when the sexual revolution began in the
1960s there was a standard understanding
of what should happen sexual liberation
would mean that people would be freed to
have more of the sort of sex they really
liked that is sex with more partners and
with less embarrassment but what was
overlooked is that this kind of sexual
liberation might along the way create
its own restrictions taboos and so to
speak varieties of imprisonment the
people targeted would not be those who
wanted to have more sex but those who
for a variety of reasons either didn’t
want to or weren’t able to have the
amount of sex that was now strongly
deemed normal sexual liberation while
driven by a desire to free us of
moralistic judgment ended up quite
unwittingly putting us in a new kind of
straightjacket insisting not that we
have no sex as moralists of old had
thundered but that we feel wholly at
ease around the prospect of making love
frequently and diverse ly it now became
as shameful to admit that one wasn’t
having sex as it had once been shameful
to say outside of marriage that one was
stigma continued shame – they just
changed their targets at the heart of
this newly stigmatized group there was a
figure a particular mockery and
opprobrium a belated virgin someone who
has by accident or design reached their
20s and still not yet been to bed with
anyone this shame has nothing to do with
the statistics surveys estimate that as
many as 15 percent of the population
between 20 and 25 remain virgins the
point isn’t how many virgins there are
there are clearly many but rather the
extent to which they have been made to
feel wretched and inadequate the goal of
true sexual liberation the sort we
should all be interested in is not to
shift stigma around it’s to remove all
stigma around all consensual sexual
choices true liberation means liberating
us not just to have sex a lot with
differ
partners in ecstatic clinches but also
to not have sex or to have sex quite
late on or for that matter to have bad
or inept or clumsy sex and never to feel
bad on this account true sexual
liberation should liberate us not just
to be athletic and tantric and poly
ecstatic but also to be weird
reclusive interestingly shy
intelligently embarrassed and about as
peculiar as we want to be and still
retain the right to honor and like
ourselves what we should aim for is to
build a society where we finally stop
suffering so intensely around our
sexuality even if that sexuality means
we don’t want to or haven’t yet managed
to have sex that and only that will be
did you know that the School of Life is
actually a place ten places in fact
campuses all over the world from
Melbourne to London Taipei to Istanbul with classes and books and lots more
1960s there was a standard understanding
of what should happen sexual liberation
would mean that people would be freed to
have more of the sort of sex they really
liked that is sex with more partners and
with less embarrassment but what was
overlooked is that this kind of sexual
liberation might along the way create
its own restrictions taboos and so to
speak varieties of imprisonment the
people targeted would not be those who
wanted to have more sex but those who
for a variety of reasons either didn’t
want to or weren’t able to have the
amount of sex that was now strongly
deemed normal sexual liberation while
driven by a desire to free us of
moralistic judgment ended up quite
unwittingly putting us in a new kind of
straightjacket insisting not that we
have no sex as moralists of old had
thundered but that we feel wholly at
ease around the prospect of making love
frequently and diverse ly it now became
as shameful to admit that one wasn’t
having sex as it had once been shameful
to say outside of marriage that one was
stigma continued shame – they just
changed their targets at the heart of
this newly stigmatized group there was a
figure a particular mockery and
opprobrium a belated virgin someone who
has by accident or design reached their
20s and still not yet been to bed with
anyone this shame has nothing to do with
the statistics surveys estimate that as
many as 15 percent of the population
between 20 and 25 remain virgins the
point isn’t how many virgins there are
there are clearly many but rather the
extent to which they have been made to
feel wretched and inadequate the goal of
true sexual liberation the sort we
should all be interested in is not to
shift stigma around it’s to remove all
stigma around all consensual sexual
choices true liberation means liberating
us not just to have sex a lot with
differ
partners in ecstatic clinches but also
to not have sex or to have sex quite
late on or for that matter to have bad
or inept or clumsy sex and never to feel
bad on this account true sexual
liberation should liberate us not just
to be athletic and tantric and poly
ecstatic but also to be weird
reclusive interestingly shy
intelligently embarrassed and about as
peculiar as we want to be and still
retain the right to honor and like
ourselves what we should aim for is to
build a society where we finally stop
suffering so intensely around our
sexuality even if that sexuality means
we don’t want to or haven’t yet managed
to have sex that and only that will be
did you know that the School of Life is
actually a place ten places in fact
campuses all over the world from
Melbourne to London Taipei to Istanbul with classes and books and lots more
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