User:John Stephenson/sandbox

This article is about the activity. For other uses, see Sex (disambiguation).

Sex is an activity involving prolonged genital contact, such as when the penis enters part of another person's body, most commonly the vagina, for the purposes of pleasure and sometimes reproduction. Sex can be part of homosexual (gay) as well as heterosexual (straight) relationships, and is sometimes discussed as an 'act of love'. Often, however, sex occurs just so the participants can experience the sensation of pleasure that accompanies the activity, including orgasm, and they may well take steps to avoid a later pregnancy by using contraceptives. Some of these methods, such as condom use, also reduce the risk of transmitting viruses that rely on sex to spread. Contraceptives, family planning and responsible attitudes to sex are three reasons that help explain why, while it is the main way of introducing sperm into a woman's body so that a man's genetic material has the opportunity to fuse with an egg to form an embryo, very often acts of sex do not eventually lead to the birth of a child.