Everyone knows that: “women want sex less and are less promisuous than men – and men all want sex all the time and with anyone available”.

It’s a standard assumption about male and female sexuality in western society.  It is also untrue.  When you work in my industry your come to realise fairly quickly that most of what society tells you about sex and other people is wrong – you probably felt that it didn’t apply to you anyway, but there is always the suspicion that you might be the odd one out.

Well, thanks to science we have a chance to look beyond the assumptions, beyond the religious dogma, indoctrination, and social expectations.

I read two different articles recently – linked below.  One of them explained that when women answered questions about their sexual history and experience more honestly (when they didn’t feel a social pressure to give “acceptable” answers and thought that lying would be detected) they reported having, on average, 4.4 sexual partners in their lifetime.  Men on the other hand reported only 4.0 partners on average.

This turn our normal perception of men as sexually promiscuous and women as sexually conservative on its head.  Continue reading →