Adult Sexual Behaviors And Attitudes

1. Adult Sexual Behaviors And Attitudes

2. What Is Normal? • Many factors are involved, including the age of the individual and the society and period in history in which the person lives.

3. Masturbation • Attitudes About Masturbation • Negative attitudes about masturbation have, in fact, been handed down from generation to generation for centuries. The Greek physician Hippocrates believed that overindulging in sex was harmful to one’s health. Ancient Chinese cultures condemned male masturbation as a waste of yang, while the biblical Hebrews considered it “spillage of seed,” punishable by death.

4. The early Roman Catholic Church considered the only legitimate purpose of sex to be for procreation. • The Church’s negative view of masturbation was formalized in the 1200s by Thomas Aquinas, who included it as one of the four categories of unnatural acts. • The Catholic Church called it an “intrinsically and seriously disturbed act” in 1975, and this view was repeated by Pope John Paul II in 1993. Orthodox Jews still regard it as one of the worst sins mentioned in the Torah. • Masturbation is a perfectly normal human behavior.

5. Methods Of Masturbation • Some individuals try to make their orgasms more intense by performing activities that deprive them of oxygen, such as placing plastic bags over the head or hanging by the neck. This is called autoerotic asphyxiation. These behaviors are dangerous, and 500 to 1,000 people die each year while engaging in them. • Masturbation is not so much an outlet for lack of sex as it is a reflection of a sexually active life style.

6. Nocturnal Orgasms • There are five stages of sleep. Stages I and II are light sleep, and stages III and IV are deep sleep. Adults enter a fifth stage about every 90 minutes. This is called REM. REM stands for “rapid eye movement.” Many physiological events normally occur during this stage of sleep, including penile erection in men and vaginal lubrication in women. It is normal! • In medieval times, it was also believed that male demons had sex with women at night, while female demons had sex with men while they slept.

7. Thus, in the Victorian era, nocturnal emissions were called spermatorrhea. • Some Victorian parents made their male children wear spiked “spermatorrhea rings” to bed at night to prevent emissions. • Many teenage boys are embarrassed by the wet spot on the sheets, especially if they have not been told in advance by their parents that this may occur.

8. In fact, many men do not remember having had an orgasm in their sleep and are only aware that they did because of the wet spot. • Women do not have a wet spot on the sheets in the morning as proof of a nocturnal orgasm, so only those women who are awakened by the orgasmic contractions can report them.

9. Sexual Fantasies • Although most men think about sex more often than women—54% of men say they do so every day, as compared with 19% of women—the large majority of women do have sexual fantasies. • The specific content of sexual fantasies is almost limitless, but we can group fantasies into four general categories: (1) exploratory, (2) intimacy, (3) impersonal sex, and (4) dominance-submission themes.

10. Dominance fantasies are more common for men, but submission fantasies of being overpowered or forced into having sex are no at all uncommon for women as well, especially among more experienced women who have little or no guilty feelings about sex. • Having a sexual fantasy does not mean that a person actually wants to experience it in real life. Fantasies also provide a safe and private outlet for thoughts that, if actually engaged in, might be considered improper and/or illegal. • Although fantasies are generally viewed as positive, about one fourth of all people who fantasize feel guilty about it.

11. Coital Positions And Locations • It is called the missionary position because Christian missionaries in foreign countries used to instruct native that this was the only “proper” way to have sexual intercourse. • Many women report oral stimulation of the area around the clitoris to be more pleasurable than intercourse, and many men find fellatio to be more intense than intercourse.

12. Some individuals consider oral-genital sex disgusting, and no one should feel pressured to engage in a behavior just because a lot of other people do it. On the other hand, if you expect your partner to do it for you, then you should not have a double standard about doing it for him or her. Double standard in sexual relations can lead to serious problems in other aspects of the relationship.