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'Promiscuity' is the practice of making relatively casual and indiscriminate choices. The term is most commonly applied to sexual behavior, where it refers to a person who does not limit their sex life to the cultural norm, typically one partner, or to the framework of a long term monogamous sexual relationship. Because of the popularity of this usage, the remainder of this article discusses sexual promiscuity. People who are called "promiscuous" under this usage, may in fact be quite selective in their choice of sexual partners.
Promiscuity is discouraged by conservative modern day religions. However, some sects, cults, and religious orders have a place for promiscuous behavior. For example, there were special examples of religious prostitution in ancient Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome.

Contents

Human promiscuity

Male promiscuity

Female promiscuity

In the animal world

Promiscuity in culture

Males

Females

See also

References

Human promiscuity

What is considered socially acceptable sexual behavior, and what behavior is regarded as "promiscuous", varies widely among different cultures. In some contexts, a woman who has sex with any man other than her husband is considered promiscuous, while the term may not be applied to a man from the same culture likewise having extramarital sex. In other cultures, the term may be applied to anyone who has more than one lover at the same time. In some sections of industrialized societies, it is likely to be used only when describing people, usually women, who have large numbers of sexual partners with a seeming lack of discrimination. In those cases, there is no ''set number'' of partners that would be considered excessive, meaning that what some might consider to be a high number of sexual partners, others might not.
It is difficult to accurately assess people's sexual behavior, since there are strong social and personal motivations to either minimize or exaggerate reported sexual activity, depending on social sanctions and taboos. The best statistics of human sexual behavior are derived from research into sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Extensive research has been conducted to study different mathematical models of sexual behavior and to compare the results generated with the observed prevalence of STDs to try to estimate the probable actual sexual behavior of the population.
People's numbers of sexual partners, both over their lifetime and concurrently, varies widely within any population. In the US, the median number of lifetime female sexual partners for men was seven; the median number of male partners for women was four. 29 percent of men and 9 percent of women say they’ve had 15 or more partners.^[1] Studies of the spread of STDs have consistently shown that a small minority of the population have more partners than the average, and a small minority have less than the average. One important question in STD epidemiology is whether these groups have sex mostly within their groups (so-called assortative mixing) or at random.

Male promiscuity

The terms 'womanizer' (or 'womaniser'), 'playboy', 'philanderer', 'player', 'ladies' man', 'man-whore', 'ladykiller' and 'rake' have been used to refer to a man who engages in love affairs with women he cannot or will not marry or commit to. The love affairs are typically sexually motivated, with little emotional attachment. The names of real and fictional men who seduce women into casual affairs have become labels for promiscuous men. The most famous of these may be 'Giacomo Casanova' who lived from 1725 to 1798.^[2] The fictional 'Don Juan' appeared in the 17th Century and 'Lothario' appeared in Nicholas Rowe's 1703 play ''The Fair Penitent''.
During the English Restoration period (1660-1688), the word rake was used in a glamorous sense: the 'Restoration rake' is a carefree, witty, sexually irresistible aristocrat typified by Charles II's courtiers, the Earl of Rochester and the Earl of Dorset, who combined riotous living with intellectual pursuits and patronage of the arts. The Restoration rake is celebrated in the Restoration comedy of the 1660s and 1670s. After the reign of Charles II, and especially after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the cultural perception of the rake took a dive into squalor. The rake became the butt of moralistic tales in which his typical fate was debtor's prison, venereal disease, or, in the case of William Hogarth's ''A Rake's Progress'', insanity in Bedlam.

Female promiscuity

Since at least 1450, the pejorative terms 'slut', 'harlot', 'tramp' have been used to describe a sexually promiscuous woman. In contrast to the glamour of the rake for men, the term slut did also historically refer to a woman being dirty or unkempt.

In the animal world

In the animal world, some species of animals, including birds such as swans, once believed monogamous, are now known to engage in 'extra-pair copulations'. Although social monogamy occurs in about 90 percent of avian species and about 3 percent of mammalian species, investigators estimate that 90 percent of socially monogamous species exhibit individual promiscuity in the form of extra-pair copulations.^[3][4][5]

Promiscuity in culture

Males

★ Don Juan

★ Chef (''South Park'')

★ James Bond

★ Hans Kloss

★ Joe Quimby (''The Simpsons'')

★ Glenn Quagmire (''Family Guy'')

Females

★ Ms. Cartman (''South Park'')

★ Foxxy Love (''Drawn Together'')

See also

★ Brothel

★ Chastity

★ Cottaging

★ Gangbang

★ Gay bathhouse

★ Glory hole

★ Human sexuality

★ Ménage à trois

★ Open marriage

★ Orgy

★ Polyamory

★ Serial monogamy

★ Slut

★ Swinging

References

1. New survey tells how much sex we’re having MSNBC
2. Love, Sex and Marriage: A Historical Thesaurus, Julie Coleman, , , Rodopi, 1999, ISBN 9042004339
3. Reichard, U.H. (2002). Monogamy—A variable relationship. Max Planck Research, 3, 62-67.
4. Barash, D.P. & Lipton, J.E. (2001). The Myth of Monogamy. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman and Company.
5. Research conducted by Patricia Adair Gowaty. Reported by Morell, V. (1998). Evolution of sex: A new look at monogamy. Science, 281, 1982-1983.