Reading the word ‘sexy’, a boy of nine screwed up his face in a gesture of disgust and said “Yuck!”. I asked him why and he replied, “Because my parents told me it’s disgusting”. Presum­ably these parents are trying to warn their son away from the tempta­tions of sexual pleasure with its asso­ci­ated immoral behaviour.

For women, there has always been accept­ance of sex within the context of family but disap­proval of sex for pleasure. In fact where a woman’s only sexual exper­i­ences are of inter­course, she is unlikely to ever discover her own sexual arousal.

Since women’s sexual arousal and orgasm are not auto­matic many women never learn how to enjoy their own sexual arousal and orgasm (either alone or with a partner).

Women’s sexual arousal relies on sexual fantasies and so women who do not appre­ciate the positive aspects of erot­i­cism also have no expect­a­tion for enjoying sexual pleasure.

“Women often feel they have no right to sexual exper­i­ence apart from that which a man provides.” (p62 Woman’s Exper­i­ence of Sex 1983)

Many women are disgusted by porno­graphy, which appears to display women’s bodies like a meat market for male grat­i­fic­a­tion. Women who enjoy their ability to arouse a lover learn that male turn-ons simply work differ­ently. A woman gives to a lover through sex in return for bene­fits in the wider relationship.

A woman who learns how to orgasm through masturb­a­tion, also knows the humility of accepting that the adult world cannot always be squeaky clean. Many other women (with fewer sexual instincts) can only justify sex as part of a loving relationship.

Disap­proval of sexual pleasure

Many people believe that women are always exploited through sex because men stand to gain so much more pleasure. Melanie Phil­lips (Daily Mail — 24^th February 2003) complains about those who want to provide young people (girls of fifteen) with the facts about adult hetero­sexual prac­tices (including oral sex and anal sex).

Melanie fears (as do many others) that know­ledge about enjoying sexual pleasure will damage the teen­agers’ emotional devel­op­ment and suggests that “genital grat­i­fic­a­tion separ­ated from a permanent loving commit­ment is a form of degrad­a­tion.” She also believes that “spir­itual and emotional meaning distin­guishes human sexual activity from animal beha­viour”.

The view that women’s exper­i­ence of sex should be restricted to marriage almost denies the fact that a woman might be capable of appre­ci­ating her sexual exper­i­ences for their own sake. The fact is that some women do explore sexual pleasure.

“In most cultures, throughout history, every­where in the world, some sort of distinc­tion has been made between the accept­ab­ility of pre-marital coitus for the male and the accept­ab­ility of such coitus for the female. This undoubtedly stems from the fact that it has always proved impossible to prevent the majority of males from having coitus before marriage; while females, who are less often sexu­ally responsive at early ages and less often stim­u­lated psycho­lo­gic­ally at any age, have proved to be more control­lable.” (p322 Sexual beha­vior in the human female 1953)

There is no reason why honest inform­a­tion about sex should encourage sexual promis­cuity in girls. Neither is it likely that knowing how couples enjoy sex in long-term sexual rela­tion­ships will harm a loving rela­tion­ship — in fact quite the reverse. There is a double standard here because no one worries that inform­a­tion about sexual pleasure will do boys any harm.

At its best, sex can be an inno­cent pleasure for any couple to enjoy whether they are married or not. If a woman finds a man she likes and respects, then the sex is sure to be even better. Sex is key to the emotional bonds that underpin healthy family life.