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it is rivalled only by the Sexpert Minxy Byline Photo: ‘Yes,’ say those pursed lips, those lowered eyelids, ‘I’ve had A LOT of sex. See how wild and loose my hair is? It’s because I’ve just had sex. See how I’m holding this pen in my photo? Just imagine what else I could hold so masterfully. See how my shoulders are bare. That’s because I just had sex. You hear me? Sex.’

      Again, speaking purely from a personal perspective, they act like the image of Boris Yeltsin squatting naked on a coffee table used to act on Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World: the ultimate schwing-killer.

      Whether pop culture’s sniggering voyeurism and retrograde misogyny reflect most people’s attitude to sex is a bigger question. They encourage that tendency, certainly, as anyone who has ever, despite themselves, bought a tabloid because of a front page story involving a footballer and his alleged ‘mid-romp’ puking (thank you, Ashley Cole) knows. But at the risk of upsetting every tabloid journalist who makes a living out of assuming that the thought of other people having sex is the most mind-bogglingly shocking concept this side of the Higgs boson particle, I’m going to say that, ultimately, no, it isn’t, or no more than Pringles reflect the human need for regular nutrition.

      Well, at last, all those sex questions you’ve always wondered about will be answered and you won’t have to suffer a Sex Therapist Tone, Minxy Photo or tales of triple anal penetration to hear them. You’re welcome!

       * Hey, why doesn’t the guy ever offer to put on a condom? Why is it always my job to tell him? I mean, it goes ON HIM, right? Even in the rare film that admits, yes, condoms are worn during sex, it’s still the woman who has to prompt the man. It’s not like I’m expected to tell a man to shave in the morning or to do any of his other manly self-care tasks, and I don’t expect him to tell me to put in a tampon, or whatever. So why this craziness, why why why?

      Easy: it’s a little-known fact among the female populace, but a very well-known one among the male populace, that men cannot get sexually transmitted diseases. That’s right: just as they cannot get pregnant, so they cannot get herpes, genital warts, hepatitis, gonorrhoea, syphilis, HIV (am I turning you on yet?) and so on. Men also cannot pass on any STDs because none of them – not one of them – has an STD.

      Moreover, if a guy doesn’t want to get the woman pregnant, he literally won’t get her pregnant. Isn’t that amazing? He just transmits a thought down to his penis mid-sexual encounter that says, ‘Penis, listen to me: I want to get laid but I don’t want a baby. So don’t shoot out the good stuff.’ And it won’t! Ah, the wonders of science.

      So seeing as sex is consequence-free for a guy, why would he sheathe the mini-me?

      Oh wait, what’s that? I’m getting word from a medical-type person that this isn’t the case. They CAN get STDs too? And pass them on? And they can’t telepathically send thoughts to their penises? Huh. So why –? Because they can’t get pregnant? And therefore they don’t grow up thinking of sex as having any consequence other than an orgasm? And because many of them think that, well, the woman can sort it – there are pills, right? And she’s probably on the Pill anyway, right? And because many of them live in the mistaken belief that it is very hard for men to catch STDs from women? Or pass them on? Because such things don’t happen to guys like them? And because they just don’t want to wear a condom? And because some of them, in the moment (and possibly beyond), are selfish jerks who are just thinking about one thing right then and it ain’t their health, let alone her health? And maybe this should make the woman think twice whether this moron deserves the privilege of gazing upon her naked body seeing as he has so little interest in its physical wellbeing? Oh. OK.

      Hope that clears it up for you.

      * How long is it normal for a single woman to go without having sex? Gosh. Well. THAT’S embarrassing. How long are we talking here?

       * Oh, um, I didn’t realise I’d have to say. Well, there was this guy last summer but his, um, didn’t really go in, um –

      STOP! I was just kidding! Please, I beg you, stop making those gestures with your fingers!

      Contrary to common perception, one’s attractiveness is not measured in how many people have seen you naked. It’s actually measured in the quality of your dance routine to ‘She’s Like the Wind’ by Patrick Swayze. Personally, I’m VERY attractive.

      As to how long it’s normal to go without having sex, the thing to remind oneself here is that the human body is not a car. It doesn’t need regular top-ups of, um, a certain viscous liquid that comes out of a nozzle which is inserted – whoa horsey! Sorry about that, I got carried away with my own metaphor. Let’s just say, your body is not reliant on regular top-ups, and we’ll stop there. In fact, it can run on empty for years and years and years. I realise this goes against the wise words preached by Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller (‘Seriously, do you, like, service yourself ten times a day?’), but this is one of those rare occasions, maybe even the only occasion, on which one must disregard the Holy Book of Zoolander.

      Sex is, yes, a natural physical impulse, and while it might be necessary for most people to have mental equilibrium and feel a sense of fulfilment, it’s not actually essential to maintain bodily functions.

      And yet, just as the so-called sexual revolution may have opened the gates to talking about sex and yet not actually raised the levels of maturity and intelligence in how sex is discussed or viewed, so it took away the social stigma of sex happening beyond the bounds of wedlock but seemed to replace it with a stigma of sex not happening outside wedlock. In other words, retained the sexual obsession, just transferred it over to the other side. If The Scarlet Letter were written today, it would be about an attractive twenty-something woman who went for eighteen months and counting without getting laid. Stone her out of town, the repulsive deviant!

      This is because while a man not having sex is endearingly, even relate-ably tragic, a woman not having sex is simply tragic, worryingly pitiable, probably physically and almost certainly psychologically deformed. From Sex and the City (‘If you don’t put something in there soon it will grow over,’ one character is warned after it transpires she hasn’t had sex since her divorce a handful of months ago) to pretty much every women’s magazine on your newsstand, the assumption is now that a woman has the freedom to go home with any of the similarly single chaps she meets at whatever dreary house party she finds herself at on a Saturday night, surely she will take advantage of that freedom.

      Yet the freaky truth is that while, yes, women can now have casual sex without being pilloried, and yes, this is a very good and right and equal state of affairs, some women don’t want to. Some women don’t want to sleep with people they don’t know all that well, even if it is on offer to them. Just because there is cake available at the buffet doesn’t mean everyone is going to have a piece of the cake. It’s not that you don’t like cake (who doesn’t like cake?), it’s that you’re not hungry right now, or maybe you don’t like that flavour of cake and you’d rather wait to get home and fix yourself the kind of cake you know you do – OK, I’ll quit the metaphors now.

      Thus, if you are a woman who doesn’t really enjoy casual sex and you are also rather picky when it comes to relationships, preferring to be with no one rather than just anyone as you’re holding out for if not the One then at least someone, and are also rather shy or maybe a little self-conscious, you may indeed find yourself going without sex for, well, quite a while. And you know what? That’s just fine. It’s only because there is still such an immature attitude about sex that anyone would even think of judging that. Why not worry about when was the last time you went down a waterslide? Or read the latest David Sedaris article? Oh that’s right, because it doesn’t involve getting – giggle – naked. Well, I guess it could, but only if you didn’t mind waterslide friction rash. And really liked David Sedaris.

      But I get that sex has more of a frisson than waterslides (if not more friction). But instead of focusing on when you last had sex, or how many people you’ve had sex with, how about thinking instead, respectively, about when was the last time you had sex that was more good than awkward and how many people you had sex with who wouldn’t

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