Let's talk about sex, baby. The UK population has become more accepting of sexual diversity, but less tolerant of partners who stray.
That is the message from the UK's National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, which took stock of the sexual behaviour of 15,162 Britons aged between 16 and 74. The results were compared with previous surveys carried out in 1990 and 2000.
In 2010, 16 per cent of women said they'd had sexual contact with another woman, compared with just 4 per cent in 1990. Their average number of sexual partners doubled over the same period, from 3.7 to 7.7. Men's average number rose from 8.6 to 11.7.
Acceptance of homosexual behaviour has increased, too. In 1990, 22 per cent of men judged relationships between men to be "not wrong at all" – compared with 48 per cent in 2010. A similar pattern was seen in women.
But people are less tolerant about playing the field: in 1990, 44 per cent of men considered infidelity "always wrong", and this has now risen to 63 per cent. In women, it has increased from 53 to 70 per cent.
"As a nation, we're thinking about a new ethical framework," says Anne Johnson of University College London, co-leader of the survey. "We're having a debate about the kind of sex that does harm to people," she says. "So while we're happy now to accept oral sex, gay and anal sex, we're moving into discussion of sex that does harm to others."
Abuse was the main focus of an accompanying paper, led by Wendy Macdowall at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. It found that 1 in 10 women and 1 in 70 men reported having been forced to have sex against their will. Yet of those, only 42 per cent of the women and 32 per cent of men had told anyone about it, with only 13 and 8 per cent respectively telling the police.
Most were young at the time: women were 18 years old on average and men 16. Macdowall says that the findings warrant greater emphasis in sex education on the quality of relationships in which sex takes place.
Journal references: The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(13)62035-8; DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(13)62300-4
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