“Some”, “Many”, & “Most”

Many people are concerned if their sex life is “normal” or falls with a “normal” range of behavior and it is important to address these comments or concerns. One person’s personal sexual experience will most likely not apply to everyone else. In fact, there are few things in sex and pleasure that are universal. In-stead health educators rely on 3 magic words: Some, many, and most. When discussing sex and desire, the best way to maintain accuracy is to use these terms: “Some people participate in Kinky sex”. “Many people self-identify as homosexual”. “Most people will masturbate at some point in their lifetime”.

If you want to be accurate when discussing facts related to sex a more general framework will work just as well. “Some”, “Many” and “Most” are useful way to generalize many different things: the amount of people who do a certain activity, identify a certain way, sex facts, or to to help normalize sexual variation. For example if someone is sexually assaulted it may be helpful for them to hear: “Most people who experience sexual assault need professional assistance to process everything and make decisions about what to do moving forward.”

By using “Some”, “Many” and “Most” you are more likely to be accurate and correct in you speech and avoid overgeneralizations. When discussing “normal” it is also important to address “outliers”. An Outlier is a case that is brought up to challenge an over-generalization. For example if someone is arguing that “Male” and “Female” are the only “biological sexes” you could counter that with the fact that “Current research suggest that 1-1500 to 1-2000 births annually are categorized ‘intersex’.” In this way outliers can be used to help acknowledge the complexity related to the facts. However, there are also “corner cases: which are when an outlier is brought up in an attempt to invalidate the general rule. For example if someone is trying to argue that “All homosexuals are child molesters” they might bring up one case of a convicted child molester who identifies as Homosexual.

The short answer is pleasure is very personal and everyone’s body is different. I once had a professor that said: “The only thing all women do is take in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide, and the dead ones don’t even do that.” So it is important to let go of this obsession with normality and celebrate your individuality. Normality is overrated!

-Sailor Jerri

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