According to a recent poll in a British newspaper, the average Briton has had 10 sexual partners. According to me the average Briton is also lying.
The weird thing about sexual partner statistics is men invariably have higher scores than women. In this particular poll men claimed to have had almost double (13) the number of partners as women (seven).
Now, assuming there are approximately equal numbers of men and women, and for the most part these women are having sex with these men, then this result is a bit odd. It could mean that there is a small number of extremely promiscuous women having sex with an awful lot of men, although I have it on good authority from folk versed in the statistical sciences that this is highly unlikely (personal research in countless bars attests to this too), or that somebody is lying. I suspect everybody is lying.
Maybe lying is too strong a word. More like being somewhat vague with the truth. These economies of veracity are not specific to Britons either.
Everybody fibs a bit about their bedpost notches. It’s all up to the definition of what constitutes sex anyway. A definition that can quite readily be tailored to suit one’s purposes. Handy when it comes to avoiding awkwardness tallying one’s conquests. Especially when you’re counting fingers and you realise your partner is on to hands. Or vice versa.
In the old days when sex was kept to bedrooms or backseats; when anything other than the missionary position was considered avant-garde, the definition was easy. Penetrative intercourse with a new partner clocked another number. One had to be pretty, well, dishonest when it came to saying, “I didn’t have sex with that woman.”
In these more permissive times our repertoire of carnal misadventure is broader and the definitions vaguer. There’s a tantalising array of possibilities, illustrated by the range of epithets we can attach to the word “sex”. In the past you were lucky if you got to prefix it with “good”. Now there’s everything from “tantric” to “terror” and “phone” to “phoney”.
Should these count? Take for example group sex — should one include those hangers-on bobbing about in the jacuzzi? Even if you can’t remember their names? What too of hand-jobs, or mutual masturbation? Although admittedly the latter two are relatively easy to explain away because they’re not all that intimate.
For most of us the biggest question on our lips is: do blow-jobs count? However one perceives it, oral sex is pretty intimate. Hence, should we include the giving and the receiving of these pleasures?
Among my acquaintances, folk have a tendency to exclude anything that isn’t strictly penetrative. Although these days, when everyone is exploring transgendered sexual identities at the drop of a frock, that’s a hopeless definition. For instance, it excludes hot lesbian action. What good is anything if it excludes the Sapphic shagging?
Now don’t for a moment imagine these good people are always including full-on coitus either. I encountered my first example of this extraordinary deceit when I wandered into a fellow student’s room, catching him and his then girlfriend in flagrante delicto.
Nothing too surprising, considering we were all doing our level best to get an oar in. Some with patently more success than others, I might add with some chagrin. Nevertheless, these young lovers were supposedly committed to the lofty ideal of abstaining from sex before marriage. They certainly weren’t married.
From my moment’s vantage it looked pretty much like sex. It sounded like sex too, with the telltale schluk-schluk noises.
When we met under less awkward circumstances I couldn’t resist mentioning his hypocrisy. He replied with a disconcerting candour: “We weren’t having sex. We were using a condom so there was no genital contact.”
I didn’t care for that definition either. At the time it took my score right back to zero. To be inadvertently virginised, that didn’t appeal at all. It was hard enough to lose my virginity. It’s not something one can just mislay. Although considering the fumbling it would have qualified as a mis-lay.
Nevertheless, it’s a similar story with sex workers. One would imagine they would have the highest numbers imaginable. But no, it’s work. Work doesn’t count. It would be like calling time spent in the office, “hanging out with friends”.
My personal definition: I’m including each new encounter if one or more party achieved orgasm. If neither did, we can have another go, or write it off, a not-bonk in the night.
The definitions of what counts as sex are as arbitrary as they are individual. So when somebody tells you they’ve had seven or 13 or 55 sex partners it’s all pretty much lies. What they’re really saying is they’ve had 10+x‒y. You can match that as you please.