Northwestern Professor Gregory Ward teaches a class in Sex & Language at Northwestern University, where he has coined the term "coitocentric," as described in this Northwestern U online article by Sally Slater. Root word = coitus, centric = centered. Yep, he's right–as a culture, we tend to be overly focused on intercourse. Most of the time, when we use the words "having sex," we really mean a man having intercourse with a woman.
He also notes that straight men and women and gay men think of "having sex" as "penetrative," while lesbian women think of any genital contact as "having sex."
This isn't really a po-tay-to / po-tah-to issue. It goes further than that. What the article doesn't say is that one of the reasons someone may say "We had sex," instead of "We had intercourse," or whatever, is to keep the activity private. It also serves to minimize the activity if someone colors outside the lines (remember Carry talking about Big in "Sex & the City"?) and doesn't want to admit that they, uh, scribbled.
Okay, sorry to use a euphemism. That they had oral, manual, or anal sex.
You'd be surprised how many people still find anything but intercourse disturbing. And, how many people feel that if their partner gets off, but they don't, that sex has been a big, fat waste of time. They complain that their partner is "gross," or that they are being exploited or disrespected if their partner wants a little help having an orgasm. It's as if saying, "I'm tired," means, "No, no, a thousand times no," and not just, "I'm tired, but if you need an orgasm, let me know, I'll help you out."
And surprised, too, at how many people, women in particular, who feel that the only sex worth having is intercourse. Which creates a big, fat problem when their partner is stressed, tired, or whatever and can't have an erection, because then their partner cannot please them in any other way. That leaves the partner feeling useless.
Now, I must admit, I've been, as Prof. Ward would say, "heteronormative," that is, writing about sex as if only heterosexual sex is normal. That's because I am straight and I live in a very straight world. I'm very comfortable talking about gay sex, but I've learned that most of my readers are straight–probably because I do tend to be heteronormative. Even though I often use the word "partner" instead of "husband" or "wife," I still end up sounding straight.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. It just suggests that we may all want to give a little thought to the way in which we use language to talk about sex and to limit its expression.
Actually, what I think is really funny is how professorial the word "coitocentric" is. Only a linguist would think up a word like that to describe bumping fuzzies.