Monday, June 23, 2008

Hetero Marraige Gender Breakdown Unaffected by Gay Marriage

After California legalized gay marriage, some initial data is in:
Based on a tally of the licenses Thursday--using first names as a guide--60 percent of the same-sex newlyweds this week are lesbians and 40 percent are gay men. Among heterosexual couples--to no one's surprise--the gender breakdown is 50-50.

The hetero breakdown is a nice touch. But it reminds me of this logic applied to sex. Years ago, I remember a friend noted that it is strange men seem to all have more sex partners than women, because they are equal by an identity, a counterintuitive result. When I was single and talked about these things, it seemed like guys were gettin' action all the time, relatively. But then do the math. If there are two sets of equal size, of things A and B. Every coupling of A & B means that the average number of couplings will be the same for A as for B. QED. As solid as the proof there are an infinite number of primes. Now, you can bring in professionals (ie, hookers), or gay men who have lots of sex, but this didn't affect most of my friends. It was kind of shocking: I thought I only knew nice girls! This is proof that men generally overestimate and overdiscuss their sexcapades, while women don't.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Men overestimate. Duh.

J said...

Women cant count.

Anonymous said...

Prostitutes are underrepresented in these surveys. Also there is potential for median/mean confusion when you "get a sense" of the results by talking to friends.