Sex by numbers: What do we know about the love lives of others?

Cinema and magazines would have us think everyone is having more and better sex than us. So what do we know about people’s sex lives? Suzanne Harrington looks through the keyhole.

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics — so where does that leave statistics dealing with a subject which often attracts enormous amounts of lying? Yes, sex. We are terrible when it comes to talking about sex with any degree of honesty, in case we sound like we are doing it wrong, or worse, not doing it enough.

Not doing it enough is something of a social crime. And statistics are like plasticine — you can bend and shape them to suit almost any outcome.

For instance, what does “having sex” actually mean? Bill Clinton famously declared that oral sex did not mean “having sex.”

Astonishingly, so did 60% of US students. While we all know why Clinton wasn’t keen on classifying oral sex as “having sex”, what is interesting is how so many students supposedly agreed with him. Where did that statistic come from?

It was from a 1991 Kinsey Institute study of around 1,000 students from the University of Indiana, 599 of whom filled in a questionnaire asking what sex meant. Of this 599, 40% thought that oral sex equated to “having sex”.

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This meant that 60% did not. The study was fast-tracked for publication in time for Clinton’s impeachment hearing. Just another example of statistics being manipulated to bolster an outcome, or genuine rock solid research? Well, both. That’s the thing with statistics.

“Statisticians, contrary to popular belief, are also human beings,” writes Cambridge statistics professor David Spiegelhalter in his new book Sex By Numbers: What Statistics Can Tell Us About Sexual Behaviour.

“I am fascinated by the special role that sex plays in our individual lives and society as a whole,” he writes. “Sex occupies a strange boundary between public and private; as President Clinton found out, sex can dominate news headlines, yet (usually) goes on in private.”

Since the first ever sex survey published in 1902 — which looked at masturbation amongst members of the YMCA in London — we have learned all kinds of things about ourselves via such research. From the UK’s Natsal — the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles to the 2006 Irish Study of Sexual Health and Relationships, which weighs in at 351 pages, the gathering of statistics relating to sex remains both bothersome and fascinating.

“What is real? That’s a hard question even in physics,” says Ronan Conroy, professor of biostatistics at the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland and one of the authors of the 2006 Irish study.

“What we admit to one another, what we admit to a stranger, what we admit to ourselves varies greatly and depends on a great many things.” These might include cultural context, how we construe consent, or what we regard as appropriate and inappropriate — there is never a definitive answer.

“It’s like trying to count mushy peas,” says Professor Conroy. “We try to agree on a methodology that works, and then stick to it. But it’s a black art. All of sex is problematic —sex and sexuality is a battle zone to define what is normal and acceptable. But there is no normal. Freud’s essay on sex says that there is no biological way of telling the difference between normal and abnormal — the boundary is completely arbitrary, and policed only by disgust. When it comes to sexual research, there is no neutral.”

Or as Professor Spiegelhalter asks, “Am I having too much? Not enough? With the right person? Did I start early, or late? Are my experiences different? Are they really different?”

Not that sex is just a bedroom thing: “Our sexual behaviour has a profound effect on how we live our lives: how society views you, whom you marry, whether you stay together, your health, whether you have children — all of these are shaped by sex. We are right to be curious.”

And everyone wants to know. Demographers want to know how many babies will be born; health professionals want to know which diseases will be sexually transmitted; psychologists want to know about levels of sexual satisfaction; psychiatrists want to treat sexual disorders; and pharmaceutical companies want to market treatments for a raft of newly- discovered “conditions” like sexual dysmorphic disorder.

The rest of us want to know because we are fascinated by sexuality, both our own and everyone else’s.

But back to the nitty gritty. The gathering of sexual statistics and data can only ever be achieved second hand. Orally, as it were. CCTV installed in selected bedrooms, says Professor Spiegelhalter, would be “staggeringly dull”, and miss out moments of passion “in the shower or the shed”.

Head-cams would attract exhibitionists. (“Think of Big Brother”). Instead, Spiegelhalter offers a star rating system of reliability when it comes to sex and statistics.

Four star “numbers we can believe” include hard data from hospitals, town halls etc, such as the peak rate for divorce being seven years after marriage, and for every 20 girls born, there are 21 boys.

Three star “numbers that are reasonably accurate” are from “good surveys” like Natsal, which tell us that the age of women having sex for the first time dropped from 19 for those born around 1940 to 16 for those born around 1980, or that the average opposite sex couple aged between 16 to 44 had sex three times in the last four weeks.

Two star “numbers that could be out by quite a long way” include the famous Kinsey Report, which collated the sex lives of 15,000 Americans in the 1940s. These people were not from a random sampling, but were carefully selected, and the results were often “unreliable”.

Some of Kinsey’s findings included the following: that 70% of men had sex with prostitutes, 17% of men brought up on farms had sex with farm animals, and 50% of husbands had extra-marital sex.

One star “numbers that are unreliable” are, says Spiegelhalter, “so biased as to be essentially useless” statistically, even if “they do portray valid and vivid experiences”.

He cites the 1978 Hite Report on Male Sexuality as an example, which includes figures such as “84% of women were unsatisfied with their relationships” and “95% reported forms of emotional and psychological harassment from their men”.

And finally, there are zero stars, or “numbers that have just been made up”. These ‘statistics’ might come from radio phone-ins or discussions down the pub. The most famous one, says Spiegelhalter, is that “men think about sex every seven seconds.”

They do not. Nor is the average amount of time spent kissing in a lifetime 20,160 minutes.

However, 55% of the US Senate agreed Bill Clinton did not have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. That statistic is not made up. Go figure.

Sex By Numbers: What Statistics Can Tell Us About Sexual Behaviour by David Spiegelhalter (Profile Books / Wellcome Trust £12.99)

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How and to whom do people talk about sex?

Eithne Bacuzzi, Relationships Ireland psychosexual therapist, shares her views: “The courage to seek help for sexual difficulties is enormous. Even in today’s society sexual problems can carry a certain stigma. A clinician who asks questions will detect twice as many sexual problems as one who waits for the client to raise the subject.

“The initial part of the therapy is crucial as clients have defined themselves by their sexual issues and often the subject is all consuming for them. At the beginning, there is a tendency to catastrophise, but that changes as they get into therapy.

“I think that individuals find it a little easier [than couples], as couples fear admitting maybe not enjoying sex, or maybe never having had an orgasm, or fear upsetting their partner, or not wanting to be more specific, and blaming as a result. That is why initially we see couples as individuals for history-taking. This gives insight into the sensitive aspects of the difficulties. It is almost impossible to get statistics, as many people go through life unable to face seeking help. There is a lot of shame and secrecy for these people, and some of my clients would have waited six or seven years to admit [to seek help].

“Also there is secrecy around not reaching orgasm and faking it. Males often avoid relationships because of erectile issues. These are just the people who have the courage to seek us out for help. When they do, and without exception, the feedback is excellent and each person articulates the regret of not having done so sooner.”

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