Thursday, April 28, 2011

Generation seX

Been thinking of an off-hand joke Kerry made yesterday that implied that his generation, the Baby Boomers, had more sex in college than my generation, Generation X. The cultural narrative is that the Boomers were the generation of free love, while we were the generation AIDS. Sex for them was a political act, a subversion of the Ward and June Clever image of the world that the 50s forced on them, whereas for us, sex became the infectious disease version of Russian roulette. The accepted wisdom is that because of this difference, we had less sex. Is this story true? I was a physics major at the time, so anecdotal evidence I could provide would be flawed.

What of the current generation of college students. If Tom Wolfe is to be believed, free love is back. Is this all nonsense? Is the rate constant across generations or does it change significantly with other sociological factors?