It’s time for the Misguided Article About Human Sexuality of the day! This one is brought to you by the Daily Mail and its charming ability to misinterpret a health survey– to the point of declaring that you’ll have better sex if you have more money. Um, okay.
According to the Spanish National Sexual Health Survey, people of high socioeconomic status reported that they felt more satisfied with their sex lives than did people with lower incomes. The DM takes it upon themselves to elaborate:
Those with a higher socioeconomic status seem to have a better awareness of their own needs and a greater capacity for developing their sexuality in a way which is satisfying for them.
Uh, yeah, that’s definitely worded incorrectly. Having more money doesn’t guarantee that you have a greater capacity for developing anything. However, it’s very possible that people who are struggling to make ends meet don’t have as much time to devote to focussing on their sexual relationships, and it’s very possible that kids who attend poorer public schools receive less effective sex education.
Being more educated doesn’t make you more deserving of good sex, but good sex is more likely to happen when you’re not worried about, among other things, how to use or pay for birth control. Instead of suggesting that people will have more fulfilling sex lives if they have fuller bank accounts, we should be working to get resources and information available to people who aren’t in the highest tax brackets. The Daily Mail‘s interpretation of this survey has seriously missed the mark.
Thankfully, their cringe-worthy article ends on a much higher note, as they quote one of the authors of the original study:
There is a need to introduce public policies which aim to reduce socioeconomic and gender inequalities that we have found in sexual satisfaction, in the use of contraceptives and in abusive sexual relations.
Right on. If we want to see people with lower incomes having healthier, happier, safer sex, we need to focus on improving education and making resources more readily available to everyone who wants them.
Via Daily Mail / Photo: Cruel Intentions (1999)
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