Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *but Were Afraid to Ask
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I'll be reviewing the get-go edition of the book because it was the one I snatched up as a teenager after finding it in the free department of a used bookstore. As an asexual young person eager to learn nearly the obsession that the other ninety-ix percentage of the human population harbored, I idea that Reuben'southward well-known bestseller would serve its promised purpose. The introduction asserted that no one could "live upwards to his human potential" west
Oh, where to brainstorm with this heap of libelous garbage?I'll be reviewing the first edition of the book because it was the one I snatched upward every bit a teenager after finding it in the free section of a used bookstore. As an asexual young person eager to learn almost the obsession that the other ninety-nine percent of the human population harbored, I thought that Reuben's well-known bestseller would serve its promised purpose. The introduction asserted that no one could "live upwards to his human potential" without having an active, healthy sexual practice life, which should have been my first hint that the author was writing with an agenda in mind. I don't know what the more than recent edition says nearly transsexuals, and, for personal reasons, I don't want to know.)
Well, information technology's been over xl years, and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex has become more and more risible as more time passes. From start to finish, Everything Yous E'er Wanted to Know Virtually Sex is a transparent attempt to convince the reader to practice vanilla-flavored marital intercourse to the exclusion of all other forms of sexual activity. The descriptions of the male and female sexual organs, as simple beefcake lessons, are exempt. The chapter titled "Male person Homosexuality" is particularly notorious for insisting that gay men are prone to anonymous hookups in public bathrooms, cannot live together lovingly ("The bitterest argument between husband and wife is a passionate love sonnet compared to the boilerplate conversation between a butch and his queen"), can be "cured" of their homosexuality by visiting psychiatrists, and, nearly bizarrely, get pleasance from penetrating themselves with strange objects such equally fruit and shot glasses. The "Prostitution" chapter is similarly defamatory--information technology is the merely section of the book that discusses female homosexuality, and asserts that the lesbians who go prostitutes do it to have the money of the men they despise and infect them with diseases. Afterward all, who needs factual information when you can have the wise doctor confirm widely held prejudices? (He must exist all-knowing, he'due south a doctor!) Reuben bestows his blessing upon oral sexual practice between a homo and a woman merely cautions them that they may take "emotional problems" if they prefer it to intercourse. "The ideal sex act" adds procreation to pleasure and an emotional connection, according to him. Yes, he really uses the phrase "platonic sex act." Plato may or may not be proud. Modern readers will likewise note that the book is totally innocent of the concepts of fisting, lesbian sadomasochism, and heterosexual anal sexual practice.
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex activity does offer some amusement value: the "interviews" from medical clients who are plain the writer's inventions provide nigh of the laughs. A prostitute visited in the daytime by a stingy john obviously dealt with him by saying, "What exercise yous think this, the kiddie matinee? You can come over hither for half toll but you lot but get half a screw!" If you lot wish that your sex manuals of pick had the tone of judgmental sitcoms, this book may exist to your liking. Simply put "Reproduction" from Grease 2 on repeat, and yous'll be all set for an evening of stern lectures confronting almost every conceivable sex deed. Otherwise, stay very, very far away from this thinly disguised propaganda.
ETA: I read the 1999 edition, and--if you can possibly imagine this--it is even worse than the original. The updated edition must have been written for the aforementioned people who were teenagers and young adults when the original was published, considering at that place is no way that these attitudes would pass without scorn from '90s youths. One has to imagine the author getting a letter from his publisher:
Dear Mr. Reuben,
We reaped cracking rewards from your runaway bestseller once upon a fourth dimension, and we would like to see you repeat the formula. Unfortunately, 30 years have passed since nosotros last published your administrative tome, and our audience of vanilla heterosexual Baby Boomers is largely no longer scared of homosexuality. Would y'all delight notice another group or 2 to defame at length? Nosotros suggest painting sadomasochists and transsexuals equally this generation's bogeymen.
Also, we'd appreciate it if you barely toned down your anti-gay attitude. You lot tin still portray gay people equally crusaders for anonymous public hookups as long you don't prescribe psychological "cures" for the orientation itself. What's more, you tin leave the prostitution affiliate almost untouched, considering our readers' contempt for hookers is dizzying.
We look forward to seeing your new efforts.
Sincerely,
Bantam
Why, oh, why did I make up one's mind to buy this volume at the used bookstore one day and not Sex Lives of the U.S. Presidents?
...moreBut information technology'south take on homosexuality is appalling. Here are a few of the statements in the book:
"I of the main features of homosexuality is promiscuity...The homosexual must constantly search for the one man, the 1 penis,
This was adequately forwards thinking for its 24-hour interval for some things like masturbation: "The just matter harmful nigh masturbation is the guilt drummed into children." Information technology too appears to support greater admission to abortions for pregnant women and discusses many varieties of nascency control.Only it's take on homosexuality is appalling. Here are a few of the statements in the book:
"One of the primary features of homosexuality is promiscuity...The homosexual must constantly search for the ane human, the ane penis, the i experience, that will satisfy him. Tragically there is no possibility of satisfaction because the formula is incorrect."
In regards to those gay men who live together happily for years: "The bitterest argument between husband and wife is a passionate dearest sonnet by comparison with a dialogue betwixt a butch and his queen. Live together? Yes. Happily? Hardly."
On gender reassignment surgery: "...2 homosexuals who had undergone these operations 5 years previously died of cancer. Ironically they succumbed to cancer of the breast--their new femae breasts. Ironicallyl these men who wanted to exist women died of a woman's affliction. that's as close as they came." Seriously? LOTS of men get chest cancer. LOTS. Here are some estimates from the American Cancer Gild for breast cancer in men in the US for 2014:
Well-nigh 2,360 new cases of invasive breast cancer in men volition be diagnosed
About 430 men will die from breast cancer
For men, the lifetime risk of dying from breast cancer is about one in three,333 slightly more than probable than dying from natural forces (estrus, common cold, storms, quakes, etc.) is 1 in 3,357.
Back to the book:
"All [homosexuals] have this in mutual: the main interest is the penis, not the person."
"Those who combine homosexuality with sadistic and masochistic aberrations are amongst the cruelest people who walk the earth...they filled the ranks of Hitler's Gestapo and SS." Nevertheless, although the author thinks heterosexual Due south&M fetishists are childish, they are but "harmless."
After describing very promiscuous and impersonal behavior (including a glory hole), the question is asked whether all homosexual contacts are as impersonal as that. The respond is, "No. Most are much more impersonal." (And why is impersonal sex and promiscuous behavior automatically wrong? It's not like heterosexuals don't exercise those things.)
Transvestites are listed nether perverts.
For someone so frontwards thinking in some areas, to be incredibly backward near gay issues, is disturbing. It was but a few years afterwards the book was written that psychiatrists removed homosexuality every bit a illness in and of itself from the DSM. Considering how many years it takes to publish a new edition of that volume, there had to have been a lot of talk at that fourth dimension most homosexuality beingness normal.
...more thanMy seeing the work mentioned in a GR daily update, though, dragged information technology out of "cold storage." And while I hold the popular view that its audience grew upwardly, grew old, lost control over bodily functions, remembers but stuff that happened a long time ago, and thinks a six-hr erection is Cialis'south best side-effect, I also want to say that Reuben's book had its twenty-four hours, really many days, in the sunday. Aye, if you didn't own a copy when I was an undergraduate, then you became the friend of someone who did, or you were office of a grouping lying in the sun and listening to the book's possessor read the "good parts" aloud. Very valuable -- this Reuben book -- and very enlightening if you were born in the 1950'due south. Bibles were holy i day a week; that volume with the sun-colored encompass was holy on the other half-dozen.
Information technology gets a five-star rating from the eighteen-year-quondam in me.
ADDENDUM
I seldom read reviews of books that I've read. And I don't ordinarily write a review of a piece of work that I haven't recently read. But having posted a "review" of a book that I read likewise long ago to recollect well, I decided to expect at other GR members' responses to EVERYTHING. . . . I discovered that some readers institute parts of the piece of work -- particularly Reuben's discussion of homosexuality -- misleading and offensive. The refuted / discredited cloth is not entirely useless; it does, later all, illuminate prevailing attitudes and behavior of a bygone era. Nonetheless, I understand the complaints; and I hope that anyone who notices that I gave Reuben'due south book five stars volition not mistakenly conclude that the rating reveals something other than the importance of the piece of work to many baby boomers.
...moreThat being said, I practise have some things to say virtually it. It is very informative when it comes to matters of anatomy and seems to be inclined, like then much of the work done by psychologists in the sixties, to want to free heterosexual couples from the constraints of imposed chastity and prudishness.
However, if you are gay, lesbian, transexual, bi or even remotely questioning, or fifty-fifty if you have proclivities that may exist considered outside the norm, You don't desire to know how I acquired this book.
That being said, I practice have some things to say about information technology. It is very informative when information technology comes to matters of anatomy and seems to be inclined, like so much of the work washed by psychologists in the sixties, to desire to free heterosexual couples from the constraints of imposed chastity and prudishness.
However, if yous are gay, lesbian, transexual, bi or even remotely questioning, or even if you accept proclivities that may be considered outside the norm, this book will be far less helpful. Lesbians are not admitted to fifty-fifty in passing, and gay men are diagnosed with perversity, with the blowsy notion that "they're looking for the perfect penis, but they will never observe the perfect penis because the perfect penis is actually their own penis which means that they demand a vagina".
In other words, this book is dated. Mine it for what information technology's worth as far every bit anatomical information, but have its lilliputian judgments with a teaspoon of salt.
...more
I oftentimes thought afterward, that it was left out in the open for a reason :}
Information technology opened upwards a world that I ddin't even know existed, and answered questions about a subject field that noone ever really sat downwardly and explained to me.
Reading information technology at that historic period was probably Not the about good for you thing that could have happened. Teenage hormones and urges were only starting to hit and the knowle I found this in my parent's bedroom when I was 14 years sometime. I read it in secret, and replaced information technology where I had plant it.
I ofttimes idea afterward, that it was left out in the open for a reason :}
Information technology opened upward a globe that I ddin't even know existed, and answered questions about a subject that noone ever really sat downwards and explained to me.
Reading it at that age was probably NOT the most good for you matter that could have happened. Teenage hormones and urges were just starting to hit and the noesis the book gave me did not help command them.
However in the pre-sex education era... with parents who never spoke about such things..maybe it was more helpful to know.
...more than
...more than
The only chapter I didn't appreciate was the one on male homosexuality. It was outdated and just lightheaded at points. For instance, information technology read that no one actually knows why the gays practise what they do. Information technology implied that they but choose that lifestyle. No, it'southward non genetic. No, it's not emotional. What poppycock.
Otherwise, this was an excellent read. I actually liked
I actually enjoyed this downwards-to-earth, medically and emotionally accurate exploration of sexual practice, the greatest activity in the history of the world.The only chapter I didn't appreciate was the one on male homosexuality. Information technology was outdated and just silly at points. For instance, it read that no one really knows why the gays do what they do. Information technology implied that they simply choose that lifestyle. No, it's non genetic. No, it's not emotional. What poppycock.
Otherwise, this was an excellent read. I actually liked the chapter on prostitutes, specially the Lezzies. September (older) sex, menopause, masturbation, basic anatomy, and libido were all covered in depth in a question-answer format. I recommend this book to anyone who has questions virtually sex. Who doesn't? Inevitably, they are covered in this volume. Answering your ain questions will certainly improve your performance and enjoyment of life.
As a final annotation, may I as well recommend
The Guide to Getting it On? Information technology is a wonderful mode to proceeds resources on creative positions. Enjoy! ...moreIn short, I exercise not like this book.
...more than When this volume first came out it was a must read for our
gang working at the mall cafe. As teenagers information technology was a wonder,
no one had told us this stuff before, and footling was
available in this contemporary format - just buying
a book at a bookstore.
I was reading information technology on intermission past the mall fountain, hunkered
downwardly so the comprehend wouldn't exist embarrassing. An older
girl stopped (20ish) she asked me what are you reading?
you lot are so intent. When I showed her the book she
got a big express joy out it!
When this book commencement came out it was a must read for our
gang working at the mall cafe. As teenagers information technology was a wonder,
no one had told us this stuff before, and little was
available in this contemporary format - just ownership
a book at a bookstore.
I was reading it on interruption past the mall fountain, hunkered
down so the embrace wouldn't be embarrassing. An older
girl stopped (20ish) she asked me what are you reading?
you are so intent. When I showed her the volume she
got a big laugh out it!
This was the become-to book of my generation. We didn't have Internet!
I don't remember annihilation inside this volume, but I do take a story nearly it that still makes me grinning decades after the fact. My best friend's family unit was moving, and her father found this volume nether her bed. She was and so embarrassed, merely all he did was ask if she had learned anything!This was the go-to book of my generation. Nosotros didn't have Internet!
...moreHis b David Reuben, M. D., is a Physician and Surgeon with a specialty in Psychiatry. He graduated from the University of Illinois College of Medicine and served his residency at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago. After internship and residency he served as a Medical Officer with the U.Southward. Air Strength before establishing his own medical offices. He has good medicine in Illinois, and California.
His books take been New York Times best-sellers and have been published in more than fifty countries in over fifty languages.
Dr. Reuben is specially known for his kickoff Number Ane best-seller, Everything Y'all Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask™, that reached approximately one hundred fifty one thousand thousand readers around the earth.
His other 8 books take revolutionized scientific concepts of adept wellness in many ways. For example, The Salvage-Your-Life Nutrition™ transformed the dietary habits in America as well as in many countries around the world. Just check your supermarket shelves to see how many products now showcase their fiber content.
...more
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