By The Numbers

Use for quick stats rundown

Prostate Health Boosted by Having Lots of Sex

Prostate screening patient

You’re not being a man-whore, you’re protecting your health: A new study out of the University of Montreal says that having intercourse with 20 or more women helps men’s risk in developing prostate cancer decrease by 28%.

However, this effect only holds true for straight men: Men who had sex with 20 or more men were twice as likely to get the disease.

The study had 3K+ men answer an questionnaire about their sex lives. In the course of the study running Sept. 2005-Aug. 2009, 1.5K+ men were diagnosed with prostate cancer.

The article doesn’t mention how exactly 20 was determined to be the break-even point. It also begs the question as to what other numbers of partners do for preventing the cancer (for example, how does having 17 partners help, or hurt?).

I’d love to know more about this. Wouldn’t you?

Women’s DIY Halloween Costumes: By The Numbers

Sexy Rosie the Riveter costume

DIY has been a big trend for a few years now. It makes sense that it’s spread to Halloween costumes, where the major goals are to display creativity and individuality.

With this in mind, I wanted to see how many women’s magazines were touting DIY costumes, and parsing out any trends I could see. I initially wanted to find three lists from three different publications from this year, but had to settle for those from varying years. I looked lists from “Glamour” (published in 2010), “Marie Claire” (2013) and “Cosmopolitan” (2014).

Let’s take a look at what I found:

“Glamour:”

Year Published: 2010

Number of Entries: 21

Number of Movie-Referenced Costumes: 1

Number of TV-Referenced Costumes: 5

Number of Children’s Pop-Culture-Referenced Costumes: 0

Number of Iconic Cultural Figure References: 4

Outliers: includes 1 music-inspired costume, 9 creative* costumes

“Marie Claire:”

Year Published: 2013

Number of Entries: 10

Number of Movie-Referenced Costumes: 4

Number of TV-Referenced Costumes: 2

Number of Children’s Pop-Culture-Referenced Costumes: 0

Number of Iconic Cultural Figure References: 1

Outliers: includes 1 celebrity baby costume, 1 music-inspired costume

“Cosmopolitan:”

Year Published: 2014

Number of Entries: 20

Number of Movie-Referenced Costumes: 10

Number of TV-Referenced Costumes: 3

Number of Children’s Pop-Culture-Referenced Costumes: 5

Number of Iconic Cultural Figure References: 2

Outliers: includes 2 comic-book-referenced costumes, 4 Disney characters, 1 school girl costume

Overlaps:

Sandy from “Grease:” “Marie Claire” and “Cosmopolitan”

Rosie the Riveter: “Marie Claire” and “Cosmopolitan”

Sookie Stackhouse from “True Blood: “Glamour” and “Cosmopolitan”

Conclusions:

These three lists are virtually the same in that they focus heavily on referencing pop culture, mostly through movies and TV (see the overlaps list above). The “Glamour” list was on of the worst offenders here, as many of the ideas should’ve stayed in that year.

But the same “Glamour” list also had the most creative costumes (see asterisk above in said section), in that clever, out-of-the-ordinary costumes were included.

Overall, these DIY Halloween idea lists need a fresh look, and more space given to clever costumes and not ones just blindly referencing popular cultural aspects.

Dating Violence for Women in Canada

Jian Ghomeshi

In light of the Jian Ghomeshi allegations, I wanted to find some dating/sexual violence stats for Canada. (For those just tuning in, three women whom the CBC radio host dated have claimed he was “physically violent towards them without their consent during sexual encounters or in the lead-up to sexual encounters.”) The women were all around 20 years his junior, which would place them in the mid-late ’20s age range.

Statistics Canada released a chart in 2010 detailing police-reported dating violence by age and gender. In the 25-to-34-year-old age range, 12K+ women reported dating violence, at a rate of 1,337 (out of a 100K unmarried population). This age range had the highest rate of dating violence, and the second-highest number of female victims (second to ages 15 to 24).

Sadly, the numbers could be a lot higher from all the dating violence that goes unreported.

Let’s hope Ghomeshi gets what he deserves.

Child Marriage: By The Numbers

Child bride Thea

Last week, a blog by 12-year-old Norwegian girl Thea went viral. Thea blogged about her feelings surrounding her upcoming wedding to a 37-year-old man named Geir.

Later, it was revealed that Thea doesn’t exist. Her blog and story were created by international aid organization Plan to draw attention to child marriage. It worked, as the blog went viral.

Child marriage, defined as marriage before the age of 18, is still a large issue in developing countries. Here are some relevant stats, found from UNICEF:

Ratio of women ages 20-24 worldwide who are child brides: 1 in 3

Global ratio of women ages 15-19 who are married or in union: 1 in 5

World marriage rates for girls over 15 and under 18 years of age (excludes China): 34%

World marriage rates for girls under age 15 (excludes China): 11%

Region with the highest rates of child marriage: South Asia

South Asian marriage rates for girls over 15 and under 18 years of age (excludes China): 46%

South Asian marriage rates for girls under age 15 (excludes China): 18%

Child Sexual Abuse: By The Numbers

Sad Child

Not all sexual stats are fun. Sometimes, we have to get heavy here. Child sexual abuse is never a easy topic for anyone, but it’s useful to know the facts to stop and prevent it.

All numbers from the National Sex Offender Public Website stats page:

Ratio of girls sexually abused before age 18: 1 in 4

Ratio of boys sexually abused before age 18: 1 in 6

Victims ages 12-14: 26%

Victims ages 9 and younger: 34%

Percentage of female juvenile victims: 82%

Percentage of sexual assaults that occur between the ages of 12-17: 35.8%

Approximate number of U.S. adolescent victims: 1.8M

If you’re a victim of sexual abuse, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at (800) 656-HOPE. Your call is anonymous, confidential and free of charge. For more details on how to help a victim, visit Help and Support for Victims.

Mutual Masturbation: How Common Is It?

Couple at sunset

I learned an interesting stat last night: According to The Kinsey Institute, 85% of men have masturbated with another person in the room, while 66% of women have done the same. The sex educator who told me this said the numbers were higher than previously thought, and could be higher still due to self-reporting.

What do you think? Are you surprised by these stats?

Italian Marriage Stats: By The Numbers

Rome Wedding shot by Dmitri Markine

Inspired by this post on “The Cut,” on Italian marital affairs, I wanted to know about Italian marriage stats. All stats are from 2012:

Average age for first marriage for Italian men: 34

Average age for first marriage for Italian women: 31

Percentage of marriages with one Italian partner and one foreign partner: 68%

Percentage of weddings with at least one foreign partner: 15%

Number of marriages per 1K inhabitants: 3.5

Fetishes: Where are the Numbers?

BDSM Fetish-gear

Earlier this week, I was curious about finding statistics on fetishes of any kind. Guess what? It’s pretty hard to do for a few reasons.

The biggest one is that data from sexual studies is self-reported by the participants. Of course, these participants can easily lie. Maybe they’re ashamed of their fetish, or unwilling to give that information to a complete stranger. (Side note: I personally find it easier to lie to someone I know compared to someone I don’t, but that’s just a personal preference.) Either way, there’d be a large margin of error since the studies can’t account for those unwilling to tell the truth, and so fully participate.

The only way to get around this would be to subject male participants to a penile plethysmograph, which measures bloodflow to the penis. But this would obviously take a lot of time and investment into new practices. There’s also no female equivalent, so there’d be no way to compare.

Another reason is that something a study identifies as a fetish might be pretty vanilla for someone else. So there can be gaps between what two people believe to be fetishes, and that may play into their answers.

With the answers, part of the problem may lie in how the questions are phrased. If a question is leading, a participant may get flustered and answer the question in a way that diverges from what they actually feel and/or do.

But the overall question is: what is “normal” sex? There’s no agreed-upon baseline, so what exactly constitutes a fetish is hard to determine.

Legal Prostitution in Nevada: By The Numbers

Mustang Ranch in Storey County, Nevada

Everyone’s heard about prostitution being legal in Nevada. And it is…but only in 11 rural counties.

Not many people know much about the intricacies of legal prostitution, so I decided to find out. After some digging, here are some interesting facts about Nevada’s legal prostitution in the United States.

Number of counties allowing prostitution: 11

Number of active brothels: 22

Number of closed brothels: 8

Number of counties banning prostitution: 4

First licensed brothel: Mustang Ranch in 1971

Male prostitutes legalized: 2009

Sleeping Naked: The Numbers

Couple Sleeping (sadly, not naked)

Lately, there’s been some talk about the health benefits of sleeping naked, especially for women: body confidence, airing out your downstairs, etc. A recent study found that only 8% of Americans sleep naked, while over 74% keep clothed.

Seems pretty low, doesn’t it? Almost too low.

Alfred Kinsey covered this topic within his own studies. He found that over 41% of men reported sleeping naked (within a sample size of 5.3K) and half of married women (out of a sample size of 5.49K). (From what I could see, there wasn’t any differentiation between single and married men.)

Kinsey’s number seems a bit more reasonable. I find it hard to believe that sleeping-nude stats have actually declined within the last few decades. My reasoning is that since it’s a topic out in the open now, there’d be more people open to doing so and admitting to it.

Sex & Stats: Where Numbers Come to Bang

Statistics. Economics. Sex.