The Playboy Readers' Sex Survey

part three

do bisexuals really double their chances of getting a date on Saturday night? as with most questions brought up in this chapter, the answer is yes and no

In January 1982, Playboy published a 133-item questionnaire that asked its readers to report on their sexual habits, attitudes and identities. More than 100,000 readers responded. We tabulated the results and ran an introductory article about them in our January 1983 issue.

We followed that in our March issue with an article that explored the effects of marital status on sexuality. We discovered significant differences in the sex lives of various groups: Single people differ from marrieds; marrieds differ from unmarried couples; people who live together differ from steady couples who haven't set up housekeeping. In that article, we reported that many social stereotypes about sex have been exploded by the sexual revolution, while some time-honored clichés still hold sway--with allowances for recent change.

This month, we turn to the world of sexual identity--possibly the most important factor in determining the differences in our changing sexual styles.

In the first two articles in this series, we reported that the men and women we surveyed are surprisingly similar in their sexual behaviors and attitudes. But in addition to setting up male-female comparisons, we asked each respondent to tell us his or her sexual identity. That question brought forth some fascinating information. It also led to some fervent discussions at Playboy regarding heterosexuals, homosexuals and bisexuals. We're about to bring you into those discussions.

Are gay men more promiscuous than straights? Should homosexual men and women be lumped together, as they have been for so long? Is it true, to paraphrase Woody Allen, that being bisexual doubles your chances of getting a date on Saturday night?

We'll be talking in detail about sexual identities, secret and otherwise--about sexual supermen and sexual Clark Kents. We'll compare the heterosexuals we surveyed with the rest as we go along. You can make your own decisions.

Homosexuals and bisexuals make up a small part of our sample, but they are better represented here than in any other recent study. There are 1179 homosexuals--932 gay men and 247 lesbians--in our sample. There are 2786 bisexual men and 948 bisexual women. Compare those numbers with previous studies: For their report Homosexuality in Perspective, Masters and Johnson studied 176 homosexual men and women, as well as six men and six women they called ambisexual. Shere Hite based her research on homosexuality on some 800 gay men and 144 lesbians. Bell, Weinberg and Hammersmith's fine 1981 report, Sexual Preference, was based on 979 gay men and lesbians and 477 straights in the San Francisco Bay Area. Playboy's respondents come from all parts of the country. They represent every political, occupational and sexual persuasion. In addition, since their numbers are significant, we can use percentages to compare the gays and the bi's in our survey with the straights. Then we can draw relevant conclusions from what they've told us.

It's worth noting that the terms heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual ought to be used as adjectives, not as labels. There's a whole spectrum to sexuality; contemporary sex is too colorful to be thought of as a three-position game. At the conclusion of this article, we'll take a close look at what's called the Kinsey scale. It's the best representation we have of that sexual spectrum. For now, let's just say that when you call someone a homosexual it's like calling him a left-hander. It's only part of what he is. We will occasionally bow to popular usage by using the terms as nouns. But we're referring to behavior, not to people. We've learned from this project that how people describe themselves is more important than how the world labels them.

Many sociologists believe that sexual behavior depends more on gender (whether you're a man or a woman) than on sexual identity (whether you're straight, gay or bi). That makes a kind of sense. You don't have to be Alex Comfort to know that a gay man's equipment is a lot more like a straight man's than like any woman's. But some take the idea even beyond behavior.

In 1981, in an article titled "What Homosexuals Want in Relationships," Letitia Anne Peplau wrote, "Whether one is a man or a woman has more to do with attitudes toward intimacy than sexual orientation does." There's some support for that in our study. We've certainly found it true for some attitudes people have about relationships. The women in our survey, for instance, generally feel that they communicate with their partners effectively. Fewer men think they do. Men of all orientations value good looks in a potential partner more than women do. Women--whether straight, bi or lesbian--are more likely than men to think sex outside a steady relationship will have dire consequences on the relationship. The women who answered our questionnaire value sexual fidelity more than the men do.

However, our results indicate a somewhat different over-all conclusion from the one at which Peplau arrived. There are striking differences between the behaviors and attitudes of gay men and lesbians. There are striking differences between those of bisexual men and bisexual women. But we found that straights--male and female alike--tend to congregate near the middle of the road. They're more traditional, more conservative, less likely to be sexual adventurers. They're in surprising agreement about sexual matters. So much so, in fact, as to throw suspicion on the theory that gender is what determines sexual attitudes and practices. Our conclusion is that sexual identity may be as important as any factor in understanding people's sexual lives.

We're going to examine those differences in behaviors and attitudes and see how sexual identity influences the lives of our respondents. We'll discuss gay men and lesbians later. First, let's go directly to the thick of things--where there may be more action than anywhere else.

Bisexuals: Boys and Girls together?

Bisexuality, as a concept, is as clear and useful as Jimmy Carter's foreign policy was. What does it mean? Is a person who has slept with at least one man and one woman a bisexual? If so, most of the gays out there are really bi's. Does a bisexual have to sleep with equal numbers of men and women? Then hardly anyone qualifies.

It is a strange and cloudy term. It overlaps other categories. A great many social scientists would just as soon do without it.

So what do we make of the 2786 men and the 948 women in our survey who call themselves bisexuals? Are they sexual half-breeds or just people who like to keep their options open?

In the first place, pure half-and-half bisexuality is very rare. The bisexuals tell us that they usually have sex with members of the opposite sex. Only occasionally do they have homosexual encounters. In fact, more than a third of them are married. Maybe the best way to characterize them is to say that there's a lot of fluidity in their behavior.

However infrequently they have it, most want gay sex to be an ongoing part of their lives. Only 16 percent of the bisexual men say their current experience is primarily gay. But 63 percent say they sometimes, or at least rarely, engage in gay sex. Twelve percent of the bi women say that their current experience is primarily lesbian. But 61 percent sometimes, or at least rarely, have lesbian sex. So not only do bisexuals want to keep their options open, most of them do so.

Does that mean Woody Allen had the right idea? Our answer must be a ringing "Sort of." Bi women do seem to double their chances. Bi men don't. More on that later.

The bisexual males we surveyed average 32 years of age. The bi females average 26. As we noted, there are more bi's than homosexuals among our respondents. There are many fewer bi's than straights. Most of the bisexuals, like the rest of the Playboy respondents, are a little better educated and a little more affluent than the norm.

Like all our other groups, they think love is life's main ingredient. We asked each respondent to list the things that are most crucial to his or her personal happiness. Fifty-one percent of the bi women and 31 percent of the bi men put love first. It's the top response overall among bisexuals, but it's not as strong a first choice for bi's as for our straight respondents. Bi men and women tend to value sex a little more highly than the other groups. They're close to straights in considering family life extremely important. Twenty-three percent of the bi men say that family life is their top priority, compared with 26 percent of the heterosexual men. Twenty-one percent of the bi women put family life at the top of the list, compared with 22 percent of the heterosexual women. (A smaller percentage of gay men and lesbians value family life so highly.)

Most of the bisexuals are active in both straight and gay sex. At the same time, 19 percent of the males and 18 percent of the females report no homosexual experience as adults. So why don't they say they're straight? Sometimes, such people are called ideological bisexuals: They believe that they are inherently bisexual but haven't had the chance to prove it yet.

In some ways, bisexuals seem to have staked out a middle ground between straights and homosexuals. That's the territory most people set aside for them. There's some support in our data for such a view. We'll look at the statistics shortly, but here are some generalities:

The bi's we surveyed have more adolescent homosexual experience than the straights. They have less, overall, than the gay men and the lesbians.

Bi women fake orgasms more than straight women but less than lesbians. Bi men fake more than straight ones but less than gay ones.

In these and other areas, the bisexuals reflect a combination of straight and gay experiences. Sometimes, behaviors average out in survey results and bi's wind up in the middle. But a bisexual is not just an amalgam of a straight person and a gay person. In fact, it's a mistake to think of all bisexuals as a (continued on page 136) Sex Survey (continued from page 128)single group. If you look at bi men and bi women separately, you'll find amazing differences.

Bisexual women, overall, seem as happy as clams and as busy as spring lightning. They get sex in both quantity and quality. They're generally younger, more sexually active and better adjusted than the bisexual men we surveyed. A healthy 70 percent of the bi women say that they're happy with their sex lives.

Bisexual men are having a tougher time. Almost half report dissatisfaction with their sex lives. That makes them the unhappiest of all the groups in our sample. More than 60 percent of both the straight and the gay men are satisfied with their sex lives. Fewer than half the bi men say their sex lives have improved over the past five years. They're the only group for which that's true.

We thought sex was getting better for everybody. Apparently, we were wrong. But why are bi women happier than bi men? It appears that bisexual women may see the world as a sexual smorgasbord--looking at every relationship as a sexual opportunity. A great many bisexual men, on the other hand, may be prospective homosexuals looking for an escape from heterosexual lives. Where are the differences? Let's look at the other things our respondents told us.

Bisexual women are getting a lot of sex. Gay men have had the most lovers, but bi women may be even more progressive sexually. Being a female bisexual offers the best shot at all sorts of dates for all sorts of Saturday nights.

We asked our respondents how they get their most intense orgasms. Bi women choose oral sex (40 percent), masturbation (29 percent), then intercourse (26 percent).

Sounds as if they're not crazy about intercourse, right? But they're getting more of it than anyone else. Sixty-nine percent say that they have intercourse "two or three times a week" or more.

That much intercourse indicates that bi women are getting their sex in quantity from men. But that's not where most of them get their intense orgasms: Cunnilingus tops that list. Since they like it so much, our suspicion is that they're getting their high-quality sex with other women. Lesbians, as we'll see, are fluent cunnilinguists, and there's no reason a phenomenon called intragender empathy shouldn't make bi women pretty good themselves. Men are not nearly so good at cunnilingus. We'll look again at intragender empathy in our section on lesbians. It means, essentially, that a woman knows what feels good to another woman.

Some bi women will tell you that they simply love sex for its own sake and "don't want to eliminate half the universe from consideration." Want some examples of that universal principle at work?

• Bi women masturbate more than any other women in our survey. Eighty-nine percent say that they masturbate at present and hardly any will admit to feeling guilty about it.

• Almost twice as many bi women as lesbians or straights use sexual devices. Nine out of ten have tried them. Considerably more than a third use them regularly. Unlike straight women and lesbians, many bi women engage in anal stimulation during other forms of sex. (See chart on page 210.)

• Three out of four have had sex with two people within a 24-hour period.

• Only a third say that they're sexually faithful to their partners. Most of the straight women and the lesbians tell us that they're faithful. Twenty-two percent of the bi women say that they "try to be," but close counts only in horseshoes and nuclear strikes. More than half of the married bisexual women we surveyed have had extramarital affairs.

• They start early. In response to the question "When did you first have intercourse?" the average age of every other group in our sample is more than 17. The over-all mean is 17.8. For bisexual women, the mean is 16.8. That may not sound like much of a difference, but when you're averaging large numbers of responses, a year is a lot. A shade less than half the bi women we surveyed were sexually experienced when they turned 16. Only 42 percent of the lesbians and 28 percent of the straight women started that soon.

(continued on page 210) Sex Survey (continued from page 136)

• The bi women take their time. They take, on the average, almost 14 minutes to reach orgasm. Lesbians also take a long time but not that long. Straight women don't take nearly so long. A duration like 14 minutes might reflect confused sexuality, or it might reflect great enjoyment of arousal and what we call heightening techniques. The reason for those techniques is to prolong arousal to the point of near-orgasmic excitement, then pause, then carry on again to an even higher peak of arousal. Most heterosexuals are goal-directed when it comes to sex. They go from foreplay to climax. A long duration to orgasm may cause anxious moments. For most bi women and lesbians, a long duration is positive--the longer they spend having sex, the more they enjoy it.

• And, finally, they are the most likely to think that penis (or breast) size is important in sex. It looks as if they're in a position to know.

Still, there are scattered showers on the bisexuals' parade. They run into opposition from all directions. Gays are often suspicious of them. Straights can be disgusted by them. Developing a bisexual identity can be liberating, but it can also be traumatic.

Most bi's, it seems, come from heterosexual backgrounds. Their current sex is primarily straight. Forty percent of the bi women and more than a third of the bi men tell us that they're married. Other studies indicate that a great many of today's bisexuals have just begun homosexual activity. It's easy to see why they have so many affairs.

Grief from both straight and gay cultures and the problems of beginning homosexual activity appear to be causing bi men a lot of trouble, as you're about to see. The same factors probably affect bi women, but they're generally more active and better adjusted.

Why? Partly because it can be hip to be a bisexual woman.

Bi women have most of their sex with straight men. It's common knowledge that many straight men are turned on by the mere thought of female homosexuality. (Have you talked with your women about that, gentlemen?) Thus, many straight men think that bisexual women are the most attractive lovers of all.

Not a few bi women are introduced to homosexual contact in threesomes instigated by their male partners. Most of those threesomes consist of one man and two women. In that way--with the approval and even the encouragement of a male partner--a woman's initial homosexual experience can be an extension of a straight relationship. It doesn't have to be a rejection of heterosexuality. That may be the easiest way to approach bisexuality.

The same conditions don't hold for bi men. They seldom get introduced to homosexual contact in amicable threesomes made up of two men and a woman. Few women are turned on by the thought of male homosexuality. So a man's coming out toward bisexuality more often demands at least a partial rejection of his heterosexuality.

Fewer than a quarter of the bi men--the fewest of all groups--say that they're sexually faithful to their partners. Most of the bi men who answered our question on infidelity report having had extramarital affairs. Those high-infidelity numbers are not far from those for the bi women, but they may have different implications. Some sociologists think that bi men are often forced into lives of lies. They think that bi men can become sneaky about finding gay sex, knowing that their female partners would be less than thrilled about their homosexual interests. Could that make them ambivalent, even furtive about their sexuality? Are they of two minds, so to speak?

Could be. Slightly more than 20 percent of the bi men say that they have "open" sexual relationships with their primary partners. Almost half again as many bi women are in open relationships. Bi men are the most likely of all our groups to say that they "try to be" faithful; it seems that many try and fail. We also asked, "If you are male, have you had sex with a prostitute in the past five years?" Of all our respondents, bi men are the most likely to have visited a prostitute. Almost a third of them have. It's clear now that we should have broken the question down for male and female prostitutes. We'll do that next time. But it seems likely that many of the bi men have been going to male--not female--prostitutes. That would be the easiest way for them to keep their homosexual inclinations under the table.

Talking about bisexual females, feminist writer Loretta Ulmschreider has said, "Women who practice bisexuality today are simply leading highly privileged lives." No one has ever said that about bisexual men. For them, being bi doesn't mean getting the best of both worlds. It's more like getting the least from either world. In her chatty Hite Report on Male Sexuality, Hite quotes a bi man as saying, "My gay friends are annoyed that I'm 'half straight,' and my straight friends are waiting for me to 'come to my senses.' Talk about alienation."

OK, let's talk about alienation. There's plenty of it evident in the bisexual men we surveyed.

Only 48 percent of them have intercourse "two or three times a week" or more. That's the lowest for any group. (The percentage for bi women is 69--highest of all our groups.) They masturbate a lot. More than a quarter sometimes feel guilty about it. Even though anal sex is a vital part of male homosexuality, the majority of bi men don't indicate that it provides intense orgasms. (It's a chicken-or-the-egg question whether people gravitate to the activity that gives them the best orgasm or whether repeated experience with a particular activity leads to better orgasms.) Just 11 percent of the bi men have anal sex at least once a week. Another 11 percent have it at least once a month.

Bi men take 12 minutes, on the average, to reach orgasm. That's longer than either straight or gay men take. Not only that--it's longer than straight women take. Could such a duration reflect heightening techniques in gay encounters? Probably not. That is much more a female attribute. Bi men take longer than gay men do, anyway. Are bisexual men, then, unable to get excited about the kinds of sex they're getting?

Maybe so. The number-one response among bi men to our "most intense orgasms" question is fellatio. Straight males choose intercourse. Straight women choose intercourse, too. Both bi and gay males say that they get their best orgasms from fellatio.

But remember: Bi men have most of their sex with straight women. Straight women perform the least oral sex of all the women surveyed.

Forty percent of the bi men tell us that they're not getting enough foreplay. What do most men mean when they talk about getting foreplay? (You're way ahead of us, right?) Do they mean that they don't get enough head? We asked the question directly. Two thirds of the bi men say that they don't get enough oral sex.

Getting too little of the thing you like the most is tough enough. Finding partners for gay sex is tough enough. (Maybe not if you walk the streets of San Francisco or the sidewalks of New York, but most people don't.) Dealing with a partner or a spouse who's turned off by your homosexual inclinations--and even having to hide those inclinations--is traumatic enough. But there's another area in which bi men have it tougher than bi women.

There's no question that ardent homosexuals tend to distrust bisexuals. They may call them switch-hitters, fence sitters or worse. Gay men are more visible in our society; their subculture is more unified and powerful than the lesbian subculture. Lesbians are more scattered, more individualistic. So, in addition to their other advantages, bisexual women get grief from a relatively small, diverse lesbian community. In addition to their other disadvantages, bisexual men face a strong gay community that can cut down their opportunities for homosexual contact.

For these and thousands of other individual reasons, the bi men we surveyed are having a more difficult time of it than the bisexual women.

There was no strong, visible gay community 20 years ago--homosexuals were outcasts. Today, bisexuals are the ones with no society of their own. Bisexual women get along pretty well, anyway, but they're still kicked around by plenty of shuddering sexual pedants. Bisexual men reap opprobrium from every side. For many of them, though, coming toward an appropriate sexual identity is worth the trouble.

Theoretically, bisexuals do double their chances for a Saturday-night date. Bi women are, arguably, the most sexually liberated of all our respondents, but too many bi men are dissatisfied. They're looking for a bisexual lifestyle that has never existed and doesn't now.

The near future should see the development of a bisexual community. Bisexual identity is already established. A lifestyle to go with it will follow. Until it does, we'll be left with sexual polarity, hanging back on the curb of what may become the fastest lane.

Gay men and lesbians: The boys in the band and the women's temperance union

Too often, even in research such as this, homosexuals are lumped together in one group. The only basic similarity we've found between gay men and lesbians is that they sleep with members of the same sex. For example, the gay men in our survey are the most "promiscuous" of all. Almost 40 percent of them have had more than 50 lovers. Lesbians are at the other end of the spectrum. They (and straight women) are the least likely of all groups to have had so many lovers. That should be no revelation. It backs up the stereotypes about gay men and lesbians. But it is a demonstration that if we're going to talk about homosexuals, we have to recognize two societies and two structures of behavior.

Why should that be so? Do gay men join a society that offers open sexuality and then adhere to its philosophy or have they constructed a society that reflects something inherent in them? Are lesbians selective by nature or do they just have trouble finding partners?

One theory is that since they cannot identify with the sexual values of straight culture, homosexuals tend to take the traditional Western gender roles to extremes. Men are supposed to be on the prowl for sex, so gay men become even more sexual than the norm for men. Lesbians, on the other hand, inflate the traditional female role by becoming even more romantic than the norm for women. There's evidence of that in both homosexual cultures. The gay-male community offers many sexual opportunities without even name exchange. There are hundreds of gay bars and clubs founded on the principle of the glory hole; the whole idea is to cater to those who want anonymous gay sex. (For a peek through the glory hole and at other features of the gay community, see Nora Gallagher's The San Francisco Experience in the January 1980 Playboy.) The lesbian community encourages long courtship routines that outsiders may see as positively Victorian.

Another theory suggests a multiplier effect. Gay men have their sex with other men. We should expect their sex to appear more extremely "male" than if there were a female presence involved. The flip side applies to lesbians. Such a phenomenon makes for an intensification of gender roles.

Whether those are profound explanations or facile ones, it became clear to us early on that we'd be mistaken to address homosexuals as a single group. We'll lead with the gay men, who are much more sexually active than most of our other respondents, and then move on to the lesbians, many of whom seem to be waiting for Ms. Right to come along.

The gay males we surveyed average 31.4 years of age, slightly older than the straight males. They are generally a little more affluent and better educated than the population at large. They work at hundreds of jobs and come from all regions of the country.

In matters of sex, they are doing everything--except making love with women--in abundance. The gay men we surveyed are definitely more active and experienced in sex than either the straight or the bisexual men. They masturbate more and perform oral sex more. They have a lot of oral sex performed on them. They engage more often in anal stimulation, and almost 40 percent of them have anal sex once a week or more. Only 11 percent of the bi men, you'll recall, have it that often. For the straight men, it's only two percent.

Gay men are more promiscuous, if that's the word you want to use. They would just say that they place less emphasis on sexual fidelity. They have had more lovers than straights, lesbians or bisexuals. We don't know how many of those lovers have been female. Two out of three gay men tell us, however, that their current sex is "always or usually" with other men.

Gay males are the most sexually caricatured people in the world. They do inhabit the hottest sexual clime, but that doesn't mean that the sniggering of Three's Company or the brutality of such films as Cruising has much to do with what's really going on.

They could be called loving as easily as promiscuous. For them, as for everybody else we surveyed, love tops the list of personal priorities. Friends come second on the list, followed by money, family life and sex. Work and leisure are farther behind. Gay men look for the same qualities in a lover as straight men do: trustworthiness, intelligence, good looks, a sense of humor and sexual energy. (It's interesting that women prize a sense of humor in mates more than men do. No wonder Joan Rivers has so much trouble.) Our findings indicate that gay men want the same things as the rest of the population, though their methods are different. While they devote more time and energy to sexual matters, they still say that they want love and trust most of all. But then, so does everybody else. People may be a little more serious-minded when they're answering surveys than when they're going into bars.

Gay men are very close to heterosexual men in terms of sexual satisfaction. Sixty-one percent of the straight men are happy with their current sex lives. For gay men, that figure is 62 percent. Our first report on The Playboy Readers' Sex Survey rebutted Hite's implication that almost everyone is miserable about his or her sex life. This report should demolish the notion that gay men are desperately unhappy about themselves and their sexual opportunities. It appears that they're as happy as anyone else--at least, once they've accepted a homosexual identity.

How did gay males come to be homosexual? Was it something that was thrust upon them? It seems that in most cases, the determining factors come early in life.

Current sex research leans toward the belief that sexual orientation is determined before adulthood or even adolescence--possibly even before birth. The authors of Sexual Preference found such a strong correlation between adolescent homosexual experience and adult homosexuality that they had to see it as a tautology. That is, they don't believe that adolescent experience causes adult homosexuality. Instead, both reflect even earlier influences. In the authors' words, "Our findings suggest that homosexuality is as deeply ingrained as heterosexuality, so that the differences in behaviors or social experiences of prehomosexual boys and girls and their preheterosexual counterparts reflect or express, rather than cause, their eventual homosexual preference."

Our data will add ammunition to their theory. Three quarters of the gay men we surveyed report some homosexual experience in adolescence, compared with a third of the straight men. Of those who did have adolescent homosexual encounters, 42 percent of today's gay men went on to engage in them frequently. But only one percent of today's heterosexual men did so. If there were no earlier factor at work, surely the men who went on to become straight as adults would have experimented more during those adolescent years. Instead, though large numbers of them were introduced to homosexuality, 99 percent became heterosexual adults.

We also found that eight percent of the straight men and women have had an adult homosexual experience. They still call themselves straights, though some might consider them bisexual. We consider them examples of the fluidity in sexual behavior shown by all our groups. Perhaps even more surprising, 24 percent of the men who identify themselves as gay report no adult homosexual experience, and 3.4 percent of them are still virgins.

Those straights who have had an adult gay experience and those gays who have had none seem to be basing their sexual preference on something other than actual behavior. They make us wonder how great a role sex itself plays in forming sexual identity. Their experience suggests, again, that adult sexual preference is more deeply ingrained than the accidents of early experience can explain.

Further backing up that idea is a strong correlation we found between the frequency of current homosexual activity and the frequency of adolescent homosexual experience. It seems that straights who have adolescent homosexual experiences seldom repeat them. Our bisexuals are 18 times as likely to report frequent homosexual encounters in adolescence. The numbers for gay men and lesbians, as you might expect, are much higher. Thirty-one percent of the lesbians and 42 percent of the gay men say they frequently had homosexual sex as adolescents. Could it be argued, then, that frequent adolescent homosexuality is what causes adult homosexuality? It could, but that would miss the point. Why don't straight men, for instance, go on to have frequent adolescent gay sex once they've been introduced to it? Why do gay men? Probably because there's already another factor at work--a predisposition toward what their adult preference will be.

By different reasoning and using a different sample, we've arrived at a conclusion that's similar to the tautological theory proposed by the authors of Sexual Preference. That theory is an example of clear thinking and elegant science. The book is worth reading; it debunks most of the old notions about the causes of homosexuality. Still, until we know much more about how childhood, infancy and biology influence sexuality, there will be plenty of room for speculation.

Back to basics: Only 64 percent of the gay males say that they have ever ejaculated too soon, compared with 81 percent of the straight males. The reason for the difference seems clear: Gay men don't have to worry about waiting for a female orgasm. Of course, that still leaves the 64 percent of gay men who say that they have come too soon. They may simply enjoy the process of arousal or may just reflect the macho ideal: The longer you last, the better you are. Also, more gay men than straights think that penis size is important. Gay men can't avoid comparisons.

Straight men tell us that their most intense orgasms come from intercourse. Gay men, of course, disagree, saying that their most intense orgasms come from oral sex. Anal sex and masturbation come in second and third. Since copulation isn't attractive, masturbation and fellatio are primary parts of a gay male's sex life. Almost all the gay men we surveyed masturbate. They do it, on the average, every other day. (Straight men average every third day.)

•

Three out of four gay men say that they fellate their partners every time or almost every time they have sex. Thirteen percent tell us that they'd really rather not, but they perform oral sex anyway.

It should be no surprise that anal sex is prevalent among gay men. Three quarters of our gay-male respondents have had anal intercourse. Twenty percent have it every time they have sex. Forty percent have it once a week or more. Slightly less than half the straight men tell us they've ever participated in anal sex. We can't be positive, but we think that the gay and the straight males are talking about somewhat different experiences. When gay men talk about anal sex, it makes sense to assume that about half the time, they're on the passive--receiving--end of it. Since straight men have practically all their sex with women, we should assume they are almost always the active--inserting--participants in anal sex.

Gay men are also more likely than straights to engage in anal stimulation during other forms of sex. Forty percent of them usually include anal stimulation in a sex session. That's four times the percentage for heterosexual men.

So, are gay men wild and indiscriminate or just looking for love in unusual places? They may be a little bit of both.

They're unusually deceptive, for one thing. Almost half have faked orgasms. Only 28 percent of the straight men have. Percentages such as those may surprise those who can't figure out why or how a man would fake an orgasm. (It's easy, really. You just close your eyes and pretend you're trapped in a blender.) There may be a simple explanation for the large numbers of gay men who have faked. Men who are very active sexually may have to fake more. They want frequent sex but can't come every time, so they fake it. The responses to one of our other questions--"Have you ever had sex with a different person at different times in a 24-hour period?"--add weight to the idea that it's the sexual acrobats who fake the most. Fifty-nine percent of the straight males have had more than one partner in a day. The numbers are considerably higher--76 percent--for gay males. And, as we've noted, gay men have had many more sex partners overall.

They're demonstrative, too. Most have had sex in public. By "in public," though, they may not mean in the bushes or at basketball games. One of our gay friends suggests that many gays consider the back rooms at gay clubs public areas.

They're awfully interested in their own sexuality. Every gay man answered two of our questions: "How many sexual partners have you had?" and "Do you think you're a good lover?" It's very rare in a questionnaire such as this not to have at least one or two people fail to answer a particular question. Nearly 80 percent of the gay men say that they're good lovers, by the way. That's not quite as high as for the straight men, who are basing their opinion on less experience.

And gay men are very active. The mean number of sex partners for the gay men we surveyed is 31.5--easily the highest for any group. Its significance is inarguable. The mean for straight men is just 19.3.

Thirty-nine percent of the homosexual men say that they've had more than 50 lovers. Again, that's far and away the highest percentage for any group in our survey. On the negative side, almost one in three reports having had V.D. in the past five years, compared with one in ten of the straight men.

But there's another side of the coin: where cruising meets commitment.

We asked each respondent to tell us the duration of his or her current relationship. Almost half the gay men are either dating around or dating one person primarily. But among the rest--the ones who are not dating--strong relationships are common. Of those who answered our question about current relationships, 38 percent of the gay men are in relationships that have lasted more than four years. Almost half of the rest are in relationships of at least two years' duration.

Granted, only a quarter of them say that they're sexually faithful to their partners. The point, still, is that even though casual sex is a prerogative in the gay community, gay men are entirely capable of durable relationships. Our data back up Hite's suggestion that most gay men want a lifestyle that is neither monogamous nor promiscuous--that a nonmonogamous but committed relationship is their ideal.

Pioneer sex researcher Alfred Kinsey said that at least 37 percent of American men have some homosexual experience. Thirty-five percent of our male respondents, regardless of their sexual identity, said they had ever had homosexual experience. He also wrote, in 1948, that "relationships between two males rarely survive the first disagreements." That has turned out to be an underestimate of many gay men's capacity to make their own kind of commitment.

Overall, it looks as if the stereotypes about homosexual men contain grains of truth. If they didn't, they would never have been accepted as stereotypes. Compared with the rest of us, gay men operate in sexual overdrive. Anal sex is prevalent among them, and they exhibit more passivity as a group than straight men--that's why some people call them fairies and sissies. But close analysis can bring out a better generalization: Gay men value sexual exclusivity less than most other people, but that doesn't mean that they're not capable of love or commitment.

How about lesbians? Well, they're in a kind of romantic overdrive--love and commitment seem to be the linchpins of their lives.

The homosexual women we surveyed may have a more progressive view of the opportunities modern sex affords than most lesbians. Answering a questionnaire in a magazine billed as Entertainment for Men wouldn't be a popular choice for the more politically minded lesbians. Neither would carrying around a magazine that features pictures of nude women. But why shouldn't a lesbian want to see the body to which she's most attracted? Don't you? Why shouldn't she want to help a large audience understand her sexual preference? As you're about to see, lesbians are rather conservative when it comes to sex. Our respondents may be less so than most. On the other hand, they could just be a little less hung up about it.

It's often said that lesbian love is distinctly feminine in form and expression. Perhaps the best response to a statement like that is "What's that supposed to mean?"

Maybe we can find out. At the beginning of this section, we said that the only thing gay men and lesbians have in common is that they sleep with members of their own sex. That's a large generalization. Still, their differences are a lot more striking than their similarities.

Gay men, as we have seen, are the most likely of all groups to have had more than 50 lovers. Lesbians are far less likely. Almost a third of the gay men have had V.D. in the past five years. Only 8.5 percent of the lesbians have gotten such an unpleasant parting gift. (Ten percent of both straight men and straight women have had V.D. during the same period. Seventeen percent of the bi men and 16 percent of the bi women have had it.)

While they may not seem to spend much time there, lesbians say that they're good in bed. Sixty-nine percent say that they're satisfied sexually. Seven out of ten rate their sex lives as better now than five years ago. Eighty-five percent tell us that they're good lovers, and that's the highest number for any group.

Lesbians, like gay men, are sexual extremists. If gay men are liberals when it comes to sex, lesbians are conservatives. They may or may not be superromantic, but they are less driven sexually than homosexual men. They'd probably tell you that they're looking for relationships, not trysts.

The lesbians we surveyed average 26 years of age. Reflecting the general makeup of our sample, they are somewhat better educated and more affluent than most of the population.

How did they come to prefer women?

Almost two thirds of them report adolescent homosexual experience, compared with 20 percent of the straight women and half the bi women. Thirty-one percent of the lesbians frequently engaged in lesbian sex as adolescents. Not even one straight woman in 100 reports that she did so. The percentages for lesbians are similar to those for the gay men; there's a strong correlation between frequent lesbian experience in adolescence and adult lesbian identity.

Conversely, 22 percent of the women who identify themselves as lesbians have had no homosexual experience as adults. Four percent are still virgins. Once more, we find people who base their sexual identity on something other than actual behavior. They feel that nonheterosexuality is the most important part of their sexuality--regardless of what their experience has been. We also have lesbians in our sample who report homosexual experience in adulthood but none in adolescence. Many may have developed a lesbian preference through identification with feminist politics. Others come to lesbianism as a reaction against negative experiences with men. Don't all those people shoot holes in the idea that adult homosexuality is just something that's picked up in adolescence? We think so. It becomes clearer and clearer that there are more factors at work in forming sexual preference than Freud, Kinsey or the Florida sunshine lady would ever have thought.

The mean number of sexual partners for lesbians in our survey is 19.7. The mean for straight women is 15.7. In light of that, our next figure may seem strange: Only nine percent of the lesbians report having had "more than 50" lovers. Maybe few lesbians have a great many lovers, but few also stick with one or two. Is that because deciding to live a lesbian lifestyle requires more experimentation than going along with the general preference? If that's the right conclusion, it's reflected in our finding that nearly half the lesbians lost their virginity by the age of 16. Just 28 percent of the straight women started that soon.

The same number of lesbians say that they lost their virginity in a "casual" relationship as say that they lost it in a "serious" one. Other women generally recall the first time as part of a serious relationship. Could it be that most of those first times are unmemorable for lesbians because they happened with men? Many social scientists think that an adolescent who hasn't quite accepted her lesbianism will experiment with straight sex as an "early denial." Before accepting her eventual lesbian preference, she tests the waters of sex with men. As we'll soon see, some of their other responses suggest that many lesbians found those waters chilly, indeed.

For lesbians, cunnilingus is the primary form of sexual interaction. Seven out often perform it every time or almost every time they have sex. More than half say that cunnilingus provides their best orgasms. Straight women, however, divide their votes among intercourse, cunnilingus and masturbation.

You might think it would be tougher for a lesbian to bring her partner to climax than for a straight woman to get her man to come. Not so. Straight women say that their male partners climax 95 percent of the time. The incidence of climax is 90 percent for lesbians. Also, only 40 percent of the straight women say that they come every time or almost every time. But more than half the lesbians say they do. They sound like technically proficient lovers.

Masters and Johnson found that they were. The lesbians they studied were immensely better at cunnilingus than the heterosexual men. The reason? Intragender empathy--we touched on it in the section on bisexual women. It applies even more forcefully here, since lesbians have almost all their sex with other women. A woman knows what feels good to another woman, and she's intimately familiar with the elusive clitoris. Chalk one up for the thesis that homosexuals are better technical lovers. (See chart on page 219.)

•

Interestingly enough, empathy doesn't seem important in fellatio. Masters and Johnson found that gay men are not significantly better at fellatio than straight women. Chalk one up for the thesis that there's no such thing as a bad blow job.

Lesbians take a long time to come. Straight women generally reach orgasm in 11 minutes. Lesbians average 13--almost as long as the bi women. They're not interested in quickies. The duration of their lovemaking probably reflects teasing techniques that prolong arousal. The lesbians we surveyed take no longer than the straight women to get aroused. They just don't rush to the fireworks.

That long duration, though, may partly be due to other factors. We found that 72 percent of the lesbians we surveyed have faked orgasms. That's more than any other group. Are the lesbian pretenders like the gay-male ones? Are they the sexual superstars? It seems unlikely. There's a physiological limit to how many times a man can come in a short time. Theoretically, there's no such limit for women, so lesbians have no physical reason to fake so much. It may simply be that they're less inflamed about sex than the rest of our groups. We also found, for instance, that two out of three lesbians say that they've used drugs for sexual stimulation. Perhaps they need drug stimulation more. In general, our results indicate that lesbians are technically skilled but not all that sexually motivated.

What about their attitudes? Do lesbian lives jibe with a "give me love, not sex" philosophy? You can bet your copy of Take Back the Night on it.

Lesbians agree with our other groups in choosing love as the master key to happiness. Eighty percent put it first or second on their list of priorities. The numbers of lesbians who put it first or second are almost the same as for the straight women. Bi women aren't quite so likely to say that love is their top priority, and all the men are much less so. Straight women say that family life is their second most important consideration overall. Lesbians put friends second. Family life, sex, money, leisure and work fall nearly out of sight in terms of importance to the lesbians.

They are fiercely faithful. Sixty percent of the lesbians--the same percentage as for straight women--tell us that they're sexually faithful to their partners. Only a quarter of the gay men say that. Of those who answered our question on current relationships, just 18 percent of the lesbians are in relationships that have lasted more than four years. Only 46 percent are in relationships of at least two years' duration. These numbers are much lower than those for the gay men. But remember--the gay men aren't faithful. Lesbians are looking for a more exclusive kind of arrangement than gay men want. Lesbians want both emotional and sexual commitments. Relationships like that are hard to find and even harder to maintain.

In answer to many of our questions, lesbians offer a more feminist view of the world than straight or bisexual women. In response to "Who knows more about 'affairs of the heart'?" lesbians are the most likely to say that women do. Other respondents generally think the sexes are about equal, but only a quarter of the lesbians choose that answer. In response to "Who has more advantages in today's world?" a clear majority of lesbians say that men do.

There are hints in our data that many lesbians have had some negative relationships with men:

Fifty-six percent of the lesbians, for example, say that they have had a physically violent argument with a sexual partner. For straight and bi women, the percentages are similar. The numbers for all groups of men are far lower. It's clear, then, that women consider some arguments violent that men don't see that way.

But that wouldn't explain the high numbers for lesbians if their arguments were happening only with other lesbians. Should we suspect that at least some of them were with men?

Forty-three percent of the lesbians say that they have been forced by a partner to have sex. Forty-two percent of the straight women say that they have been forced. Those numbers look too close to be coincidental. Also, lesbians are much more likely than other women to say that they would leave a partner who forced sex on them. Is it reasonable to think many of them already have left, while many straight women have remained with men who forced them?

It would be ideal if we could resolve big questions such as those, but our questionnaire didn't reach quite that deeply. Next time, we'll remember we're not talking only to straights and make it a point to break down more of our survey questions for gender. For instance, if we'd asked with which sex those violent arguments had taken place, we might know more about lesbians' past difficulties with men.

Masters and Johnson examined the sex fantasies of lesbians as part of their research for Homosexuality in Perspective. They found stronger elements of violence and misandry--antimale feeling--in lesbians' fantasies than in anybody else's.

In the Masters and Johnson study, heterosexuals most often fantasized the replacement of their current partners. Gay men most often imagined male body parts. But lesbians (who fantasized more than any other group) most frequently imagined forced sex. The force involved was usually psychological, not physical. Lesbians were the only group that frequently reported sadistic fantasies. "There were fantasies of physically destructive approaches to helpless victims," wrote the researchers. "The fantasy content usually went beyond physically forced rape to include sadistic specifics almost always directed to the reproductive organs."

Masters and Johnson emphasized that the lesbians they studied were a small group that was not representative of the whole population. They also cautioned against making generalizations from their small sample. There are more than eight times as many lesbians in our survey. We've found no thoroughgoing aggression or misandry in their fantasies. As we've seen, however, there are noteworthy hints elsewhere of antimale sentiment among the lesbians.

Our findings don't justify strong conclusions about misandry in homosexual women. And we're not saying that bad experiences with men are necessarily what bring about a lesbian identity, though that may be the case for some. The politics of the feminist movement present opportunities for some women to be introduced to lesbian sex, and there are certainly lesbians who have little feeling for men one way or another. What some of our findings do suggest is this: Many women who are in the process of realizing their lesbianism go through unhappy experiences with men that lower their estimation of them. The sexual structure of our society is male-oriented and male-dominated. Heterosexuals generally buy into that structure. Gay men enlarge upon it. Bisexuals can literally have it both ways. Only lesbians must reject it in order to create an identity.

All in all, the lesbians we surveyed appear less concerned with sex than people in the other groups. They embrace romance and courtship even more than the traditional female role would demand. They're the most sexually conservative group we surveyed. Our results harmonize with one of the lesbian activists' chants. It's not just a song and dance: Lesbians really are looking for quality, not quantity.

The Kinsey Scale: I've got your number

There are straights who sleep only with straights. There are straights who sometimes sleep with gays. There are gays who sometimes sleep with straights and gays who sleep only with gays. Then there are bisexuals. Where to put them all?

In 20 years, when anything consenting adults want to do is fine with society, calling people heterosexuals, bisexuals or homosexuals may make no sense at all. It doesn't make much sense now. Try this one: Would you call a woman who has slept with ten men and four women a straight, a bi or a lesbian? What if she slept with the ten men a long time ago? The old labels keep slipping off.

As part of his incendiary sex research, Kinsey created a flow chart for sexual preference. It's still the best representation we have of the continuum of sexual activity. Following the lead of Masters and Johnson, we'll be using a slightly liberal interpretation of Kinsey's terminology:

A zero rating on the Kinsey scale means that the person in question has never had an overt homosexual experience.

A one represents a person whose straight experience far outweighs his or her minimal homosexual experience.

A two has had more homosexual experience than a Kinsey one but an even greater amount of straight experience.

A three represents somebody with approximately equal homosexual and straight experience.

A four is a person with significant straight experience but with a greater amount of homosexual experience.

A five is somebody whose homosexual experience far outweighs his or her minimal straight experience.

A six is a person who has never had an overt straight experience--the opposite of a Kinsey zero.

A person's Kinsey rating may change over time. Some bisexuals, for example, start out with only heterosexual experience but end up with about the same number of straight and gay partners. Someone like that has gone from a rating of zero to one of three. (The scale measures total lifetime--not just current--numbers of sex partners.) In the course of their lives, individuals may alight in a number of Kinsey categories.

Kinsey's is an experiential scale. It doesn't measure what you want to be, or when. Instead, it places your cumulative sexual experience in the context of other gradations of experience.

That's not a limitation. As a matter of fact, it's often an aid to sex research. Many of the homosexuals, you'll recall, could, by their experience, be called bisexuals or even straights. Why doesn't their self-identification correspond to their experience? The scale gives social scientists a starting point for finding out.

Most of the heterosexual men in our survey fall into the zero part of the Kinsey scale. They have never had an overt homosexual experience. About a third would get a rating of one. They have had minimal homosexual experience. Hardly any of the straight males we surveyed would rate two or higher.

Eighty percent of the straight women have never had an overt homosexual experience. They're in the zero category. Almost all the rest would rate one, having had minimal lesbian experience.

Fewer gay men and lesbians are so nearly exclusive. Still, most of the gay men and the lesbians tell us that they currently sleep only with members of their own sex. Other studies suggest that self-described homosexuals populate the Kinsey ratings from three through six in substantial numbers. We found people who identify themselves as homosexuals in every Kinsey category, but the vast majority are in the three-through-six range.

Most of the bisexuals fall into the ratings from one through three. They have predominantly straight experience, even at present. There are only a few in the higher categories.

Straight, gay and bi simply can't describe all the varieties of human sexuality, especially when used as labels. The Kinsey scale isn't perfect, but it's an improvement. We would all be better off (more accurate, anyway) if we thought in terms of Kinsey ratings rather than three inflexible words. Better yet, we could bear in mind that even the Kinsey ratings aren't six railroad cars. They overlap and flow into one another, like the colors in the visible spectrum.

We've presented a lot of information about sexual identity. We've come to some conclusions, supported or rebutted some theories and opened the door for a few questions that scream to be answered. Some of our data confirmed our suspicions, but some surprised us and turned our expectations upside down.

When all the words and figures are boiled down, what's the best thing we can take away from them? Perhaps it's simply that pigeonholes and labels limit any understanding of contemporary sex. In the end, maybe we've reached a point at which the only relevant label is someone's name.

See our July issue for part four of The Playboy Readers' Sex Survey, wherein we'll reconnoiter the world of experimental sex.

"We thought sex was getting better for everybody. Apparently, we were wrong."

By Kevin Cook in collaboration with Arthur Kretchmer, Barbara Nellis, Janet Lever and Rosanna Hertz.