Gay men enjoy sex in their old age. That's according to a study designed to find out otherwise
We know that most gay men like sex. What we didn't know is how many of them enjoy it late in life. According to a study conducted by the University of East Anglia in collaboration with King's College London and University College London, men interested in men enjoy erotic play well into their 70s. And not just with one partner.
But the aim of the study, which interviewed over 5,000 people, was not simply to uncover gay men's erotic secrets, but to provide relevant, up-to-date data to adjust mathematical models that predicted the spread of Mpox (formerly known as monkeypox).
Research leader Dr Julie Brainard, from Norwich Medical School at UEA, said, " Many models for sexually transmitted diseases before this study assumed that people would stop being sexually active or, at the very least, stop having multiple partners at a certain age - say 40 or 65."
"Or someone might also assume that young people have the most sex. But the reality is much more complex and partly depends on people's sexuality," the researcher further said. And that's exactly why the experts decided to do their study.
Sexual behaviour survey
During the research, the experts interviewed 5,164 people in Britain. 3,297 of them were people from the general population and 1,036 were men having sex with men, whom the experts reached out to via Facebook and Instagram. A further 831 men then took part in the study in response to ads on the dating site Grindr. "In 2022, Mpox cases were mainly spread among men having sex with men, so we targeted this group in particular," Dr Brainard explained.
The questions in the survey were straightforward. Respondents answered what gender they were, what their sexuality was, and how many sexual partners they had in the last three weeks and in the last three months. In fact, the aim was to find out just how much age affects sexual activity. But of course, the number of sexual partners does not mean the number of intercourse. - It's the number of people, not the number of sexual acts they've had with them.
The experts then divided the responses into three broad groups: (1) women having sex with men, (2) men having sex with women, and (3) men having sex with men.
Data from bedrooms
- Across all age groups, most people reported having sex with one partner or not having sex with anyone in the previous three weeks.
- For women having sex with men, 65% said they had had one sexual partner in the previous three weeks. This was the response of women until the age of 50, when there was a sharp increase in those who had no partner. Among women over 70, 79% had not had a single sexual partner.
- For men having sex with women, the figures are similar. 50% of all age groups reported having had one sexual partner in the last 3 weeks. However, as age increased, more and more reported zero sexual partners. In the over 70 age group, 50% of men had no sexual partner in the last 3 weeks. Under 70 years, however, only 44% had had no partner in the last 3 weeks.
- Equally interesting data is also available on concurrent sexual partners, i.e. when one person has had sex with more than one person (but not necessarily at the same time). In the general population, such cases were minimal, but among the responses from Facebook and Instagram, this behaviour was common. 42% of the men who had sex with men had at least two partners. Of the men contacted on Grindr, this was as high as 52%.
- The number of those who enjoyed sex with different people declined with age. But again, the group from social media had the least. 17% of men over 70 who had sex with men said they had had more than one sex partner in the last three weeks. 25% of gay and bisexual men aged 70+ then said they had concurrent partners. Among heterosexuals, however, only 2% of those in this age group had multiple partners.
"We were able to get a lot of information from men having sex with men who had concurrent partners. About 45% of them had continuous multiple sexual partners between the ages of 27 and 63. And even after age 65, men approached through social networks tended to have more sexual partners than the general population of the same age," Brainard added to the data.
Don't forget the context
However, Dr Brainard also pointed out that the findings need to be interpreted correctly. "Our study shows how important it is to consider how the data was collected. For example, we cannot conclude from this study that men who have sex with men who use social networks are more likely to have more sexual partners [than those who do not use social networks]. But it's possible that the algorithm that Facebook and Instagram use to identify men having sex with men is also very good at finding this particular subgroup."
And where do gay men stand on sexual activity in the Czech Republic? As far as we can judge from personal experience, it's not too bad. But we don't have scientific data on that yet. However, we will have it, or rather the National Institute of Mental Health will have it. In fact, the current national survey CzechSex aims to find out exactly that. It intends to reach out to several thousand individuals and get information on how things are going with the sex life and health of Czechs. And there will be no shortage of questions about the gay experience. So if a letter lands in your mailbox asking you to get involved, you can help science.
