According to an article on Yahoo, researchers may have finally figured out the reason for the discrepancy between the number of sex partners men have in their lifetime and the number of sex partners women have. The new discovery, they say, is due to the fact that in nearly all of these surveys, female prostitutes were not taken into account.

The inference being is that if you added up the number of partners for both sexes taking into account female prostitutes, that the high numbers for men and the relatively low numbers for women would even out.

Okay, I gotta say it.Bullshit.

Well, sure, this might even it out *some*, but I know lots of guys who have had MANY MANY partners, and very few (if any at all) of those partners were prostitutes.

I’ll tell you the reason, and I don’t even have to be a fancy researcher to figure it out: men and women both lie. Men will say more, and women will ALWAYS say less. Because men WANT to be thought of as experienced, and women don’t.

Now, the women have good reason for not wanting to be thought of this way, in defense of my gender. Even some of my closest male friends in their late twenties and early thirties, reasonably well adjusted men mind you, feel uncomfortable with the idea that a woman they are with may have had a lot of sex partners. Most of them just won’t ask, and will prefer it if she doesn’t offer that information. They don’t mind if she ACTS like a slut in bed, mind you – they just don’t want to think she IS a slut.

How many partners does it take to become a slut? Really? Is twenty too many? Thirty? Is there some kind of magical number that, once reached, will turn a woman from a desirable person into an unlovable slut?

Here’s my thinking: if I could just find out that magical number, when I reach it, I could start rolling the numbers back from then on. Like if the number is 30, with my 31st partner, I’d actually subtract one from my “list”, until I was back down to five or so. I could be the most lovable 40 year old out there! Because you know all those other slutty 40 year old women out there would have had WAY more than my insignificant and decorous five partners.

Grump. I hate double standards.