Basic Types of Sexual  Behavior

2. Heterosexual Intercourse

Basic Types of Sexual Intercourse

Academic writers often feel the need to specify, classify, and categorize what people do to each other when they make love. For example: Even sexual intercourse without direct physical contact can be divided into several subcategories. Thus, a person who is stimulated by an obscene phone call, and who actually encourages the caller, may be said to engage in "vocal and aural intercourse". In the same vein, one could speak of "postal intercourse" or “internet intercourse” between people who send each other sexually arousing letters, photographs, and e-mails, or who watch each other’s web cams.
However, in everyday life, this kind of terminology is unnecessary and can easily sound pedantic and pretentious. For practical purposes, therefore, most professionals have agreed on a few basic terms which describe only those forms of sexual intercourse that involve direct physical contact with the sex organs of at least one of the participants. This simplifies the matter considerably. Therefore, we follow this usage here and distinguish between four basic types of sexual intercourse: