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 This page Promiscuity is part of the human sexuality series Illustration: Fashionable Contrasts (1792) by James Gillray
This page Promiscuity is part of the human sexuality series
Illustration: Fashionable Contrasts (1792) by James Gillray

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In human sexual behavior, promiscuity denotes sex with relatively many partners. In polygamy it is distinguished from promiscuity.


Promiscuity is discouraged by conservative modern day religions. However, some sects, cults, and religious orders have a place for promiscuous behavior. For example, there were special examples of religious prostitution in ancient Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome.


Human promiscuity


These standards are not universal. Indeed, in some Germanic tribes in the first century BC (according to Julius Caesar in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico), it was scandalous for a man to have sexual relations before his twentieth birthday.

Accurately assessing people's sexual behavior is difficult, since there are strong social and personal motivations, depending on social sanctions and taboos, for either minimizing or exaggerating reported sexual activity. Extensive research has produced mathematical models of sexual behavior comparing the results generated with the observed prevalence of sexually transmitted illnesses (STIs) to statistically estimate the probable sexual behavior of the studied population.


A 2006 comprehensive global study (analyzing data from 59 countries worldwide) found no firm link between promiscuity and STIs, with poverty and mobility being more important factors. This contradicts other studies.

Global promiscuity

A 2008 US university study of international promiscuity found that British people are the most promiscuous in the industrialized world. The study measured one-night stands, attitudes to casual sex, and number of sexual partners.

Researchers said Britain's position on the international index "may be linked to increasing social acceptance of promiscuity among women as well as men". Britain’s ranking was "ascribed to factors such as the decline of religious scruples about extramarital sex, the growth of equal pay and equal rights for women and a highly sexualised popular culture". (telegraph.co.uk)



One study found that people from developed Western countries were more promiscuous than people from developing countries in general, while the rate of STIs was higher in developing countries.

Male promiscuity

male promiscuity

A 1994 study in the United States looking at the number of sexual partners in a lifetime found that 20% of heterosexual men had 1, 55% had 2-20, and 25% had 20 or more. Early studies found men with homosexual contact were more likely to have a very large number of sexual partners, but a 1989 study found a very high number of partners (over 100) to be present but rare in that demographic. The difference was attributed to sampling problems with earlier studies, and the influence of AIDS.

The words "womanizer", "playboy", "stud", "player", "ladies' man" and "rake" may be used in reference to a man who has love affairs with women and will not marry or commit to a relationship. The names of real and fictional seducers have become eponymous for such promiscuous men. The most famous are the historical Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798), and the fictional Don Juan, who first appeared in the 17th century, and Lothario from Nicholas Rowe's 1703 play The Fair Penitent. James Bond and Captain James T. Kirk are famous fictional characters that can be considered womanizers.


Female promiscuity

female promiscuity

A 1994 study in the United States found that almost all married (heterosexual) women reported having sexual contact only with their husbands, and unmarried women almost always reported having no more than one sexual partner in the past three months. Lesbians who had a long-term partner reported having fewer outside partners than heterosexual women.

Since at least 1450, the word "slut" has been used, usually pejoratively, to describe a sexually promiscuous woman. In and before the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, terms like "strumpet" and "whore" were used to describe women deemed promiscuous, as seen for example in John Webster's 1612 play The White Devil.

Promiscuity privilege of female nobility

In some tribes of Sierra Leone, "A woman who is a Paramount Chief may have sexual intercourse with as many men as she pleases."

Nature versus nurture controversy

Evolutionary psychologists propose that a conditional human tendency for promiscuity is inherited from hunter-gatherer ancestors. Male promiscuity, they say, was advantageous because it allowed males to father more children.

Primitive promiscuity

Primitive promiscuity or original promiscuity, is the 19th century hypothesis that humans originally lived in a state of promiscuity or "hetaerism".

Extra-pair copulation in animals


Two examples of promiscuous animals are the primates chimpanzees and bonobos. These species live in social groups consisting of several males and several females. Each male copulates with many females, and vice-versa. In bonobos, the amount of promiscuity is particularly striking because bonobos use sex to alleviate social conflict as well as to reproduce.

See also

Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Promiscuity" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on original research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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