The New Joy of Sex: Part 1.
The art of gourmet lovemaking.
2008, based on the works of Alex Comfort and Susan Quilliam. Listen to the podcast at How To Sex.
Preface 1.
I first wrote this book nearly 20 years and over 8 million copies ago. I am a physician and human biologist for whom the natural history of human sexuality is of as much interest as the rest of human natural history. I had notes on it. My wife encouraged me to bring biology into medicine, and my old medical school had no decent textbook to teach a human sexuality course.
Joy was compiled and very importantly, illustrated, just after the end of that daft and extraordinary non-statute in Western society, the Sexual Official Secrets Act. For at least two hundred years, the description, and above all the depiction, of this most familiar and domestic group of activities, and of almost everything associated with them, had been classified. When, in the sixteenth century, Giulio Romano engraved his weightily classical pictures showing sixteen ways of making love, and Aretino wrote poems to go with them, a leading ecclesiastic opined that the artist deserved to be crucified. The public, apparently, thought otherwise (“Why”, said Aretino, “should we not look upon that which pleases us most?”) and Are tin’s Postures have circulated surreptitiously ever since, but even in 1950s Britain pubic hair had to be airbrushed out to provide a smooth and featureless surface.
People today, who never experienced the freeze on sexual information, won’t appreciate the propositions of the transformation when it ended; it was like ripping down the Iron Curtain. My immediate predecessor in writing about domestic sex, Dr. Eustace Chesser, was (unsuccessfully) prosecuted for his low-key, unillustrated book Love Without Fear, and even in 1972 there was still some remaining doubt about whether Joy would be banned by the Thought Police.
The main aim of “sexual bibliotherapy” (writing books like this one) was to undo some of the mischief caused by the guilt, misinformation, and lack of information.
That kind of reassurance is still needed. I have asked various people; chiefly older couples; whether The Joy of Sex told them things they didn’t know, or reassured them about things they knew and already did or would like to do. I have had both answers. One can now read books and see pictures devoted to sexual behavior almost without limitation in democratic countries, but it takes more than a few decades and a turnover of generations to undo centuries of misinformation; and of this material, much is anxious or hostile or over the top. People who worried, when the book first came out, if they did some of the things described in it may now worry if they don’t do all of them. That we can’t help, nor the fact that the same people who went to doctors because of sexual fear and inhibition under the old dispensation now go complaining of sexual indigestion under the new.
Sexual behavior probably changes remarkably little over the years; sexual revolutions and moral backlashes chiefly affect the degree of frankness or reticence about what people do in private; the main contributor to any sexual revolution in our own time, insofar as it affects behavior, has not been frankness but the advent of reliable contraception, which makes it possible to separate the reproductive and recreational uses of sexuality. Where un-anxious books dealing as accurately as possible with the range of sexual behaviors are most valuable is in encouraging the sexually active reader; who both wants to enjoy sex and to be responsible about it; and in aiding the helping professions to avoid causing problems to their clients. It is only recently, as ethology has replaced psychoanalytic theory, that counselors have come to realize that sex, besides being a serious interpersonal matter, is a deeply rewarding form of play. Children are not encouraged to be embarrassed about their play; adults often have been and are still. So long as play is not hostile, cruel, unhappy, or limiting, they need not be.
One of the most important uses of play is in expressing a healthy awareness of sexual equality. This involves letting both sexes take turns in controlling the game; sex is no longer what men do to women and women are supposed to enjoy. Sexual interaction is sometimes a loving fusion, sometimes a situation where each is a “sex object”; maturity in sexual relationships involves balancing, rather than denying, the personal and impersonal aspects of arousal. Both are essential and built-in to humans. For anyone who is short on either of these elements, play is the way to learn: men learn to stop domineering and trying to perform; women discover that they can take control in the give-and-take of the game rather than by nay-saying. If they achieve this, Man and Woman are one another’s best friends in the very sparks they strike from one another.
This book has changed considerably since its first edition and it will be revised again in the future as knowledge increases. What will not change is the central importance of un-anxious, responsible, and happy sexuality in the lives of normal people. For what they need; in a culture that does not learn skills and comparisons in this area of living by watching; is accurate and unbothered information. The availability of this, and public resistance to the minority of disturbed people who for so long limited it, is an excellent test of the degree of liberty and concern in a society, reflected in the now-old injunction to make love, not war. It is a socially relevant test today.
Preface 2.
I am a relationships psychologist and sexologist whose lifetime aim, through a variety of expert roles, has been to help people enhance their emotional and sexual partnerships. So when the publishers of The Joy of Sex approached me to “reinvent” the book for the twenty-first century, it seemed to me the fulfillment of everything I have been working for.
I well remember the original publication of Joy, and the awed giggles with which I and my friends read, discussed, and then put into practice its suggestions. So I know firsthand what over the decades proved to be true: Joy is an astonishing and inspirational child of its age, born not only out of social but also political changes that irreversibly altered the sexual landscape for individuals, couples, and society. Barely a decade before the book’s 1972 publication, the contraceptive pill had, for the first time in history, enabled women to have control over their own fertility. In its wake came increased female education, emancipation, and self-belief, as well as a whole host of liberalizations, sexual and social; increasing permissiveness, more frequent cohabitation, easier divorce, more available erotica, and gay rights.
Joy was not only a product of this revolution, it also helped create it. Dr. Alex Comfort’s aim was to write the first book that gave readers accurate knowledge about sexuality, and permission to use that knowledge. The text and illustrations were designed to both reassure the reader that their sexuality was normal and to offer further possibilities with which to expand their sexual menu. He was hugely effective in his intention; 8.5 million copies of The Joy of Sex have been sold to date and it has been translated into fourteen languages. More than that, it was a key influence on the social changes of the late twentieth century and has been a byword for sexual vision ever since.
Why, then, reinvent? There have already been content revisions, in the author’s lifetime and after his death in 2000, the most recent being the highly successful thirtieth-anniversary edition by Alex’s son Nicholas Comfort. But the very changes that Joy itself wrought in society have meant that the book has come to need updating in a more fundamental way. This was my task; to re create The Joy of Sex for the contemporary world; to do what Alex Comfort would have done had he been writing today.
The majority of the text remains the same, but substantial additions have been made. Many of these are informational; there have been countless key scientific discoveries in recent years in the fields of physiology, psychology, psychotherapy, and medicine, while the advent of sexology; the specialist study of sexual matters; has resulted in both rigorous academic research and a more widespread public awareness of, and skill in, sex.
Alongside these informational updates, a great deal of refocusing has been necessary to reflect social shifts. An intimate relationship is a very different animal from what it was in 1972. It’s now largely expected that sex will be part of every love partnership, that bedroom activity will include practices previously considered outrageous, and that these practices will be informed and often suggested via a new raft of technological advances. It’s acknowledged that a woman can lead just as much as a man, both in bed and out of it; one reason why the publisher chose a woman to reinvent the book. And it is, albeit slowly, now acknowledged that a couple’s sex life lasts well into their later years and increases, rather than decreases, in quality.
Yet along with all these positive developments has come a flurry of problems that weren’t predicted in the heady days of 1972. Pressure to have sex; regret that one has had sex; worry that one isn’t sufficiently beautiful to deserve sex; worry that one isn’t having enough sex or enough good sex. And all that is set beside high rates of pregnancy, abortion, and sexually transmitted infections. In the twenty-first century, as we hastily adapt to a society arguably more sexualized than any previous one, it’s a wild world out there.
All of which is why the many changes made to Joy have been underpinned by what remains the same; an absolute yet pragmatic optimism around sexuality and its place in our lives. Running throughout the original book was a rock-solid seam of positivity that sex is a good thing and that mature adults, given the right information and inspiration, can be trusted to treat it as such. Despite the headlines and scare stories, I still deeply believe in what Alex Comfort proposed; that sex should be and can be a total joy.
I have loved reinventing the book because Alex Comfort’s values and aims are also mine. I too want to present knowledge in an accessible form. To encourage mature decision-making and offer the skills and strategies to do it. To protest attempts to enforce inhibitions on human sexuality. To see sex as the ultimate in human play, but at the same time a developmental essential that helps us grow as people and partners. Above all, to give people not just the technicalities, the fripperies, or the “junk food” of sexual literature, but an intelligent, thoughtful, and “gourmet” treatment of the topic.
In the end I return to, and repeat in my own voice, Alex Comfort’s words from his first preface. My intention and my hope is that this book will “benefit the ordinary, sexually active reader; eager to both enjoy sexuality and to be tender and responsible with it.” True in 1972. Just as true today.
With Your Body.
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body, i like what it does,
i like its hows, i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
firm smoothness and which i will
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh.; And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new
On gourmet lovemaking.
All of us, barring any physical limitations, are able to dance and sing; after a fashion. This, if you think about it, summarizes the justification for learning to make love. Love, in the same way as singing, is something to be taken spontaneously. On the other hand, the difference between Pavlova and the Palais de Danse, or opera and barbershop singing, is much less than the difference between sex as our recent ancestors came to accept it and sex as it can be.
At least we recognize this now (so that instead of worrying if sex is sinful, most people now worry whether they are “getting satisfaction”; one can worry about anything, given the determination.) And there are now enough books about the basics; we are largely past the point of people worrying about the normality, possibility, and variety of sexual experience. This book is slightly different, in that there are now enough people who have those basics and want more depth of understanding, solid ideas, and inspiration.
To draw a parallel, chef-grade cooking doesn’t happen naturally: it starts at the point where people know how to prepare and enjoy food, are curious about it and willing to take trouble preparing it, read recipe hints, and find they are helped by one or two techniques. It’s hard to make mayonnaise by trial and error, for instance.
Gourmet sex, as we define it, is the same; the extra one can get from comparing notes, using some imagination, trying way-out or new experiences, when one already is making satisfying love and wants to go on from there.
This book will likely attract four sorts of readers. First, there are those who don’t fancy it, find it disturbing, and would rather stay the way they are; these should put it down, accept our apologies, and stay the way they are. Second, there are those who are with the idea, but don’t like our choice of techniques; remember, it’s a menu, not a rule book.
Third, most people will use our notes as a personal one-couple notebook from which they might get ideas. In this respect we have tried to stay wide open. One of the original aims of this book was to cure the notion, born of non discussion, that common sex needs are odd or weird; the whole joy of sex-with-love is that there are no rules, so long as you enjoy, and the choice is practically unlimited. We have, however, left out long discussion of very specialized sexual preferences; people who like these know already what they want to try.
The final group of readers are the hardy experimentalists, bent on trying absolutely everything. They too will do best to read this exactly like a cookbook; except that sex is safer in this respect, between lovers, in that you can’t get obese or atherosclerotic on it, or give yourself ulcers. The worst you can get, given sensible safety precautions, is sore, anxious, or disappointed. However, one needs a steady basic diet of quiet, loving, night-and-morning intercourse to stand this experimentation on, simply because, contrary to popular ideas, the more regular sex a couple has, the higher the deliberately contrived peaks; just as the more you cook routinely, the better and the more reliable banquets you can stage.
One specific group of readers deserves special note. If you are disabled in any way, don’t stop reading. A physical disability is not an obstacle to fulfilling sex. In counseling disabled people, one repeatedly finds that the real disability isn’t a mechanical problem but a mistaken idea that there is only one “right”; or enjoyable; way to have sex. The best approach is probably to go through the book with your partner, marking off the things you can do. Then pick something appealing that you think you can’t quite do, and see if there is a strategy you can develop together. Talking to other couples where one partner has a problem similar to yours is another resource.
In sum, the people we are addressing are the adventurous and uninhibited lovers who want to find the limits of their ability to enjoy sex. That means we take some things for granted; having intercourse naked and spending time over it; being able and willing to make it last, up to a whole afternoon on occasion; having privacy; not being scared of things like genital kisses; not being obsessed with one sexual trick to the exclusion of all others; and, of course, loving each other.
As the title implies, this book is about love as well as sex: you don’t get high-quality sex on any other basis; either you love each other before you come to want it, or, if you happen to get it, you love each other because of it, or both. Just as you can’t cook without heat, you can’t make love without feedback. By feedback, we mean the right mixture of stop and go, tough and tender, exertion and affection. This comes by empathy and long mutual knowledge. Anyone who expects to get this in a first attempt with a stranger is an optimist, or a neurotic; if they do, it’s what used to be called love at first sight, and isn’t expendable: “skill,” or variety, is no substitute. Also, one can’t teach tenderness.
The starting point of all lovemaking is close bodily contact; love has been defined as the harmony of two souls, and the contact of two epidermis. At the same time, we might as well plan our menu so that we learn to use the rest of our equipment. That includes our feelings of identity, forcefulness, and so on, and all of our fantasy needs. Luckily, sex behavior in humans is enormously elastic (it has had to be, or we wouldn’t be here), and also nicely geared to help us express most of the needs that society or our upbringing have corked up.
Elaboration in sex is something we need rather specially and it has the advantage that if we really make it work, it makes us more, not less, receptive to each other as people. This is the answer to anyone who thinks that conscious effort to increase our sex range is “mechanical” or a substitute for real human relationship; we may start that way, but it’s an excellent entry to learning that we are people and relating to each other as such. There may be other places we can learn to express all of ourselves, and do it mutually, but there aren’t many.
Those are the assumptions on which this book is based. Granted this, there are two modes of sex; the duet and the solo; and a good concert alternates between the two. The duet is a cooperative effort aiming at simultaneous orgasm, or at least one orgasm each, and complete, untechnically planned release. This, in fact, needs skill, and can be built up from more calculated “love-play” until doing the right thing for both of you becomes fully automatic. This is the basic sexual meal.
The solo, by contrast, is when one partner is the player and the other the instrument. The aim of the player is to produce results on the other’s pleasure experience as extensive, unexpected, and generally wild as his or her skill allows; to blow them out of themselves. The player doesn’t lose control, though he or she can get wildly excited by what is happening to the other. The instrument does lose control – in fact, with a responsive instrument and a skillful performer, this is the concerto situation; and if it ends in an uncontrollable ensemble, so much the better. All the elements of music and dance are involved; rhythm, mounting tension, tantalization, even forcefulness: “I’m like the executioner,” said the lady in the Persian poem, “but where he inflicts intolerable pain I will only make you die of pleasure.” There is indeed an element of infliction in the solo mode, which is why some lovers dislike it and others overdo it, but no major lovemaking is complete without some solo passages.
To be continued. based on the works of Alex Comfort and Susan Quilliam, for The New Joy of Sex.