The phrase “having sex” means different things to different people. Most people agree that penile-vaginal intercourse counts as sex and that if you’ve had penile-vaginal intercourse with a person then you’ve “had sex” with them and that the person counts as a sexual partner. However, what counts as sex isn’t always so cut and dry (and can vary by age, gender, and self-identified sexual orientation among other factors). When I first began working at The Kinsey Institute in 1999, a study that one of my mentors – Dr. Stephanie Sanders – conducted with her colleague, Dr. June Reinisch, that had examined college students’ meanings of having “had sex” was newly published. The study made waves in large part because it came at a time when Americans and politicians in particular were debating whether oral sex was sex, and thus whether President Bill Clinton was being truthful when he said he had not “had sex with that woman”. Continue Reading →