Defining Sex

When is sex not sex?

I was talking to a friend the other day about how we in the kink community often have very different ideas of what sex is than those in the vanilla world do.  I find the definition of sex to be very fluid and sometimes it includes something and other times it might not, depending on the relationship and the situation.  I have also found that sex can be far less intimate than some S&M activities, at least for me.

So, what is sex?  What do we count as sex?  I heard Tristan Taormino speaking about her new book on open relationships.  She had interviewed a number of people about their relationships, and the main thing that became clear was that you cannot just use terms that you haven’t defined.  She listed some relationships styles that seem to only occur in D/s types of relationships.  I don’t remember all of them, but the couple I do were the “Queen Bee” relationship, wherein the dominant has multiple relationships with submissives or slaves, and the slaves or submissives are expected to be “faithful” to the dominant.  Another was the “Package Deal,” where a couple might play with others or have sex with them, but only when both parties – or all parties in the case of poly relationships – were present and involved.

She talked about interviewing one couple that had a rule that each person could play with others as they liked, but there was, in their words, “no sex.”  As she began pinpointing that, it became less clear than it seemed on the surface.  Could they have sexual contact with others, like hands for instance?  Yes, that was fine.  Ok, so what about insertions, like dildos or vibrators?  Oh, sure.  What about oral contact, fellatio or cunnilingus or analingus, was that ok?  Yep, that’s fine.  Ok, what about actual intercourse?  No, no, of course not, no sex.  Clearly, their definition of sex and many people’s definition of sex would be very different.

If we were going to count my lovers, we’d have to define our terms.  Do we mean people that I’ve had a relationship which included some sexual overtones or activities?  Lord, that’s going to be a lot of people…  On the other hand, if we’re only counting people I had actual sexual intercourse with it is, actually, a considerably smaller number.  But then, if we’re using that, do we count girls?  What about people that I acted upon sexually, but who did not act on me?  What about people I necked with, rolled around naked or nearly so with, but never actually got farther than second base?  Do we count them?

I remember talking to someone online once and it became a reasonable thing to ask him how many lovers he’d had.  He was in his 40’s and had been single a long time.  “Four,” he said.  I thought, hell, I’ve been in bed with more people than that all at once.

And then I changed the subject.