condoms

You know, what "sex" even IS differs for everyone. There are a world of sexual activities out there -- oral sex, manual sex, intercourse, anal play, role play, frottage, the works -- and how each person does them isn't only different from person to person, but from partnership to partnership, and...

Any way you do it, however you define it. In other words, what "sex" even IS varies pretty widely from person-to-person and day-to-day, and can be or include ANY number of sexual activities. Intercourse is sex, but so is oral sex, anal sex, manual sex, making out, frottage, role play, cybersex...

My boyfriend says that anal sex is no different than regular sex. Is that true? He also says we don't have to use a condom? Also, will I still be a virgin if I have anal sex? Will it hurt as much?

Hanne Blank is not a virgin. (She's almost 37 and she's been living with her life partner for nine years -- we just thought we'd get that out of the way.) But she is a historian, a writer, and an expert on virginity, having written the first-ever history of the subject, "Virgin: The Untouched History."

What's safer sex? Find out how you can best reduce your risks of STIs and protect your health and how to do it and be supported in it without feeling like the Sex Decency Brigade or bringing on the buzzkill.

The more common meaning and implication of the term came to change around the 13th century and derived a sexual, sexist and moralistic meaning. With that change, the word now implied that staying a virgin until marriage guaranteed that a woman would uphold the family honor by passing from father to husband as an object that was owned -- her virginity, her own body, was a thing of value that would be owned by her father, until such time as ownership of her virginity, body and sexuality would be transferred to her husband.