Sex poll

[Aum]

The other thread inspired me to ask a time honoured question.

What do you consider "sex" to be?

[cwbyrvr]

I went with penetration, genital contact, manual stimulation, oral, pleasuring touching of any kind, and physical contact while partially or fully nude. Though I was unsure of selecting the last two, those are more situational to me. Depends heavily on where the touching is/what kind of touching it is, and what the physical contact is/where it is. Generally, if I feel like I've had sex, then I've had sex. Seems like a good enough rule for me. An orgasm is not necessary especially as those never happen for me.

[lillerina]

I'm reluctant to say pleasuring touching of any kind, because there's sexual and nonsexual pleasuring touching. I think that for me to count something as sex, genitals have to be touched in some way, but penis in vagina sex is not more legitimately sex than a hand job or oral sex. I would count nongenital sexual touching as sexual behaviour but probably wouldn't call it sex.

[monk]

I'm with both Lilly & Raver, I feel the genitals have to be involved but if you feel enough has happened that you think sex has happened then for you it has happened more than likely. For instance two people wearing just shorts (that stay on) who lay in a bed for an hour making out and rubbing and touching each other could each decided differently whether sex happened or not.

[Sonic#]

I don't know. It probably involves genitals,* and does involve great pleasure, but other than that, I have nothing more than what sex ends up being.

*Sometimes I like to think of the skin as the largest sexual organ. Of course it isn't solely that, or that most of the time (otherwise most contact would be creepy), but it's important.

[Mathmo]

Generally, if I feel like I've had sex, then I've had sex. Seems like a good enough rule for me.

This - whatever the people involved think counts as sex.

Also, what about phone sex?

[octarineoboe]

I chose penetration, genital contact, oral, and manual stimulation.

But the fact that we're even asking this question exemplifies why I hate the word "sex" and hate the way we talk about it. It's so unclear and confusing and unnecessarily difficult. My boyfriend and I have designated another word for non-penetrative sexual activities, because we needed to talk about what we were doing, but we did want to keep "things that can cause pregnancy" in its own category. That was a relatively easy problem, but not so when I went in for a physical and the nurse told me I that I was right on the age boundary for pap smears and I should get one if I'd had sex before. At that point I was regularly having oral and manual sex, but had never had PIV sex, so how the hell was I supposed to answer the question? I even asked her to clarify and she just repeated again that "having sex" was the criterion. (in case you're curious, i went ahead with the pap smear, but that isn't really the point of the story.) What a unhelpful, ill-defined word.

[cwbyrvr]

Generally, if I feel like I've had sex, then I've had sex. Seems like a good enough rule for me.

This - whatever the people involved think counts as sex.

Also, what about phone sex?

And cam sex. And sex chatting (through text/IM/email/whatever). I'd definitely call that sex, it's really just another form of mutual masturbation only you're not anywhere near each other. I guess this is assuming you're masturbating and not just talking about stuff. I recently came across a thread elsewhere about masturbation and how frequently you've done it recentlyish and I was like "hrm, wait, most of my "masturbation" of late has been with another person involved through long distance so I don't really know how to answer this."

[demonicpoison]

I say all of the above (minus the orgasm bit) because of the sexuality class I just finished. Before that, I would have said just penetration.

[Rainbow Dolphins]

It's really arbitrary to me. If I feel like I could brag about getting laid last night, then whatever I did the night previous counts as sex. I kind of picked what I generally feel fits that category (penetration, oral, manual, and genital touching). I think these activities would pretty much always count as sex to me but there are probably some other activities that would sometimes count as sex.

[Meperidine]

This is a tricky one for me because I have sex with people of both sexes, so it's like...manual/oral may be the whole sexual encounter with a woman, so does that mean that head/manual with orgasms and/or the intensity lesbian sex might have also counts as sex when it's a man performing it on me?
Basically orgasms are required for me to think of it as "going all the way," but I am fortunate in that I have orgasms very easily and frequently.

[hannahrae]

Psh. I feel like some sort of bigot or something I've only slept with caucasions. Caucasions of allllll sizes and shapes, but caucasions none the less. Stupid me.

[Rainbow Dolphins]

Basically orgasms are required for me to think of it as "going all the way," but I am fortunate in that I have orgasms very easily and frequently.

I kind of feel the same about this. Like, if I had vaginal penetrative sex with a man but didn't get off it would be more of a grey area than getting fingered and getting off (which would definitely be sex, with a man or a woman).

[The Other Lizard]

I once read a definition of sex as "the pursuit of an orgasm". I like that definition.

[Storage and Disposal]

For me, sex isn't centered around orgasms. I mean, I really like orgasms and I honestly probably like giving orgasms even more. They're definitely highlights, but I like to think that sex isn't simply the pursuit of an orgasm.

[Meperidine]

Like, if I had vaginal penetrative sex with a man but didn't get off it would be more of a grey area than getting fingered and getting off (which would definitely be sex, with a man or a woman).

Good followup to my first thing--never thought about it quite like that and it's good.

[Eravial]

Orgasms have nothing to do with whether or not sex happens, in my mind. I do kind of have different criteria for what constitutes sex whether it's with a man or a woman, though, which I am sort of ok with. For sex with a woman (same sex), any touching of any genitals with any body part constitutes sex, for me. For sex with a man, for the most part I only consider PIV (well, and anal, but I never do that) sex as "sex," but that's definitely tied into the fact that PIV is nearly always what I prefer most.

[monk]

So if I'm following correctly, a mans hands/fingers are not sexual organs but a womans are. And an orgasm is sometimes required for sex unless you don't have orgasms then it's never required.

I really don't think this topic is pollible.



and I think the topic title should be changed to "sex pole"

[rowan]

IMO, if you can get an STD from it, it's sex.

[Eravial]

IMO, if you can get an STD from it, it's sex.

Defining one species' behavior based on an entirely different species' biology like whaaaaat.