Saying No to the Sexual Revolution in Sweden

• Post by: Bryce J. Christensen
• September 9, 2016

In the mid-twentieth century, Swinging Sweden commanded the global spotlight as a leader in sexual daring. But in the second decade of the twenty-first century, researchers are finding evidence that the young Swedes now responding to the Sexual Revolution with a firm No (Nej in Swedish) enjoy decided advantages over those who say Yes. Assessing how sexual abstinence affects young Swedes was the purpose of a study recently completed by a team of researchers from three Swedish Universities: Lund University, Linnæus University, and Linköping University. In carrying out their investigation, the researchers parse data collected from 3,380 Swedish 18-year-olds, focusing their attention on those who were still virgins.   After carefully weighing their data, the researchers conclude that sexual abstinence comes linked to social and psychological benefits. The data indeed indicate that when compared to peers who have engaged in sexual activity, chaste young Swedes manifest “lower pornography consumption, lower alcohol and tobacco consumption, less antisocial behavior . . . lower sexual desire . . . and fewer experiences of sexual abuse.” All of these contrasts satisfy the analytical tests for statistical significance, but the disparity in reports of sexual abuse is truly striking (adjusted Odds Ratio of 25.5).  Though it is the gap in vulnerability to sexual abuse that is particularly remarkable, the researchers calculate “increased O[dds]R[atio]s for sexual abuse and physical abuse” for the sexually experienced compared to the sexually continent.   Though the authors of the new study do not identify it as such, exposure to pornography understandably looks like a kind of psychological sexual abuse to many conservative thinkers. So it is perhaps not surprising that the Swedish scholars find that the sexually abstinent 18-year-olds in their study were decidedly less likely to have viewed pornography than were their sexually experienced peers.