Historically, the trajectory of Western sex advice books has gone a little something like this: In the early 20th century, things had a decidedly clinical—or conjugal—flavor. Both 1918's Married Love or Love in Marriage, written by the British contraception pioneer Marie Stopes, and 1926's Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique by Dutch gynecologist Theodoor Hendrik van de Velde clearly focused on married sexual relations as the only legitimate kind. The emphasis on heterosexuality and gender conventionality continued in books like 1969's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) and 1972's The Joy of Sex. Feminist works like Our Bodies, Ourselves, first commercially published in 1973 by the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, expanded the conversation to include more diverse perspectives. In the 90s, bestsellers like the Guide to Getting It On! and Hot Sex were infused with their authors' personalities—"we were initially very radical, bad girls for writing this book in conversational English rather than some careful, timid version of medical Latin," Easton told me—but they retained a core interest in techniques.Read more: How People with Disabilities Have Sex
One clue that things have moved on from attempts to be authoritative is in the (slightly unwieldy) title of a forthcoming alternative sex guide: Enjoy Sex (How, When and If You Want To): A Practical and Inclusive Guide. Compared to the sometimes hectoring or paternalistic sex manuals of yore, Enjoy Sex, written by activist–academic Meg-John Barker and sex educator Justin Hancock, takes a kinder, gentler approach to dishing out advice, peppering their suggestions with phrases like "You could try" and "You might find it helpful."These are authors who wear their credentials lightly, and aren't offering a scientific approach (apart from calling their focus a "biopsychosocial" one); they call themselves "sex advisors" rather than "sex experts." Amy Rose Spiegel, a former Rookie editor and the author of 2016's Action: A Book About Sex, goes further, wearing her lack of authority almost like a badge of honor: "No academic degree—or degree of skankitude—can imbue someone with the grand and lofty ability to know what feels good for them/fuck like a maniac," Spiegel writes.We were very radical, bad girls for writing this book in conversational English rather than some careful, timid version of medical Latin.
One refreshing aspect of Spiegel's contribution to what she calls the "consent-versation" is an understanding that this can be a gray area:We've noticed in mainstream sex advice that consent is hardly ever explicitly mentioned. When we looked through the bestselling sex advice books, the average number of pages devoted to consent was 0.005 per cent! It seems like the authors buy into the wider cultural idea that consent isn't really relevant: as long as nobody is actively expressing distress about sex, then it has been consensual.
we have to acknowledge the fact that consent, though essential, is fallible. I think the gigantic, looming threat of potentially messing up when it comes to consent, and then being forever after labeled an abuser, assailant, or rapist, is part of why some members of the genuinely non-monstrous majority population are afraid to discuss it—and are, as a result, more likely to mess it up.
As Easton put it, "there is no gold standard of how your sex life could be." Nevertheless, Easton and Hardy believe in the transformative potential of good sex; the book comments that "sex and intimacy really are physical expressions of a whole lot of stuff that otherwise has no physical existence," and this isn't so far away from Stopes writing about sex as enhancing spiritual union in 1918.Action and The Ethical Slut could go further in establishing that sex doesn't have to be about personal growth and learning, or about making the world a better place; it doesn't have to mean anything. While it's important that these authors gently encourage readers to learn more about themselves and what they want, adaptability and flexibility are also necessary for a satisfying sex life. The emphasis on unapologetically going after what we want (just as soon as we figure out what the hell it is) reclaims sexual assertiveness for people whose desires have traditionally been pushed down or treated as shameful. But there must be a middle ground between the "Here's how to rock his world" and "Here's how to organize a BDSM orgy" schools of sex advice. This middle ground might be inhabited by people of color or those with disabilities, who are very familiar with the way sexual power relations interact with other kinds and who might reflect critically on the way this affects their sexual negotiations and desires.There are no absolutes in this post-sex-positivity world.
Keeping that in mind, it's interesting to speculate about the ways that these works, which seem ultra-modern now, might appear hopelessly dated in 20 years. For the next generation of sex advice writers, will "relationship anarchist" be a standard relationship category on Facebook? Will two-person relationships go the way of the passenger pigeon?For now, there's plenty of scope for choice. If the authors of Enjoy Sex are like soft-spoken camp counselors, the authors of The Ethical Slut are akin to favorite aunts, the ones who tell great stories about free love at Woodstock. Meanwhile, Spiegel is a chatty friend you meet at happy hour (and a millennial diner at the kind of sexual buffet Hardy imagined).One of these might be for you, or none. You might find thinking and reading about sex to be hugely erotic, or about as sexy as cardboard. Whatever your proclivities, in the spirit of Enjoy Sex: keep the pressure off yourself. I would add: Don't trust any one person (or one book) too much.