Americans enjoy more sexual freedom than ever, with major cultural changes in just the last 20 years.
But we still need more options for expressing our sexuality, with less interference both from well-meaning conservatives and well-meaning progressives.
Each group would dictate what we can say and what we can do–and both are unacceptable.
Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy magazine, died this week at age 91. He was extraordinarily innovative and influential, and he was reviled by a lot of people for exactly those reasons.
When the 27-year-old Hefner started Playboy in 1953, America was a sexually sick country.
As a lifelong “liberal” it breaks my heart to say this, but “liberals” and “progressives” are making it harder and harder to write about things that matter. Here are examples of facts that I and others hesitate to write about:
We know that President Trump has an interesting relationship to facts. When it comes to sex he’s not alone.
People believe the darnedest things about sexuality, as if it’s a relief to “know” that sex is bad for you, dangerous to others, and so powerful that we’re all just one step away from civilization collapsing under the urgency and blind selfishness of desire. But there are things that are known…
I was interviewed about this on Public Radio yesterday. Since it’s a subject I hadn’t given a lot of thought, I prepared by reading up on it just a bit. And I was shocked. It’s actually against the law to touch yourself sexually—in private—if you’re in jail. Sounds barbaric, doesn’t it? OK, you’re behind bars, your body is no longer your own. But if you’re not allowed to masturbate, neither is your soul. Worse, if there’s any disagreement about whether you’ve done it, you automatically lose the argument. There are many cases in which guards either misinterpret prisoner activity and…
Like a bad penny—or like an abusive ex-husband, or a public policy cancer—abstinence is back, just when we thought it was gone. Through the 1970s, U.S. policy was to reduce teen pregnancy. In 1981 the goal was changed, to funding programs to reduce teen sexual activity. During the Bush Administration, $1.5 billion was spent trying to get kids to have less sex. These programs failed completely (other than transferring federal case to Bush supporters). In 2009 the federal government ended most funding for abstinence (although states and school districts continued funding abstinence programs locally), and began funding comprehensive sex ed.…