Bill Clinton has taught us nothing.
When the former U.S. president said he “did not have sexual relations with that woman” during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, researchers from the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University used it as an opportunity to poll college students on what the term “had sex” means and found there was little agreement.
Now, a new study from the Kinsey Institute that polled 486 Indiana residents ranging in age from 18 to 96 has discovered the more people you ask what it means to have sex, the less consensus there will be.
“It illustrates again the vagueness of sexuality in our culture,” says William Yarber, a co-author of the study.
Study participants, most of whom were heterosexual, were asked, “Would you say you ‘had sex’ with someone if the most intimate behaviour you engaged in was...,” followed by 14 specific items.
Nearly 30 per cent of those surveyed said oral sex didn’t qualify. Approximately 20 per cent of respondents said the same about anal sex; 95 per cent of people considered penile-vaginal intercourse as constituting sex, but that rate dropped to 89 per cent if there is no ejaculation.
There was also significant differences between age groups. For example, while 81 per cent considered penile-anal intercourse as having had sex, the rate dropped to 50 per cent for men in the oldest age group (65 and up) and 67 per cent for women in the oldest age group.
The study points to a need for health-care providers to be more specific when discussing matters of sex, Dr. Yarber says.
“When you’re talking about sexual issues and particularly related to protection from STIs and HIV, when they say, ‘Protect yourself from these possible negative outcomes from having sex,’ it’s really important to be a little bit more exact,” Dr. Yarber says.
