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Discussions about the average number of sexual partners are having something of a renaissance thanks to social media and the rising popularity of the term “body count”, a relatively new and crude term for someone’s “number”.

On TikTok, videos of boys and men discussing their “body counts”, or debating what an acceptable body count for women is, have racked up millions of views globally.

The term has also been adopted and popularised by Andrew Tate-esque content creators such as Walter Weekes and Myron Gaines, who host the Fresh & Fit podcast and YouTube channel, which has 1.57 million subscribers.

Marketed as a “male self-improvement podcast”, topics of discussion centre around a belief that women are in control and that boys and men should get that control back by doing things such as getting ripped, having sex on the first date or training for a marriage as if you’re a professional boxer.

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When asked during a recent episode, “What’s the highest body count of someone you’d have as a wife?” Gaines replied: “She’s gotta be a virgin, man. My thing is, I’m going to have multiple wives – so one, at least, has to be a virgin. One hundred per cent. The other’s gotta be damn near zero.

“There’s a reason why virgins have always had the highest value since the beginning of time ... Bottom line: men don’t like promiscuous women when it comes to a relationship. They’ll have sex with you, but they won’t take you seriously.”

It should concern us all that the phrase “body count” is being used so casually. The term refers to the number of people killed in a war; it’s literally counting bodies as objects of violence. To use this term in a sexual context positions women as objects to be counted as opposed to human beings on an equal footing.

“How many people you’ve slept with shouldn’t matter,” Trkulja says. “It’s not a reflection of how you’re going to show up in relationships today. It doesn’t define you, or reflect your sense of morality and value systems. People who care about how many sexual partners an individual has had in their lifetime is a mere projection of their own insecurity. It’s a reflection on them, not you.”

I let go of sexual repression back in my early 20s. That has meant I racked up way more than sexual partners in my lifetime (so far) than the Australian average. The moment I felt the liberation of sexual independence, I never looked back.

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Perhaps that’s why the Australian average – and the fact it’s the second-highest in the world – felt so surprising.

The problem is not that these metrics exist, but rather the weight and power we still give to them. That women self-report fewer partners than men, and that some men use war terminology to discuss their sex lives proves the social stigma that remains.

Laura Roscioli is a freelance writer based in Melbourne.

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