Have you had sex?

If not, no big deal. And if  you’re like, “Yeah, done it, currently doing it,” okay, yes, go off.

But either way… how do you know? Like, most people would agree  “penis in vagina equals S-E-X.” But what about mouth stuff?  Hand stuff? Butt stuff.

When it comes to doing it… what actually counts as it? Hi! I’m Shan Boodram, and this is Crash Course Sex Ed.

[0:24] [THEME MUSIC]

[0:28] Shan: Doing it. Getting laid.

[0:30] Teen Shan: Don’t forget the horizontal hula!

[0:32] Present Shan: [to Teen Shan] Yes, thank you Teen Shan for that very helpful addition.

[0:35] Shan: [to audience] Whatever you call it, there’s a whole range of sexcapades people get up to—involving penises, vaginas, mouths, hands, butts, toys, and so on. But here’s the thing. When people say they’re “having sex,” what exactly do they  mean? Turns out, for a long time, we didn’t know.

Not until a guy came along who studied… insects? Teen Shan, let em know.

[0:56] [TV static]

[0:57] Teen Shan: It’s 1938, and Indiana University is offering its first ever “marriage” class, for married students in need of some sexual and reproductive health 101. Despite being more of a bug guy, popular professor and entomologist Alfred Kinsey is enlisted to help teach it. And the students have lots of sex questions. Though, they’re really all the same question: What’s normal?

Kinsey realized… he didn’t know. Nobody did, because there simply hadn’t been solid scientific study of  what people actually do when they “do it.” So, Kinsey hatched a plan: instead of collecting bugs, he’d collect people’s sex histories. Over the next decade and a half, he and his  team interviewed over eighteen thousand strangers, asking direct and non-judgmental questions like, “How often do you masturbate?” and “When was your first sexual experience?” The team’s findings sent shockwaves across the United States.

Masturbation, premarital sex, and same-sex experiences were  far more common than assumed, considering how widely these behaviors  were shamed—and even punished—at the time. And one of the most influential concepts to  come out of that research was the Kinsey Scale: the idea that sexual attraction falls on a continuum, not in two opposite categories. On a scale many people fall somewhere in the middle. Sexual attraction isn’t just black and  white—it’s all the shades in-between.

[2:15] [TV static]

[2:15] Present Shan: Kinsey’s research challenged Americans’  perceptions of what was “normal” sexual behavior. And it added a lot to the field of sexology: the scientific study of sex. Today, sexologists continue to research what  people do, think, and feel about sex—which is why we know more than, like, rumors from your best friend’s cousin’s neighbor. And a juicy truth we can pull from the  Kinsey Scale?

Sexuality — who you are as a sexual being — is about more than  just what you’re doing in the bedroom. (Or on the couch. Or not at all!) Sex columnist Dan Savage puts it this way: Sexuality is like a three-layer cake. There’s your sexual orientation: who you want to do it with.

Your sexual behavior: who you actually do it with. And your sexual identity: who you tell people you do it with, by identifying  as gay, straight, bisexual, or something else. Sometimes, those layers are all the same flavor.

Imagine a man who’s attracted exclusively to women, has sex exclusively with women, and identifies as “women want me, fish fear me”... I mean, straight. That guy might be a little delulu about his sexual and fishing prowess, but at least he’s comfy with his cake.

But now, let’s imagine this fisherman is actually attracted to men, despite identifying as straight. His cake has a funfetti layer! But because of  attitudes around him—like major anti-funfetti vibes among his friends and family—he feels  ashamed or unsafe acting on that desire, much less announcing it to the world.

He  feels like he needs to hide the funfetti, and tell the world he’s all red velvet. And when someone experiences a clash in the layers of their sexuality, this can trigger stress, depression, and the  feeling that they can’t be fully themselves. Often, that inner conflict is thanks to culture,  which is kind of like an iceberg.

You can see only about ten percent of it on the outside— the food, the clothing, the aggressively orange mascots. The rest is a hulking mass of beliefs,  attitudes, and meanings lurking beneath   the surface, influencing how we view the world… including how we think about sex. And different cultures circulate their own ideas about what’s “normal” or “acceptable." Like, is sex before marriage forbidden, tolerated, or expected?

Do people talk about sex openly, or treat it like embarrassing photos from your awkward phase— only safe with a few trusted people? Is same-sex attraction punished or embraced? Every culture regulates sex in some way—whether that’s through formal rules, like legislating homosexuality as a crime, or through social norms, like closing the bedroom curtains so the neighbors can’t see you.

And all that can influence how we feel about, well, the way we feel. Culture can even influence what we consider “sex” and what we don’t. Which brings me back to that question: Have you had sex?

How do you know? Because even within the same culture, people don’t always agree on which behaviors count. Like, in 2017, researchers looked at responses from over three thousand straight-identifying men and women in the U.S. who were asked  if they considered butt stuff to be sex. While ninety percent agreed that penis in anus  equals sex, when it came to mouths or hands touching a butt, they were like, “Yes!  No! I don’t know!” Except for older men who’d personally done that stuff—they were more likely to say, “Oh yeah, that’s sex for sure.” And when it comes to intimacy, or a feeling  of closeness?

That can accompany sex… or not. Making out can feel intimate, but so can someone taking your bare, ungloved hand as you step out of a carriage. Maybe I’ve watched Pride & Prejudice too many times.

Give me a minute [fans herself with a hand fan]. Anyway, maybe you’re thinking, “But Shan: there’s a reason penis-in-vagina sex is the sex. It makes babies. Isn’t that the whole point?” Okay, yes, true— Making more life is the reason sex evolved in the first place. And it’s stuck around for lots of species because it works: combining two individuals’ genes creates offspring with a unique combination of traits, making it more likely that a species will survive.

But it’s not like you’ll die if you  never have this kind of sex. Lots of sexually reproducing species—us included—have same-sex sex, too, a behavior that may have evolved as a way  of strengthening social bonds. And plenty of people have sex when they aren’t physically able to have children, or just don’t want to.

In fact, according to a 2007 study, people  have hundreds of reasons for doing it that have nothing to do with making babies  —ranging from “It’s fun” to “I wanted to get closer to God” to “I felt jealous.” “I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.” And—my personal favorite—“It seemed like a good workout.” Get that cardio. And people’s reasons for having or not having  sex can ebb and flow in their own lifetime. Like, some people choose not to have sex until  they feel ready or they’ve found the right partner.

And some long-term couples find themselves having less sex as time goes on. The point is, there’s no one reason for having sex, and what we count as knocking boots isn’t  just biological: It’s cultural. It’s personal.

So why does it matter what counts as sex and what doesn’t? Well, because we act like it matters. The word “virgin” is often used to describe someone who’s never had sex—historically, the penis-in-vagina kind.

Just the existence of this word puts that one act on a pedestal, implying it’s the sex. And then the word gets used to organize and judge  people based on whether they’ve done it or not. “Losing” your virginity can  either be a badge of honor, or something to be ashamed of or confused about. That can be especially complicated for people whose first time having penis-in-vagina sex wasn’t consensual, folks who don’t want to have sex at all, or those who regularly engage  in other sexy activities.

Like, are gay people virgins for life if they never have P-in-V sex? I don’t think so. And valuing one kind of sex over another can lead to more than internalized shame.

Many studies have found that LGBTQ+ folks are likely to endure bullying and discrimination in their lifetimes, and can even be less likely to seek medical care in communities where sexual diversity is not widely accepted. But just because culture can saturate words like “sex” and “virginity” with positive or negative values doesn’t mean those  values are objectively true, or set in stone. Like, in a survey from 2014, many LGBTQ+ people shared that their first time having sex—no matter how they defined that—didn’t feel like  it was as meaningful as “coming out.” And in other studies, LGBTQ+ people have told researchers that they often think of “losing their virginity” as a process, not  a one-time thing.

They’ve had first times, plural, because different sexual experiences helped clarify their identity. So when you say you have or haven’t had sex, what you mean isn’t as straightforward as you think. You and I might have totally  different definitions, and that’s okay.

There’s no single way of doing  it, no single “why” for doing it, and no single thing that “doing it” means. What’s normal is variation. And ultimately, it’s up to you to decide  what sex means in your life. Next time, we’ll explore the wide and wonderful world of the vulva.

See you then. This episode of Crash Course Sex Ed was produced in partnership with the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University. If you’re interested in learning more, visit their website for resources that explore  the topics we discussed in the video today.

Thank you for watching this episode, which was filmed at our studio in Indianapolis and was made with the help of all these nice people. If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone, forever, you can join our community on Patreon.