This post is interesting. I’m certainly open to the idea that we can’t extrapolate our findings about insects too broadly to humans, and there is increasing evidence that girls can be just as promiscuous as boys, given the right social prompts.
What’s really mind-blowing, though, is the comments section, and the near-unanimous consensus that the rubes reporting 4 (for women) and 7 (for men) lifetime sexual partners must be either lying or hopeless prudes, because all the hipsters joining the discussion seem to have hit the double digits while still in high school.
Some sample comments (from the “clean” ones):
“I think they meant to say “Memorial Day weekend” instead of “lifetime”. Typo! ”
“LOL. I always wonder about me and my friends when I read those studies because I don’t know a single person – male or female – who have had fewer than 10 sexual partners. Most of my friends have 20+ sexual partners and we’re in our 20s so either we’re an extremely promiscuous bunch who is having sex for the rest of the country or the subjects of these studies are lying.”
“In NZ, the average age for girls is 15, and boys is 17, I believe. Also, I have heard of another study, that claims average no of partners for men is 8, and for women is 20. I’m going with culture, FTW!”
“an average of four in their lifetime? i had four this MONTH! aaugh! ”
Does anybody know – are the Amish accepting converts?
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Andrea adds: Actually, Rebecca, some of the Hawaiian Islands are uninhabited. No need to convert, and you could still use electricity and other modern amenities.








If the person quoted doesn’t know a single person with fewer than ten sexual partners, that means their friends are all talking to them about how many people they’ve slept with. Ewww, TMI. I think it’s so icky when people do that.
Beside all the obvious issues with what these kids are writing the thing that kills me the most is the tint of celebration about the large number of people teens are having sex with. It makes me so sad that the number of partners one may have is something to brag about. There is a huge number of teens who have been lied to by society. It is definitely our job as Christians to try and straighten that out! Thanks for the post.
Don’t get too upset; what this means is that there must be a whole lot of people who have very few sex partners, if it brings down the average so much.
The modern attitude towards sex blows me away and I am not very comfortable with it. My first and last sexual encounter was with my wife of nearly 40 years that I lost to cancer in 1999. I liked the old version of morals better than todays were sex seems to be a recreational activity.
I was going to post about this myself, questioning how it’s possible that ‘on average’ men and women have had different numbers of sex partners. Even if there are a few girls who are sleeping with hundreds of guys, won’t M/F overall rates equal out? Or is there some weird math here that I don’t understand.
I do remember a long-ish while back that one of these studies discussing the average age of sexual initiation excluded those who were not sexually active before marriage.
I guess another possibility is that gays are being included, and gay men particularly, tend to have large numbers of sexual partners.
I just read the article, and it discusses the ‘how can the women’s and men’s numbers be different?’ thing I mentioned. They attribute it to reporting differences between men and women. Men tend to exaggerate up, and women tend to exaggerate down – both very believable explanations.
“He who loves one woman has loved them all. He who loves many has loved none.” – I don’t remember who said that.
“A man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” I do know who said that. But I like Matthew’s too.