The older you are, the better it gets – survey looks at age attitudes to sex

Updated

Pensioners are more likely than 18-24-year-olds to believe both partners enjoy sex, a YouGov survey into heterosexual relationships has suggested.

The study of 3,922 British adults found three-quarters (75%) of those aged 65 and older felt both the man and woman would equally enjoy lovemaking, compared with 58% of those in the youngest age group.

The data also advanced the belief that men both need and want sex more than women, and are likely to initiate intercourse.

Attitudes to sex
Attitudes to sex

Research commissioned by the End Violence Against Women Coalition found one-third of people (32%) believe that men need sex more than women, compared to just 1% who said they feel the opposite.

Similarly, 42% of people said they felt men wanted sex more than women, with 2% feeling the other way.

Some 45% of those surveyed said they felt the man is more likely to initiate sex, compared with 3% for women, while 43% said both were responsible for starting it.

Just 11% of respondents said they felt the woman decides when intercourse has finished, compared with 36% for men, and 38% who believe both decide.

Among 18-24-year-olds, however, just 25% believe it is a mutual decision, while half (50%) think it is up to the man to decide, while 10% think it is up to the woman.

The survey found the majority of people (57%) think women are more likely to “go along with sex to keep their partner happy”, compared with only 2% who thought the same of men.

Attitudes to sex
Attitudes to sex

Some 56% of respondents felt women were more likely to turn down sex, compared with just 1% for men. More than half of people (53%) think that men are more likely to orgasm during sex than women (3%), while around a third (35%) think both partners are likely to orgasm.

Sarah Green, director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, said: “Although it’s good to find that three-quarters of adults believe men and women are both likely to enjoy sex, what we clearly also have are persistent, widely held views about who sex is primarily ‘for’, who ‘needs’ it and whose pleasure matters.

“This is a cornerstone of equality as much as equal pay and shared parenting, but ‘the orgasm gap’ is perhaps not as widely discussed as some other key equality issues.”

Dr Fiona Vera Gray, research fellow at Durham Law School, expert on sexual harassment and pornography, said: “This report shows how far we’ve got to go in changing outdated ideas about women as sexual gatekeepers.”

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