For once, science has given us some good news about weight and sex.

This week, science brought us a surprising study about sex work, an unsurprising study blaming everything on women’s allegedly low sex drives, and the link between body fat and sexual stamina. Here’s what we learned.

1. The bigger the cushion, the longer the pushin’.

I get most of my life lessons from comedian Christopher Guest, so I’m not surprised that a new study confirms (kind of) a claim made by a song from This is Spinal Tap. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll definitely remember the epic rock ballad, “Big Bottom.”

The bigger the cushion, the sweeter the pushin’/That’s what I said/The looser the waistband, the deeper the quicksand/Or so I have read

It turns out a similar song could be written about men’s big bellies. A new study shows that men with bigger bellies may last longer in bed than lean men, because men with more fat have higher levels of oestradiol, a female hormone that inhibits orgasms in men. “We found that patients with lifelong PE [premature ejaculation] were leaner than the healthy control cases… As the BMI [Body Mass Index] increased, the number of patients decreased in the PE group,” said the study’s authors.

On average, the study found, overweight men stayed erect for seven minutes before climaxing, while slimmer guys lasted two minutes. To put that into perspective, it takes an average of 10-20 minutes for women to orgasm. I guess we need to write another song: “The bigger the cushion, the longer the pushin’ that’s what I said. The looser the waistband the more time in the quicksand, or so I have read.”

2. Dissatisfied with your job? Maybe you should consider becoming a sex worker.

Canada’s first national study on sex workers had some interesting findings that undermined its conservative government’s arguments for criminalizing sex work. Justice Minister Peter MacKay claims that Bill C-36, which aims to abolish sex work, is needed because, “the vast majority of those that sell sexual services do not do so by choice. We view the vast majority of those involved in selling sexual services as victims.” Yet the five-year study found that 82 percent of workers felt appropriately rewarded, 70 percent were satisfied with their jobs, and 68 percent felt they have good job security.

Perhaps, you might argue, the study is biased, or the workers delusional. What still doesn’t make sense is how criminalizing their behavior helps them. It has the opposite effect, making them less safe by pushing them further underground and making it harder for them to seek help and support. So whether you like to think that every single sex worker is a radical, feminist, subversive, anti-patriarchal, empowered, autonomous revolutionary on the one hand, or a hopeless, helpless victim on the other, we should all be able to agree that persecuting and prosecuting them doesn’t help anyone.

3. When in doubt, blame women’s low sex drive.

Hong Kong’s birth rate has dropped from 1,933 births for every 1,000 women in 1981, to 1,285 in 2012. What’s behind this trend? According to a poll conducted by Hong Kong’s Family Planning Association, it’s ladies’ low libidos.

This is how the South China Morning Post article describes the results of the study:

“The association polled around 2,100 ethnic Chinese women aged between 21 and 40 from December 2007 to December 2009, and found almost six out of 10 had at least one sexual problem.

“Of that number, about 400 said they had no sexual desire and had arousal problems, 500 did not have orgasms and 430 experienced pain during sex.”

OK. First of all, what is a “sexual problem”? Second of all, do these 400 women have no sexual desire and arousal problems at the same time? Or is it one or the other? And if they are simultaneous, couldn’t it be that the arousal problems they encounter hamper their sexual desire? In other words, couldn’t it be that nothing is wrong with their own sex drives, but it’s something related to what their partners are or are not doing? Or, perhaps, just perhaps, their failure to orgasm and you know, physical pain, are preventing them from getting in the mood. But why talk about how women’s sexual needs aren’t being met or fulfilled when it’s so much easier to paint women as frigid?