Complete Idiots Guide To Amazing Sex | Page 6

equipped you will be to responsibly experience all the v\
ariety that sexuality has to
offer. The goal of your sex life can be to have fulfilling experiences t\
hat you never regret. In
order to do that, you have a lot to learn.

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From Sexual Revolution to Sexual Evolution
Here I am about to tell you explicitly how you can have amazing sex. But\
it wasn't long ago
that people could hardly talk about sex. Even as recently as the 1950s, \
it was considered taboo
for people to have conversations about how they could improve their sex \
lives. In the 1960s
and 1970s, people began to talk more openly about sex. The sexual revolu\
tion of those years
incited our culture to have a greater comfort level with sex.

However, in the 1980s, the AIDS epidemic put a damper on sexual freedom.\
People were told
that sex could kill. All of the freedom that was felt in the 1960s and 1\
970s turned into restraint
in the 1980s. In the 1990s we entered a time when we could talk more ope\
nly about sex than
ever before. There has been no time before now that so many sexual issue\
s have been out in the
open. Because of the sexually explicit nature

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of television, movies, magazines, books, many Internet sites, and even s\
tories in
the news, we talk about everything from adultery to anal sex to
masturbation—topics that were formally taboo.
As we head into the 2000s, I notice that many people are frustrated, bec\
ause they
really want more out of their sex lives. There had been a sexual evoluti\
on: from
repression to sexual freedom, back to repression again. Now, the pendulu\
m has
swung once again to a positive place of sexual desire. We are at a terri\
fic time in
the sexual evolution of our country—a time in which people are allowe\
d to
express their interest in sex, to seek and find amazing sex. We know tha\
t AIDS,
sexually transmitted diseases, and unintended pregnancies are the diffic\
ult,
negative consequences of sex. But we also know about the precautions tha\
t can
help us continue to enjoy sex in a healthy way. Sex can bring great plea\
sure and
happiness to everyone's lives.
Do Sex Trends Exist?

While sexual desire has an internal component, it still can be influence\
d by the
world around us. In the straitlaced '50s, the free-love '60s, the disco \
'70s, the
Reagan '80s, or in the media age of today, people's sexual desires may h\
ave
churned at the same pace, yet the factors that made each generation dist\
inct also
made sexual trends unique.
A trend is something that we notice many people in our culture following\
. For
example, if you notice that many women are sporting belly rings and henn\
a
tattoos, that's a fashion trend. If instead of saying “hi,” you he\
ar most people
using “yo,” as a greeting, that's a language trend. A trend is a c\
hange that is
actually occurring—not just something that you happen to hear more ab\
out. In
order to assess whether or not a trend is occurring, we have to see it i\
n the culture
around us. But because we cannot peer into other people's bedrooms, we h\
ave to
rely on sex research or cultural observations to determine if there are \
any sex
trends.
Some trends that I have noticed that are unique for today's Americans in\
clude:
• acceptance of premarital sex, to the point that it is considered th\
e norm by most
Americans
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• increased willingness for women to initiate sex compared with previ\
ous
generations
• increased frequency of oral sex and manual stimulation prior to eng\
aging in
intercourse, so that oral sex is often considered a prelude to intercour\
se.
• increased viewing of pornography, due to the increased accessibilit\
y for people
of all ages.
• greater ability for people to talk about sex, because of the increa\
sed forum for
finding out factual sex information from educational sex books, magazine\
articles,
television shows, radio shows, and the Internet.

Because people have much greater exposure to sexual images today than ev\
er
before, people might mistakenly think that every sexual lifestyle that t\
hey hear
about is really a sex trend. Every time a new image of sex appears on a \
magazine
cover, on television, or in a movie, some people say that it's the hotte\
st, newest,
most exciting sex trend. I remember in the early 1990s when Madonna's Sex book
came out and the press was saying that S/M was the hottest sex trend. Or\
when
Sting was on TV talk shows discussing his practice of Tantric sex, and s\
ome
people wondered if the prevalence of this type of alternative sex was in\
creasing.
Or in the late 1990s, when it was reported that President Clinton had an\
affair
with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and many people were say\
ing
that the new sex trend was for men to have affairs with subordinates at \
work. But
did millions of people get into S/M only because Madonna did it? Or try \
Tantra
because of Sting? Did millions of men have affairs because Bill Clinton