How many partners are too many, how many are enough, and other doing-it anxieties While promoting his new book Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America, writer Peter Biskind shook the internet by reporting that the 72-year-old actor has slept with “12,775 women, give or take, a figure that does not include daytime quickies, drive-bys, casual gropings, stolen kisses and so on.” Beatty’s lawyer has since called the book “rubbish” and refuted the number, but the Beatty number-awe (twelve thousand?) galvanized me to conduct an entirely casual poll about sex-partner numbers and what they mean. (Only seven guys wrote me back, while a shit-tonne of girls did; most respondents had more than 30 or less than 10 partners. I can say decisively that we’re not entirely “over it.”) A sampling:Friend One, a girl, says: “It’s either 38, 39 or 40. Being a queer makes it more complicated to determine than I imagine it is for a totally heterosexually normative vanilla person.... I am entering a new chapter of my sex life wherein I am about to get a lot more kinky/fetishy. That kind of stuff would not be possible had I only fucked a few people.... diversity of bodies and fucking styles expands your horizons and abilities.”Friend Two, girl, has done it with seven people. “That is full-on intercourse. I can never understand people who ‘count’ a blowjob as having sex. Or people who say that oral sex is more intimate than intercourse.”Friend Three reports more than 120, the highest of my survey, though I personally know a guy (OK, I personally fucked a guy) who’s done it with way, way more people. “I’m pretty sure it’s fairly accurate…. I think the number’s high, but a girl’s gotta have a hobby. And I have no regrets.”Friend Four, a dude, has fucked five people, and considers it low given his age (28) and “recreational habits” (bar-based). “It seems quite a bit lower than most of my friends and at the very least, is personally unsatisfactory. Four of these people were women with whom I was in a relationship.” Friend Five stopped counting at 35. “I used to keep a list but it got depressing so I stopped. I think it’s a high number. I’ve talked to other girls who had similar numbers so I know I’m not a statistical outlier. At least half were shitty, drunken one-night stands.” Notably, Friend Five doesn’t include women, because “that’s a separate list.”Friend Six, a girl, says “I lost count because I realized I couldn’t remember names and junk anymore. Never lied about it because I never saw the point of such a thing and I always knew if a dude had an issue with how many people I had slept with, he was not for me.” (Her husband high-fived her after their only numbers talk.)Friend Seven, a dude, reports 32 partners, 23 of which involved intercourse. He says “If we’re naked and getting each other off, then we’re doing it.”Friend Eight, a lady, is at 76. “For a while I wrote them all down. I used to wonder if there was a magic number that defined a slut…. Eventually I realized that being a ‘slut’ was more about whether you treated yourself with respect than it was about a number.”Friend Nine, a girl, feels like her number, 30, (calculated via “penis in vagina”) is high. “Never really ‘lied’ but have been completely evasive…. I still have some friends who are judgey about it, but that’s their problem, not mine.”
THE SEX INDEXCompiled by Michael Cranston17: Average age Canadians lost their virginity, according to Durex7: The median number of sexual partners reported by American men according to the US National Center for Health Statistics4: The median number of sexual partners reported by American women according to the US National Center for Health Statistics10.6: Average number of sexual partners for Canadians, according to Durex12: The ideal number of people both men and women want to have slept with, according to The Twelve Bonk Rule10: The number of sexual partners for a woman that 40 per cent of men consider “too many,” according to www.bestandworst.com2,000: World gangbang record set by Sabrina Johnson after having vaginal, oral and anal sex during a two-day event8,000: The number of women hotel porter Umberto Billo is reported to have had sex with, earning him Maxim’s “#1 Living Sex Legend” title20,000: The number of women Wilt Chamberlain is reported to have had sex with49: Percentage of Canadians that have had unprotected sex, according to Durex50: Number of lovers Whoopi Goldberg said she’d had when defending France’s first lady Carla Bruni30: The number of lovers Carla Bruni is reported to have had649,716: Number of indirect sexual partners you’ve had if you’ve slept with 10 people by age 25, according to Lloyd’s Pharmacy500: The number of people in the world’s largest orgy, held in Japan40: US dollars it costs for the accompanying DVD, titled “500 People Sex!!”Follow @EYEWEEKLY on Twitter.
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