Men have on average more sexual partners than women?

Factual Questions
1

How is it possible in all surveys on sexual behavior that men have, on average, more sexual partners than women? Who else are they sleeping with to raise the average?

The numbers have to be equal barring the fact that men are likely lie to raise the number and women are likely lie to lower it. However, this hardly explains the discrepancy. I don’t think either sex lies that much.

If there were considerable more women than men in the population, this would explain the discrepancy, but the slight difference in population by gender is minimal. Hardly enough to account for the reported differences.

Perhaps again if the sample size were small and the few women who had great numbers of sexual partners were absent to raise the overall average, then this may help the explanation. But this seems not to be the case when surveys are reported by Cosmo, Men’s Health, Kinsey Institute, Masters and Johnson, etc. Certainly one of the several surveys would have located those women with larger numbers of partners.

Is the answer simply because we lie?

2

Other men, sheep, dolphins, the whole barnyard and beyond. Not to mention inflatable women and animals, and stuffed plush objects. I kid you not.

3

Prostitutes.

I kid you not. Somebody actually came out with a study, not too long ago, that claimed to resolve the discrepancy you’re asking about. Basically, the typical woman has fewer partners, but the typical prostitute … well, I’d ratehr not contemplate.

4

obviously the studies where geographically isolated! I attend uni in a town about 3 hours north of my current location, and no kidding, most of the 17-25 year old females I know, average around about 5 sexual partners per year…and these promiscuous young lasses are the decent chicks I know!

5

“How is it possible in all surveys on sexual behavior that men have, on average, more sexual
partners than women?”
Perhaps because men don’t get pregnant & don’t have to raise the kids, which takes away a lot of time to bleep new people.

6

handy, that doesn’t matter one bit, because a sex act between a man and a woman raises each gender’s average almost exactly the same amount. (the only difference accounted for by the difference in the number of men and women) Now, if you’re counting homosexual sex too, then the numbers could easily be different, since those partners would only be affecting the average of their own gender.

If you’re only counting heterosexual sex, then the discrepancy can be explained by: lying or bad sampling. (which includes having no prostitutes in the sample, since that sample would then be non-representative of the population as a whole. Of course, I imagine a prostitute is unlikely to remember exactly how many customers she has had, so an accurate figure is unlikely.)

7

handy, I assume that you are serious, since there was no smiley.

Every time a man and woman have sex for the first time, both participants’ totals go up by one. The total number of opposite-sex partners, and hence average number of opposite-sex partners, for males and females should be identical, given equal numbers of males and females in the population.

Bill

8

My first simul-post! :slight_smile:

Bill

9

The confusion arises because of the difference between what you mean when you say “men have, on average, more sex partners than women” and what the surveys show which is that “most men have more sex partners than most women” or “men typically have more sex partners than do women.”

Considering only heterosexual partnerships, the total number of sex partnerships formed by all the men in the world must equal the total number of sex partnerships formed by all the women in the world so the statement “men have, on average, more sex partners than women” can’t be true if we are talking about the entire universe of sexually active persons. However, sex surveys only sample a portion of the universe and they usually focus either on the “general population,” some subset of the “general population” (e.g., sailors, 15-19 year old girls, etc.) or prostitutes. They don’t even attempt to get an unbiased sample of the total population because if they did, the data from prostitutes, who are at an extreme in terms of numbers of sex partners per unit time, would throw off all their averages unless the prostitutes were represented in the sample precisely in proportion to their proportion in the total population. (Example: you sample 500 people of which 50 have 0 sex partners, 250 have 1, 100 have 2, 50 have 3 and the remaining 50 have an average of 5. This averages out to 1.7 partners per person. Now what happens if you include just one very busy prostitute in your sample. Now your most promiscuous 50 are 49 people averaging 5 partners and one person averaging 500 partners. Now the average number of sex partners for the people in your sample is not 1.7 but 2.7! Take home lesson: sampling is important.) You could, of course, include prostitutes in proportion to the proportion of prostitutes in the total population if you knew what that proportion was, but you don’t.

So when people study the “general population” and find that “men have, on average, more sex partners than women” they are under sampling prostitutes. The important thing that they usually find is that it is that the proportion of men who have few (less than 2 per year or less than 3 - 5 lifetime) sex partners is lower than the proportion of women reporting so few partners.

All this points out how dangerous it can be to use measures such “averages” to describe differences between populations. More meaningful in this case is the median. The median number of sex partners for men is higher than the median for women. Better yet, when comparing numbers of sex partners reported by men and women, one should report the proportion of each sex with 0, 1, 2, 3-5, 5-10, and over 10 sex partners (or some similar breakdown) to really get a good picture of the male-female difference.

And yes, men tend to exaggerate and women tend to minimize. Anyone doing sex behavior surveys knows this and takes it into account.

10

Say you had a population with two men and ten women.

Each of the two men has sex with each of the ten women.

Select your sample based on an equal number of men and women.

Each of the men in your sample would have had ten partners. Each of the women would have had two partners.

No big whoop. While the number of congressional acts would be equal (discounting intra-gender relationships, farm animals, inflateables, and other inanimate objects), the number of partners per gender need not be.

There also need not be the same number of apples and oranges in a fruit basket.

Perhaps there really are three kinds of lies.

11

It also depends what is meant by “average.” Are we talking mean, median, or mode?

Are you saying there is a correlation between Congress and sex? :slight_smile:

12

Because of the ratio of men and women in the general population, so even if everybody was humping everybody, the average woman would only have 49 partners and the average man would have had 51. Which one is more promiscuous? I dunno. Does it matter?

13

You must also remember that these surveys track the number of sex partners one has in a lifetime. Consider that half of all men cheat on their wives and a quarter of all women cheat on their husbands. This might explain a little bit.

14

tbea: your theory would be correct IF sex ratios were that skewed in the general population. However, the correct ratio is not 1:5, but 49:51. And these surveys typically report that heterosexual males have two or three times the number of sexual partners that heterosexual women do. The only answer is that the samples are not representative. And the probable source of the bias is that female sex workers are under-represented and typically don’t keep accurate records anyway.

15

It could also be that males are more likely to admit (or even exaggerate) having a large number of sexual partners. I’m not sure if they compensate for this effect when they analyze survey results.

16

I noticed the same thing once in a survey, but it specifically said measured the number of sexual partners “in the course of their lives”. So if the men have just rampant necrophilia that could skew the numbers.

The rest of you can look it up when you get home.

17

I just read in the SJMN, strangely enough, that the average female prostitute had over 600 male partners a year. Considering the number of rostitutes out there, it would seem to indicate the discrepencacies.

18

NO NO NO! The real population of men and women does not have ten women to each two men. It’s roughly equal. In your example, in order to be at all valid, it would have to include eight other men who are not getting laid at all. Or if they are, it doesn’t matter because the average for each gender is the same regardless.

19

Out of left field, but isn’t it possible that some of these studies focus on the median, rather than the average. In that case, the 10 partner men would have a higher “average” than the 5 partner women + the 1/100 who are 600 partner prostitues.

20

Sigh.

OK, say you had 100 men and 100 women.

Fifty of the men have had 10 partners.

Fifty of the men have had only one partner.

Can it be inferred then that 10 women have had 50 partners? (no) How about presuming that for the women partners of the men who have had only one partner, each woman will have also had only one partner? (no) Can we assume that 40 of the women have had no partner? (no)

That’s the only way your premise that the average number of partners between the two sets must be the same can succeed; you would have to exclude interactions between the three groups above. The function between the two sets is not both one-to-one and onto, so the premise fails.