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Sex and the Citizens
| Date: |
13 November 2005 12:00 |
| Producer: |
Carol Albertyn Christie
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
Birds do it, bees do it, but how often do our viewers do it?
Woman 1: 'I really think about once a week.'
Man 1: 'Could say about once a week if possible.'
Man 2: 'Twice a week, twice a week.'
Woman 2: 'Saturday and Sunday, maybe.'
Woman 1: 'Sometimes more if I've had a good week [laughs].'
Woman 3: 'Well not a lot at the moment...'
Man 3: 'A couple of times a month...'
Man 4: 'Maybe three times a week.'
Man 5: 'As much as I can really.'
According to the results of the Carte Blanche Sex Survey, if you have sex once or twice a week, and have had two to five sexual partners and think that the best sex time is 'anytime', then join the club - you are a typical South African. With over 63 000 respondents, the Carte Blanche Survey, is by far, the largest sex survey ever to be undertaken in South Africa.
Derek Watts (Carte Blanche presenter): 'Among the billions of acts of procreation that take place on this planet every day, apparently only dolphins, monkeys and humans have sex for pleasure. And yet we know so little about human sexual behaviour.'
Dr Marlene Wasserman is a well-respected sexologist based in Cape Town. She was crucial in devising our questionnaire and guiding the survey. She believes surveys help us understand changing sexual behaviour.
Dr Marlene Wasserman (sexologist): 'We all want to normalise ourselves. We all want to kind of fall on to a place on a continuum where we say: so many percentage of people are doing this, so I am kind of okay, or we say: so many people are doing that and I am okay. Because we don't really talk about sexuality enough.'
So let's talk about sex. In the past, it was purely seen as an act of procreation. According to Dr Esther Sapire, Freud was the first pioneer to emphasise the importance of sex, and then along came Kinsey.
Dr Esther Sapire (sexologist): 'The largest survey was done by Kinsey in the '30s and '40s. And he revealed what was going on in society more than anybody had ever known before. It normalised a lot of behaviour; it gave people permission to accept what they were doing was okay.'
But have sexual trends changed since Kinsey's report? Carte Blanche decided to take the plunge and do our own sex survey.
Derek: 'We were amazed by the number of viewers who responded - more than 63 000. The reasons... we used technology to make it easy, it was anonymous and you could do it in the comfort of your own living room... the survey, that is!'
This survey took technology to the limit. Fifty three and a half thousand people responded to a list of explicit sexual questions through their DSTV decoder and their mobile phones and a further ten and a half thousand people completed an extensive questionnaire on our website. The results were so overwhelming that we are unable to encapsulate them in this programme... but here is a snapshot.
The results showed that 95% of our viewers were sexually active, 88% of them are heterosexual and nearly 50% are married.
One of the questions asked was, at what age did they lose their virginity? We approached some people in the street to judge their response.
Man 1: '16 I suppose'
Woman 2: '18'
Man 5: '18'
Man 4: 'I think I was 20'
Woman: 4: '16'
Man 3: 'Probably about 16 or so'
Woman 5: '15'
Woman 3: '14. Yes it goes younger and younger every year.'
Thirty-two-and-a-half thousand respondents said that they lost their virginity between the ages of 16 to 19.
Few can resist the thrill of attraction. In the throes of sexual arousal, your heart rate increases, your breath quickens and potent hormones of exhilaration course through your bloodstream. The act should culminate in orgasm for both parties.
Marlene: 'Found some very interesting facts in the survey. Do you fake an orgasm? 62% of women.'
Derek: 'Have you ever faked an orgasm?'
Woman 2: 'Yes [laughs].'
Woman 5: 'Ja.'
Woman 3: Yes. Yes I have.'
Woman 4: 'All the time...'
Derek: 'Do you think women you have been with have ever faked an orgasm?'
Man 1: 'No. I am confident they haven't.'
Man 2: 'No I wouldn't want to know, actually.'
Man 5: 'You don't really know when she is faking it or not.'
Woman 3: 'It is so the guy won't feel bad, you know.'
Derek: 'Now Esther, about 60 percent of women fake orgasms and we joke about it. But there are serious undertones.'
Esther: 'It is serious because it implies that women are going to try and please their man and make him feel good about what then becomes a performance, instead of making love.'
Marlene: 'Most women will say they have faked because they feel they are taking too long and men are not spending enough time. What I like to use... my favourite word at the moment is please give women more attention generally in their relationship, but certainly they need to be giving the clitoris more attention because that is primarily how women become orgasmic.'
Another startling stat is that 24% of the 28 000 heterosexual men said that they also faked orgasm.
Marlene: 'It's actually quite a significant amount of men.'
Derek: 'But isn't that quite difficult for a man?'
Marlene: 'It actually isn't, especially if they should be wearing condoms, like all men should. They know how to make the sounds, they know how to make the contractions they are faking.'
In the history of sexual evolution man has always been seen as the initiator of sex. Even with women's emancipation,, the figure still seems to be high. Our survey showed that 82% of men initiate lovemaking.
Esther: 'The male sex urge is generally stronger than the female and although he may have worked hard all day and be exhausted, his desire for sex would still be there. Whereas his partner might be dissipated in her thoughts - she has done her job, she has done her shopping, she has done her cooking, her laundry and so she is less likely to initiate than the man.'
Marlene: 'I have a lot of empathy for men because they have a lot to go though in order to initiate being sexual. The statistic that we work with is that 70% of men get into bed feeling anxious. I think it is actually way higher than that. They face rejection and they face failure at every single step of the way in a sexual process.'
Derek: 'More than 60% of respondents have had sex in a public place, a car, a plane, even [on] a beach, but surely not in an elevator?'
Woman 3: 'There was only one other floor and we got stuck between the two.'
Man 3: 'A car'
Woman 2: 'On the beach.'
Man 3: Not in a public place, maybe the workplace.'
Woman 3: 'In a car.'
Man 3: 'In a car, yes.'
Woman 5: 'In a park, in a car, and a bathroom.'
But there were some more surprising stats in the survey. Twenty three percent of our viewers have had sex with more than one person per night; 19% have had sex with more than one person at the same time, and 36% or 20 000 have had sex with a stranger.
But how responsible are our viewers in protecting themselves? Although 90% of them say they know their HIV status, an alarming statistic is that only 10% of them are wearing condoms.
Esther: 'I don't believe that 90% of those people have been tested and they may think: I am clean, he looks clean, she looks clean and therefore they haven't got HIV. And that is a major risk. Unless they have had a blood test, they don't know.'
Both sexologists are very concerned that HIV/AIDS education isn't changing sexual behaviour. According to the responses, only 0.22% are using dual protection - that is, condoms and hormone contraception.
Marlene: 'Derek, we spend... we, as sex educators, spend an inordinate amount of time telling people that this is the only method to go. You have to use a condom plus using a contraceptive hormone.'
Derek: 'But surely, Marlene, that is only for couples that have recently met?'
Marlene: 'Should we turn to the statistic on extra-marital affairs?'
Derek: 'They say you should kiss and never tell. And our survey shows that one out of three South Africans has cheated on their partner. The question is, were our respondents completely honest?'
Esther: 'The survey was done with possibly two partners in the lounge and having to press that button, and many of them may not have admitted to it, and so the figure could be higher. It is interesting though, that the figure given by Kinsey was much higher; that was about 40%. So I question the figure, because I think that cheating tends to be common and it may have been that they were constrained.'
But they don't seem to be that constrained in the bedroom. Seventy-three percent have visited sex shops, just over half have used vibrators and 60% of our viewers watch pornography. On an oral note, 51% of our viewers have used food during sex.
Marlene: '50% of people use food. It's like, 'What? - Please I hope you are not putting it into any of your orifices besides your mouth because that is really dangerous'
Derek: 'Is that the whole chocolate coating thing?'
Marlene: 'I hope it is only chocolate coating Derek.'
Derek: 'Did you watch pornographic movies?'
Woman 2: 'No.'
Woman 4: 'It doesn't really do it for me.'
Woman 1: 'If it is a good one, yes I find it quite a turn-on.'
Derek: 'Esther, are people still really enjoying sex or are they overwhelmed by the media?'
Esther: 'Both, both. I think people are overwhelmed. I think they are threatened with performance anxiety. I know that the porn industry is a billion-billion dollar business and I know that on the Internet it is readily available. I know too that it is causing problems. I see people who have problems.... whose husband/partner is sitting up until three in the morning, stimulating himself watching porn, and not even having sex with her any more.'
The stats on sexual satisfaction were surprisingly low. Only 35% of our respondents were not despondent with time spent on sex play. So how happy are we generally with our sex lives?
Marlene: 'I think that women are not happy with their sex lives, and the survey shows that. Even though they have been active perhaps once, twice a week or once or twice a month, the level of satisfaction is low and that's what we need to be giving attention to. Why is it that men and women, and specifically women, have got such low satisfaction? It is the quality of sexual lives that they are leading.'
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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