Sexual Promiscuity

How sexually promiscuous would you have to be to be considered "bad"?

My friends and I were discussing this last week and we defined sexual promiscuity as not only having full sex with several different people in a short time period but as performing other sex acts too.

It's mainly women who are classed as sleeping around rather than men; they are more likely to lose the respect of their peers as a woman who "sleeps around" than a man who has an equally active sex life. So why do they do it? The first thought that springs to mind is that they're insecure about themselves, they need to feel wanted somehow and this is some sort of a 'quick fix'. Yet this may not apply to all women who are sexually active with several people in a short space of time. They may have completely different attitudes towards sex than the majority of the population. It is possible that they are able to distinguish sex from emotion (uncommon in most women as we tend to become more emotionally-attatched than males) and this therefore leaves them able to have "no-strings" sex without feeling used afterwards.

Even though this kind of behaviour is becoming more commonplace with the current generation, why is it that many still frown and discriminate against these women for the sexual lifestyle they have chosen? It may be because the older generations are more likely to have religious backgrounds and will therefore refuse to justify any kind of sexual immorality, whether it be excessive sexual partners or fornication alone. Or even if religion is not an issue, moral standards in general were much higher then than they are now. However, it is possible that more people are willing to speak openly about it in the 21st Century; it may have been more commonplace in our grandparents' generations than we think but because of recent social developments such as the sexual revolution of the 1960's and the Feminist movements of the 1970's, it is now far more socially acceptable to discuss with close friends.

It would also be ignorant of us to not take into account the risks that sexually promiscuous people expose themselves to with HIV/AIDS and many other STI's on the increase. "Sexually transmitted diseases are among the most common infections with an estimated 18.9 million new infections annually in the United States and 340 million infections worldwide." You can read more about this at http://www2.ncid.cdc.gov/travel/yb/utils/ybGet.asp?section=dis&obj=stds.htm