The Sexual State of the Union

From the Introduction: The Wrong Question

When we talk about sex to each other, one-on-one, we open a well-worn box of lovers' lies: fake orgasms, promises of fidelity, boastful exploits. But on a social stage, lying about sex grows to such a grandiose level that instead of just answering with fibs and falsehoods, our collective breath doesn't even pose an honest question. The very premises of our education, our media, our aesthetics, assume tremendous beliefs about sexuality that aren't any more real than a flat earth. Instead, double standards and things that go bump in the night are the order of the day, the order of our childhoods, our daily bread.

My childhood was filled with pious and common messages about sin, femininity, romance, and virginity. I'm glad the nuns in my parochial school took off their habits; that was "the beginning of the end," just like the pope predicted. It was the sixties, we let our hair down, and the lies about good girls and bad girls fell from our heads like useless hairpins. I learned what the word "hypocrisy" meant in those years, what a social lie can do to a person. It made a tremendous imp ... read full excerpt from: The Sexual State of the Union ebook