Whoopeee!!!!

Yessss. After a six month review, sex and relationships education in England is to become compulsory for all students of 11 and upwards. At last, at last, the Government has acknowledged what we sex educators have always known - that it's a straight choice between caught and taught.

Thankfully they've come down on the side of the teaching, so contraception, STIs and the supporting raft of relationship advice will be available to all late primary and secondary children from 2011 onwards. And that should mean that more resources are funnelled the SRE way - for student materials, teacher training and course support.

Yes, there are parental and faith school opt-outs, with provision for religious establishments to provide the teaching within the context of their own values. And, actually, though many sexual health providers disagree, I concur with this on the basis that democracy should trump mandatory every time.

But the fact remains that if we can fulfil this promise, in two years' time every adolescent in the country will be receiving regular, targetted, well-delivered SRE education. And with a bit of luck, a few years' after that, we won't be bottom of the European league tables for teen pregnancy and STIs!

PS: following a suggestion from my staff (truly not from me), I am now officially a nominee for the Our Bodies Ourselves Women's Health Heroes Award. If you'd like to vote for me - or even, if you know my work, post a comment in my support, then go to the Women's Health Heroes page and scroll down to find me. Last date for voting is May 8th.

Well, yet another gap in transmission due to busy-ness at work.

But that doesn't mean to say that nothing's been happening. The past few weeks have been full of sex-relevant media stories. And, happily many of them have carried a hidden upside.

Poor Jade Goody finally lost her battle with cervical cancer - but on the back of that, in some areas of the UK the number of women taking smear tests is up by many per cent. The economic crisis means that men can't afford to keep mistresses any more - and the upside of that is, hopefully, fewer broken marriages and destroyed families. Plus, Jacqui Smith's husband has been caught in flagrante with two porn films - but that in turn has brought the whole issue of porn squarely into the public domain.

It's been that last story that I've been asked to comment most on - including a long interview for The Times - and I have expressed concern. Yes, I was the one who in the recent Family Planning Association Debate on the issue of porn argued that there are no easy answers. And I still think that burying all sexual images and tabooing all sexual information - as was done in Victorian times - is a very bad idea.

Nevertheless, it's becoming clearer and clearer that while the general principle of openness about matters sexual still holds true, it needs to be done well. When linked with inaccurate information (all men have big penises, all women climax immediately upon penetration) and when surrounded by problematic values (a woman is only valid if she is slim and big breasted, a man is only valid if he keeps it up all night) porn is utterly harmful.

And, of course, addictive. I get more and more letters from women in particular who are distressed and disgusted by their partners' use of porn - and the subsequent deceit and betrayal where such partners promise to stop but then secretly. Relate reports a steep increase in marriage breakdown that is fuelled by Internet porn addiction (though whether the breakdown chicken or the addiction egg comes first is still in debate).

No it won't work to ban all erotic images. It won't work to think that our society can magically switch back to pre-sexualisation days.

But what we can do is to encourage a process of emotional maturity in our treatment of sex, so that we don't get stuck at the 'big tits, big cock' stage of adolescent sexuality. What we can do is topoint out that screen portrayals are not real life, and that real life sex is much much better just because it is real.

What we can do, in short, is to constantly remember that good, positive loving sex is much much better than the ersatz porn variety...

Sons and Lovers

As we come up to Mothers' Day, I thought I'd point you in the direction of two contrasting stories that have emerged this week - both about mothers' relationship to their sons, both causing a bit of a stir in the press.

Julie Myerson has hit the headlines on the back of her latest book, a reworking of the real life conflicts which resulted in her barring son Jake from the house. Should she have put all this in the public domain? The general concensus is no.

Meanwhile, Lucy Baxter is going public with a completely different problem. Her son Otto, 21, has Down's Syndrome, and as a result is finding it difficult to have the normal sexual experiences that a lad of his age wants and expects.

Now, I'm not a mother, so my insights will be limited here - but I'm far more moved, and far less outraged by the the second story than the first. It feels to me absolutely commendable - and very farseeing - that Lucy should be fighting publicly for her son's right to a happy, healthy sex life; his mother is not only doing him a good turn, but doing good for all the other physically and mentally handicapped youngsters (and oldsters) who aren't seen as sexual beings, and who are therefore denied an outlet for their passionate feelings.

The slight nose-twitching that has been going on in response to her speaking out seems to me to be utterly unwarranted. Why should Otto be penalised simply because he has a medical condition? Why should we not support him simply because he does not tally with our view of 'fit'. Why should we not see him as a sexual adult who needs and deserves the pleasure and comfort of an intimate relationship. As Lucy Baxter says, "it's society who has a learning disability" in this respect.

As for Julie Myerson? Yes, her child's drug habit is heartbreaking and everyone sympathises. But perhaps she could learn a lot from Lucy Baxter's support of her son as he tries to make that difficult transition to individuated adulthood.

And perhaps both Julie and her son should thank heaven they don't have the challenges that the Baxter family faces, day in and day out...

Naked as nature intended?

I for one will be tuning in to BBC 2's Horizon tomorrow at 9pm for a fascinating glimpse of what we sexologists consider our daily bread: nudity.

The programme will be exploring just why human beings feel embarrassed when they take their clothes off - and, by means of a series of exercises, will be attempting to lower the embarrassment factor for a group of volunteers. Apparently the exercises are so successful that at the end of the filming process, the group walks to their 'take-me-home' taxis stark naked. Gripping stuff.

Of course what interests me most here are the sex-related implications. Apparently we humans are socialised into a wariness of nudity in order to keep sexual temptation to a minimum, avoid infidelity and maintain social stability. Mmm.... I do fail to imagine everyone suddenly jumping into bed with everyone else just because the clothes are off. Nudist camps, by dint of intelligence and respect, manage not to generate daily orgies - and speaking for myself, seeing a naked man who I'm not personally involved with is a turn-off rather than a turn-on. Nevertheless, I get the point.

But I do still have a problem with the backlash that such socialisation creates in society. Because I'd be a rich woman if I had a pound for every advice-seeking letter from a reader who's hung up about their body, hung up about physical intimacy, hung up about getting naked even with the person whom they most love and desire.

Our emphasis on nudity may be keeping us all safe from making love indiscriminately - but it's also keeping us from being at ease with our bodies, and from being unembarrassed and comfortable with other people's bodies. It's also making us wary and inhibited in the very arena and in the very relationships where we should be most open, trusting and uninhibited.

Not to mention the fact that what's forbidden immediately becomes more fascinating. (I'd love to see some studies exploring whether people who are at ease with nudity are less prone to using pornography. I strongly suspect they are.)

So I'm with the Horizon group. No, I won't be walking naked to pick up the next taxi that I hail. But I'd love to live in a world where doing exactly that was entirely possible!

Reclaiming the joy

Sorry to revisit a topic I was going on about only a few weeks ago... but if there is one thing that I really "got" when I was rewriting Joy of Sex, it is that while sex may be the same as it was in 1972, the joy certainly isn't. Given the drip feed of horror stories in the press and the continuous warnings about the dangers of sex from all sides, we've somehow lost our optimism, our innocence - somehow, we've flushed the joy baby out with the bathwater.
Don't misunderstand. I'm not advocating condom-free orgies or emotion-free lust-fests. I'm as aware - and as vociferous - as anyone about just what we all need to do is order to make sex safe, sane, concensual and super-enjoyable. But I do feel that we've forgotten that sex is a Good Thing.

Which is why I was delighted to be invited to speak at a ground-breaking new conference in Devon yesterday. Run by the Eddystone Trust (with backing from the thinking person's condom-maker Durex) the training was packed with all sorts of fascinating folk from the world of South West sexual health. We had a great presentation on making older-age sex good, a fascinating interactive workshop on young people and risk taking, and an equally fascinating one on communication. Apparently one of the feedback forms said that it was 'the best workshop' the delegate had ever attended.

My contribution was to set a framework on just why we can get so negative - because of the above mentioned media panic and also, rightly, because of our need to protect ourselves (and particularly our young people) from the very real dangers of sex. I also made the point that sometimes being sex negative comes right from the heart of our own lives. If we love sex, we don't want others to spoil that by being irresponsible... if we've been disappointed in sex, we want to warn others of the dangers. It's all very understandable.

But I stil think it needs a rebalance. I still think we need to recontact the fact that, when safely and lovingly done, sex is one of the most wonderful things in the world. Lose the statistics, let's reclaim the emotion. Lose the cynicism, let's reclaim the joy...

Yet More Joy

So just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water... they publish two more books in the Joy of Sex series.

In other words, though I've batting on for months now about the original book, what I didn't stress was that it isn't just a book, it's a whole brand. And this week the next two books in the brand hit the UK shelves (US readers, sadly, have to wait until May to get their hands on them).

The Romantic Lover. The Adventurous Lover. Not to descend into back-cover blurb, but they're both small-and-perfectly-formed hard-backed pocket books, illustrated with more of the great Joy of Sex photos - though the text is entirely new.

Both do what they say on the tin. The Romantic Lover majors on all things pink and loving with sections on massage, foreplay and simultaneous orgasm (yes, it is possible!). The Adventurous Lover ventures into more exotic territory, with sections on anal, bondage and swinging. I can't claim to have tried in full everything I wrote about, but I have talked - in detail - to those who have. :)

So onward and upward. Next stop - later in the year - the Long Weekend Lover. And if anyone out there has any special requests for more titles, we have a long publishing list to go. All ideas gratefully accepted!

Joy coming home to roost...

I've spent, in my role as Joy of Sex spokeswoman, the last six months talking about sex - to journalists, TV presenters, radio hosts. And the one thing they always ask me is how things have changed since the book was first published 37 years ago. Typically I list the scientific changes, the rise of the Internet... and eventually come round to the fact that in 1972 there was an atmosphere - how can I put this - of naive optimism.

The orignal book reflected those times, those heady, postpill, sexual-revolution times when (to paraphrase Alex Comfort) a sexually transmitted infection was seen as slightly less problematic than a dose of flue, and infidelity was seen as par for the course.We look back now and wince...

And wincing is very much on the menu this week as reports come through of a sharp rise in sexual cancers in the wake of said revolution. The study, from King's College London, points out that the rate of cancers triggered by the HPV virus have rocketted since the Swinging Sixties and Seventies. And we all know why.

I was there - and contrary to the cliche, I remember it! Thank heaven I was informed and sensible enough to keep my sexual contacts safe and loving - but that wasn't the norm. We genuinely thought that if we were on the pill we were safe from all harm - and that meant we could play without protection. And it is deeply sad that we are now paying the price for our ignorance.

But let's remember that it was ignorance - and let's steer clear of the moralising about those times that is already appearing in the popular press. Please don't blame us. We weren't evil, we weren't immoral, we didnt' set out to have orgies. We were young and hormonally fuelled - and most importantly we just didn't know how dangerous it could be to have sex.

Now society knows, and is much more wary (though interestingly of course, it is this very generation that still doesn't quite realise that they are in danger - the 40+ cohort is currently the one where STI rates are rising highest.) And that in itself is sad.

Because, for all the illness, all the abuse, all the unhappiness that unconsidered sex can cause. we still need to remember that - safely and happily done - sex is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!