Let me start by saying this: there are valid reasons to want to know if certain demographic groups are more likely to have a higher number of sexual partners than the rest of their peers. While anyone can get an STI — even someone who only has one sexual partner their whole life — the more partners you have, the more opportunity you have to get exposed to STIs. And while I think that everyone should be given full access to the whole scope of sexual health education and STI prevention strategies, someone who is regularly hitting up the sex parties is more likely to need access to something like, say, PrEP than someone in a monogamous relationship.
So I can’t be too mad at the group of scientists who decided to look at a set of data collected from thousands of English adults above the age of 50 and try to assess what demographic factors might lead someone to have more sex partners than average. (You can see the resulting paper here.)
What I can be mad at is the Yahoo! writers who saw this paragraph:
Younger age, being separated/divorced or single/never married, being a current or former smoker, and drinking alcohol regularly or frequently were independently associated with a higher number of sexual partners in both men and women. Homosexuality in men and bisexuality in women were also associated with a higher number of sexual partners. White ethnicity, regular moderate and vigorous physical activity, and the absence of limiting long-standing illness were independently associated with a higher number of sexual partners in women only, and being in the highest and lowest quintiles of wealth was independently associated with a higher number of sexual partners in men only.
And came back with this headline:
“Sporty and bisexual women have ‘far more’ sexual partners than peers”
I mean are you fucking kidding me.
There are lots of things they could have cherry-picked. Young people are more likely to have sowed their wild oats than their elders. Single and divorced people get around more than the marrieds. Middle class men are less likely to get laid than rich and poor ones. Hell, I’d even have been fine with “White Women: Total Sluts!”
But no, of course not. Instead we get a fixation on the sex lives of bisexual women (and, for some reason “sporty” women). Of course that’s what needs to be focused on.
But let’s go back to the study. Because while I don’t fault the researchers for doing it, I feel like they were, uh, not particularly well equipped to analyze the data once they got it, as some of the conclusions they draw (which I’m mostly going to paraphrase) sound like the ramblings of someone who has never before had sex. (And let’s not even start on the weirdness of trying to extrapolate answers about human sexual behavior writ large from the survey answers of a few thousand Brits who were born before Thatcher came to power.)
For instance: why are white women more likely to have more sexual partners than WOC? Well, according to these researchers, it’s probably because in England, WOC are more likely to be Muslim than white women, and Islam is a sexually conservative religion. Why are “sporty” women (in the study’s parlance, “women engaging in moderate and vigorous physical activity at least weekly”) hooking up with more people? Maybe because they’re less depressed? Or because they’re probably doing team sports that introduce them to people? It does not seem to occur to the researchers that in an English context, women who are white and physically fit are probably deemed more attractive and thus more likely to have an easier time attracting partners if they so desire.
[I feel like I should note here that the study originally had six categories for numbers of sexual partners (0, 1, 2-4, 5-9, 10-19, and 20+) but since there weren’t many people in the 0 or 20+ categories, they collapsed it to four groups (0-1, 2-4, 5-9, 10+). Make of that what you will. It is certainly making me feel like the people in my life are not representative of the world at large — or, perhaps, like the people in this study aren’t. IDK.]
Okay, let’s get to bisexual women, though. What is the study’s grand conclusion about the sex lives of my people?
” [W]omen who were bisexual had a higher number of lifetime sexual partners than those who were heterosexual. A plausible explanation for this finding is elusive and further research is needed.”
Look I’m going to say what we’re all thinking: if you’re this bad at figuring out why people get laid more maybe you shouldn’t be doing this study. Also, really, that vague statement is what gets bi women Chief Slut Status?
I’ll be honest: I’m not actually surprised that bi women are more likely to have more sexual partners than straight women. One’s sexual history is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Bi women get told that we’re sluts, which (for many, though certainly not all of us!) means we have less incentive to try to be “good girls” — if the world has already given you the scarlet S, you might as well have some fun, right?
Furthermore, when your partners buy into stereotypes about bi womanhood — when they assume that you are a slut, when they assume that you are sexually adventurous, when they assume you want threesomes, when they assume you can’t be monogamous — they are more likely to either a) support you in those pursuits (if they are in fact things you want) or b) pressure you into doing them (if they are not). Or you may feel like this is what you, as a bi woman, are “supposed” to be doing.
There are many possibilities, but it all comes down to social norms. Straight women face a lot more expectation to be sexually pure than bi women do. Of course bi women are going to be more likely to get around.
Especially when we’re defining getting around as 10+ partners.
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