They’ve just done another one of those surveys in which men and women are asked how many sexual partners they’ve had. The women, all twentysomethings, confessed to having succumbed to an average — or more properly, mode — of seven lovers. Men admitted, on average, to achieving somewhere close to 30 female conquests. This accords, pretty much, with previous polls and vox pops.
The only truly scientific survey on this issue, which spoke to 18 876 men and women aged 16 to 59 in 1991, revealed that women were twice as likely to have had only one sexual partner during their lifetime than were men, and five times as many men as women admitted to more than 10 sexual partners. Things have moved on apace, though, since then.
”Seven” has replaced ”none” as the acceptable thing for a woman to say when asked such an intrusive question by social scientists. A long time ago women always used to say ”none” and look outraged at the very nature of the inquiry. Then, 30 years ago, they started saying, ”Oh, three or four.” Now, apparently, it’s ”seven”.
Most of my previous girlfriends, when so interrogated averred that they’d had about seven previous boyfriends. I never believed them. Any more than they believed me when I told them I’d had 625 women including Nastassja Kinski, Emmanuelle Beart and Queen Noor of Jordan.
Meanwhile, ”30” has replaced ”10” as the acceptable thing for a man to respond when so queried. Of course, if random samples of men reveal that they’ve had an average of 30 lovers and similar samples of women allege they’ve had only seven, we’re left with something of a conundrum, statistically speaking. How can this be, assuming the samples are truly representative?
There are four possible answers. The first is that everybody is telling the truth, but that the pollsters fail to pick up the people responsible for the statistical anomalies. In other words, a true sample of 10 women asked to state their number of sexual partners would, roughly, read like this: 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 439, 7, 7, 7, 7. It’s that sixth lady who is causing the blip.
And similarly, for some reason, the pollsters miss those men who have had no sexual partners whatsoever. Maybe these guys run like hell when approached by the female market researchers, weeping and ashamed.
The second explanation is that there exists a Clintonesque blurring of the truth, on both sides. Women say they’ve had seven ”sexual partners” but, in arriving at this figure, have excluded that deeply regrettable, extracurricular, alcohol-fuelled and unfulfilling 20-second liaison next to the dozing tramp in the club doorway with Bob from accounts after the Christmas party last year. ”You can’t count that! I was drunk! I kept my coat on (it was -15°C)! Plus, crucially, I stopped just before, you know, um … well, in any case, I’ve totally blocked it out, you know?”
Yep, we know you have. But Bob hasn’t blocked it out, believe me.
Women may also discount anything that does not involve full sexual intercourse, on a regular basis. Whereas men will undoubtedly add to their total every single incident of fumbling and ferreting about.
The next possible solution is arguably the most convincing of all: both sides lie through their teeth and give answers that they believe are expected of them, answers that seem, in a very gender-specific way, ”respectable”.
This was certainly the conclusion of the last sociological study of sex surveys (Taylor, 1996), which concluded: ”The discrepancy arises from men’s tendency to exaggerate and women’s fear of derogatory labelling.”
But it is the nuances within the lying that I find interesting.
Women know that, these days, they won’t get away with ”none” as an answer. In fact, it is no longer remotely socially desirable for secular, Western women to be sexually inexperienced. Women who have had no sexual partners by their
mid-20s are deemed to be either, to use the uncouth vernacular of our age, total mingers — or just downright weird. Or worse, religious.
But normal women are expected to be discriminatory, however; to be a bit choosy. Hence the figure ”seven”, which is just this side of racy, betokening experience, but not whorish abandon or incipient nymphomania.
We men are not expected to be discriminatory at all. Certainly not by our male peers. We will quote the highest figure we can get away with, the most anybody will believe. This averages out at about 30.
Men like me who live in a state of perpetually dangerous psychosis and have constructed an elaborate fantasy world for themselves may try saying ”625” — but we know it won’t wash. Georges Simenon, the French writer, claimed to have slept with 10 000 women. This was arguably his finest work of fiction.
The depressing thing is the ease with which the discrepancy between male and female statistics, true or false, corresponds to the evolutionary forces that genetic determinists argue control our sexual behaviour. Put very simply, in the space of a year a woman can conceive only once, whereas men can father an almost infinite number of offspring. These are powerful factors in determining not only how we behave, but how we wish to be seen behaving.
The fourth explanation is a muddled melange of the other three. We lie through our teeth, we blur the truth and there are rogue men and women who distort the various averages.
But whatever; here’s a prediction. In 20 years’ time when the same survey is undertaken, women will say ”20” and men will say ”106”. And the respective figures will continue to rise exponentially, until Armageddon. — Â