Hmm… this is a tricky one. Yes, I’m—well, “offended” isn’t even quite the right word, just
utterly baffled—by the idea that only PIV is “real sex.” (In MSM culture, in my experience, anal intercourse, specially anal penetration with a penis, occupies a very similar role at the top of the sexual totem pole; this is also baffling.) I would also be lying if I denied that, contrary to Scarleteen’s official definition, sex involving
genitals didn’t feel qualitatively different from, say, making out—and that’s unquestionably cultural, because it’s not like it’s necessarily more arousing, even. For me personally, I guess I would have to say that activities that get somebody off* fall closer to the “full-blown sex” end of the sexual activities scale, and that activities that get
all parties off** are pretty much as fully blown (if you’ll excuse the pun) as sex gets.
*Gonna acknowledge that personally “get somebody off” usually equals “result in somebody orgasming,” because (problematically, I realize) that’s typically the end goal when my partner and I engage in genital sex acts. Has it happened that genital sex acts or a sequence thereof conclude without either person orgasming? Yes, of course. Are both of us happy with that? Not usually! But that’s an us thing, and I’m sure there are people out there who would feel perfectly fulfilled without having orgasmed. I know there are people who regularly orgasm from things that involve no genital contact whatsoever, too. So broadly, “get somebody off” = “result in somebody achieving a state of sexual pleasure that all parties find satisfactory.”
**Again, whether or not the getting off results from one or more activities—probably almost always more than one, actually! Personally, the closer together (we’re talking like “less than an hour” versus “over an hour” closeness) the orgasms, the more something subjectively feels 100% like sex. Why? Heck if I know.
To give an example: the first time I went “yep, that was definitely sex” as opposed to arguing with myself over whether a particular thing was or was not sex was the first time my partner and I engaged in… I guess it would be half manual sex and half mutual masturbation? Simultaneously giving the other person and ourselves a hand, let’s say.
That felt way more like sex than previous attempts at manual sex or partnered masturbation alone—or the first time we had genital-oral contact, for that matter—because, to be frank, it worked a lot better.
This is despite the fact, I should stress, that my partner and I have
exactly the same genital configuration as the cisgender heterosexuals pushing PIV supremacy. So! Yes! It’s complicated. But my complicated definition works well for me!
I should note, though—and what I’m
not trying to do here is call people out, because 1) I don’t have conclusive proof that they’re
all using it this way, and 2) if they are, all they’re doing is reflecting the usage they see around them—is that I’m almost equally irritated by people using “intercourse” as a synonym for
vaginal intercourse specifically, and “vaginal intercourse” in turn as a synonym for PIV sex. Now, I’m no sex educator, and I’m sure my definitions in this regard are somewhat idiosyncratic, but for me “intercourse” refers to the type of sex you have when someone’s genitally located Tab A goes into someone else’s genitally located Slot B. The two
types of intercourse are named after the two possible genitally located Slot Bs:
vaginal intercourse and
anal intercourse. Using “intercourse” to refer just to vaginal intercourse is reductive in that it’s hetero- and reproduction-centric, as Heather points out—even though not all vaginal intercourse might potentially result in reproduction, and even though not everybody who has vaginal intercourse is heterosexual, and even though vaginal intercourse is not the only kind of intercourse heterosexual people have, its strongest cultural associations are with heterosexual, reproductive sex.
Going an
additional step and equating vaginal intercourse with PIV sex (or anal intercourse with penis-in-anus sex) is also problematic. You’ll notice I referred to Tab A as
genitally located, not as genitals per se; this is because I would contend that anal or vaginal penetration with a strap-on dildo is
also intercourse.*** I don’t actually think there’s one single word encompassing the ways in which defining intercourse as necessarily containing a penis is problematic, but the best way to put it is probably to say that it’s reductive with regard to both sexuality
and gender. It’s reductive with regard to sexuality because it invalidates both the type of vaginal intercourse two cisgender women have
and the type of anal intercourse a cisgender woman with a receptive cisgender male partner has. It’s reductive with regard to gender because it devalues the type of intercourse penetrative partners without penises can have relative to the type penetrative partners with penises can have,
and because it implicitly assumes all of the former are women and all of the latter are men. Not a fan.
***A note on genitally located: I specify this, and I specify “with a strap-on,” because I personally would not think of anal or vaginal penetration with someone else’s hand(s) or hand-held sex toy(s) as actually being intercourse; I would call it “anal/vaginal penetration.” This has some wishy-washy connection to the concept of… pelvic thrusting, I’m gonna say?… as necessary for intercourse and may be where sex educators and I differ. I personally would categorize them separately, though.