WOMEN: ATTITUDES TO SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR. KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SEX
It’s now realized that women can need, want and enjoy sex as much as men: no longer are they advised on the eve of their marriage to grin and bear it or ‘close their eyes and think of England’. There’s also greater acceptance of women as initiators of sexual advances and activity, and it seems that more women now have more sexual partners during their lives than previously. The availability of reliable contraception has allowed premarital sex and brief or casual sexual liaisons without the risk of pregnancy.
In spite of relaxed attitudes to sexual behaviour, double standards for the behaviour of women and men still exist, though perhaps are not as widely or strongly held as in the past.
The new attitudes have also brought some problems. Many people have been emotionally wounded, and casual sex has led to an increase in sexually transmissible infections. The risk of AIDS and other sexually transmissible diseases
has led us to reconsider seriously our attitudes to casual sex.
Though in the late 1940s and early ’50s several researchers published results of survey questionnaires about sexual behaviour (and most people thought these studies were prurient), any studies of sexual function at this time would have been considered outrageously improper. The majority believed that the procreational act was the ultimate privacy and should remain a mystery; perhaps something that only God should know about.
This all changed in 1966 when Masters and Johnson published the results of their studies into the physiology of sexual function. The rest is history. Since the initial outcry settled down (and it took a few years) their discoveries have had more publicity than any other branch of physiology. Today I imagine most people know more about how their bodies function sexually than about respiration, digestion and other bodily functions.
*89/31/5*
