Statistical Vindication of the Superiority of Pre-Marital Sexual Abstinence

That sounds like a scientific paper title. If you ever write for a technical journal, basically your header will encapsulate the conclusion of your research. Goes to show I really was paying attention in my writing-intensive elective seminar.

As I scrolled through the latest argument about sex on my university forum, I saw that the resident third-wave feminist had levied a research study's conclusions against a guy commenting on the same "slut survey" I wrote about in this post. He had said that he couldn't see why anyone would take pride in 'owning' the word slut and expressed that there must be something wrong with them. Feminista Number One's response made use of data from a blogspot article by The Social Pathologist to claim that women who had several sexual partners were less likely to divorce than women who had had a few, or women who had had numerous partners. This was supposedly evidence of the superiority of having more than one sexual partner. 

Nevertheless, FN1 couldn't deny the results also showing that virginity prior to marriage was far superior to any number of sexual partners, in serving as a predictor for the success (non-divorce over an extended period) of their first/only marriage. Intrigued, I went on to click on the link and peruse the article.

Here are some quotes of interest from the article at the blog link:

"...divorce rates are the lowest for those with zero pre‐marital partners. That part is unambiguous. Virgin brides are the least likely to divorce, all else equal. But why do  divorce rates rise with one or two premarital partners only to reverse and drop after two or more sexual partners? And next, why do divorce rates reverse and climb back up after the pre‐marital partner count goes into the double digits?"

"My own hypothesis is that a higher partner count (up to 5‐9 or so partners) is correlated with age and maturity in dating experience....Specifically, I suspect it’s not the 5‐9 pre‐marital sex partner count per se that drives the relative drop in the divorce rates, but rather it’s the maturity and experience that women have acquired while they’ve dated more men."

From a table constructed by the analyst,

"One can see that the divorce rate is nearly 50% for women who had only one pre‐marital partner and if that partner did not develop into her husband. The divorce rate falls to half the above rate (25.6%) if a woman later marries her first and only pre‐marital sex partner. However, both these divorce rates are higher than the divorce rate for virgin brides. Pre‐marital sexual experience with one’s future spouse does not beat out having no pre‐marital sex at all."

Thanks, Feminista Number One!

I initially thought I was going to be led  to a pro-3WF site where I would have to read between the lines. As it turns out, that's what FN1 was doing, herself. Intriguingly, the study cited was called the National Survey of Family Growth and was published by the Heritage Foundation. So FN1 is reading research spearheaded by conservatives. One can only hope she doesn't fail to be persuasively influenced by her dabbling in the enemy's camp, over time.

It should be noted that it isn't the mere fact of virginity or sexual activity that has an effect on marital success, but what it implies, either in terms of the type of character or decision making that went into the choice to have or abstain from intercourse, or in terms of the type of effect that such a decision consequently has on that person. But if you're a foolish person, doing the right thing without knowing why is not morally wrong, it's just less beneficial to you; nevertheless, since it gives you time to figure out a coherent ethic justifying your choice, you will reap the reward for it over time, even if you do "the right thing for the wrong reasons." 

~ Rak Chazak