Andrew Barnard (Letters, 2 August) wrote in response to Suzanne Moore’s article (Making babies is beginning to look as difficult for men as it always has for women, 27 July) that her statistics were exaggerated and need to be checked because they would mean “an average of just over four ejaculations per week”. Mr Barnard needs to check what his male friends are up to, because a 2007 survey by Cupid Bay suggested men ejaculate on average eight times a week. It may also be worth his while to read the current NHS guidance on avoiding prostate cancer which encourages ejaculating at least 21 times a month. His suggestion that the author might have got her gallons mixed up with litres is laughable and would leave a large number of men hitting the lifetime average in their teenage years.
Mark Oates
London
• I wonder whether Andrew Barnard has considered that Suzanne Moore’s statistics are correct and that he is just not trying hard enough?
Derek Worthing
Bristol
• Andrew Barnard is quite right, though I would have thought that ejaculation rates vary according to age – ie the frequency is greater from teenage years to about late 40s, but declines thereafter. I’m also curious to know how these figures were obtained. Were men (or their partners) asked to keep records of the number of ejaculations per day over an extended period? I understand also that boars can shoot out 800 milligrams at one go. What fun!
Meirion Bowen
London
• Suzanne Moore estimated total male ejaculate at 14 gallons, Andrew Barnard thought it more likely to be 14 litres, but I reckon Max got it just about right in Phoenix Nights when he confided to Paddy that he’d only been allotted “a bucket and an ’alf”. According to my garden bucket that amounts to 20 litres.
Paul Tattam
Chinley, Derbyshire
• I must dispute Andrew Barnard’s “oft-quoted average” volume of ejaculate as 5ml. As any pop fan with an interest in band name derivations knows, a “Lovin’ Spoonful” is “10cc”. This immediately reduces the average lifetime’s ejaculations to a more realistic 6,370.
David Collins
Kidderminster, Worcestershire
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