Sex means something different to everyone.
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Not everyone has the same definition of "having sex." 

A survey asked gay, lesbian, and bisexual people what "having sex" means to them.

For people with penises, it was pretty clear that penetration was the most-common definition. 

But for people with vaginas, it wasn't so clear. 

When you think about what the word "sex" means to you, you may think about the "traditional" definition — aka penetration. But when it comes to what the word means to a broad range of people, it turns out there is no standard definition for "having sex." 

A new study, published in 
The Journal
of
Sex Research
, set out to define what "sex" means to different people, and to center gay, lesbian, and bisexual people in that conversation, as these studies have often focused on straight couples.

Researchers asked participants which sexual acts they would qualify as "having sex." The list for people with penises included "69", oral-genital stimulation, "rimming" (mouth to anus stimulation), mutual manual-genital stimulation, frottage (rubbing penises), anal intercourse, and self-stimulation on the phone or computer. 

Of course, penetrative sex reigned as the supreme definition , with 90% of participants with penises saying that they'd define that as fuck having sex. But it's worth noting that around 50% of these participants also included mutual oral stimulation as having sex. 

For people with vaginas, however, there wasn't as clear-cut a definition. A majority of participants ranked a few things as counting as "having sex," with 70% saying that "69," penetrations by a dildo into a vagina, and both partners using a double-ended dildo would be defined as "having sex." A majority also said that scissoring (rubbing genitals), penetration by a dildo into an anus, mutual manual-genital stimulation, and rimming all counted as sex in their book. 

It's important to remember that being sexually active doesn't just have to involved penetrative sex.
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But it turns out even these "clear-cut" definitions of what sex is can change if they're not happening to us.