What Is Sex? A Special Investigation

An AP article today scrutinizes the American idea of sex in light of the South Carolina governor Mark Sanford admission that he had “crossed lines” with six other women besides his wife during his years of marriage, but never the “sex line” (until the Argentina chica).  So where is the “sex line”?  The AP cites an alarming study: increasing numbers of our undereducated children do not know what sex is:

The study, based on 1991 survey of 599 college students, found [many] considered oral sex or mutual masturbation as having “had sex.”

Mutual masturbation as sex?  Oh dear.  The definitive defining definition of sex, after the jump:  

Sex is when a penis is inserted into a vagina.

What is confusing about this?  I suspected at first that sleazy women were cheating and counting BJs as sex because they wanted to be able to brag to their friends how many dudes they had slayed out (“I gave him a beej, yo!  And then I put him in me.”  ”Aw sick, you did MTV to him?  You totally crushed him, lady-bro!”), while men, cautious not to just “give it up” to a woman before an emotional connection had been made, wanted to think of sex as “more special” than oral sex.  Shockingly, the numbers reflect nearly the opposite.

Of the women, 37 percent considered oral sex as, well, sex. Forty-four percent of men did.

A second survey in 1996, asked “Is oral sex ‘real’ sex?”

About 52 percent of the men said yes, but only 46 percent of women did.

Fortunately, science has since determined that oral sex is not sex.  Sex is when you do the thing that can make babies (the scientific term for this is “sexual reproduction f*cking”), and oral sex cannot do this unless you are Boris Becker.

Print out and use this chart for reference in the future whenever you need it:

Sex = sex.

Oral sex = not sex.

Anal sex = not sex, but close.  Note: gay people may consider anal sex to be sex.  The rule is: if your preferred style of sex cannot cause sexual reproduction, you may count the next-closest method of copulation as sex.

Mutual masturbation = are you serious?

Kissing = not sex, unless done really hard.

Source: The chart was all me, but thanks to CBS for raising the hard questions.