In the Kinsey survey only 1 per cent of women had, for example, pre-marital coitus with as
many as twenty-odd
different partners. Yet the same percentage of men had pre-marital coitus with more than a
hundred different
partners. Kinsey accepts "the male's greater inclination to be promiscuous" yet this belief is
going beyond the
data. Perhaps, for instance, women desire wide sexual relationships as much as men but are
more inhibited or lack
the opportunities, a consequence of male-orientated society. Anyway a number of historical
performers-
Cleopatra, Messalina, etc. - are quite as impressive as the men. The record is surely held by
Madame de
Saint-Ange, who argued that a woman can be ruined by lovers but that mere acts of libertinism
are quickly
forgotten - "That is the conduct I would always prescribe to all women who would follow in
my steps. In the
twelve years I have been married I have been had by perhaps ten or twelve thousand
individuals." (Quoted in J.
Atkins' "Sex in Literature".)