What it suggests to me, assuming that the numbers in the CDC study were reported accurately by the participants, is that having a relatively large number of sexual partners over the the course of one’s life is more common for men than it is for women.
In the cite I gave, by the time that Americans are in their early 40s, over half (53%) of women have had no more than 4 different partners, while almost 2/3 of men (63%) have had 5 or more different partners.
Good point; I’m not sure that that would account for all of the difference, but it would make sense that it’s a contributing factor.
The number itself is pretty meaningless. The reasons a person chooses to have sex or not at any particular opportunity can say a lot about them, but you have to have a real conversation to suss that out.
And median is absolutely the right way to think about issues like this.
To take an extreme example: If almost all women have a single partner, and a few (perhaps sex workers) have thousands, the mean might be several partners per women. But the median is 1. And that’s the number most women will be comparing themselves to, as well, to the extent they think about the numbers at all.
And it seems weird to consider a difference of 1 or 2 in the median values as making the higher value “relatively large”. I mean, sure, arithmetically speaking 5 and 6 are indeed larger numbers than 4, but when considered in light of the feasible range, they seem like “about the same number” in informal terms.
I guess really we’d need to see the standard deviations as well as the median values on these variables to understand them better.
When I was in college, there were a couple of girls I had sex with who qualified as “sluts” (aa woman who has many casual sexual partners), i.e. one of them had a well-earned reputation for blowing guys and the other had sex with like five guys in my fraternity. So technically I think that qualifies.
Now the real question is should such behavior be treated as “offensive” (slut, after all, is a derogatory term). Probably not. Although I don’t suppose that would make either of them “girlfriend” material.
Guess I am the “weirdo” here but that is okay with me. Met my wife back in the 70’s in high school and while we, meaning she, did not rush into sex she has been my one and only sexual partner. Married in 83 and while the frequency is of course lower as we age it most certainly has not disappeared. Boring sexual life? I guess it depends on how you look at things. I knew I never had to worry about who I could hook up with on my weekends when I was off. I have always known.
It would be more interesting IMHO to see a sort of histogram, That would be more reflective of diverse sexual lifestyles.
You have INCELS (and I suppose non-involuntary celibates) with zero.
Maybe a lucky (or unlucky) few who meet the love of their life and that’s it (one).
I would expect that most Americans follow a typical pattern of maybe a couple different long partners in high school and college, until they get married in their mid 20s. (3 to 5)
That number might get bumped up to 10 to 20 or more if they had a particularly “wild period” in high school or college or an extended period of singleness their 20s or something.
I think as you get to numbers like 30, 50, 100 or more you start getting into different, somewhat atypical lifestyles:
People who don’t want to settle down and would prefer to just have as much sex as possible
Or who do want to settle down but can’t or won’t maintain a relationship for more than a few weeks
More than that, I think you are starting to get into celebrity territory or people who make sex a disproportionate (perhaps unhealthy) part of their life.
No, I’m wondering why we still use offensive terms to describe a woman with lots of sexual partners. I mean I can guess why. I’m saying we probably shouldn’t.
Back to the actual question in the OP - I would say a reasonable number of sexual partners is completely dependent on your own personal value system. Nothing more, nothing less.
Some people consider even a moderate number to be “slutty”. Some people will say that is “slut shaming” and that is a bad thing, that these people are instead “sex positive”. Both are valid, for a particular individual’s value system. So, your definition of “reasonable” is different than mine, and should be.
I would also say that the mathematical discussions need to include the “Bill Gates/Jeff Bezos” effect that we see when we talk about wealth. Namely that any discussion of mean or average can be skewed by outliers. Saying that the “average” for high school males is 3 sexual partners could mean there are ~10,000 virgins, and ~10 “players” (bad example, but you get the picture).
That’s why median is a better number than mean. When Bill Gates walks into a bar, and a random person walks out, the median income either stays the same or increases slightly. (Depending on whether the one who walked out had an income above or below the median.)
And the risk in THAT discussion is that the “average” (in the colloquial sense) person does not have a strong grasp on the statistical definitions and distinctions between Average vs. Mean vs. Median. So when the OP quotes Averages, the man on the street doesn’t dig into the numbers and definitions.
