Revisiting "The Joy of Sex"
The 1972 best-seller "The Joy of Sex" was intended to unleash its readers' sexual potential by counteracting their ignorance and shame. "The Joy of Sex," which sold more than twelve million copies worldwide, was an "unanxious account of the full repertoire of human heterosexuality," according to its author, the British scientist and physician Alex Comfort. It was the English answer to Japanese pillow books, illustrated texts designed to show couples where to put what, and was further enhanced by helpful advice: for instance, "Never, never refer to pillow-talk in anger later on ('I always knew you were a lesbian,' etc.)."
If you are a child of the seventies and were raised on "The Joy of Sex," you are not likely to have forgotten the illustrations. The woman depicted in these drawings is lovely, and, even nearly forty years later, quite chic. Her gentleman friend, however, looks like a werewolf with a hangover.
At times, "The Joy of Sex" has the feel of a penis propaganda pamphlet.
The penis "has more symbolic importance than any other human organ." Lest there be any confusion: "Vibrators are no substitute for a penis." Comfort writes of male genitalia, "It's less the size than the personality, unpredictable movements, and moods which make up the turn-on (which is why rubber dummies are so sickening)."
There was not a lot of feminist outcry about the book when it was published, probably because in 1972 there was so much else for feminists to cry about. There was, however, a feminist alternative: the Boston Women's Health Book Collective's "Our Bodies, Ourselves" which covered much of the same material as "The Joy of Sex," just with a different tone. Both books said that everybody was bisexual, that sex should be a mutually satisfying, full-body experience, and that the communication of turn-ons could be of great benefit to this enterprise.
"Joy" and "Our Bodies" were part of a movement that radically reformed the way the English-speaking world conceives of sexuality.
Today, Crown is releasing a new edition of "The Joy of Sex" ($29.95). Comfort himself revised his book several times; now Susan Quilliam, a British "relationship psychologist and agony aunt" (as her Website describes her), has endeavored to modernize the text for a new, post-feminist era. Quilliam has succeeded in bringing "The Joy of Sex" up to current standards. The book is still emphatically straight, but Quilliam has given it a gay-positive tone.
The orginial drawings have been replaced, with a mixture of modest photographs and impressionistic sketches. The participants have the smug smiles of a couple whose 401(k)s have just appreciated. They look as if they were in a Viagra commercial, which is to say that they look like two people who have never, ever had sex.
Source: THE NEW YORKER, January 5, 2009
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