in the real world. Kids live with their parents and no one wants to have a relationship with someone stuck in a child's mentality. Or even remotely resembling it. And you completely ignore homosexuality and the fact that now, more than in the past, is it possible for one to come out and not be eviscerated. A likely explaination of the same data is that more women are having sex with one another.

Markets while maybe feeling crass is the term used in sciences like sociology to study dating and relationships from a statistical POV.

One would think the roughly 10% gap between men and women (mentioned in the article) could not be explained by more frequent homosexual sexual encounters if it is assumed that homosexual men and women have close to the same amount of sex. It seems reasonable to assume that lesbians don't have sex at a disproportionately greater rate than gay men.

sexual market place does not mean "prostitution".

the user is most likely speaking about the sexual economy, or the mating economy, or the relationship economy if you will.

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