Brame - TRUTH ABOUT SEX, A SEX PRIMER FOR THE 21ST CENTURY VOLUME II: sex for grown-ups

Table of Contents

A Note About Case Studies:

To protect the confidentiality of my clients, all case studies in this book are composites of at least two to four different patients who presented with similar problems. Names are fictitious to further protect their privacy.

The Truth About Sex

A Sex Primer for the 21st Century

Volume 2: Sex for Grown-ups

by

Dr. Gloria G. Brame

CCB Publishing

British Columbia, Canada

The Truth About Sex, A Sex Primer for the 21st Century Volume 2: Sex for Grown-Ups

Copyright 2013 by Dr. Gloria G. Brame

ISBN-13 978-1-77143-077-7

First Edition

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Brame, Gloria G., 1955-, author

The truth about sex : a sex primer for the 21st century volume 2 : sex for grown-ups / by Gloria G. Brame. First edition.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77143-076-0 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-77143-077-7 (pdf)

Additional cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

Cover artwork by David Ampola.

Extreme care has been taken by the author to ensure that all information presented in this book is accurate and up to date at the time of publishing. Neither the author nor the publisher can be held responsible for any errors or omissions. Additionally, neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the express written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief and accurately credited quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Publisher:

CCB Publishing

British Columbia, Canada

www.ccbpublishing.com

Note: This book contains frank material on adult topics. It is not recommended for minors.

Praise received for Gloria G. Brame, PhD

Gloria is the most articulate woman Ive ever met.

--Helen Gurly Brown, former editor-in-chief, Cosmopolitan magazine

If you dont have a sex therapist on speed dial, Dr. Gloria Brame will be your emergency contact. She plants a sex-positive flag into the American landscape.

--Megan Andelloux, Board Certified Sexologist and Sexuality Educator

The first step in affirming sexual freedom as a fundamental human right is ones own sexual liberation. Dr. Brames work outlines a clear path toward that goal!

--Ricci Joy Levy, Exec. Director, The Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance

Dr. Brame is simply the best tour guide I know for your travel in the world of kinky sex. She is a superb scholar and a great human being -- I think that her father must have dipped his joint in honey when he created her.

--Dr. Ted McIlvenna, Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality

Dr. Brames mind is devastatingly erotic because it is embodied philosophical eroticism repletive of the cardinals: wit, directness, reductive, suffused with organic immediacy.

- -Godfrey Silas, Cinematographer/Producer, The G-Spot Project

Dr. Gloria Brame brings a refreshingly original perspective to the study of human sexuality in all its dimensions and permutations.

--Dr. Sandor Gardos, Sex Therapist and Founder of MyPleasure.com

Dr. Brame provides an honest and reassuring outlook on how healthy sexuality is fundamental to building healthy lives, relationships, communities and societies.

--Nina Hartley, R.N., Author of Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex

The way that most men deal with traditions

is to receive them as they are delivered,

without applying any critical test whatsoever.

-- Thucydides

Section One

Sex is as Complicated as the Adults Having It

Introduction

Youve heard people say it a million times: Sex is the most natural thing in the world. And it is for every other species except humans.

For better and for worse, it has been humankinds unique biological destiny to have an unnatural relationship with sex. Unique to our species, we intellectualize sex. We also feel shame and guilt about sex; we lie and cheat about sex; and we think its noble to rise above our lusts and pretend sex isnt as important as it is to us. We are, when it comes right down to it, as bizarrely repressed and baroquely ritualistic as it gets in the great wide world of sex. If any of the species whose sexual antics we routinely giggle over on YouTube knew what humans went through to get laid, I wonder whod get the last laugh.

In the first volume of this series, The Truth About Sex, I focused on the two most basic and fundamental elements of sex: masturbation and orgasm. It came as a surprise, I suspect, to people more familiar with my work on BDSM and fetish sex, and my history of tackling unusual and radical sex topics. For fans of my more radical work, this volume will clear up any confusion about why I decided to start the trilogy at what I consider the very beginning the relationship each of us has with our own genitals and sexual desires.

I also know a key step to a balanced sex life is to develop a more positive view of orgasms, a harmless behavior long demonized for no rational reasons, and now, in the 21st century, something all the sciences, from medicine to sexology, can agree is healthful, and perhaps even key to longevity. So I felt I should start my trilogy with a basic sex-positive primer designed for both adults and their kids to gain familiarity with their own bodies, and to develop good sexual health habits through education.

As masturbation is the fundamental building block of adult sexuality, and the first type of sex most of us have, youd think people would do it naturally and not worry about it, but its the rare and fortunately uninhibited person who feels that way. Most people are hung up about it, think its wrong, cant talk about it, get stressed out if their partners do it, and essentially manifest all the fears and inhibitions you would expect in any intensely sexually repressed culture. Years of clinical experiences have shown me that people who find masturbation difficult or embarrassing bring their inhibitions with them into their sex lives with partners. The ongoing myths about masturbation and orgasm as somehow dangerous or unhealthy activities that one should avoid have done more to screw up adult relationships than most people will acknowledge.

Its a basic principle of my therapy practice to help people emotionally connect to the importance of loving our individual erotic potential and embracing that potential by developing healthy, mature, and regular sexual habits according to our individual needs. I consider it a basic requirement of an adults sex education to know that masturbation is good for you, and that orgasms are healthy. By the time youre in a relationship or planning to marry, you should also understand that sex is as complicated and magical as love, and that sexual intimacy enhances our quality of life.

Instead, our culture and laws treat sex as something that is so dirty that we need not only to be protected from it, but prevented from having it. We still abide by 18th and 19th century beliefs that sex is a dangerous force which has the power to pollute minds and drive adults mad.

As I see it, much of what we label as sexual dysfunction (meaning inorgasmia or a womans inability to climax, and erectile dysfunction or a mans inability to sustain an erection until climax) are consequences of this enduring perversion of sexual intimacy. When you grow up in a world where depictions and descriptions of the beauty and fun of sex are considered obscene, while ghastly sex crimes make national headlines, you cant help but come to believe that sex is fundamentally unsavory.