Did you notice something odd about the figures for young people's sexuality in Ireland, recently published in this newspaper?, asks Kevin Myers
Just 1 per cent said they had had nine sexual partners in their lives; the same percentage - though needless to say, not the same people - said that they had had sex with 11. One per cent had 12 partners, and 1 per cent had 15, but none said they'd had sex with 13 partners; moreover, 4 per cent said they'd had sex with 10.
So much for surveys. For "10" partners is a nice round figure, so 10 is apparently what people answer. And thus the 4 per cent who have had 10 partners stand like Ayers Rock in a plateau of 1 per cent which stretches from nine partners to 15. So all those people gallop through the first nine sexual partners in order to get to 10, at which point they come skidding to a stop; is that it? And just as respondents prefer decimalised sex, they apparently abhor tredecimal sexuality. For as we've seen, no one reported having had sex with 13 partners. Which all in all probably suggests that this was as much a survey about superstition and a preference for nice round numbers as it was about actual practices.
Funnily, enough, no one seems to have acknowledged having sex with 14 partners either - perhaps because that would be an admission that before the most recent sexual partner, one had slept with 13 people: oh, frightful thought. But when it came to admitting to having had 15 partners, the figure was back to 1 per cent again. Yet all of those people must in their pilgrimage to 15 partners must have had sex with 13 - unless they escaped from the figure 12 by having sex with two people simultaneously - and this can often be quite both difficult to arrange, and rather messy too.
There's probably a third factor nudging us away from the actual truth - which is of respondents saying what they think they should say, even anonymously. For when it comes to making sexual disclosures, women still seem to prefer a comfortable untruth to the slightly uncomfortable truth.
Ever since Kinsey, researchers have been puzzled by the discrepancy between men and women about their sex lives: men always seemed to have had more sexual partners than women. Some of this could be accounted for by a busy few women with hearty pelvic appetites. Some by men resorting to prostitutes, which to my mind doesn't really count. But it doesn't explain the difference right across the board. So what does? This. Women lie. Not men. Women.
It has been always assumed that the reason for the survey discrepancy was that men lied and were boastful in their answers. But a recent survey in the US by two women, Michelle Alexander and Terri Fisher, has shown that the opposite is true. For though their survey appeared to be about sex, it was in fact about sexual honesty. Groups of young men and women were asked questions about their sex lives under different conditions. One group was left alone and told their answers would be anonymous. Another group was told that the supervisor in the room would know which person was filling in which form, and so would know their individual answers. A third group was fitted to bogus "lie-detectors" and told if they told an untruth it would immediately register.
The difference in answers was startling. Women who answered anonymously averaged 3.4 partners. For women who thought the supervisor could identify them the average was 2.6 partners. But women who thought they would be outed by the lie detector if they told an untruth admitted to an average of 4.4 partners.
The figure for masturbation was even more startling. The numbers of women who admitted to masturbating leapt more than threefold between the two extreme conditions of supervisor-identification and lie detector. Only a minority of women admitted to masturbating when they thought the supervisor could identify them; more admitted to it when they thought the reply was simply anonymous. But when they were connected to a lie detector, the outcome was a large majority who admitted that they did.
But across the board, no matter what the conditions, men came up with roughly the same answers to questions about sexual partners and masturbation - which suggests either that they consistently lied or consistently told the truth. And girls, I hate to do this to you, but it looks as if the chaps told the truth.
Which probably means that the Irish Times survey of the sexual habits of Irish young people reveals only part of the reality.
For a start, we can be sure that there's no Ayers Rock of sexual partners at the figure 10; that roughly as many people had 13 sexual partners as nine, 12 or 15; and that we can probably increase the number of sexual partners women had had by 30 per cent or more.
But there is this other, larger question. Why do women, even anonymously, lie about their sexual habits? Is it just a matter of laziness, of just going for the nice round figure, as so many respondents in Ireland did? But this doesn't explain why the US survey showed that some women apparently forget that they've resorted to the solitary act - which is surely the kind of thing one would either know or not know.
So why do women tell untruths to others and - more curiously - even to themselves about their sexuality? Ten thousand years of oppression - yes, yes, yes, I know; but my dears, is that a good enough answer?