The Naked Truth About Sex Ed
A week ago, I got my hands on a book that big media has been afraid to touch. According to its author, a National Public Radio show said it was "too edgy" to review, while Newsweek said it was "inappropriate."
No, it's not Harry Potter or The Da Vinci Code. It's a book on honest communication about sex, with an emphasis on sexual pleasure and emotional health. It recognizes that sex is so much more than intercourse and encourages readers to have an extensive pre-sex discussion, or PSD, before becoming sexually involved with a partner. And it advises not committing monogamously to one partner too soon.
But I've read it, and I'm not afraid. In fact, I think many adults can benefit from Libby's emphasis on communication and honesty and emotional health.
"This is the first book (about sex) written to teenagers other than (books about) abstinence since 1968!" he exclaims during our phone interview.
Libby is a certified sex therapist with a practice in Seattle and an adjunct professor of the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco. In writing Naked Truth, he deliberately stayed away from the usual diagrams of genitalia and reproductive systems in favor of getting to the real concerns young people have about sex.
The book includes numerous questions sent to him by teens and twenty-somethings during his Pleasure Dome radio show, which ran for three years on indie rock station 99X in Atlanta.
While young people will recognize themselves in the words of their peers, I suspect these Q&A sections will be revelations to parents as well. Judging from the e-mail I receive on a daily basis, young people aren't the only ones with these concerns.
Am I normal?
I have never had an orgasm. Not with a guy, not even when I'm masturbating. It makes my boyfriend feel bad because he thinks he's not pleasing me. What should I do?
I wish your PSD were required before sex. Maybe if sex education included something besides abstinence we'd all be informed enough to be selectively sexual.
All we ever get from teachers is the tired, irrelevant, "Just say no" motto.... How can we influence adults to be more real?
"I wanted to do a think piece, to promote a different view of sex," Libby says. "A broader definition (of safer sex) – a PSD, not just, 'Do you have a condom?'"
He sums up the pre-sex discussion thusly:
A PSD is an intimate and entertaining conversation that informs prospective lovers about each other's feelings, desires, expectations, fantasies and her/his sexual knowledge and sophistication. It's an introduction to the possibility of a sexual relationship or encounter – a preview of what sex would be like.
He doesn't talk much about the mechanics of sexual intercourse, focusing instead on making smart choices that lead to happy and safe sexual experiences, now and in the future. He writes about developing a healthy body and emotional self-esteem, fostering relationships based on mutual affection and trust, and the importance of being a good listener.
And of course he delves into protecting your physical health, explaining the options for preventing STDs and pregnancy.
Libby also recognizes that today's youth have a whole new world of sex available to them.
They are meeting peers online through chat rooms, games and social-networking websites, forming friendships and flirting and sometimes more. But they also risk encountering creepy adults who attempt to lure them into sexual situations, online and off.
They weather an incredible daily bombardment of hypersexuality through pop culture, not to mention easier access to pornography than any previous generation.
Even as the government and the schools have stopped providing any semblance of sex education, the internet has provided access to a wealth of sex information. Unfortunately, it's hard for young people to sort through and find reliable, accurate sources, especially around politicized issues like birth control, disease prevention and homosexuality.
But it's not all bleak.
Libby favors a friends-with-benefits arrangement over "hookups," as the emotional and physical tolls of casual sex can be great, especially for young people. He also believes that few teens are ready for home base – intercourse – before they graduate from high school.
He encourages youth to expand their definition of sex and suggests that young people agree on "stopping points" during their PSDs, long before any clothes come off. ("Don't decide whether to continue sex play while in the heat of lust and passion. The agreement should be made by the time you eagerly unsnap bra snaps and unzip zippers!")
The PSD really is the heart of the book.
"A properly conducted PSD minimizes dangers and maximizes pleasures," he writes. "A PSD includes the meaning of sex, assessing the risks and preventing STDs and unwanted pregnancy, and agreeing (or not) to celebrate sex together. A PSD encourages mutual honesty; sex without honesty is not meaningful, long lasting or fun."
He shares a number of tips for getting over the initial embarrassment of broaching the subject of sex, and destroys the myth that "the game" is normal. ("The game" is the old way of getting to sex, where the boy pursues and the girl slaps him away and each time she relents a little further until finally she gives the boy what he wants, which is also what she wanted all along but was prohibited from saying so.)
The Q&A sections show in stark detail the confusion and danger that results when young people are fed inaccurate information about sexuality.
Glamour recently published a piece in which several doctors spoke out against basing sexual health information on political wishful thinking rather than scientific evidence. It's hard enough for an adult to sift through the conflicting messages about sex, much less a young person just starting his or her adventure into adult sexuality.
What might surprise you is that most teens say they wish they could talk to their parents about sex more than they do. Parents, according to Libby, often overestimate how much they discuss sex with their teenagers.
I asked Libby where the disconnect happens. Most parents of today's teenagers are 40 to 55 and have had plenty of non-marital and non-vanilla sex.
Maybe that's the problem.
"The parents are not conservative about sex for themselves, but they are for their kids. They get into this control role with their kids, but that's not a good approach – it should be a discussion, not a confession or a lecture," he says.
"Parents and kids should discuss their relative experience without expecting it to be a blueprint of each other. Kids are individuals, they have a right to be different and choose different values, and parents have to deal with it."