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Are you getting friskier?...Another artice stolen from FOX NEWS.

shadowcat

Atlanta suburb

AOL News (Oct. 4) -- From teenagers to senior citizens, Americans across the country are getting frisky. They also say that they're getting more experimental and that plenty of them are faking orgasms.

Those are just a few of the findings from the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, a new survey on sexual behaviors among Americans. It's the largest, most comprehensive exploration of its kind in over a decade: A total of 5,865 people, between ages 14 and 94, answered a series of intimate questions on their carnal habits.

"Unless, like al-Qaida, you feel there's something abnormal about the American people, what these data say is, 'This is normal -- everything in there is normal,'" Dr. Dennis Fortenberry, lead author of the study's teen sex section, told The Associated Press.

And the study indicates that "normal" includes a vast array of sexual positions and practices. A grand total of 41 different activities, from oral sex to partner masturbation, were cited by participants as their most recent sexual experience.

We're also experimenting between the sheets (or on the coffee table, or the kitchen floor) with same-sex partners. Around 7 percent of respondents identified as "other than heterosexual," but around 15 percent of adults had a sexual history that included oral sex with a same-sex partner.

Sixty percent of men had masturbated at least once in the last month. Fewer women, only around half of those in their 20s, reported doing the same.

The frankness with which participants fessed up to their sexual norms likely got an added boost, because researchers opted to use the Internet to circulate their survey. Eliminating face-to-face contact may have yielded more open disclosure.

"The era of wham-bam, thank you ma'am is over," Pepper Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Washington, told Bloomberg.

But the research also noted a disparity in sexual satisfaction between men and women, and one that suggests a lack of communication between the sheets.

While 85 percent of men indicated that their most recent partner had reached orgasm, only 64 percent of women confirmed that inkling. And one-third of women surveyed had experienced genital discomfort during their last sexual experience, compared to a mere 5 percent of men.

"I think it's a combination of people being too embarrassed to work out an issue or too careful about shaking up the system by giving accurate feedback," Debby Herbenick, who co-authored the research, told ABC News. "Men take a lot of pride in 'giving' a woman an orgasm ... so in the beginning, faking it could be about encouragement."

And some Americans -- though maybe not those you'd suspect -- need to start stockpiling (and using) condoms.

Teen condom use was surprisingly high, with 83 percent saying they used one during their most recent encounter. Among older adults, though, condoms aren't even the norm: Only 22 percent of adult males reported condom use.

"Younger kids have grown up with the AIDS threat," Schwartz said. " ... Older people don't have the same health attention, in part because no one wants to know about their sexuality at all."


Sponsored Links Condom use among black and Hispanic communities is also higher than it is among whites, which suggests that public health interventions in the two groups are having a positive impact.

The survey will be a major help for public health administrators and sex educators, who can glean important information for policy changes and priorities.

But experts also note that the findings have positive implications for everyday Americans, by reassuring them that what they do with their clothes off isn't really all that freaky.

"That's why this is so important," Monica Rodriguez, president the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, told The New York Times. "It gives us a sense of what's really happening, instead of all this, 'Well, my sex life must not be normal, because I don't do this or only do this.'"