Question: what’s the difference between group sex and a gang bang? Please pop on your serious hat and ponder along with me. I’ve got DIAGRAMS and everything.
This question sprung from a silly joke I made on Twitter about my top 3 sex resolutions for 2020 (threesome with two dudes; group sex with 5 dudes; gang bang with 20 dudes). Naturally, someone popped up to ask how many men would be required in this scenario to turn group sex into a gang bang. And after much careful thought, I have come to the conclusion that group sex vs gang bang is not a question that can be solved with cold hard numbers, it’s all about tone and context.
My partner and I had a long discussion about this, and we have settled on an answer: the definitive difference between group sex vs gang bang. I’ll give you his explanation first, which is clearer and more mathsy (like he is), and then my explanation, which is hornier and more wordy (à la me).
Group sex vs gang bang: the network explanation
My partner explains the difference between group sex and a gang bang like so: a gang bang is like a star network. One person in the middle, everyone else on the periphery, but crucially they are all engaging with that central point on the network. The person whose birthday it is, so to speak.
Fig 1: a simple gang bang with me in the centre and six lead singers from famous punk bands in the surrounding circle
However, we do not need to be quite so prescriptive with our numbers, because we have the map to demonstrate the gang-bang-iness of the scenario. Potentially, one could have a gang bang in which it’s more than one person’s birthday.
Fig 2: a gang bang in which my partner and I are in the centre, and various Game of Thrones characters are gathered around the edge
I reckon something can still be a gang bang if you have more than one person in the centre, the key things are
a) the number of extra dots. In order to remain a gang bang, there must be proportionately far more dots in the surrounding circle than there are in the center and
b) where the attention of the circle of extra dots is focused. If all banger attention is focused on one, two or three central dots, then I think what we have is a gang-bang.
Group sex is a very different beast. A map of group sex would look far more like a net/mesh than a star.
Fig 3: group sex with my partner and I coloured red, and the rest of the people we have invited to this imaginary fuckparty coloured black
Now. As you can see, the key difference between group sex vs a gang bang is that when we’re talking about group sex, there are far more connecting lines between those dots. As well as showing person A (me) the time of her life, person C is also erotically sexing with persons D, E and G. These interactions do not have to be anything specific – we’re trying to avoid being prescriptive, after all. Perhaps C is kissing or stroking, maybe giving oral, maybe banging vigorously like they’re trying to knock down a partition wall: it doesn’t matter. The point is that each participant engages in broad interactions with other members of the group, rather than focused interaction with just one or two.
It’s also worth noting that this model does not require interaction with every member of the group in order to fit the definition of ‘group sex.’ Because group sex is meant to be consensual, you don’t have to interact with every person if you don’t want to. C and B are not doing any sexy stuff together, although they are both eagerly interacting with G and A. Maybe B and C don’t fancy each other, or they haven’t found anything they both like doing together. Maybe they’ve just got their hands full. Either way, this model is clearly ‘group sex’ rather than a gang bang because the group comes together in a mesh-type network linked by multiple interactions.
Yes, I absolutely should get out more. But let’s press on. I think I agree with my other half, it’s just that I’d put it differently. I’d be more likely to explain things via porn…
Group sex or gang bang: the erotic explanation
Someone’s dick is in her mouth, but she’s not sure whose. Her eyes are closed and she’s too busy enjoying the details of this moment: a slippery hand busily rubbing between her thighs, the sound of moans coming from a few feet to her left, wet lips on one of her nipples and – of course – the rhythmic thud of the head of someone’s cock at the back of her eager throat.
He’s enjoying himself too – watching as she’s rubbed and licked and plundered by the rest of them, as he in turn slides his cock slowly into someone else’s thoroughly-lubed-up cunt. Behind him, someone presses their body against his, sliding an erection between the cheeks of his ass – pushing down on him and shoving his cock further into the woman he’s slowly but firmly fucking.
This is group sex, then: when neither one of them can work out where ‘the group’ begins and ends. Where you can follow the trail of touches from that guy’s hands reaching through his armpits to pull tight against broad shoulders, to his own body – his dick – penetrating the next woman whose hands, in turn, touch his partner. With this trail, then, you can draw a line through all of them – this hand to that cunt, that mouth to this dick, these fingertips to those nipples to that tongue to that soft inner thigh.
“Is this a gang bang?” his partner asks, when she no longer has her mouth full. He smiles. A few others pause and smile too. The woman who had previously been busily working her clit sits up. Wipes her mouth. Reaches for a nearby strap-on.
There’s a lull in activity as everyone’s attention – previously fractured in a kaleidoscope of pleasurable fucking – crystallises around the woman who asked the question.
“Is this a gang bang?” She repeats, as the second woman slides her legs into the harness and rubs generous handfuls of lube on her stiff, silicone dick.
“No,” she explains, as the group – now united in a common purpose – turns with playful glee to the woman who wants to know. They are no longer fractured and disparate, but whole. Not individual ‘they’ but as one: one group, one purpose. One gang.
All eyes turn to the woman in the center of the room. She grins in anticipation at what she feels is about to happen. She opens her eyes wide now and stares around, taking in the sight of eyes, nipples, crotches, chests, all bodies facing her – presented to her, like a gift. Thick fingers and broad hands grab cocks, spitting on them ready to slide them into whichever holes she will make available.
The woman who replied ‘no’ – the leader – steps forward and nudges the first woman onto her back. Spreading her legs wide for everyone else to see, gently pinning her wrists to the floor and holding the tip of her cock at the first woman’s still-parted lips.
“That’s not a gang bang,” she tells her. “This is a gang bang.”
And then they pounce.
This post brought to you by the JS paint web app, because I am old school.
Whatever you do, please don’t take this too seriously. If you’ve had group sex/a gang bang which doesn’t fit my model, I am probably wrong – don’t let me define away your good times, I just enjoy the silly/nerdy discussion of this stuff. Make your own kind of music, define your own kinds of fuck.
10 Comments
This is probably very Heteronormative of me but I’ve always assumed that a Gangbang includes multiple men and one woman. So a MMF threesome would be a gangbang, albeit a small one.
This is probably formed by most porn however, where male performers in an MMF threesome don’t interact. In comparison most MFF threesomes in porn definitely count as group sex because the female performers interact.
But like most things in life, and especially sex, they defy easy categorisation. Though I do very much appreciate the effort to try, and to help me reconsider things.
This is an interesting question. (I should get out more too.)
I always thought that a gang bang was one person, in my fantasies female, YMMV, being banged by lots of men simultaneously. Your first diagram fits my fantasy.
Group sex is lots of people of different genders and sexual persuasions all having sex with each other all at once in a myriad of different ways. Your third diagram is close but it needs more circles with lots more colours for different genders and sexual orientations and lines interconnecting every single circle. Maybe multicoloured circles to indicate gender/orientation/preference. Line with arrows to suggest who is doing what to whom and who is dominant and who is submissive.
Fred
I love discussions like this! I think both your partner and you are partly right, in that it’s a combination of the interactions between participants and the overall dynamic of the situation that determine whether something is a gang bang. A gang bang requires a person or small group of people being banged by a larger group of people. Most commonly a woman being banged by a group of men but any genders could be fulfilling either role as long as the right dynamic is there. The number of participants need not be large, providing that the right dynamic is there.
Whereas I see group sex as an overarching term for any sex involving three or more people. I would consider a gang bang to be a subcategory of group sex. I would class the scenario detailed in Fig 3 of your partner’s explanation and the beginning of yours (before it becomes a gang bang) as an orgy, which is another subcategory if group sex.
Goddammit you may be onto something with the sub-category thing. Interesting…
Perhaps we need a relational database listing the different subcategories of group sex (gang bangs, orgies, threesomes, etc) along with specific sex acts than can be performed as part of each subcategory. I feel like I would get as much satisfaction putting together and using such a database as I would participating in the sex acts in question.
Haha, love the second explanation. :)
Data geekery and hot smut, this blog is where I come to get *all* my kinks fed!
I agree with both sets of explanation; and also that ‘gangbang’ could be a subcategory of ‘group sex’. Excuse me now while I go and think deeply about the subject….in my bunk
Great question and answers! I’d like to add one more possible definition: gangbang is a group sex act where somebody has to wait for his/her turn to actually engage in a sexual activity with somebody else. It’s common(?) in gangbang porn that guys are wanking because they physically can’t reach the body of the banged person(s). Also I think it takes at least 4 persons to have a gangbang.
Great article. I’m looking forward to the publication of the academic paper “Group Sex or Gang Bang: A Graph Theory Approach” as a follow-up ;)
I agree with the diagrams…was wondering if there is another (possibly more scientific) word or phrase for gang bang. So far have only found group sex, but as stated in the article there is a difference.