How to Have a Fun, Healthy Sex Life Free of Anxiety and Hang-Ups

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We're animals who like sex. We like pictures and videos of other people having sex. We like talking and thinking about sex. The particular aspects or practices we like (or don't) can feel inexplicable, but are at least partly informed and shaped by the culture we live in – which is misogynist, racist, fetishizing, objectifying, violent. And also increasingly liberal, egalitarian, accepting and diverse.

We'll have a less fraught sexual culture when we have less fraught gender relations. And we'll have less fraught gender relations when we quit positioning sex as oppositional, shameful and transactional.

Opening up the conversation is a good start, and Virginia Johnson is one of many who can take credit for that work. The task now is to continue talking and learning, to expand our understanding of the diversity of human sexual experience and to undo the toxic sexual messages we all receive. That would mean transforming our sexual culture into one where sex is simply good, and not a good to be traded or used.