A mixed bag, please! Definition difficulties
Difficulties in understanding. When people talk about their wildest love affairs in friendly conviviality and then the extra hint is dropped: "...and then we also had sex". Oops, and what was all that other stuff you did together?
Penetration
It's actually a classic: where does sexuality begin and where does it end? Generally, the term refers exclusively to the penetrative act. This is particularly surprising when the interlocutors are people who otherwise celebrate sexuality in all its diversity and engage in various experiments, techniques, games and pleasures that lie beyond the heteronormative compulsory matrix. Of course, the term 'sex = penetration' is accompanied by a great deal of ambiguity. It raises questions about fidelity, jealousy and crossing boundaries. It excludes certain practices of the LGBTQIA+ communities. It charges the moment of 'penis in vagina' - or, to put it in a more contrasexual way, 'dildo in hole' - with a great deal of meaning and standardizes this actually unimaginative and seemingly naturalistic practice, which links sexuality to the function of reproduction.
What constitutes sex? Is there such a thing as 'sex-sex' and 'non-sex-sex' or 'actual' and 'non-actual sex'? How does the distinction between 'foreplay' and 'sex' make any sense at all if we don't have a teleological concept of sex? And what forms of representation of sex do we then agree on? Where do we find the many forms of play that could also count as 'sex' without involving genital sex? And what are the markers that mark a genre (e.g. pornography) through the staging?
Presentation
These difficulties are particularly noticeable in mainstream films. The frustrating, banal or ingenious sublimations are of course well known, when the camera suddenly cuts to a train passing through a tunnel or pans to the curtain just at the moment when things get exciting (a phenomenon described by Daniel Bickermann in his plea for more sex on the big screen : "I was sitting in the movie theater, watching Pretty Woman, and Richard Gere, after a blowjob in front of the TV and a bit of romantic piano strumming in the hotel lobby, was finally about to seduce Julia Roberts in the room they shared - when suddenly a wooden ornamental screen slid in front of the picture. You can imagine my horror at this amateurish camera mistake: Hadn't anyone noticed that nothing was recognizable for a full thirty seconds? [...] After all, there are a thousand good reasons to show sex scenes. Let's stick with Pretty Woman: a corporate speculator bored with life takes on a street hooker. Surely nobody wants to tell me that it's not important what he does with her, how it goes, who enjoys it and who has the initiative? Good sex scenes often tell you more about the characters than their most dramatic dialog.")
Variation
From time to time, we are surprised by unusual depictions of sex that capture in a caring and attentive way what would otherwise fall through the cracks of a penetrative concept of sex. A paradigmatic scene can be found in the US comedy series Broad Cityin which we are allowed to be part of how two young women, Ilana and Abbi, navigate their way through the bizarre, silly, disturbing and endearing everyday life of New York. In the episode 'B&B-NYC', Ilana hooks up with NBA basketball player Blake Griffin with the goal of spending a hot night with him, but this brings its own challenges and ultimately leads to a mind-blowing virtue being made out of necessity. Due to Griffin's oversized sex, the two are denied penetrative sex. This is fortunate, as it is only thanks to this impossibility that new possibilities for intimacy are sought, giving us viewers a wonderfully colorful bag of a sex scene. In a rapid sequence of cuts, we are shown what else sex can be: the basketball player sits naked (both are actually naked during all scenes) with his arms spread out on the bed and Ilana at one point licks persistently from one arm span to the other while his face bears the expression of horniness in a porny manner; Ilana enjoys the feeling of flying during a joint acro-yoga exercise; Blake Griffin carries Ilana, who is crying hysterically wrapped up in a sheet, soothingly around the room as if he were comforting an infant; both sit on armchairs with their legs elegantly crossed and sip tea in a very 'British' way; sitting on the floor opposite each other, they play the typical finger-banging schoolyard game - Griffin cheers, the oniony Ilana suffers and he turns to comfort her; both stretch holding each other by the arms and breathing deeply and meditatively; she rides on his back as if on a horse, whereupon he in particular announces "so close!", to which Ilana excitedly agrees that she too is on the verge of orgasm. Post-coital, they sit in bed munching on pizza, each wearing the other's shoes - an even more romantic version of the request "call me by your name!" :-)
And here's a wonderful article by a medieval historian who traces the roots of how penis-in-vagina sex came to be considered "proper": http://www.bishuk.com/sex/history-penis-vagina-default-sex/
And another list of sweets that are delicious besides tucking in: https://www.bishuk.com/sex/amazing-sex-without-having-sex/
