Sexual acts

What are sexual acts?

Sexual acts (sexual behaviors in research) is the catch-all for what people do sexually with each other or with themselves: handjobs and fingering, oral sex, penis-in-vagina sex, and anal sex. Dutch criminal law uses exactly these words and nowhere describes which acts those are. Where the line lies differs by source.

Why no watertight list exists

Because the question “does this count as sex?” has been investigated empirically and the answer varied.

Stephanie Sanders and J. M. Reinisch put it in 1991 to 599 students at a university in the American Midwest, a random stratified sample representative of the whole student population. Their result appeared in JAMA and is still the sharpest figure that exists on the boundary of this concept: 59 percent felt that orogenital contact was not “having had sex”. About anal penetration 19 percent said the same. The researchers concluded that people hold widely differing views on what does and doesn’t count.

Consider what that means in practice. If two people agree they’ll have “no sex”, one may understand something quite different by it than the other, and not out of unwillingness. In my own conversations it usually runs the other way: someone names something she doesn’t want, and on asking it turns out to be an act her partner would never have counted as sex.

How law, healthcare, and research cut the group differently

Three institutions look at the same row of acts and cut it in three ways.

1. The law cuts at penetration. Title XIV of the Criminal Code, in force since 1 July 2024, has articles 240 through 243 all turn on someone who “performs sexual acts with a person”. Article 239 explains the concept, but only on the perpetrator’s side: whoever has another perform acts or undergo them by a third party also falls under it. Which acts they are, it doesn’t say. The only subdivision the law itself makes is in the sentencing: acts that “consist of or partly consist of sexual penetration of the body” turn assault into rape, and six years into nine.
2. Healthcare cuts at mucous membrane. The RIVM’s LCI guideline on gonorrhea has four groups, and they run right across the first division: genitogenital contact (penis-vagina), genitoanal (penis-anus), orogenital (“oral sex on a penis or vulva”) and oroanal (“rimming”). For a bacterium it doesn’t matter who penetrates, only which mucous membrane touches which.
3. Research cuts at what you can tick a box for. Rutgers’ Monitor Seksuele Gezondheid 2023 puts four in a footnote: “By ‘sex’ we mean handjobs or fingering, oral sex, penis-in-vagina sex, or anal sex.” Masturbation and watching porn are in a separate table in that same report, outside that definition.

None of those three is wrong. They were made for different questions, and that’s exactly why someone who lays a legal, a medical, and a popular-science text side by side finds three different lists.

How often each act occurs

Set side by side, the figures look different from the conversation about them.

Rutgers asked 12,551 Dutch people what happened the last time they had sex with their last partner. Penis-in-vagina sex came to 85 percent, fingering or handjobs to 73, oral sex to 58, sex toys to 20, and anal sex to 8 percent. Measured over half a year, among 15,470 people, the picture shifts: masturbation then tops the list at 78 percent, higher than penis-in-vagina sex (64) and higher than any other act with a partner.

That’s a curious result, because the act done most often falls, in that same report, outside the definition of “sex”. Anyone who reads the row as one category sees at once what the classification leaves out.

American research points the same way. Debby Herbenick and colleagues mapped, for the Journal of Sexual Medicine, a nationally representative sample of 5,865 Americans aged 14 to 94, across six acts: masturbating alone, masturbating together, giving oral sex, receiving oral sex, vaginal and anal penetration. Their finding: masturbation occurred across the whole life and was more common in adolescence and after age seventy than anything you do with someone else.

And the row itself changes over the years. Catherine Mercer and colleagues compared, in The Lancet, three British national surveys from 1990-91, 1999-2001, and 2010-12, together good for 15,162 participants in the last round. They recorded a broadening of the heterosexual repertoire, “particularly in oral and anal sex”, and at the same time something rarely mentioned: the number of different acts people do decreases with age, and more strongly in women than in men.

Why knowing this row is worth something

Not because you have to want everything. Because without words you can’t have a conversation.

The gain is in the distinction. As long as “sex” is one word, every question about it is a yes-or-no question, and then the conversation is about whether or not instead of about what and how.

• For you when you’re unsure, the use is mostly that you can say which part you mean. “I don’t want penetration but I do want the rest” is a sentence you can speak out loud; “I don’t know yet” is not.
• For two people together it takes the noncommittal edge off an agreement. That’s exactly what a yes/no/maybe list or a checklist does: pull the row apart so there’s something to choose per line.
• For anyone dealing with healthcare it saves a misunderstanding. An STI test looks at the spot you name, and that follows the RIVM’s classification and not yours.

The category orders, no more than that. That an act is on the list says nothing about whether you want it, and that an act is not on it doesn’t mean you can’t name it either.

Misconceptions

“Sex means penetration.” For the law that’s a sentencing line and not a definition: articles 240 through 243 are about sexual acts, with penetration as an aggravating circumstance. In Rutgers’ figures, the last time people had sex almost always more than one thing happened at once, because the percentages for four acts add up well above a hundred.

“What’s not on the list doesn’t count.” The lists from Rutgers, from Herbenick, and from the RIVM are all three made to count or combat something. Kissing, touch, worship, and everything that on this site falls under BDSM are on none of the three, and that doesn’t make them any less sexual.

“Everyone means the same thing when ‘no sex’ is agreed.” That’s exactly the misunderstanding Sanders and Reinisch measured. For nearly six in ten, oral sex fell outside what they called “having had sex”.

What happens in conversations about this row

I’m Victor, a gigolo, over twenty-five years into BDSM and with a background as a psychotherapist. Women who email me rarely start with an act. They start with a feeling, and the acts only come when I ask about them.

The row then often turns out much shorter than the conversation around it. Someone writes that she “actually wants to try everything at some point” and then names three things. The reverse happens too: someone says she wants only one thing, and along the way it turns out she already knew the whole row and had only never talked about it.

The strongest move I know is not asking what someone wants to do, but what someone wants not to happen. That answer comes faster, and it’s more useful. Everything that’s left is then worth the conversation.

What you can do yourself

• Name the act instead of the word sex when you make an agreement, because the two are not the same and that has been measured.
• Put the row on paper before you talk about it, for example with a yes/no/maybe list, so you can choose per line instead of in general.
• At an STI test, ask for the spots that go with your acts, because a standard test doesn’t automatically look at the throat or anus.
• Agree on what doesn’t happen before you agree on what does; that answer is more concrete for almost everyone.
• Assume the row moves with you. What you didn’t want last year doesn’t have to be the same this year, and the British research shows that repertoires really do change across a life.

More reading

The two biggest parts are explained separately here: oral sex with the Dutch figures and the word’s history, and anal sex with the risk profile and the build-up. Masturbation is the act that tops the statistics and is missing from the definitions.

Beyond this site there are two documents worth reading. Rutgers’ Monitor Seksuele Gezondheid 2023 is free online and holds all the tables the percentages above come from, including the breakdowns by age this page doesn’t carry over. And Title XIV of the Criminal Code is shorter than you’d think and reads surprisingly well, even if you’re not a lawyer.

Where this fits on this site

Working out which part of this row is right for you doesn’t have to become an appointment. A conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing, and it’s exactly the place where such a row gets concrete: what yes, what no, and what you’d rather decide on the spot. How such a conversation goes and what I ask in it is on the page about the introductory conversation. If you then also want to experience it, with attention and without haste, intimate togetherness fits that most closely.

Sources

• Would You Say You “Had Sex” If … ?. Stephanie A. Sanders & J. M. Reinisch, JAMA 281(3), 275-277, 1999 (DOI 10.1001/jama.281.3.275 and PMID 9918484, both checked separately; Crossref lists only the first author, PubMed gives the second only with initials, taken over here unexpanded). Provides that the question was put in 1991 to a random stratified sample of 599 students representative of the student population of a Midwestern state university, drawn from 29 states; that 59 percent (95% CI 54-63) indicated orogenital contact was not “had sex” and 19 percent said the same about penile-anal penetration; and the conclusion that Americans hold widely differing views on which behavior does and doesn’t count as “having had sex”.
• Monitor Seksuele Gezondheid 2023. Rutgers, expertise center on sexuality, 2024. Provides the operational definition in footnote 1, verbatim “By ‘sex’ we mean handjobs or fingering, oral sex, penis-in-vagina sex, or anal sex”; table 2.1.5 on the forms of sex with the last sex partner (n=12,551) with 85 percent penis-in-vagina sex, 73 percent handjobs or fingering, 58 percent oral sex, 20 percent sex toys, and 8 percent anal sex; and table 2.1.3 on the past six months (n=15,470) with 78 percent masturbation, 64 percent penis-in-vagina sex, 63 percent handjobs or fingering, 54 percent oral sex, 51 percent porn use, and 9 percent anal sex, with masturbation and watching porn falling outside the definition of “sex”.
• Wetboek van Strafrecht, Title XIV Sexual offenses. Dutch legislation, text in force; the title has held this form since 1 July 2024. The articles were read in the retrieved text itself and not only reached via the anchor. Provides that article 239 only extends who falls under “the person who performs sexual acts with a person” and does not describe the acts themselves; that article 240 (negligent assault, at most two years) and article 241 (intentional assault, at most six years) turn on performing sexual acts while the other’s will to do so is absent; and that articles 242 and 243 aggravate the same offenses to negligent and intentional rape, at most four and nine years respectively, when the acts “consist of or partly consist of sexual penetration of the body”.
• Sexual behavior in the United States: results from a national probability sample of men and women ages 14-94. Debby Herbenick, Michael Reece, Vanessa Schick, Stephanie A. Sanders, Brian Dodge & J. Dennis Fortenberry, The Journal of Sexual Medicine 7(Suppl. 5), 255-265, 2010 (DOI 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2010.02012.x and PMID 21029383, checked separately; author first names from Crossref). Provides the sample of 5,865 Americans aged 14 to 94 (2,936 men, 2,929 women); the six acts asked about, namely masturbation alone, masturbation with a partner, giving oral sex, receiving oral sex, vaginal penetration, and anal penetration; and the finding that masturbation was common across the whole life and more common in adolescence and from age seventy than sex with a partner.
• Changes in sexual attitudes and lifestyles in Britain through the life course and over time: findings from the National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal). Catherine H. Mercer, Clare Tanton, Philip Prah and colleagues, The Lancet 382(9907), 1781-1794, 2013 (DOI 10.1016/S0140-6736(13)62035-8 and PMID 24286784, checked separately; only the freely available abstract was used). Provides the comparison of Natsal-1 (1990-91), Natsal-2 (1999-2001), and Natsal-3, with 15,162 participants in the last round (6,293 men, 8,869 women), conducted between 6 September 2010 and 31 August 2012; the finding that the range of acts people do with an opposite-sex partner decreases with age, “especially in women”; and the observed broadening of the heterosexual repertoire over time, “particularly in oral and anal sex”.
• LCI guideline on gonorrhea. Landelijke Coördinatie Infectieziektebestrijding, RIVM, published 29 June 2024, last modified 3 August 2026. Used on this page only for the classification the guideline uses, verbatim: “The main transmission routes are genital contact, namely contact between penis-vagina (genitogenital contact) and penis-anus (genitoanal contact), and in addition orogenital (oral sex on a penis or vulva) or oroanal contact (rimming).”

Related terms

• Oral sex. The part with the oddest word history, and the act most disputed over whether it counts.
• Cunnilingus. Oral sex on a vulva, with the origin of the word cunnilingus and the role of the clitoris in it.
• Anal sex. The part that occurs least and takes the most preparation.
• Masturbation. The act that tops the figures and is missing from most definitions.
• Yes/no/maybe list. The form that pulls this category apart line by line.
• Consent. What it’s about the moment you agree per act instead of in general.
• Safeword. What you use if an act turns out differently along the way.