Sex sells, the old adage goes, so it should come as no surprise that the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles has dominated today’s headlines. Published in the Lancet, the survey – carried out once a decade – asked 15,000 Britons a series of questions about their sex lives.
It has yielded some interesting results. It found that people aged 16-44 are having sex less often than the last time the survey was taken; just under five times a month, compared with figures of 6.2 for men and 6.3 for women in the 2000 survey. Perhaps more significant, though, is what the survey implies about our attitudes to sex. It shows that people – men and women alike – are more relaxed about promiscuity and one night stands. It also found that the numbers believing that same-sex relationships are “not wrong at all” have doubled. The gender gap in sexual partners is closing, too; women have an average of 7.7 partners during their lifetime, compared to 3.7 in the first national survey, carried out in 1990-1. For men, the numbers were 8.6 in the first survey and 11.7 in the latest one. Women are four times more likely to have sex with another woman than they were 20 years ago, and are losing their virginity younger.
Tellingly, respondents were very willing to be open in their responses. Just 3 per cent of participants refused to answer the most intimate questions about their sex lives (compared with one in five who wouldn’t divulge what they earned).
Taken together, these figures suggest an overall liberalisation in our attitudes to sex. (Of course, the results were not universally positive: one in ten women reported forced sexual encounters). Researchers suggest that the increased number of partners for women demonstrates greater emancipation. Professor Kaye Wellings, who worked on the survey, told the BBC that it was linked to the “profound change in the position of women in society, the norms governing their lifestyles and media representations of female sexuality.”
Yet despite this apparent shift, much of the media coverage of the survey has demonstrated that as a society, we still struggle to speak about sexuality in an adult way. The Metro’s story exemplifies the odd combination of salaciousness and moralising which characterises much of the mainstream coverage: “The question ‘how many people have you had sex with’ is one we tend to want to evade when a new partner begins prying into our past. But any worries of appearing promiscuous is failing to stop Britons from sleeping with more and more people, it seems.” BBC Radio 4’s Today programme struck a curiously pejorative tone, when it repeatedly said that women now “admit” to having more sexual partners, as if it is a crime to be confessed. The overall decline in sex has led some papers to speak of a sex “crisis” caused by modern technology, even as others spoke of “bed-hoppingBritain”. Clearly, if sex is under discussion, there has to be a moral panic somewhere, whether it is too much sex or not enough.
The recent political furore over the suggestion that the age of consent be lowered to 15 was another example of our difficulty with having a mature public discussion about sexuality. It appears to be impossible to talk about sex without resorting to a gratuitous “nudge nudge, wink wink”, or alternately, to the idea that sex is something to be ashamed of. Since bedroom habits seem to be evolving beyond this simple binary, the political and media discussion should attempt to catch up.
