The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal - What Is Sex?, Part II
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09:45 am
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What Is Sex?, Part II
Some interesting responses from yesterday's post on what it means when you say, "I had sex with X," some of which were quite fascinating.
Some folks went roughly with my internal definitions. Other folks went with the idea that "Any activity intended to give orgasm to one of the participants" was sex - which is an interesting, if extremely vague, definition, but some folks want that vagueness.
Before we continue, however, a fun Ferrett fact: my first sexual experience, which involved a very small woman and non-lubricated condoms, was very much like sticking Little Elvis into a Play-Doh Fun Factory. It wasn't pleasant, and so I assumed that sex itself was overrated. For the next two years of my life, my only sexual contact with my girlfriends was oral and manual sex.*
Now, in that time, I had two of the five most memorable relationships I've had. The intimacy I felt with those girlfriends was nothing short of amazing, and the fact that I never had penetrative intercourse with them doesn't lessen what we shared in the least.
Yet if you were to ask me, "Ferrett, did you have sex with them?", my answer would be, "Uh... no. I didn't. But..."
Which is the interesting bit. For me, my own internal definition of "sex" has nothing to do the level of sexual intimacy experienced in a relationship. Some folks thought there was some hierarchy at stake, wherein if you didn't have sex then by God, it somehow "doesn't count" or is less real. But for me, the term sex is merely a definitional word, in much the same way I draw a distinction between kissing, kissing, and making out. (The first is just lips, the second involves tongue, and the third involves multiple tongue kisses with full-on body contact.)
When I say, "Wow, I didn't have sex with them," for me it simply defines the physical range of what we experienced together. I've stuck my penis inside of women where it was considerably less intimate than what I had in with most of the girlfriends in those first two vaginal intercourse-free years. Far as I'm concerned, intimacy can't be measured by a simple "What body part touched what body part."
And because I believe that, my definition of the term "sex" does not connote the level of intimacy, but rather the range of activities experienced. Many folks want it to connote the level of intimacy, because if they spend several hours in bed with someone they want it to count. And that's perfectly fine.
But that brings up the second point - this is my own internal set of definitions, which I firmly acknowledge are illogical and not particularly thought through. They're just what instinctively goes through my head when someone says, "X had sex with Y." The definition of "any act intended to bring someone to orgasm" is such a wobbly construct that it can contain everything.... Which is convenient for some, but not for folks like me who a) like categorizing things and b) like knowing what happened. (Yes, I'm nosy.)
As it is, for me, if someone said "I had mind-blowing sex with [GIRL] last night!" and it turns out that [GIRL] gave him a handjob, that image would be at odds with what I'd consider sex. Yet that is simply me. I'm not attempting, as many are, to make some blanket statement of WHAT SEX IS, but rather to look at how society and our own personal desires create an odd set of not-always-consistent rules that each of us uses.
I think that "intent to provide orgasm" is a useful tool in polyamorous households to determine where the backstop is. And it's not a bad way of looking at it if you're looking to come up with some way that makes you feel as though you've connected with your partner. But again, none of those are what flit instinctively through my head when someone says, "I had sex with X," which is the question I was asking.
And I find it interesting. Fisting? I count that as sex for lesbians, not for men. (Not that it's not sex per se, but fisting is unusual enough in a lot of relationships that I'd expect some mention of it as an exception.) Tribadism? Not sure why, but for me that absolutely counts for women as sex. Bizarre, but it's what floats through my head instinctively. It is not universal.
Do any of those matter? Fuck no. What matters is what you think and what makes you happy. As it always has been.
* - Thankfully, an older woman introduced me to the joys of lubricated condoms and the difference they made, and ho boy it was a whole different ball game.
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![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/40497973/951469) | | From: | ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) zillah3 |
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| Date: | August 16th, 2008 02:04 pm (UTC) |
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You know, the fact that society has different names for these acts at all implies that society in general does not consider them all to be equal and under one name. Category, yes, or they wouldn't come up in this discussion at all. But they are not all automatically "sex", or we wouldn't have the words "fisting", "blowjob", etc.
Of course, that's society talking, not individual people.
I don't know about that. There may be a societal perception that they're not all equal or the same -- bringing up again Ferret's example of Clinton's denial as an example -- but without a poll or polls to back that up, that's really our own individual perceptions of what society may perceive. (Dizzying to follow while I'm still having my morning cup of coffee, so if I'm unclear, my apologies.)
More practically, there's different names for different activities because of a desire to label and categorize. Let's take 'cooking', for example. That's a broad enough category, and we can agree that the ultimate aim with it is to provide enjoyable food for digestion. But, it doesn't have to be nourishing! (It can, and we like to joke that cake has eggs, milk and flour, which are good for us, but cake really isn't nourishing. It's just really yummy.) There's also different names for different types, stages and styles of cooking: baking, chopping, barbeque, sauté, braise, roast, prep, steam, stuff, mix, blend, Chinese, fusion, etc.
Some may not consider chopping vegetables for a soup, salad or to put on a skewer for shish-kebab on an equal level as, say, making a soufflé or baked Alaskan, but it's all still 'cooking'.
That doesn't follow. Should we not have the word "apple" because we already have the word "fruit"?
| | From: | zillah3 |
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| Date: | August 16th, 2008 02:07 pm (UTC) |
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wow, I'm the only person commenting on Saturday morning....
| From: | (Anonymous) |
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| Date: | August 16th, 2008 02:36 pm (UTC) |
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The rest of his friendslist is obviously having some form of intimate contact with significant others or, um, themselves.
I agree with you on this. I was going to make one exception, but then I read the previous post too, and you covered that. The exception being, if you ask your partner if they had sex with someone else, when they gave a handjob or whatever, the answer is not 'no'.
I think the reason is, two definitions. In "I had sex with X" the definition is the specific one, distinct from oral sex or whatever. In "did you have sex with X?" the definition is the catchall version. Why two definitions? Because there isn't a separate word for that. (Though to be fair, there is a separate word for the specific one, but it's a stupid word, and nobody's going to say "I engaged in coitus with X" to leave 'sex' free to be the catchall term.)
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/64840875/440417) | | From: | jenk |
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| Date: | August 17th, 2008 01:38 am (UTC) |
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The exception being, if you ask your partner if they had sex with someone else, when they gave a handjob or whatever, the answer is not 'no'.
Well, as the person who advocated the "if someone had an orgasm then some sort of sex occurred" view of "sex", I will note that THAT is one of the reasons for the definition my husband and I use. We aren't monogamous, and our agreement is to get check in and get each other's approval before engaging in activity with intent to cause orgasm.
So if I've met someone new, flirting is okay. Hugs are okay. Kissing is okay ... as long as we stay away from orgasm.
Oh, and the reason for saying "some sort of sex occurred" is that there are lots of kinds of sex!
Yeah, see, that's just it: while sex can have intimacy, it doesn't automatically have it every time. (If it did, there are a lot of anonymous Johns and hos being intimate while getting their money's worth.) I can understand the desire to want to conflate sex with intimacy, but it really doesn't follow.
Believe me: I've had my share of fun, meaningless sex.
However, I would much rather have sex -- falling under the broad definition I gave on the previous entry -- with someone I love and care for, on a very intimate and meaningful level.
Again: I understand those who want to assume that sex means intimacy. I really do. But you get into a LOT of trouble with that -- this is where hearts get broken and innumerable misunderstandings arise. When I overhear someone say, "But we had such great sex! I thought he* loved me. Why hasn't he called?", I have to mightily restrain myself from butting in to try to correct this person's thinking. Unless those words came out of your partner's mouth at least once (and preferably at least once outside of sex), you really cannot assume love or intimacy. Ever. Unfortunately, that's a lesson that some have to learn the hard way before they'd ever believe it.
* "he" could just as well be "she." Not trying to fingerpoint at just one gender, here.
Aren't you the original author of the now-famous Purity Test? I think that might be a barometer for those who might not be familiar with you/your history. You've been thinking/obsessing(?) about these definitions for quite some time (or so I'm surmising). And so it does come up in something like the purity test, for instance.
I know my friends and I discussed our definitions when we were taking the purity test together and came up with very similar definitions as yours. And I agree, they're definitions, but don't have have a cause-effect relationship (for me at least, not for some of my friends though) to the Personal Relationship itself.
the original author of the now-famous Purity Test?
- what the one i took in 1988? Can't be, surely... well, if he was a child prodigy... no, surely can't be...
So, wait, have you now changed your mind on the lesbian thing? In your first post, didn't you say only oral was counting, in your mind, as lesbian sex?
Though I'm not sure why it matters, if you can't have it yourself. Defining whether a partner can have it, I suppose, maybe, but...meh.
Sex is being more broadly defined to include anal, oral, digital, intrafemural, and other types in part because of child molestation. Some courts are willing to lower sentences for criminals who molest children because there was no penis-vagina contact and therefore no one was deflowered, making it a lesser crime. This idolization of virginity is sick in it's own right, but that's neither here nor there. In all actuality, any kind of sex is sex for a child and ought to be treated that way. What adults classify as sex between adults is much less important, unless, again, you're talking about rape.
... I actually just read a law briefing which detailed intrafemural sex as not "real" sex and therefore of less harm to the person who suffered through it.
As for fisting, I know someone who was forced to fist his mother. He calls it sex. I'm not going to quibble.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/401637/264986) | | From: | leduck |
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| Date: | August 18th, 2008 02:59 pm (UTC) |
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Heavens-- what is intrafemoral sex? That's clearly too polite a euphemism for me to comprehend. (But then again, what comes to my mind is the femoral artery, and I'm pretty sure that whatever is happening there, it isn't like a catheterization.) Are we talking about tribadism? Dry humping? Inquiring minds are stumped!
The intimacy I felt with those girlfriends was nothing short of amazing, and the fact that I never had penetrative intercourse with them doesn't lessen what we shared in the least.
Especially since sex is not necessarily emotionally intimate and emotional intimacy can occur without sex by any definition of the word.
Personally I think I'd call it 'sex' if it's 'both people naked and rolling around together and ending in orgasm' even if the orgasm was brought about orally or manually. However, I wouldn't necessarily call it sex if one person gave another person another person a blowjob in the Clintonian fashion, both people clothed and one pleasuring the other. I'm not sure why though.
My old (gay) boyfriend used to say; "Some people want the whole world up their ass." (In relation to your fisting comment.)
People are often ignorant and confused about sex so they believe a myriad of things. There are some who even believe that masturbation is sex.
So I wonder if anything definitive will come out of this conversation.
But it has been interesting.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/10427108/609252) | | From: | nex0s |
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| Date: | August 16th, 2008 08:22 pm (UTC) |
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Masturbation is sex with oneself.
But hey, I'm wacky that way.
N.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/78323072/932444) | | From: | pinwiz |
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| Date: | August 16th, 2008 05:41 pm (UTC) |
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I definitely fall on the "intent of Orgasm" side of the argument. At least I feel that way on the gay side. Anal sex is tons of fun, but it's also takes a lot of work and planning to do it right/be clean. I'd assume that it's more difficult to achieve than the typical heterosexual intercourse, which is why a good oral/hand combo works as sex for me.
Now if you say that you fucked someone... that implies penetration.
What I don't get is how if I were to perform cunnilingus (or fisting, it seems) on my wife, it wouldn't be sex, but if a lesbian woman (or bi?) were to perform the same acts on her, it would be sex.
In regards to 'Yet if you were to ask me, "Ferrett, did you have sex with them?", my answer would be, "Uh... no. I didn't. But..." '
Unless that "But..." was followed by "...anyone but me would have considered it some sort of sex.", then you are a liar.
Actually, the "but" would have been followed by "We had oral sex."
The question of whether "Anyone but me would have considered it some sort of sex" is the very point I'm making. Would they have? Some would, some wouldn't. Probably more would than wouldn't, but would they consider that "sex"? Dunno.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/82771973/446406) | | From: | zoethe |
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| Date: | August 17th, 2008 02:33 am (UTC) |
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I think that his saying, "No, but..." followed by a basic description of the act that was performed is being honest. There was nowhere that he said that disclosure was unnecessary. Far from it: he specifically said that disclosure was required.
Fisting? I count that as sex for lesbians, not for men.
But that's not what you said the first time around! ;)
Actually, I hadn't thought about fisting, or tribadism, at the time. As I said, it's a nebulous terminology.
I get that your definitions are just your own and not what you necessarily want everyone to use.
I don't find it a wobbly construct because I'm not hell-bent on knowing the precise definition of what someone is doing in a single word. That's why we have adjectives and other descriptors.
If one person was sexually intimate with someone else (I didn't say emotionally intimate in my previous comment, just sexually), that is a suitable answer for whether they've had sex. Just like if someone's had anal sex, I consider their virginity well and truly busted.
I'm also not sure why counting, or not counting, is a big deal. Virginity is one of the stupidest concepts I've ever heard of; arrangements re: "what is cheating" should be pretty damn specific in any case; the only real reason for "had sex with" is that "had sexual intercourse with" or "stuck his cock in me" sounds all sorts of awkward at Sunday brunch.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/31357263/559299) | | From: | hartley |
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| Date: | August 28th, 2008 09:35 pm (UTC) |
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| | Late to the party | (Link) |
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But I felt I should comment. I, at least, happen to see where theferret seems to be coming from. Not from any sort of heirarchy or rules-lawyering of the language, just what his personal definition is of the word "sex," especially in the contact of what comes to mind when the phrase "I had sex" (or similar) is used. And yeah, the immediate thing that pops into my mind is vaginal intercourse. Of course, I'm a (more or less) heterosexual male. I would also say, "no, but we did X" if someone asked if I had sex with someone with whom I had only had oral, for example. I just don't understand why a drama explosion was necessary. |
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