SEX IS NO LONGER TABOO

Sex education, and certainly school sex education, generally gives no more than a description of the genital organs of both sexes and an account of how sperm meets egg, how the embryo is formed and develops, and how it is born nine months later. A few words on contraception, with a description of the various methods, are generally added, and a warning about venereal disease and the precautions that can be taken.

No doubt all this is useful information. But sex education should also, and above all, be about love, pleasure and eroticism: questions that should preoccupy every man and woman on this earth. This is what we shall try to do in this book, giving enough precision to make things clear in every reader’s mind, while taking care to shock nobody.

“Everyone knows how to make love. Who needs instructions?” You must certainly have heard this kind of remark. People who talk like this are more to be pitied than blamed. If they were just to think for a moment they would realize that when they make love they settle for an instinctive act no different from any animal’s act of copulation: the male inserts his penis into the female’s vagina, thrusts in and out a few times until he ejaculates, and falls asleep – satisfied until the next time he gets aroused!

And for very many men and women – more than you would think – sex is no more than that. This ought not to be called love: it is mere copulation.

But what differentiates human beings from animals is their intelligence: the capacity to think, understand, imagine, create, perfect. And we can put this capacity to work in our lovemaking, so as to go beyond mere copulation and enjoy all the wide range of pleasures our sex organs can give us. Not only our sex organs, indeed, but many other parts of our bodies too.

Orgasm is of course the final goal in lovemaking. But many young people, and even adults if they are too shy, uninformed or lacking in imagination, or if they are consciously or unconsciously influenced by moral or religious precepts acquired in early childhood, ask no more than that. There is also a distinction to be made here between men and women, since men invariably reach climax while many women only rarely do so.

Boys and girls alike become aware of the pleasure their genitals can give them around the age of ten to fourteen. Boys feel a more imperative urge to use their penis, partly because – it being the same organ they use to urinate – they have it in their hand several times a day in any case. Moreover it is an external, visible organ, and they can see and feel the changes it goes through. For them this is the age of spontaneous, uncontrolled erections and wet dreams.

Young boys are quick to learn the connection between erection and ejaculation. They begin to masturbate, and they realize ejaculation is pleasurable. It is not a very intense pleasure, but the sense of relief that follows as their penis shrinks again makes them see masturbation as the satisfaction of a natural need. There is nothing sensual about it, nothing erotic. The boy feels the need to “empty” his penis the same way he empties his bladder, not so much for pleasure as for relief. So much so that once the boy begins to take an interest in girls, he can be perfectly happy to just kiss and pet with his girlfriend while he carries on masturbating in private.

As he grows up he will want to go further. His girlfriend will say no at first; she is probably ill-informed about contraception and afraid of getting pregnant; she thinks it important to keep her virginity; or saying no is seen as a part of the game.

At first, then, she will be content to masturbate her partner and let him stroke her clitoris (often very clumsily); sometimes she will stop him before she reaches the climax she feels rising in her, for fear of losing control and being led beyond the limits she has set herself for the time being.

Adolescent behaviour, governed by apprehension, fear and unsatisfied or poorly satisfied desires, is neither abnormal nor regrettable; on the contrary, this intermediate stage between childhood and adulthood is of crucial importance for a young person’s later sexual development.

This is the time when the meaning of love, tenderness, pleasure and eroticism should be made clear in a young person’s mind.

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