Revealed - the real sex lives of the French

Local France

14-11-2024

French sexuality is a subject foreigners - particularly anglophones - have loved to speculate about.
English-language films and TV shows rely on a few tropes; the French being comfortable with infidelity, the elusive and effortlessly beautiful Frenchwoman and the Frenchman who is great in bed.
In an effort to go beyond the clichés, the country's National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM) on Wednesday published its fourth scientific study on the subject.
After surveying 31,000 people between the ages of 15 to 89, the authors found some notable ways that French sexuality has changed since their last major nationwide study on sexuality in 2006.
From 'more diverse' sexual practices to less frequent intercourse, here were some of their main takeaways;
People are becoming less sexually active, and they're not too bothered by it.
Survey respondents were asked about sexual activity in the past 12 months, as well as how many times they had sex in the past four weeks.
Overall, the majority of adults in France had had sex in the last year, but by both indicators, sexual activity has been declining in the last three decades for both men and women and across age groups.
In 1992, 86.4 percent of women aged 18 to 69 reported having sexual intercourse in the past year, but this dropped down to 82.9 percent in 2006 and then by 2023 it was 77.2 percent.
For men, 92.1 percent said they'd had sexual intercourse in the past year in 1992, and this dropped to 89.1 percent in 2006 and down to 81.6 percent in 2023.
Researchers asked people who had not had sex in the last year how they felt about their situation, and women - particularly the youngest and oldest age brackets - said that the situation 'suits them'.
On average, 76.5 percent of women were not bothered by the lack of sex in the past year, whereas men were less likely to be satisfied with their sexless year. A little over half (55.4 percent) said the situation 'suits them', and this dropped down to 47.7 percent for men aged 40-59.
On top of that, the researchers noted that the proportion of women saying they 'often or sometimes' had sex to please their partner (without really wanting to themselves) had been decreasing since the mid-2000s (from 50.9 percent in 2006 to 43.7 percent in 2023).
People are staying sexually active longer
On the other side of the coin, the researchers found that the older French people are continuing to have sex.
Similar trends have been reported in other countries too. In the UK, a 2015 study by the University of Manchester found that over half of men and almost a third of women over 70 were still sexually active.
In France, as of 2023, over half of women over 50 (56.6 percent) and almost three-quarters (73.8 percent) of men over 50 had reported said they were still sexually active.
Still, people over 60 in France had some of the lowest levels of sexual satisfaction. While both men and women felt this way, the trends in sexual satisfaction in older people were slightly reversed by gender.
For older men - it has been dropping. In 1992, 37.7 percent of men over 60 said they were 'very satisfied', and then this dropped to 33.7 percent in 2006 and down to 28 percent in 2023.
While women over 60 saw very marginal increases in satisfaction - from 31.8 percent in 1992 to 33.7 percent in 2006 and finally up to 34.3 percent in 2023.
First time sex at an older age
The idea of French teenagers becoming sexually active from a young age may not be so accurate.
In fact, adolescents are waiting longer before having sex for the first time. The study found that median age for first-time sexual intercourse had started increasing since the late 2010s, for both men and women.
For the 2019-2023 period, the median age for first-time sexual intercourse was 18.2 for women and 17.7 for men.
Similar trends have been observed in other countries, such as Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the US, but the increasing age does represent a reversal of previous trends.
From the early 1960s (1959-1963) to the mid-2000s (2004-2008), the median age for first-time sexual intercourse had been steadily dropping - going from 20.1 years for women down to 17.3 years.
More sexual partners
For women, the average number of sexual partners throughout their lifetime has gone up significantly in the last few decades. The average was 3.4 sexual partners (in total) in 1992, and in 2023 the average was 7.9 partners.
For men, the figures had stayed somewhat stable between 1992 and 2006 - at around 11 partners on average, but then jumped up to 16.4 partners in 2023.
But if we compare France with their neighbours across the Channel - a 2023 survey found that the average Briton had four sexual partners during their lifetime, while adult men had a median of five and women reported having had three partners.
For the US, the CDC reported that the average number of sexual partners for American women (as of 2015-2019) was 4.3, and slightly higher for men (6.3 partners).
There was one age group that stuck out among the French for having the highest number of sexual partners - this was men aged 50-59, who as of 2023 reported having been sexually involved with an average of 18 people.
Diverse sexuality
One big takeaway was that people were engaging in a wider range of sexual activities, including masturbation.
In 1992, just 42.4 percent of women reported having masturbated, compared to 72.9 percent in 2023. For men, the change was smaller - going up from 82.8 percent to 92.6 percent.
But aside from being more comfortable with solo-sex, people in France also reported experimenting with other sexual practices aside from vaginal intercourse.
More and more women have reported either trying anal penetration, up from 23.4 percent in 1992 to 38.9 percent in 2023. For men, anal sex (either performing or receiving) went up pretty significantly from 29.6 percent to 57.4 percent.
People are more open to same-sex encounters too - in 2023, 8.4 percent of women and 7.5 percent of men reported having had at least one same-sex partner.
These figures change when considering age too - 14.8 percent of young women (aged 18-29) and 9.3 percent of men reported having had at least one same-sex partner.
Overall, 13.4 percent of women and 7.6 percent of men said they had been attracted to someone of the same sex in their lifetime.
The study authors noted that attitudes toward the gender and sexuality have shifted in France.
They wrote that "the questioning of heterosexuality is more common among the younger generations who, unlike their parents and grandparents, have grown up during a period of strong rights and social visibility of LGBTQA+ people.
"The questioning of heterosexuality is also more noticeable among women: for them, there is more to gain from moving towards other sexual possibilities, not least because of the inequality and violence found within the heterosexual couples."
Intimate partner violence still elevated
When comparing the surveys of 2006 and 2023, the authors found that reported sexual violence has increased. The authors used the terminology of 'forced and attempted forced intercourse' to describe sexual violence.
In 2006, 15.9 percent of women said they had experienced either forced intercourse or an attempt at forced intercourse, and by 2023, this had increased to 29.8 percent.
This was particularly pronounced for young people - 16.5 percent of women aged 18-29 said they had experienced sexual violence in 2006, compared to 36.8 percent in 2023. For men, this rose from 4.7 percent in 2006 to 12.4 percent in 2023.
The authors explained that these changes may reflect both an increase in frequency of sexual violence, as well as changes in people's ease with discussing sexual violence in a research setting, plus their ability to qualify it generally.
Many acts of sexual violence have only been recently codified in law. Marital rape, for example, has only been recognised by the French legal system since 1992.