One of the key researchers behind the project, University of NSW professor Juliet Richters, says the study of more than 20,000 people showed we are becoming both more tolerant of others, and more adventurous in our own bedrooms.

"We have now got a generation not just of children, but of grown-ups, whose parents don't think sex is wrong in and of itself, who don't assume it's dangerous and terrible," Richters says.

Despite their slightly salacious name, most people would not think of the noughties (the first decade of this century) as an era of sexual liberation. But this unique study of Australia's sexual practices shows we have continued on a path of quiet liberation, experimenting more sexually at the same time as we have become more satisfied with our relationships.

Take the quiz now - spoilers below

 

"In the 19th Century there was this idea of the "pure woman" and the "fallen woman" ... But now we have lots of amateur sex, and we have an active sex industry," Richters says.

"The reality is that we are all fallen women now".

And we're showing no signs of trying to get back up. Richters' research shows that a decade ago, 79 per cent of men and 67 per cent of women aged between 16 and 59 had tried oral sex, but now that figure has reached 88 per cent of men and 86 per cent of women.

With that change appears to have come an entire social shift in attitudes towards the practice.

"There is still a sizeable proportion of older women who have never had oral sex in their lives, either given or received, because in older generations there were a lot of people who still followed what their parents' generations believed, which was that oral sex was an elaborate, or kinky practice, or what was called 'whore's tricks'," Richters says.

"Oral sex was an optional extra, like anal sex is now. But oral sex has moved to sit at the other end of the spectrum, to foreplay, or what that generation would call 'petting'."

Women are also sleeping with more people, now with an average of 8.9 partners over their lifetime. Men have an average of 17.5.

But there is one area in which we are not getting more permissive - cheating. Nearly 85 per cent of men and just over 82 per cent of women believe having an affair while in a committed relationship is always wrong.

"It appears that Australians are less concerned about the morality of particular sexual practices, but are becoming more concerned about the morality of infidelity in monogamous relationships," the research team wrote in a special edition of the journal Sexual Health, which was produced to report the findings.

Curiously, Richters notes, this belief in monogamy isn't always openly discussed. Only 57 per cent of men thought they had actually discussed exclusivity with their current partner, compared to 71 per cent of women.

"That's a lot of men who haven't heard a conversation that women think has happened," Richters says.

But are our sex lives getting better?

This raises the question, is all this experimentation actually leading to better relationships, and better sex?

The data can only show us what people are doing, not how much they are enjoying it. Yet it shows the percentage of women who had an orgasm the last time they had sex has not gone up. Only about 66 per cent of women orgasmed, compared to 92 per cent of men.

Back in 2002, this was just under 95 per cent of men and 69 per cent of women, although Richters cautions the 2002 figures represent a slightly younger group of people, so the figures are not directly comparable.

She wonders if men and women are still having trouble communicating, or possibly even discovering, what works best for them in bed.

"[In] every popular culture representation and piece of research, the most common complaint from women was that they wanted to have more foreplay," she says.

"Intercourse is an awfully good way to deliver an orgasm to a man, and an awfully unreliable way of delivering an orgasm to women. That's not to say it's not good for some women, but if people don't negotiate what they really like, and they just do the standard social script, it's not going to work for them."

Shockingly, one in five women has also been forced or frightened into a sexual act, and about one in 20 men. In both groups about half of those experiences happened in childhood.

And we're also having less sex, down from an average of 1.8 times a week to 1.4 times.

University of NSW Associate Professor Martin Holt, who co-edited the special edition of Sexual Health, says this makes him wonder exactly what is going on.

"Are people less relaxed, do they have less time for sexual activity, is there more going on for them mentally and physically? We have gone through a global economic downturn, how does that impact on people's sex lives?"

"If people are more stressed, if they experience more forms of mental ill-health, their sex lives are going to suffer."

Men and women also seem to be having very different experiences when it comes to their changing sexual world.

There has been a "striking" increase, Richters says, of women having same-sex experiences, up from 8.8 per cent 10years ago to nearly 15 per cent today.

She puts it down to our more permissive attitudes: "When sex isn't policed as heavily as it was in the past more things are possible, and one of the possibilities today is going to bed with someone else and seeing if it's better." One of the only Western countries that hasn't seen a similar increase, she notes, is Ireland, which is traditionally far more conservative sexually.

Yet, particularly among young women, masturbation is still very uncommon. Less than half of all women have masturbated in the past year (compared to 76 per cent of men), and for girls aged 16-19, this falls to 30 per cent.

And while women are experimenting with other women, men have seen no similar shift. Researchers are still split as to whether there are biological reasons for this difference, or if it is cultural.

Holt says he is resistant to the biological explanation. "I think it's about social expectations, as well as the greater stigma for men who admit they have had same-sex experience."

While the idea that women might have an autonomous sexuality is a newer cultural phenomenon, men's sexuality has been subject to strict social monitoring for far longer. Add to that the stigma attached to the HIV epidemic, and being an openly gay man came with an even greater social cost, Holt says.

"There are some nasty expectations out there for men that are very rigid, and we make strict demands on men who are straight, the kind of straight men we want," he says. "It smacks of a deep-seated anxiety about men having sex with men, and I don't know why that is."

Among gay communities it can be equally frowned upon to admit to also having attraction to women, so "they cop it from both sides", he says.

The internet is for porn, and it's changing how we view sex

That moment with your partner (or, perhaps, your partners, or yourself) when the mood changes, that touch of skin, flash of energy. It's hard to imagine something so personal being influenced by cultural and political trends.

Professor Gary Dowsett, the deputy director and chairman of the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health & Society at La Trobe University, says our sexual practice develops in many different ways.

Sometimes, there is an explosion, such as, recently, a book like 50 Shades of Grey.

"One idea from something can have profound social effects. These kinds of moments, they shift the agenda. The world does get transformed," he says. "A private secret becomes a public discourse".

But sometimes it's a slow creep, with academic research percolating through the public via popular culture, changing media representations, and people sharing secrets with their friends.

Dowsett says the last decade has seen a huge increase in public discussions about sex, often linked to scientific or research breakthroughs.

"We just know so much more about what people were doing sexually five years ago than we did 10 years ago, and this stuff does filter out."

Though it may not feel like we have been part of a sexual revolution, this flow of information and discussion has been slowly but surely changing each and every one of us.

One of the biggest cultural changes in the past 10 years has been the rise of the internet.

Back into 2002, we spent about 46 minutes a day online. By the time of the second survey, it was four hours. And the number of people online had ballooned from 569 million, to 2.27 billion.

Sex permeates everything online - from news to music and movies - and everyone knows that if there is anything the internet is good for (besides cat videos) it is porn.

 

It's hard to know exactly how big the internet porn world is, but it's estimated there are more than 2.5 million sites and about 13 per cent of searches are for erotic material.

In the office of sexual health counsellor Brett McCann, the internet is both a blessing and a curse. While pornography may have been liberating for some, it has also created false expectations.

"Young people in particular can now find somewhere to identify if they feel a bit different to others," he says. "When you look at say, popular culture, video clips, there is a lot of sexuality from a young age.

"Young men and young women are more fluid about their sexuality, and they don't necessarily identify with a sexual orientation". He notes the proportion of men who had a same-sex experience rose among the 16-19 age group, from 1.7 per cent to 4.2 per cent.

But for some couples the constant exposure to sex has created expectation and pressure, without giving them the communication skills and confidence to deal with it.

"They are just swapping what they used to do with what they see in pornography, which is just performance sex, and they are saying 'I don't feel connected'," he says.

"Sex has become a sport and there is this huge pressure to use it as a way of measuring your relationship."

One thing everyone agrees is that talking is the key. Our increasing experimentation and openness is probably a good sign - and certainly is for the reduction in stigma towards people whose sexual desires differ from the norm.

But until we learn to add more communication into the mix, counsellors like McCann will always have work.

"Most of the stuff you read about sex is not about intimacy and relationships and feelings, it's still about doing and being done," he says.

"If it's all spectator driven, brain driven, that's very different to having an emotional, sensual and spiritual connection people may be looking for".