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The statistics are about sex, not about having partners, so I'm not sure where you're getting your fundamental objection from. Sure differential rates in coupling could account for some of the difference but...
Given that most women are serial monogamists (and have been for decades, since probably at least the 80s) at best (and for your average woman any given man often doesn't last long), yes it does mean they're more promiscuous. We're not talking about statistics of virginal marriages here.
If you bang 10 guys in a year, it doesn't change anything that you temporarily gave them all the title of "boyfriend".
If you bang one guy for 10 years during your twenties, while a loser male has one or two hookups but otherwise remains single and technically sexless for 8/10 of those years he still has an equal or higher body count to the woman. In this way measuring promiscuity by sexual partner count in the last year doesn’t make sense.
The stat posted is a binary yes/no on sexlessness in the last year as far as I can see, but yes you're right about another aspect of the limitations of these kinds of statistics and how men can apparently come out ahead even though they're actually not by any means.
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