definitional nit to pick robert harley writes it is perfectly obvious that heterosexual promiscuity is exactly precisely identical between males and females of course the shapes of the distributions may differ you ve redefined promiscuity above as total or average activity which seems to rob it of its common meaning activity above some specific threshold usually one or norm or involving extra or indiscriminate variety promiscuity is thus inherently a description of distributions rather than averages consider a population of NUMBER males and NUMBER females let there be three pairings which result in each person having sex once then let one of the males also have sex with the other two females sure the average number of sex acts and sex partners is equal between the sexes tautologically but here more women than men are above the single partner threshold above the overall average NUMBER NUMBER acts partners threshold above the overall median NUMBER NUMBER acts partners above the overall mode NUMBER acts partners and here women have a higher mode NUMBER and median NUMBER number of partners so in this contrived population females are more promiscuous than males unless promiscuity is defined uselessly gordon 