by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux
I get a lot of survey requests in my inbox, and I mostly delete them, but yesterday morning, one caught my eye – the Daily Princetonian was asking me to participate in a survey about student sexual activity. I have yet to see one of these surveys that did not end with normative and problematic claims, but what the hell, anything to avoid my work – I clicked.
And oh, what a survey. I will briefly outline some of my issues – but let me say that whatever conclusions are drawn from it will reflect a very narrow sample of the student body, and will probably result in inaccurate generalizations about students’ sex lives.
The survey was in trouble right out of the gate. The second question asked for gender, and then offered two options: “male” or “female.” Most recent surveys distributed by the university have given “transgender” as a third gender option – and that’s the least they should do.
It went on to ask about “sex” – without defining what kind of sex it was talking about. I’m assuming that when a survey like this asks, “Have you had sex?” it means vaginal intercourse – but what if one student defines “sex” only as vaginal intercourse, while another counts oral sex as “sex”? Surveys like this need to be more specific if they want to draw accurate conclusions – and not just assume that vaginal intercourse is “sex.”
There was another question that I was actually unable to answer: “How frequently do you have sex?” What? Does that mean how frequently do I have sex when I’m in a relationship – or how frequently do I hook up with people and have sex – or on average, how many times have I had sex this year (a truly bizarre and impossible question). Many of my friends have sex in monogamous relationships (and have a lot of sex), but when they’re single, they could be abstinent for months at a time. How do they answer that question? And is frequency of sexual activity something that’s really possible for most people to accurately quantify? My guess is that the creators of the survey were hoping for a lot of “once a week” answers – “proving” that a hook-up culture exists.
Another strange question: “Where on campus have you had sex?” The options: dorm rooms, eating clubs, showers, academic buildings, Firestone, the Forbes golf course, Frist Campus Center, and “other” (you fill in the blank). Why does the Prince care where people are having sex? And why those options? I’m genuinely puzzled – and hope that this doesn’t result in an article about sex in Firestone.
A potentially heteronormative question: “When having sex, do you always wear a condom?” Again, what kind of sex? Two women having sex are not going to use a condom – but they would (hopefully) use some other form of protection.
The next two questions were about hormonal birth control – oral contraceptives, and the IUD. Why not ask about the NuvaRing, or other forms of contraception? The choice of those two just seemed arbitrary.
Specific objections aside, the survey just seemed difficult for someone who wasn’t sexually active to fill out. There was always an option for people who were not having (or had not) sex, but I’ve already talked to several people who felt that because they weren’t having sex, they didn’t have anything to contribute to the survey. So my prediction: the people who filled out this survey are sexually active, currently in relationships or perhaps hooking up, but not people who aren’t sexually active, whether or not they’ve had sex in the past. Is this something that we should draw sweeping conclusions about campus sexual culture from? Probably not.
Hmm, this sounds like a survey designed to corroborate (or disprove) allegations that there is a “hookup culture” at Princeton. The problem is that the alleged “hookup culture” is such a nebulous concept that any survey based around it will miss the nuances and complexities of real human behavior. It’s like asking “Do you eat doughnuts for breakfast?: Yes; No” and expecting the answers to portray a meaningful description of people’s eating habits.
As for the inherent heteronormativity and trans-ignorance, my guess is that the folks who designed the survey just didn’t think too hard about it. And why should they, given the parameters of the questionnaire?
One of the worst sins in the PC calendar is “treating someone like a sex object.” But it seems to me that this is entirely appropriate, given that human beings are sex objects. I mean, we are neither disembodied souls nor neuter, which is what it would actually mean for us not to be sex objects. Which are we not, if we’re not sex objects? Not sexual? Or not physical objects? Sorry, but we’re clearly both. So unless we’re going to live a lie, we should be permitted to treat people as such. One may reasonably object to treating people like they’re no more than sex objects, but that is a different question.
The other thing the PC police aren’t going to enjoy hearing is that beauty, contrary to popular mythology, is not superficial. In fact, it is one of the most enduringly substantial qualities a person, particularly a woman (gasp!), can have. In real life, we all know this, but we keep pretending otherwise. A Social Security number is a superficial characteristic; this is not. Still, I remember a friend of mine looking at Margaret Thatcher at a conference a few years ago and remarking, “who cares about being pretty when you rule 50 million people?” Quite.
Appearance cuts both ways between the sexes more than people think. Ugly men may not suffer as much as ugly women, but society has very definite physical ideas of what it wants men to look like, particularly if they aspire to important roles. Plug-ugly Lincoln would notoriously never get elected today, and I distinctly remember Governor Engler of Michigan being ruled out of the last Republican presidential race because he just looks like a boring old bureaucrat. Unlike, say, former matinee idol Ronald Reagan.
The survey is unquestionably an irresponsible, poorly thought out mess.
In response to QED’s comment: tldr
For some reason I’m stuck on the random places… Firestone (the tire shop?) really??
Not sexually active, but I did fill out the survey. I may not be the norm, but I didn’t feel especially excluded.
When I filled out this survey, I similarly had trouble answering the question “How frequently do you have sex?” It did, however, remind me of something I learned in Sinclair’s psych of gender class: women (I don’t think there was a distinction based on sexual orientation) show more variability over time in terms of amount of sexual activity. In other words, although women may go months without having sex after a break up, men show more consistency in or out of a long-term relationship.
Obviously this is just a statistic, but it sounds like this question (as well as the condom use question) suffers from a heterosexual male perspective. The Prince might benefit from a more diverse group when constructing and interpreting their surveys.