Via Jim Barker @ Flickr.
First, in Bad Science news…a Japanese study on the links between breakfast consumption and age of first intercourse. (I refuse to say “loss of virginity.” REFUSE.) If you ate breakfast, but feel like losing your lunch, read this story, called “Eat Your Toast or Lose Your Virginity.” A survey of young people led “scientists” to conclude that eating breakfast correlates to later age of first intercourse though the magic of “family stability.” ‘Cause only kids who have “unstable” families–whatever the fuck that means–have sex. And sex is really just a form of “acting out,” according to researcher Kunio Kitamura:
“Those unhappy with their parents – such as for not preparing breakfast – may tend to find a way to release their frustration by having sex.”
This is such an enormous steaming pile of wrong, it’s hard to know how to respond. So, rather than granting it the compliment of rational opposition, say it with me, people: correlation is not causation. Regardless, I’ll be waiting for the spun-out, FOXNews version: “Working Moms Make Teens Promiscuous!”
But there is some Good Science news to temper the bad. From Science Daily (which can go either way) comes a story about a new study from a communications scholar at UC-Davis that indicates that although women are typically thought of as less self-assured in their communications than are men, the differences between the communication styles of the sexes depend largely on their context.
While this seems like a big “durrrrrrrrrrr!” to me, I was pleased to read it, anyway. Professor Nick Palomares says:
“I found that women are more tentative than men sometimes, and men are more tentative than women sometimes,” Palomares said. “It depends on the topic and whether you’re communicating with someone of the same gender. Gender differences in language are not innate; they’re fickle.”
Probably because they haven’t had breakfast.
I never ONCE had breakfast as a teen and I remained as pure as the driven snow way past my eighteenth birthday. Suck on that, researchers.
age of first intercourse: I refuse to say “loss of virginity.” You are right. You’ve convinced me.
Also, it’s tiring to always point out the bad science/bad policy/bad logic, but then again, silence is acquiescence so, keep fighting the good fight Dork!
@Soalg: I never ate breakfast either. Seriously I think I skipped breakfast from the age of like 8 to the age of 25. It was more about me having a nervous stomach in the morning.
Well, my mom prepared me a big bowl of oatmeal with cinnamon every morning for my entire school career (before she left for work! How could a working mom do such a thing?). I still had sex at 16. And I don’t have a single regret about it.
[...] Read more from the original source: Weird Science – The Pursuit of Harpyness [...]
I wonder if the converse is true…teens who’ve had sex are more likely to eat breakfast. Or whether men and women who communicate tentatively are too intimidated by frozen waffles. or sex. Or teenagers. Mix and match causality!
Does that Science Daily headline make anybody else crazy? Hey, let’s put a rhetorical question in the headline whose answer is “no”! So then we’ve got plausible deniability in case anyone wants to notice that we’re intimating in support of the status quo…
But what if your breakfast consists solely of Poptarts? That means you give BJs right?
That is some hilarious (as in, lolsob) science right there. Cue the pro-abstinence commercial featuring a picture of a sad looking teen with a voiceover admonishing mothers, “Give her bacon, or drive her to sex.)
theKP: “Give her bacon, or she’ll get herself some sausage.”
Obviously hungry teenagers are unable to think clearly, so they’re more likely to make bad decisions. And they’re trying to make up for their sensory deprivation. Food=sex, you know.
You’re welcome. *snerk*
I also don’t use “loss” or “loose” or “take/give” when talking about virginity. My favourite is “swipe the V card” but “first intercourse” is less cutesy.