What is Sex and Why Does It Matter? A Motivational Approach to Exploring Individuals' Definitions of Sex (Report‪)‬

What sexual experiences qualify as "having sex"? We investigated two assumptions apparently underlying research on how individuals make these judgments: that individuals have clear definitions regarding what qualifies as sex and that these judgments depend on how closely the activity being assessed matches their definitions of sex. Using open-ended questionnaires, 100 students, 51 women and 49 men, described their experiences that were "almost but not quite sex" or "just barely sex" and situations where there was uncertainty or disagreement about whether the experience qualified as "sex." In contrast to the above assumptions, many respondents expressed ambiguity about their definitions of sex, and their decisions about labeling an experience as "sex" often seemed influenced by the consequences of applying this label. Understanding how individuals define "sex" has important scientific and health-related implications. Educators talk with students about abstaining from sex or about engaging in safer sex, physicians ask whether patients are sexually active, and researchers ask participants about their past sexual behavior. All of these communications assume that the speakers and listeners share a definition of sex that is clear, consistent across situations, and unbiased by personal motives. In fact, there is limited research evaluating individuals' definitions of sex, and the research that does exist seems based on implicit assumptions that may be problematic in some ways.