It Turns Out ‘Sex’ Really Is in the Eye of the Beholder

BLOOMINGTON, Ind.—On Jan. 17, 1998, during a White House press conference with his wife at his side, President Clinton famously uttered the line that continues to haunt him to this day: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

Exactly seven months later, Clinton would eat those words in grand jury testimony, when he finally admitted that he had had an "improper physical relationship" with Lewinsky. But the semantic damage had been done. America was talking about what it means to “have sex,” and was the definition fluid, so to speak. Could someone define it themselves and conveniently decide that a blow job was not sex, that oral sex of any kind, or anal sex, is not really sex, or was there an established meaning that no one could willy-nilly get around? It turns out the answer then, as now, remains the same.

In 1999, the Kinsey Institute in a study came to the conclusion that no consensus exists about what it means to “have sex.” Eleven years later, the Kinsey Institute at the University of Indiana announced that it has conducted a second, more thorough, study that also came to the same conclusion as the first. 

“The new study, published in the international health journal Sexual Health in February, examined whether more information helped clarify matters—study participants were asked about specific sexual behaviors and such qualifiers as whether orgasm was reached—and researchers also wanted to involve a more representative audience, not just college students,” read a press release issued Thursday by the institute.

“Is oral sex considered sex? It wasn't to around 30 percent of the study participants,” it continues. “How about anal sex? For around 20 percent of the participants, no. A surprising number of older men did not consider penile-vaginal intercourse to be sex. More than idle gossip, the answers to questions about sex can inform—or misinform—research, medical advice and health education efforts.”

Conducted in conjunction with the Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention (RCAP) in IU's School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, the recent study asked more specific questions than the previous one, in the hope that querying participants about specific behaviors would clarify the matter. Instead of using just college students, as the 1999 study had, the new one used a more representative sample of people, hoping that that, too, would result in something conclusive. It did not.

"Throwing the net wider, with a more representative sample, only made it more confusing and complicated," said Brandon Hill, research associate at the Kinsey Institute. "People were even less consistent across the board."

Surveyed over the phone, participants, mostly heterosexual, were asked, "Would you say you 'had sex' with someone if the most intimate behavior you engaged in was ...," followed by 14 behaviorally specific items.

Some of the study's findings are:

* Responses did not differ significantly overall for men and women. The study involved 204 men and 282 women.

* 95 percent of respondents would consider penile-vaginal intercourse (PVI) having had sex, but this rate drops to 89 percent if there is no ejaculation.

* 81 percent considered penile-anal intercourse having had sex, with the rate dropping to 77 percent for men in the youngest age group (18-29), 50 percent for men in the oldest age group (65 and up) and 67 percent for women in the oldest age group.

* 71 percent and 73 percent considered oral contact with a partner's genitals (OG), either performing or receiving, as having had sex.

* Men in the youngest and oldest age groups were less likely to answer "yes" compared with the middle two age groups for when they performed OG.

* Significantly fewer men in the oldest age group answered "yes" for PVI (77 percent).

According to William L. Yarber, RCAP senior director and co-author of the study, the study’s findings reaffirm the need to be specific about behaviors when talking about sex.

"There's a vagueness of what sex is in our culture and media," Yarber said. "If people don't consider certain behaviors sex, they might not think sexual health messages about risk pertain to them. The AIDS epidemic has forced us to be much more specific about behaviors, as far as identifying specific behaviors that put people at risk instead of just sex in general. But there's still room for improvement."