Prefer web to sex, says survey vs Why you should choose sex, not the internet

Many women would rather surf the net than have sex, according to an Intel-sponsored survey.
The Internet Reliance in Today's Economy survey of 2119 people aged 18-plus, said that 65 per cent of adults admitted they can't live without the internet.
According to the survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, nearly half of women (46 per cent) and 30 per cent of men would rather go without sex for a fortnight than give up internet access.
For women aged 18-34 it was 49 per cent and for women aged 35-44 it was 52 per cent. Only 39 per cent of guys aged 18-34 would swap the bedroom for the broadband.
Television also copped a beating in the survey with well over half the respondents preferring to give up two weeks of telly than a single week of web access.
Internet availability of many movies and TV shows likely skewed the result, which showed 61 per cent of adult women would happily switch off the box.
And nine out of 10 US adults (91 per cent) report that their lives are better because of the internet, taking into account better contact with friends and family, shopping and financial management like online banking

Why you should choose sex, not the internet,

I have been almost permanently disturbed since reading Dawn Kawamoto's revelations about a survey that suggested women would rather forgo sex for two weeks than give up internet access.
When I read that nearly half the women surveyed felt this way, I had a number of purely instinctive reactions.
First came the notion that the Harris Interactive surveyors, at the behest of Intel, had merely been screening women who work in IT. Which would have made the results entirely understandable. For so many reasons.
However, then I shook off this conception in favor of a simple explanation: perhaps it's the men these women are choosing (not) to have sex with. The slightly more than 50% who could not give up on, as Richard Nixon would put it, fornication, were possibly either fortunate to be in a rare, healthy relationship with a man or preferred the intimacy of women.
So many men can be, as they put it across distant shores, toerags. And the sexual quality that was (not) enjoyed by this worrying percentage of females might reflect male insensitivity and incompetence rather than some lasting lust for the web.

Does she look really happy to you?(Credit: CC Jared)
While I am obviously unable to help with the immediate need for finding better sexual partners, I can, in an attempt to influence Dawn's Readers Poll, offer Six Deadly Reasons why sex will always outscore the internet.
1. When a man crashes, he generally does so after sex. A laptop will often choose to crash right in the middle of the video you've been just dying to see.
2. Sex takes up so much less time than the internet. With sex, twenty minutes can give you a considerable spike of adrenalin and even a little tingling of the fingers in the company of a living and, usually, breathing human being.
With the internet you can lose untold days socially networking till your fingers believe they've just played Rachmaninoff's 3rd at the Lincoln Center. And what do you get for it? A bunch more imaginary friends.
3. When it comes to sex, you've normally had dinner first. Which means that it is far less messy than most people's evenings on the laptop.
They perch it on their knees, fingering the keyboard with their left hand while reaching for Domino's finest cheese, pepperoni and green pepper with their right.
If they're not crisp with their bite, the cheese stretches out like a ghost in a cartoon movie, until it makes contact with the keyboard, sticking to it and sliding into the cracks between the keys. Before they know it, their Apple is cheddared.
4. Sex exposes you for exactly who you are. There you lie, entirely denuded of pretense, being as much yourself as you could ever be outside of, perhaps, when you play golf. On the internet, by contrast, everyone lies. The interactions you have are as false as a flamenco dancer's eyelashes. How can anyone take pleasure in that?
5. Sex gives you something to talk about. It gives the tabloids something to write about. Which gives people something to read about. Which gives them something to talk about. Can you ever imagine a publication solely devoted to what Britney Spears and her fellow cohort of stars do on the internet? How crashingly dull that would be.
6. The internet will always be there tomorrow. What about your lover?

237 reasons we have sex lust

After exhaustively compiling a list of the 237 reasons why people have sex, researchers found that young men and women get intimate for mostly the same motivations. It's more about lust in the body than a love connection in the heart.
College-aged men and women agree on their top reasons for having sex -- they were attracted to the person, they wanted to experience physical pleasure and "it feels good," according to a peer-reviewed study in the August edition of Archives of Sexual Behavior. Twenty of the top 25 reasons given for having sex were the same for men and women.

Expressing love and showing affection were in the top 10 for both men and women, but they did take a back seat to the clear No. 1: "I was attracted to the person."

Researchers at the University of Texas spent five years and their own money to study the overlooked why behind sex while others were spending their time on the how.

"It's refuted a lot of gender stereotypes ... that men only want sex for the physical pleasure and women want love," said University of Texas clinical psychology professor Cindy Meston, the study's co-author. "That's not what I came up with in my findings."

Forget thinking that men are from Mars and women from Venus, "the more we look, the more we find similarity," said Dr. Irwin Goldstein, director of sexual medicine at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego. Goldstein, who wasn't part of Meston's study, said the Texas research made a lot of sense and adds to growing evidence that the vaunted differences in the genders may only be among people with sexual problems.

Meston and colleague David Buss first questioned 444 men and women -- ranging in age from 17 to 52 -- to come up with a list of 237 distinct reasons people have sex. They ranged from "It's fun" which men ranked fourth and women ranked eighth to "I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease" which ranked on the bottom by women.

Once they came up with that long list, Meston and Buss asked 1,549 college students taking psychology classes to rank the reasons on a one-to-five scale on how they applied to their experiences.

"None of the gender differences are all that great," Meston said. "Men were more likely to be opportunistic towards having sex, so if sex were there and available they would jump on it, somewhat more so than women. Women were more likely to have sex because they felt they needed to please their partner."

But this is among college students, when Meston conceded "hormones run rampant." She predicted huge differences when older groups of people are studied.

Since her study came out Tuesday, people are coming up with new reasons to have sex.

"Originally, I thought that we exhaustively compiled the list, but now I found that there should be some added," Meston said.

Source :http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=227048

Sex hormone

Sex steroids, also known as gonadal steroids, are steroid hormones that interact with vertebrate androgen or estrogen receptors. Their effects are mediated by slow genomic mechanisms through nuclear receptors as well as by fast nongenomic mechanisms through membrane-associated receptors and signaling cascades. The term sex hormone nearly always is synonymous with sex steroid.

Male sex hormone easily triggered

Surging testosterone?Scientists have proved that even the most seemingly innocent chat with a woman can be enough to send male sex hormones soaring.
A team from the University of Chicago paid students to come into their lab under the pretence of testing their saliva chemistry.
While there, the students got to chat to a young female research assistant.
Saliva tests showed the brief interaction was enough to raise testosterone levels by as much as 30%.
The more a man's hormone level shot up, the more attractive he later admitted to finding the research assistant.
And perhaps more tellingly, the research assistant herself was able to identify those men who found her attractive.
The men who she judged to be doing the most to try to impress her proved to be those who registered the biggest jump in testosterone levels.
However, little or no change was detected in the saliva of students who chatted with other men.
Animal reaction
Testosterone has long been closely linked with the male libido.
The researchers say their work is the first time that hard evidence has been produced in this way.
It is known that the release of testosterone in animals can embolden them, triggering courtship or aggressive behaviour.
The Chicago team believe the same may be true in humans.
However, lead researcher Dr James Roney said it was also possible that the release of the hormone was stimulated by a stress reaction.
Dr Roney told BBC News Online: "The findings are consistent with the existence of brain mechanisms that are specialised for the regulation of courtship behaviour and thus respond to cues from potential mates with coordinated behavioural and hormonal reactions.
"One might call these reactions components of a "mating response" which, if confirmed by future research, could be as basic and significant as, say, the well-known "fight or flight" reaction."
Dr Nick Neave, of the Human Cognitive Neuroscience Unit at Northumbria University, said the study was "very interesting".
"Other researchers have found changes in male hormone levels after watching erotic movies but this seems to be the first that has attempted to assess hormone changes when males meet women on a more 'normal' level."
Dr Benjamin Campbell, an expert in anthropology at Boston University, said it was possible that testosterone made men more bold by suppressing activity in an area of the brain called the amygdala, which controls the stress reaction.
Testosterone levels peak in a man by his early twenties, and then gradually diminish.
Men who are married or in long-term relationships have lower testosterone levels than those still playing the field.
The research is published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

Estrogen and Testosterone Hormones

The differences between female hormones and male hormones may not be as specific as you might think. The definition of a hormone is a chemical substance produced by an endocrine gland that has a specific effect on the activities of other organs in the body. The major female and male hormones can be classified as estrogens or androgens. Both classes of male and female hormones are present in both males and females alike, but in vastly different amounts. Most men produce 6-8 mg of the male hormone testosterone (an androgen) per day, compared to most women who produce 0.5 mg daily. Female hormones, estrogens, are also present in both sexes, but in larger amounts for women.
Estrogens are the sex hormones produced primarily by a female's ovaries that stimulate the growth of a girl's sex organs, as well as her breasts and pubic hair, known as secondary sex characteristics. Estrogens also regulate the functioning of the menstrual cycle.
In the majority of women, ovarian hormones appear not to play a significant role in their sex drive. In one study of women under the age of 40, 90 percent reported experiencing no change in sexual desire or functioning after sex hormone production was shut down because of the removal of both ovaries.
The Importance of EstrogenEstrogens are important in maintaining the condition of the vaginal lining and its elasticity, and in producing vaginal lubrication. They also help preserve the texture and function of a woman's breasts.
In men, estrogens have no known function. An unusually high level, however, may reduce sexual appetite, cause erectile difficulties, produce some breast enlargement, and result in the loss of body hair in some men.
Androgens are sex hormones produced primarily by a male's testes, but are also produced in small amounts by the female's ovaries and the adrenal gland, an organ found in both sexes. Androgens help trigger the development of the testes and penis in the male fetus. They jump start the process of puberty and influence the development of facial, body and pubic hair, deepening of the voice, and muscle development, the male secondary sex characteristics.
After puberty, androgens, specifically testosterone, play a role in the regulation of the sex drive. Large deficiencies of testosterone may cause a drop in sexual desire, and excessive testosterone may heighten sexual interest in both sexes. However, testosterone levels are poorly correlated with sexual interest and drive when they are within the average range. Sex drive is much more likely to be affected by external stimuli (sights, sound, touch) than by variations in sex hormones, except in extreme cases.
Too Little Testosterone in MenIn men, too little testosterone may cause difficulty obtaining or maintaining erections, but it is not clear whether testosterone deficiencies interfere with female sexual functioning apart from reducing desire.
However, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that because women have less testosterone than men do, they have lower sexual interest than their male counterparts. Instead, it seems that women detect and react to much smaller amounts of testosterone in their circulation than men do.

Aging, illness and certain cancer treatments can affect our bodies' delicate hormonal balance, causing changes in sexual interest and functioning. Familiar to most are the changes that occur when a woman goes through menopause. Estrogen production drops throughout this process as a woman exits her child-bearing years.
The major sexual impact of decreased estrogen is a shrinking of the vagina and thinning of the vaginal walls, along with a loss of elasticity and decreased vaginal lubrication during sexual arousal. Some women experience only slight changes in sexual functioning, while others have dryness and pain with intercourse, or genital soreness for a few days after sexual activity, if they don't use a vaginal lubricant or take some form of hormone replacement.
Researchers investigating the effects of hormone replacement therapy on women's sexual functioning have shown that taking estrogen often allows sexual functioning to return to normal. In addition, androgens have been prescribed for postmenopausal women to enhance their sexual desire.
Hormone-Replacement TherapyPerhaps less well known is the fact that men sometimes experience lowered testosterone levels, which can be responsible for sexual dysfunction. How this hormonal decrease affects the man's sex drive and erections remains unclear. But urologists, as a treatment for these difficulties, sometimes recommend testosterone replacement. There is a great deal yet to be learned about which men and women may require and benefit from hormone-replacement therapy.
It is tempting to try to understand sexual behavior solely in terms of hormones. In many animal species hormones that control the female's willingness to mate and the courtship and sexual behavior of the male tightly regulate patterns of sexual behavior.
In humans, however, there is a more complicated relationship between hormones and sexual behavior. Although a substantial testosterone deficiency usually reduces sexual interest in men and women, there are cases in which that effect is not seen.
Similarly, although many men with below normal testosterone levels have difficulty with erections, not all do. Women who have low amounts of estrogen in their bodies do not lose their ability to be sexually aroused or to have orgasms.
In short, sex hormones are not the only factors affecting sexual interest or behavior. If you are concerned about your hormone levels and whether they may be effecting your general health or your sexual functioning, consult your doctor for some easily performed and (almost) painless laboratory blood work.