News: Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex Even Though You're Not Having It Much

Like all media, The Lancet's National Survey Of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles was BONKTASTIC! manna from PHWOAR! heaven for The Independent.
A survey!
And it's about sex!!!
Double-page spread with saucy photos?
Beats working!

"For some aspects of sexual behaviour, for example numbers of partners, it has narrowed, for others, such as age at first sex, it has closed and yet in other respects, such as same-sex experience, women have overtaken men," Professor Wellings said.

"Whilst same-sex experiences have remained relatively constant among men [at 7% for 16-44 year-olds*], it has increased markedly among women. Although a minority of women have reported sex with another woman, that proportion increased from 4 per cent in 1990 to 16 per cent in 2010 and 2012," she said.

Asked whether this four-fold increase was real or an artefact of the survey, she added: "I think it's too big to be simply an artefact of reporting. We can see signs in the media that there have been changes in the representation of women. There have been celebrities who have apparently embraced same-sex experiences. We do see women kissing together and so on."

Daily Star: The survey said we're having less sex

• Here is it all broken down into a series of supercool infographics.

There's probably no survey more unreliable than a sex survey - people will lie either way; the disconnect between the number of sexual partners men (12) and women (8) claim is typical of these things, and hilariously telling (Here's NATSAL's methodology).
Another warning sign is that almost a third of men claim they haven't had a wank in the last four weeks.
Yeah, right.
This all does seem to support Fagburn's theory that British people don't really like doing it much.
The overall percentage for men who reported having had "same-sex experience with genital contact" is 5% - and not 7-8%.*
But the figure for men who said they'd had "at least one male sexual partner in the past five years" - genital or not - is just 2.6% (2.9% for 16-24s).
Fagburn is not sure how other people define "sex".

* This was the first survey that asked people aged 45 and over about their sex lives - I know not why - which brings the total male average ever ever ever having had gay sex - or "contact" (??!) - to 8%.
It's also worth noting 3% of all people refused to answer "intimate" questions.

• Here are all the men's tables.

Do conventional public opinion surveys under-report the proportion of gays and lesbians in the population? And do they underestimate the share of Americans who hold anti-gay views?
A team of researchers from Ohio State and Boston Universities say the answer to both questions is yes...

Pew Research.