SEXtember: More boys say no to sex before marriage

BOYS may have more traditional and conservative attitudes towards sex than you think, according to a survey conducted by Trinity College Foundation Studies students Hagianti and Nadia Phie. They share their findings this SEXtember. 

As part of Meld’s SEXtember campaign, we conducted a poll of 50 Trinity College Foundation Study students asking them about their attitudes towards sex. In particular, we were interested to explore whether these attitudes differed between boys and girls.

Our findings came as a bit of a surprise, and defied the traditional stereotypes.

All 50 students polled said they weren’t sexually active. However, boys and girls had different expectations of what ‘the first time’ would be like.

Our initial expectations were that Hollywood’s romantic movies, which are aimed largely at teenage girls (like the recently released If I Stay),would skew female survey respondents’ perspectives to thinking about sex as being all romantic and dreamy.

In reality, 80 per cent of girls said they expected their ‘first time’ to be quite a scary but nonetheless intimate experience.

Most of the boys surveyed were much less nervous or apprehensive about their first sexual experience.

When is the right time?

More than half of the girls  surveyed said they were prepared to lose their virginity while they were dating.

This was in stark contrast to the more than 70 per cent of boys who said they preferred to wait till after marriage.

What surprised us the most was that around 60 percents of girls said their first sexual partner did not have to be a virgin.

On the other hand, 90 percents of the boys said they expected their first sexual partner to be a virgin.

Regardless, the majority of students surveyed understood the importance of safe sex, especially outside the confines of marriage.