Meg-John Barker - Enjoy Sex (How, when and if you want to): A Practical and Inclusive Guide

A PRACTICAL AND INCLUSIVE GUIDE

MEG-JOHN BARKER AND JUSTIN HANCOCK

Published in the UK in 2017 by

Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

3941 North Road, London N7 9DP

email:

www.iconbooks.com

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ISBN: 978-178578-080-6

Text copyright 2017 Meg-John Barker and Justin Hancock

The authors have asserted their moral rights

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typeset in Adobe Caslon by Marie Doherty

Printed and bound in the UK by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

About the Authors

Dr Meg-John Barker is a writer, therapist and activist-academic specialising in sex, gender and relationships. Meg-John is a senior lecturer in psychology at the Open University and has published many academic books and papers on topics including non-monogamous relationships, sadomasochism, counselling, and mindfulness, as well as co-edited the journal Psychology & Sexuality. They were the lead author of The Bisexuality Report and they are involved in running many public events on sexuality and relationships, including Critical Sexology. Meg-John is also a UKCP accredited therapist working with gender, sex and relationship diverse (GSRD) clients. In addition to their many academic books, they have now written several books for the general public including Rewriting the Rules (Routledge, 2013), The Secrets of Enduring Love (Penguin Random House, 2016) and Queer: A Graphic History (Icon Books, 2016). They are frequently mentioned in the media, and they blog about sex and relationships on rewriting-the-rules.com. Twitter: @megjohnbarker.

Justin Hancock is a sex and relationships educator, trainer and practitioner working with young people and adults in this field since 1999. His website BISHuk.com is one of the leading sex and relationships advice websites for all those over fourteen and is sponsored by Durex UK. The accompanying book to the website, Sex Explained: A real and relevant guide to sex, relationships and you, was self-published in 2013 and was very well received by activists in sex, sexuality and sexual health work such as Brooke Magnanti, Buck Angel and Dr Ranj Singh. In addition to this Justin works with practitioners in sex and relationships education and sexual health services providing training and resources. He was involved in writing teaching resources for the DO SRE for Schools project. He has made a number of media appearances on television and radio and has written several pieces for newspapers and blogs. Twitter: @bishtraining.

Acknowledgements

Wed like to thank Hannah, John, Stephen, Fi, Ben, Petra, Toni and Dean for all their immensely helpful comments on the first draft of the book. Wed also like to thank Kiera from Icon for all her enthusiasm and support with this project, Rhiannon from Hey Kiddo for her invaluable help with our website, and the Open University, Damn Fine Media and Julia Scheele for their input on the additional animations. Thanks also to the people who have taught us so much over the years about sex, too numerous to mention. Were very grateful to the employees and customers at the Barbican and Look Mum No Hands cafes for their patience with two people talking loudly and enthusiastically about sex for hours around a laptop.

Preface

Hello, and welcome to our sex advice book. Our idea with this book was to give you a practical guide through the confusing, and sometimes daunting, world of sex and sexuality. We wanted to put your experience at the heart of the book, and to invite you to explore what might really be enjoyable to you.

For many people even the idea that sex is something we could enjoy is quite radical. In the past, many cultures have tended to be quite sex negative people werent supposed to enjoy sex but it was more of an obligation or duty linked to having children. These ideas are still very much around, but in recent years a more sex positive culture has also come in where were all supposed to love sex, to be really experimental, and to have incredible orgasms. That can actually put us under just as much pressure and prevent us from really tuning into what we want to do because were so busy trying to demonstrate how good we are at sex or how much were enjoying it. Were bombarded by so many messages that we should be having sex of a certain kind that we can struggle to even think about what wed really like to do, let alone communicate that to another person.

In this book were trying to get away from the sex negative and sex positive messages to find a kinder way in which we can all approach sex, and enjoy it if we want to.

WHO ARE WE?

A lot of sex advice books claim that the authors are sexperts who can give you the secret to great sex. Were going to challenge all of those ideas over the course of this book! Weve learnt a lot about sex over the years, but its important to remember that only you can be the expert on your experiences, your body and your desires. Were all in this together with the kinds of messages we receive about sex, and we all struggle with them.

This book is the first big project that weve done together after several years of loving each others work and being great mates. Its the result of many mornings in London cafes sitting together around our laptops with many cups of coffee.

Justin has been a sex educator for a couple of decades, working with young people in schools, youth clubs, and clinics. He also trains other sex educators and runs the BishUK website. Meg-John has studied sex and relationships academically for a similar length of time, as well as working as a sex and relationship therapist, and doing a lot of activism in this area. When we started delivering workshops together and discussing our work we realised that wed come to similar places from different directions. We noticed similar problems in sex education, sex therapy and sex advice. We hope that by bringing our different knowledge and skills together in this book the result is something new and helpful.

WHO ARE YOU?

When we were writing this book we tried very hard to make sure that itd be relevant to everyone. A lot of sex advice is written primarily for a certain kind of person in a certain kind of relationship.

Were hoping that the book will particularly appeal to you if youre:

• Somebody whos keen to enjoy sex more than they do
• Somebody whos generally left out of sex advice books (most people!)