Just under a decade into my sex-having career, I am officially done with foreplay. But don’t worry, I very much do not mean this in the Cameron Diaz in The Holiday sense of “Lol foreplay is stupid because I am playing an early-2000s Pick-Me—just stick it in me already!” Rather, I mean that it is long past time we, as a sexually active society, abandon a goal-oriented, heteronormative conception of sex that centers penetrative intercourse as the epitome of “real” sex and reduces all the other stuff—all the other very good stuff—to mere “foreplay.” Allow me to explain.
You may have noticed that our culture has historically defined “sex” as P-in-V penetration ending in (a usually male) orgasm. Meanwhile, everything else we do and love in bed—making out, hand stuff, mouth stuff, boob stuff…you get it—tends to get written off as precursors to the main event, appetizers rather than the full meal or bases on the way to home plate. Choose your metaphor; the point is, if a penis didn’t go into a vagina, then you didn’t “go all the way.”
This, friends, is obviously bullshit for a whole bunch of reasons. Not only is it heteronormative as actual fuck, but it also reflects and reinforces a host of other problematic attitudes surrounding sex and sexuality. There’s the purity culture aspect, of course. As a recovering Catholic school student, I can confirm that some of my more religious but still very horny peers were *actually* doing anal (God’s blind spot, baby) because God—literally capital-G-God—forbid a penis enter their precious pre-marital pussies.
Then there’s the gross, sexist connotation the very word “foreplay” has taken on thanks to decades of tired sitcom jokes that frame it as an annoying chore straight men oh-so-reluctantly perform to appease their nagging female partners who have the audacity to want to experience some degree of pleasure during sex—something men do just to get it out of the way so they can move on to more important things, like sticking their dick in us. Enough!
Not to mention, this idea of “foreplay” as something that precedes “sex” (read: P-in-V intercourse) reflects an idea of getting it on as a step-by-step activity with a set end goal—i.e., (usually male) orgasm. This, folks, is what we talk about when we talk about “goal-oriented” sex—which, go ahead and ask literally any sex therapist, is simply Not It.
“Sex in the traditional sense focuses primarily on male pleasure because it usually ends when the man ejaculates,” says sex and relationships coach Tara Suwinyattichaiporn, PhD, host of the Luvbites by Dr. Tara podcast. One way we can help shift that focus? By not reducing all the other stuff we do in bed (much of which, ahem, tends to be more pleasurable for female sex-havers than straight-up intercourse) to mere “foreplay” and instead embracing a definition of “sex” that includes all kinds of intimate acts.
“By reframing how we view and engage in sex to include all forms of erotic touch and play, we’re giving ourselves permission to connect with our sexual partners and experience pleasure without the limitation of penetration,” says Suwinyattichaiporn. “Sexual acts that happen during ‘foreplay’ are also satisfying and bond strengthening—deep kissing, nipple play, and oral sex, for instance. By not categorizing other sexual acts as foreplay but as a part of sex as well, more female pleasure can come into play.”
And not *just* female pleasure, by the way. According to Suwinyattichaiporn, ditching these outdated ideas of what counts as “sex” vs “foreplay” can also lead to deeper relationship satisfaction, higher sexual desire, and stronger sexual connection—all things that can benefit sex partners of all genders and in relationships of any gender dynamic.
Of course, language is language and we have different words for different things for a reason, so there may be situations in which it is still helpful to have some way of distinguishing between penetrative sex and all the other sex stuff. For this, psychotherapist Lee Phillips, Ed.D., LCSW-C, a certified sex therapist, recommends “outercourse.”
“‘Foreplay’ assumes you are going to have intercourse,” says Phillips. Outercourse on the other hand, is a more inclusive term that ditches that presumption and places non-penetrative play on the same level as the P-in-V stuff. It’s not something that precedes intercourse, it’s just an equal but opposite form of fucking, y’know?
But if words like “outercourse” feel a little, uh, clinical to you, then that’s fine! At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter all that much what you call it. If you, unlike me, can hear the word “foreplay” and not immediately picture some ’90s stand-up comic in an ill-tailored suit performing a sexist bit about how much he hates going down on his wife, then by all means, feel free to keep using it.
What *does* matter is rethinking what sex means to us and our partners and landing on an open-ended definition that prioritizes everyone’s pleasure and ditches society’s outdated, heteropatriarchal scripts that uphold things like male pleasure and procreative potential as the criteria for what counts as “real” sex. Because frankly, yuck.
Associate Sex & Relationships Editor