Sex American Style: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

​Size appears to matter:

• Penises come in all shapes and sizes, with the smallest erect penis about 1.6-inches long and the largest about 10.2-inches long.
• The average American erect penis length was 6-inches long and 5-inches around.
• Twenty-seven percent of women ended a relationship due, in part, to a mismatch between their penis size preference and their partner’s penis size.
• Women’s preferences for penis size were slightly larger than the average male.
• Women tend to misremember their partner’s penis sizes as more minor than they are.

​In the ‘just the facts category,’ there are some thought-provoking items:

• About 5.6% of United States adults identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or something other than straight or heterosexual (LGBTQ), and that percentage is steadily rising.
• LGBTQ people were more likely to report open relationships and non-consensual non-monogamy.
• About 1.7% of the United States population had no attraction to anyone (asexual).
• About 1.8% of sexually active people said they had bondage, discipline, sadism, or masochism (BDSM) sex in the previous year.
• About 1.4 million people in the United States are transgender.
• Males and females lose their virginity on average about the same age - at 17 years old.
• For men only, having had more sex partners in their lifetime was correlated with lower sexual satisfaction.
• Frequent kissing or cuddling predicted happiness in the relationship for men but not for women.
• Half of Christians say casual sex is sometimes or always acceptable.
• The average number of lifetime sexual partners for adults in the United States was 7.2.
• People in Louisiana averaged nearly six times as many lifetime sexual partners (at about 16) as the lowest state, Utah, at about 2.6.

​The bad and the ugly include:

• Sexual dissatisfaction is associated with an increased risk of divorce and relationship dissolution.
• There are about 1 million prostitutes in the United States.
• About 15% of adult American men have had sex with a prostitute.
• 1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of rape in her lifetime, with about 14.8% completed and 2.8% attempted.
• About 3% of American men—or 1 in 33—have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.
• About 1 in 9 girls and 1 in 53 boys experienced sexual abuse or assault as minors.
• In 88% of the sexual abuse claims, the perpetrator was male; in 9% of cases, they were female, and 3% were unknown.
• More than one million people have HIV in the United States, with one in five unaware of their infection.
• Erectile dysfunction (impotence) is the inability to get and keep an erection firm enough for sex and affects about 30 million men in the United States.

​It is often about the finish:

• About 46% of women said they always or nearly always had an orgasm when having intercourse, with only 6% of women reporting consistently having an orgasm.
• About 9% of women reported never having had an orgasm from intercourse.
• Up to 15% of women have never had an orgasm.
• Adults using a condom for intercourse rated the sex as positively in terms of arousal, pleasure, and orgasm as without one.
• About one in three men experience premature ejaculation, defined as when a man always or nearly always ejaculates within one minute of penetration.
• Men are more likely to orgasm when sex includes vaginal intercourse, while women are more likely to orgasm when they engage in various sex acts and when oral sex or vaginal intercourse is on the menu.