NYTimes: Why do men lie about sex?

STN

sou'wester
well done STN! say what does your name stand for? sexually transmitted... nerd???? :)


If it were, all the world's scientific quandries would have been solved due to a huge proportion of the female population turning into nerds overnight one by one (boom boom).
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
but the mean average does represent the fact that most men reported higher numbers than most females
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
*sigh*
Listen to what we're saying here! There may have been surveys where the mean reported partners was higher for men than for women, but this specific article talks about the median, not the mean. The two are different.

The median of a sample of data is the value which half the sample is above, half below. (Forget what I said earlier about the highest and lowest data points, that's something else I was confusing with the mean.) The median is only the same as the mean for a symmetrical distribution. If, as is fairly likely, the distribution is skewed towards the lower end, so most men have had a few partners while a minority of studs make up a long tail at the high end, then the median can be higher than the mean. Since we're not told the mean, it could be anything - it could be exactly the same as the female mean, for instance. In this case, the different female median would be due to a different-shaped distribution.

Edit: bollocks, I'll get this right eventually...to get a median higher than the mean, you'd need a distribution skewed towards the higher end, i.e. a few men with few partners, and then a larger number with more. Anyway, I'm not a statistician, but the point is, the two values need not be the same.
 
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N

nomadologist

Guest
Ok. I read it again, and then I read this:

http://www.maths.murdoch.edu.au/units/statsnotes/samplestats/medianmore.html

Seems to me that the median is in fact a much better representation of what the "average" respondent said--especially since the "mean" of a given set is usually skewed toward the right. If the median is higher, it's still an indication that more men reported higher numbers. It is *misleading* to talk about median average as if it were the "mean" (which is what most people who read the article probably thought it meant.) You are right.

I see your point, but I don't think the results are "meaningless" because of them. Just not as strikingly off.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
so the point being... men do not necessarily lie more than women in the context of these surveys? that the underreporting is prolly equally contributing to the difference?
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
that's what my theory is--that overreporting is happening more on the male end (could be happening sometimes on the female end too), and underreporting is happening more on the female end.

i wonder if religion has anything to do with it--for example, would a muslim woman underreport and even say 0 if she wasn't a virgin? because of lifelong pressure to stay a virgin until married?
 

zhao

there are no accidents
well of course i would think things like religion makes a huge difference.

would be interesting to do same survey in different countries. for instance a place like japan, where the traditional roles are so polarized (males speaking in growls and grunts, females in wittle baby bird voices)...
 

petergunn

plywood violin
would be interesting to do same survey in different countries. for instance a place like japan, where the traditional roles are so polarized (males speaking in growls and grunts, females in wittle baby bird voices)...

a friend once gave me a box of japanese porno tapes...
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
japanese porn is so inventively fetishistic. it makes american porn seem really lame.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
i... see...

not that your point isn't clear... but could you maybe elaborate a bit?
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
american porn is all about the most obvious, boring kinds of fetishes (T+A). japanese people aren't afraid to get a lot more abstract with theirs. which is all i think i should probably say about that for the sake of the forum.
 

petergunn

plywood violin
american porn is all about the most obvious, boring kinds of fetishes (T+A). japanese people aren't afraid to get a lot more abstract with theirs. which is all i think i should probably say about that for the sake of the forum.

and they do funny stuff like pixelate out vaginas while showing, say, a girl spray a coffee enema all over the fucking place...
 

zhao

there are no accidents
i read somewhere that a survey of the brothels in japan revealed that "normal" sexual intercourse is much less requested than sexual acts which some or most would consider "deviant".

a fetish is by definition an inanimate object which becomes focus of erotic energy, in place of human contact. the fetishist often cannot derive sexual pleasure without his/her fetish object. so in this sense, it is arguable if T+A, or any other part of the body such as the elbow, is indeed kind of separated from the rest of the person in the mind, enough that they can be "fetishized".

now the question: does repression facilitate an increase of sexual pleasure? i think it can, and does in many ways; but at the same time, maybe we are not equiped to answer this question as we have no proper way to compare -- because we were raised in repressed societies, and have never experienced (presumably) the totally un-inhibited, blissful ideal of sex as nature meant it...
 

ripley

Well-known member
oops :eek: article was not about what i thought it was going to be about...

why don't we do a survey here? oh i guess it would be statistical information about a bunch of music nerd boys and... nomad.

cheers. or did you think I wouldn't participate?
 
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