The Study of Sex
Let’s skip over the fact that “intravaginal ejaculatory latency” has got to be one of the unsexiest ways to describe sex I’ve ever read. The study establishes that when measuring intercourse time, they’re not including any kissing or foreplay. Participants were asked to count only the time between insertion and ejaculation. Clearly, there are a lot of issues with this study. Not only does it define "sex" in a very narrow way, but the study focuses only on the male orgasm. If you think about it, these two omissions are closely related. Women benefit more from arousal via foreplay than men. So, a longer foreplay session tends to lead to women reaching climax sooner. If the study focuses only on men, foreplay would be optional.
Respondents of the study were asked to time themselves from the point where the penis enters the vagina until such time as orgasm occurs. No mention is made as to whether reaching for a stopwatch during intimacy might impact anyone’s time. The study did control for variables like circumcision and condom use, and included men from five different countries: the United Kingdom, Turkey, the United States, Spain, and the Netherlands. Participants monitored themselves for a four-week period, although it’s not clear how much intercourse happened for each participant during that time.
The 'Average' Time
What did science learn from this? First, that the median average of “intravaginal ejaculatory latency” is about six minutes (5.7 minutes to be exact). I have to laugh at that. When I got my first job as a phone sex operator, the minimum time for a call was six minutes. Back then, I thought that was a laughably short amount of time to get the job done. As it turns out, it’s literally average. The study also suggested that men had some idea of what the appropriate time should be, in that when they expressed dissatisfaction with their time, their time was lower than average. The study also determined that men from the UK had the longest average latency time - 10 minutes. Do with that information what you will.
