We definitely, probably, maybe had sex. I think.

When was the last time you had sex?

According to Dictionary.com

sex (sɛks)
— n
...

3. short for sexual intercourse
4. feelings or behaviour resulting from the urge to gratify the sexual instinct
5. sexual matters in general

sexual intercourse
noun
genital contact, especially the insertion of the penis into the vagina followed by orgasm; coitus; copulation.

Over the course of my research, I've asked people to define sex for me. It started with the kinky community, but it's such an interesting question, I usually bring it up at dinner, over drinks, while playing mini-golf, at academic conferences. I feel it is a measure of self-restraint that I wait until I've met someone a few times before I ask (usually).

Where you stand depends a lot on who you lay down with. Most vanilla heterosexuals jump straight to the sexual intercourse definition. I cozened onto the fact that this was not the case for kinky people pretty early in my experience with the community when I heard a bunch of submissives discussing "p/v sex." Since I felt like I spent the first month with my mouth agape as I learned new and exciting scenarios for eroticism, I felt let down when someone told me it was penis/vagina sex. Then I realized the linguistic significance of such a category. One type of sex, among many.

Growing up on a steady diet of heteronormativity, for me sex had always been linked with reproduction. All that other stuff that didn't threaten pregnancy was just not-sex. This concept presented difficulty when I began taking female lovers. I felt safe from the ever-looming disaster pregnancy could bring, but I also felt those experiences were somehow less authentic than the ones I had with men.

Personally, I began to base my concept of sex on orgasm some time in my late teens. If someone came, then it was definitely sex. If not, well, that wasn't a guarantee one way or the other. But it satisfied my undefined queerness. It wasn't anything I discussed much with people who I wasn't intimate with.

Ethnocentrically, I thought this definition would hold water for people with alternative sexual practices who were not focused on reproduction. Many of the women I asked to define sex put forth similarly nebulous definition that took account of female pleasure, at least as the ideal. Abigail (never real names) told me

My favorite thing is sex with no foreplay, just thrown on the bed and fucked. I love that. You should try anal sex, that’s nice. There are some people who don’t consider it sex unless it’s vaginal. I don’t know what they call the other stuff but it’s not having sex. It’s playing around or messing around. If I have an orgasm, it’s sex. When they talk about no sex at parties, they are talking about no penetration.

This focus on penetration came up repeatedly. Charlotte, who told me she rarely has sex in public, explained

Sex is whatever you consider sex with the person that you are with. In this case, with my owner, I am talking about penetration. With other people it really depends the person I’m with and how they are talking afterwards, and if we feel we had sex, then we had sex .

So, I'm going along with this as an anthropologist, learning the emic definition of sex, which doesn't necessarily contradict the classic definition of sexual intercourse, but instead expands to include p/v sex as one type of many. Penetration is still present. What amazed me was that female orgasm (usually without penetration) was prominently on display at all of the parties I attended, including the ones that were sex-free. Only in queer settings was this sometimes considered sex (and not always then). The defining difference between pro-sex parties and sex-free ones was usually the occurrence of male orgasm.

Part of me felt like women were pulling the wool over heteronormativity's eyes, taking pleasure that was forbidden to men. Then I realized that female pleasure is not a sufficient indicator of sex. I was returned to my adolescent struggle with whether or not my female lovers counted as "real" sexual partners. Expanding one's repertoire in ways to get off does not necessarily queer the assumptions we are raised on about what counts as real sex. In the kinky community, procreation is usually off the table as a means of defining sex. Male orgasm is a definite indication that sex has taken place. Barring that, penetration becomes the measure of sex. But as Charlotte notes, sex isn't necessarily the same for everyone. This leads to situations where people, in all seriousness, say things like, "I am pretty sure we had sex."

I like that sex is one of those things we think we have a grasp on, like sleep. We have our own experiences that form the basis of our knowledge, sometimes supplemented with porn. Very rarely do we have the chance to compare ideals with practice, which is part of why I love my research. I think sex is contingent and constructed, like everything cultural. For myself, I'll stick with the pleasure principle.