Thanks to the Two Rules of Desire and other conventions, that men must automatically know more than women do about sex. This affectation is not without its consequences.

In a lovely post titled “Don’t be a slut, you prude,” Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon calls out slut-shamer Susan Walsh for claiming it’s tawdry and irrelevant to discuss how many partners women should have, a.k.a. their “number” when in fact Walsh has discussed it. All well and good.

I’ve got a question though. In her post about numbers Walsh makes the claim that

Your number is too high. OK, fine, you don’t want any guy who cares about how many people you’ve slept with. Problem is… that’s most guys.

Read the quote in context, and follow the links, here.

Is that true? More specifically is that universally true? Is it true only for inexperienced or insecure men? Is it also true with sexually experienced men? Is it…

Well, admittedly an awful lot of men are sexually inexperienced, and a surprising number of experienced men are still insecure. At at this year’s Sex 2.0 conference Veronica Monet mentioned that when she was a sex worker a man paid her nearly $15,000 to help him learn how to give his partner an orgasm. Nor was he the only customer to pay her for similar advice. This, presumably, because they were anxious about asking their partners directly. For fear, it sounds like Susan Walsh would say, that they might know.

Anyway, seriously, what possible legitimate reason should real adult men have for caring about their partner’s “number?”