Half of participants who engaged in anal sex employed a condom. By contrast, only 36 percent of men reporting receiving anal sex and 34 percent of men reporting giving it. Around 75 percent of participants reported kissing their partners, giving oral sex, and/or receiving oral sex in their most recent sexual encounters. The results: Despite the popular perception, 'sexual behaviors involving the anus were least common,' researchers found. Did it involve kissing, cuddling, masturbation, oral sex, anal sex? Did it happen with a boyfriend, spouse, stranger, or sex worker? Was it in a car, a home, a club? Were condoms used? The study hopes to combat 'the almost exclusive focus' on HIV in most academic research on gay male sexual behavior, as well as to increase understanding of the 'diversity and complexity of these men’s sexual lives.' To do that, they asked gay and bisexual-identified men ages 18 to 87 to chart their most recent sexual experience. In the Journal of Sexual Medicine, researchers from Indiana University and George Mason University surveyed nearly 25,000 gay and bisexual men in an effort to better understand how they experience sex.
