ABSTRACT
Intercourse is often imagined to be an entirely ‘‘natural’’ act, the central biological function
which links humans with non-human animals. And of course, in some sense this is true: if at
least some humans had not been engaging in heterosexual, reproductive intercourse
throughout history, our species would never have survived. But an acknowledgement of this
basic truth should not draw attention away from the multitude of ways in which intercourse
is a profoundly social affair, starting with the fact that the act inherently involves more than
one person. While intercourse is often so taken-for-granted that it becomes the proverbial it
in ‘‘doing it’’ – as if we all knew what that meant with no further explanation – the ideas and
practices which surround and constitute intercourse have varied enormously across both
cultural and historical contexts. Indeed, the very idea that intercourse is primarily or exclusively
‘‘about’’ reproduction is a recent one, and it is worth turning a critical eye toward the
assumptions that this narrow focus upon reproduction carries with it.
