How many partners must a woman have had for men to consider her promiscuous?
This article, written by Chiara Atik, was originally posted on HowAboutWe.com.
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Are women who have had five or more partners promiscuous? They are according to AskMen’s Great American Male Survey–an even lower threshold than last year.
Remember how last year we were horrified when 41% of American men surveyed by AskMen said that women become sexually promiscuous after sleeping with 10 men — which at the time was the lowest possible option?
The results of the 2010 survey broke down like this:
At What Point Does A Woman Become Sexually Promiscuous?
Never? 14%
When she sleeps with her 10th partner? 41%
When she sleeps with her 20th partner? 34%
When she sleeps with her 50th partner? 14%
When she sleeps with her 100th partner? 3%
Well, this year, AskMen changed the survey, adding a lower option: When she sleeps with her 5th partner. And, would you believe it, given the lower option, the men surveyed voted that thatwas actually the tipping point into promiscuity.
Let’s think about this for a second:
The average American woman loses her virginity at 17 years old. So that’s one sexual encounter.
So the average 30-year-old American woman will have been sexually active for 13 years. This means that, in addition to the initial sexual encounter, if a woman has sex with 4 partners over the course of 13 years, she’s considered promiscuous. That’s about 1 sexual encounter every three years.
Come on, men! Having sex once every three years does not a promiscuous woman make! We’re still waiting for AskMen to add a question about at which point guys themselves become promiscuous. Never?
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Read a response to this post “At What Point Do Men Consider Me Wanton?”
More from HowAboutWe.com:
10 Things You Shouldn’t Do Till You’re “Exclusive”
Dating Outside Your Comfort Zone: My Date With Amazon Eve, the World’s Tallest Model
6 “Psycho” Things That Women Do That Are Actually Pretty Reasonable
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—Photo Photo Monkey/Flickr
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These questions are really stupid, but if you put a gun to my head and told me to pick a number, I’d say that a woman who has had 100 partners or more is “promiscuous.” But I belong to the school of thought that says there are really only two questions that you’re entitled to ask re: your partner’s sexual history:
a) do you have children?
b) do you have any STDs?
I deserve – and am honor bound to give – honest answers to these questions. Other than that, extensive discussions about sexual histories and “numbers” usually lead to grief IME, and you’re still not even sure if somebody is lying or not. So just concentrate on practicalities.
I think if even a women has had 1 partner, that can be claimed as “promiscuous”. in the school yard, having one sexual partner a girl can be labelled a ‘slut’. in an office, sleep with the boss and he might be their first, second or their ever partner and they can be labelled as a ‘slut’.
I think it is definitely a label based around number of partners but also on certain situations. Basically, women are mean when it comes to other women, perhaps because of jealousy or plain out bullying.
Men do have it easier with these labels though, thats for sure.
- tork
dad blog
Well to be fair, the survey said how many sexual partners…not how many times they had sex. The response this article game insinuaded that from 17 to 30 a woman had sex a total of 4 times since their first encounter. False. The survey says (no family feud) # of partners, so therefore she has had 4 sex partners over the next 13 years since her first. Now how many times she had sex with those individual partners is unknown, but if any of them were boyfriends I’d say quite a bit.
Exactly, think about the details before you slash a male survey. I agree with this, I mean who says your perspective is right?<@author I believe 5 is a lot, us as humans are and have learn and most believe casual sex is okay, but is it? I am morally offended by it personally, and i have no religious beliefs that mold my morals either. and look at what comes from it, diseases like aids and other stds. Obviously there is a problem here with all humans. I live by a standard much less then 5 as myself am, however this is by choice. Anyone can go out and get laid, but that doesn't mean because you can and want to that its right. Just think about it.
I think part of the problem is that this question allows the person answering too much leeway in interpreting the scope of time involved. Someone in their 20′s may be thinking about the women they meet. So a 21 year old with more than 5 is seen as promiscuous. Whereas a 35 year old would have no problem with a woman that has never been married and has had 15 partners.
So maybe the question should be posed more in terms of a rate, like averaging 1 per year.
However, promiscuous or not, high numbers start to paint a certain picture regarding commitment. It could even be seen as evidence that something ain’t right and they have so many relationships not because they are promiscuous or afraid of commitment, but because they are nucking futs or a raving biotch so no relationship lasts very long because the man runs after a couple months. That negative view may subliminally cause some people to pick a lower number as simply being a bad sign, not specifically promiscuous.
C’mon guys, even a token amount of introspection should be enough for you to admit that ‘promiscuous’ has nothing to do with the woman and everything to do with YOUR confidence in YOUR ability to satisfy her. That most men chose the lowest number is proof that male insecurity about their ability to impress is just as epidemic as female insecurity about their ability to attract.
Every man who calls a woman a ‘slut’ is equivalent to an obese woman who calls every healthy woman ‘anorexic.’
The study’s fucking useless unless there is context involved, including the age of the respondents.
This is a question I associate with very young men. The fact that it’s asking about absolute numbers, not numbers over a time period, suggests to me that this is a question asked by men who are just becoming sexually active, asking about women who are just becoming sexually active. When looking at the life history of an 18-year old, the number of sex partners could conceivably say something about a person’s personality. When you’re 35 and dating 35 year old women, this question seems pretty immature, like wondering what a 35 year old divorced lawyer and mother of two got on her SAT’s. A 40-year old woman who has lost count of the number is not necessarily all that promiscuous. After a while, even if the number is pretty low, there’s less interest in keeping track.
of course they are cause they are usually lying lol they lye low so they won’t seem like whores trust me i’ve gotten girls to tell me the truth and they start having sex young
Well then, in that case I consider every men with less than 500 partners still an inexperienced, boring, useless virgin who should stick his cock into pies not vaginas.
They had to have understood the question to include the caveat “at the same time.”. In that case, I prefer the term “precocious”.
It’s the quality of the relationship, or lack of, that goes with the sex that matters. So to leave out context is inexplicable. The poll has to accurately measure what it purports to measure. Promiscuity with women carries a very charged moral judgment with it that makes it very hard to extrapolate anything useful from a discussion arranged in this manner. Unless they were just trying to maniplate some shocking result for discussion.
The fact that this question is being posed against women only really says a lot. And your argument “defending” higher numbers “not being too big of an issue” is a veiled sexist cop out. If it were asked of men, there would be no formal number considered too high to call him a slut or “promiscuous”- the term you intend while insinuating the former.