BY Lux Alptraum
June 25, 2007
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This just in: the CDC recently released a report chock full of interesting statistics about sex, drugs, and the personal lives of American adults. Drawing from self-reported data collected between 1999 and 2002, the report has a whole lot of statistics likely to be taken out of context and thrown about in debates over the course of the next few months (for example: 96% of adults have had sex! Men report having more partners than women do! Get ready for the onslaught.).

While the report does have a lot of interesting information, and is certainly worth reading through (especially if you’re interested in learning, say, what percentage of adults had sex before the age of 15 (16%) and what percentage were still virgins after the age of 21 (15%)), it’s important to remember a few things when paging through its data:

• Self reported data is only as good as its source. While the CDC has taken steps to increase the accuracy of its data (moving from face-to-face interviews to computer-based interviews, in the hope of reducing the urge to pad data to please an interviewer), people still lie. Especially about sex, and how many partners they’ve had. (See also: people forget.)
• Taken out of context, statistics are just numbers. Knowing that 16% of adults had sex before the age of fifteen doesn’t really tell us much: depending on the circumstances, it could be good, bad or neutral. Reducing sexual experience to raw numbers and percentages doesn’t really provide insight on the actual behavior.
• Don’t let the numbers guide your life. Given my earlier piece on virginity, it seems fitting to remark, once again, that sex is a personal decision — that even if 96% of adults have had sex, if those 4% don’t want to or don’t feel ready or simply want to wait, they’re not weird or bad or wrong: they’re just in a different place from most people. The problem with using numbers to “normalize” sexual behavior — to say, for instance, that 5 is the “normal” number of sexual partners for a woman — is that, well, there is no “normal” sexual behavior, no standard. Sex is too personal, too based on individual needs and desires and circumstances, to be able to come up with some scientific formula to rationalize and predict it.

[Photo by mongol]