Advocate Sex Survey Results

I want to comment just a bit on the results of the Advocate's sex survey. The reason I'm commenting just a bit is because, well, they're exactly what one might expect. No real surprised. The only surprise, I'd say, is their choice to emphasize the total answers on each question instead of answers for men and women. For each response, they give the total number of people who checked the box, then how many men did, how many women, and the percentage of all people who gave that response, irrespective of sex. That gives some pretty skewed percentages.

For an example, let's look at question 9: During your lifetime, how many different same-sex partners have you had sex with? These are the percentages:

None: 5.60%
1: 6.95%
2-5: 20.24%
6-10: 12.72%
11-20: 12.18%
21-50: 14.44%
51-100: 9.92%
101-300: 9.58%
More than 300: 8.40%

Aw, how...conservative! The most popular category is 2-5 sex partners. That's not unreasonable at all! I have straight male friends who've had sex with more parters than that. Nearly a third are less-than-fivers. And people say that gay men are promiscuous...

But look at the percentages (they show you raw data, but not the percent) for gay men alone:

None: 4.51%
1: 3.42%
2-5: 14.32%
6-10: 11.46%
11-20: 13.28%
21-50: 17.32%
51-100: 12.50%
101-300: 11.98%
More than 300: 10.76%

The numbers themselves aren't THAT different, but there's a clear skew upwards. The most populated category now is 21-50 (I can only think of two friends who may fall in this category or above, and they ain't straight). Not even a third are less-than-teners. Over 10% have had more than 300 partners! Crazy mo-fos.

I actually wonder what these answers look like for straight people. I mean, given this isn't a scientific survey, but I think the Advocate's readership is probably fairly representative of the gay community. Stick this survey in Maxim, and what are the results? As I mentioned in a recent entry, I have a bit of a Jesus/Solomon complex (the male version of the Madonna/whore complex), and I want to know how Solomony these straight boys actually are.

One more weird result: Over 40% of male respondents said they had their first same-sex sexual experience before they turned 15. 18.75% had their first experience before they turned 12. I don't really know what to make of that. Hmph. Brain dead today.