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written by Sam Greenspan

A man slowly undressing his wife.

5.2% of people don’t think having penis-vagina sex counts as sex. And that’s just the beginning of this madness.

A few days ago, I saw an article about a study conducted at Indiana University. (School motto: “We can’t even say, ‘At least we’ve got basketball’ anymore.”)

Researchers at Indiana surveyed hundreds of heterosexual adults, male and female, from age 18 all the way up to 96, and asked them if different sexual activities constituted “having sex.”

And the results… were amazing. At least the results I saw. As usual, the Liberal Media only published enough of the findings to give us a taste, but not a complete picture.

Fortunately, the good people at The Kinsey Institute at IU were kind enough to provide me with the full results of their study. Good people over at that Kinsey Institute. Totally worth getting it on with one of them, even if you get the feeling they’re just doing it for research purposes.

11 Sexual Activities That Don’t Count as “Having Sex” According to Study

While some people are haunted of their biggest fears during sex, they might want to rethink their definition of ‘having sex’ after reading these findings.

Here are 11 results of their study, which proves one major thing: People’s definition of “having sex” is just as ambiguous as people’s definition of irony.

1 | Regular, penis-vagina sex – 5.2% don’t count that as having sex

It was this number that made me realize we can’t really take anything for granted in this study. Essentially, this is saying that, if you went up to 20 people and asked them, “Does having sex count as having sex?”, one of the 20 would say “Nope.”

(It also makes me wonder: If you don’t count this as having sex, what the hell DO you count?)

The people really bringing the percentage down here are the older men. For men 65 and up, 22.7 percent said penis-vagina penetration doesn’t count as having sex — by far the highest percentage for any age range and gender.

Sexual activity refers to any physical contact or behavior that is intended to sexually arouse or satisfy oneself or one’s partner. Since these people on that age bracket have difficulty getting into the “zone,” they count the normal sex as not having sex.

A banana beside a chocolate flavored donut on a pink background.

2 | Just the tip – 5.6% don’t count that as having sex

So if you just dabble around for a short period of time, should that count? Slightly more people say no, it shouldn’t.

This is a good time to mention that the researchers found no statistically significant difference between women’s responses and men’s responses during this study. So this isn’t a case where every guy counts “just the tip” toward his number as he tries to inflate it… and every woman says it doesn’t count as she tries desperately to stay in the golden single-digits-of-sexual-partners zone.

For this one, 5.5 percent of men and 5.8 percent of women said it doesn’t count — not a big difference.

3 | Penis-vagina sex, but with a condom – 6.7% don’t count that as having sex

So when you add a condom to the mix, somehow, that makes people less likely to count it as having sex. Even though there’s the whole ceremony of the condom, which, universally, says, “Time to protect ourselves for sex.”

I guess one out of 15 people just doesn’t count that because they like it rawwww. Good idea, that — taking sex education lessons from Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

4 | Penis-vagina sex, with no female orgasm – 7.3% don’t count that as having sex

These people apparently base their definition of “having sex” on a myth. I assume they’d also say it doesn’t count as having sex if they don’t like your penis size, or unless you get the blessing of Zeus and Hera.

5 | Penis-vagina sex, with no male orgasm – 10.9% don’t count that as having sex

I actually kinda get this one — if you’re an old school procreationist (and/or misogynist), it’s not over until the man says it’s over.

Once again, it was the 65-and-older men carrying the torch here; 36.4 percent of them said it’s not sex until they’ve finished things off, put back on their loose-fitting white tank top, taken off their sock garters and set their alarm clock to 4:30 AM.

Man in bed hides under a sheet while his girlfriend lies on top of him.

6 | Anal sex, with a condom – 18% don’t count that as having sex

Ah, yes — the argument that’s kept Catholic school kids sane for generations.

7 | Anal sex (no caveats) – 19.1% don’t count that as having sex

This is flip-flopped from the penis-‘gina sex statistics — with anal sex, more people think it counts as “having sex” if it’s protected as opposed to unprotected.

They should do a follow-up survey asking people which of those two options is “grosser.” I have a hunch which one would win.

The older people drove that number up — but this time, it wasn’t just the men. 50 percent of the men 65+ said that anal sex doesn’t count as having sex… but so did 33.3 of the women in that age range! For the love of all things good, do not think of the implications of those numbers relating to your single/divorced/widowed loved ones.

A few other anal sex numbers from the survey that didn’t get their own entries on this list because I’m a slave to 11: 18.2 percent think anal just the tip doesn’t count as sex… 18.9 percent think anal shouldn’t count without a female orgasm (?)… and 20.5 percent think anal doesn’t count without a male orgasm.

8 | Receiving oral sex – 27.1% don’t count that as having sex

This is blatantly, just blatantly, because of Bill Clinton.

During his sex scandal, and the semantic games therein, the most influence-able generation was the one that’s now 18 to 29. And they’re, by far, the least likely to count this as sex. For men 18 to 29, 60 percent say receiving oral sex doesn’t count as sex. For women in that age range, it’s 32.3 percent.

I’m curious if these statistics apply when hooking up with your average porn star.

9 | Performing oral sex – 29% don’t count that as having sex

While I found all the numbers about penis-vagina sex and anal sex to be surprising… this makes sense to me. If I had been a part of this survey, I would’ve answered “doesn’t count as having sex” to both of these oral sex questions.

What can I say? We’ve all got a little Clinton inside us. (Some more literally than others.)

A woman with red lipstick putting a banana in her mouth.

10 | Receiving manual stimulation – 51.9% don’t count that as having sex

There’s a huge generation gap for me (and the people in the survey) on this one. The 18-to-29-year-olds barely consider this having sex — 83.3 percent of young men and 67.7 of young women say this doesn’t constitute “having sex.” For the other age ranges, the numbers are up in the 50-50 range.

I mean, this one doesn’t even end with the word “sex”… like anal sex, oral sex, or sex sex. This one ends with words like “job” and “blast.”

11 | Performing manual stimulation – 55.1% don’t count that as having sex

So, of all the genital-based activities you can do, this gets the fewest votes as a way of having sex. As it should.

Nothing that happens to you out in public at a Vegas strip club or during a physical with a deliciously thorough doctor should make you go running around talking about you had sex. Then you’re the Shermanator.

And applying this standard, I wonder what the real numbers are for people who claimed having the most sexual partners in history?