Taiwan's place at the top in five categories in a recent global sex survey is a source of both good news and bad.
The good news is that Taiwan-ese have their first sexual experience later in life than any other nationality surveyed, they are the most conservative about having premarital sex, and that Taiwan has the world's lowest ratio of AIDS cases per capita than any other country in the study.
The bad news is that Taiwanese are the world's most reluctant to practice safe sex during their first sexual experience, and the reason for that, according to the survey, is because of a lack of contraceptive devices.
PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES
The 1999 global sex survey, conducted by SSL International Plc, the manufacturer of Durex condoms, questioned around 4,200 members of both sexes aged between 16 and 21 years old in 14 countries around the world. The previous three annual surveys focused on 16- to 45-year-olds with sexual experience.
It is the first time Taiwan has been included in the company's global survey. Questions cover three major areas: sex education, sexual initiation, and sex lifestyle.
"We want to see how effective Taiwan's sex education is and to learn about the attitude of Taiwan's youth toward sex," said Paul Wang (汪政廷), country manager of London International Group plc, Asia Pacific, at a press conference yesterday.
The survey shows that on average, Taiwanese have their first sexual experience at the age of 17 -- the world's oldest -- and that the world average is 15.9 years old. The US figure is even lower, at 15 years old.
The survey showed that while 43 percent of the Taiwanese population prefers to have their first sexual experience after getting married, only around 16 percent of the rest of the world wishes to do so.
Despite the increasing prevalence of AIDS in society, almost half of all Taiwanese people didn't use protection the first time they had sexual intercourse, compared to just 28 percent for the rest of the world.
Surprisingly, some 62 percent of all Taiwanese people who didn't use contraception when they lost their virginity said that the reason was because they didn't have access to contraceptives. The fraction that used this excuse in the rest of the world was just 38 percent.
Another guest at the conference, Wen Jung-kwang (文榮光), President of the Chinese Association for Sexuality Education (中華民國性教育協會), called for raising general awareness of safe sex.
"People pay a lot of attention to IQ [intelligence quotient] and EQ [emotional quotient], but pay little attention to SQ [sex quotient]," he said.
"Using protection while having sex is like wearing a helmet or safety belt while driving. Having sex is like going onto a battlefield -- if you're not well prepared, you're running a risk of getting yourself killed."
Wen also criticized the emphasis that Taiwanese society places on virginity, citing cases from his own clinical experience.
"The idea makes married women hesitate to indulge in sex if they get divorced, while single women feel guilty about having sex before they get married," he said.
Hsiung Hsien-chih (
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