The Complete Idiot's Guide to Amazing Sex
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PART 6 UNIQUE SEXUAL ISSUES
People are sexual in such diverse ways in all stages of life. There's a lot more to sexuality than the average male-female coupling. For some people, it's easy to accept that others may be gay, lesbian, and bisexual, but some folks approach this topic with fear or prejudice. In fact, being gay, lesbian, and bisexual is just a natural, wonderful part of Sexuality for many individuals, and this part will help you understand that it is just a normal part of life.
Sex and Pregnancy, of course, is a completely different matter. Facing the many physical, emotional, and sexual challenges associated with this miraculous condition can sometimes be overwhelming. I'll show you how to make the most of your sex life during and after the 9 months.
As for sex and aging, experience really does count—but if aging people face changes without knowing what to do to make themselves more comfortable, they can lose sight of what's important. Information provided here can help you keep it all in perspective regardless of how farsighted you may have become. You can have an amazing sex life throughout your entire life, for as long for as you live.
If I mention the names Ellen and Anne, and Elton, you most likely know exactly who I am talking about, and exactly why I am bringing them up. Today, we are on a first name basis with many gay, lesbian, and bisexual celebrities. But only a couple of decades ago, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in our country were treated with much less acceptance.
Of course, nowadays, things are not perfect. Gays, lesbians, and bisexuals are still discriminated against and are still sometimes misunderstood. That's why it is so important that you understand the simple fact that this is just a normal way of life for millions of people.
Being homosexual is normal. It's just the way that at least 10 percent of our population happens to be. The term “gay” has become synonymous with homosexual, but don't forget that it also means happy. Be happy that being human provides so many ways to live and love.
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This chapter is intended for gay readers and straight readers—and any readers who are in between. It'll help you understand your own sexual orientation, and it will help you gain a better understanding of how you love people of the same or opposite gender.
Labels Are for Cans
Because most people want to try to explain who is attracted to whom, we often try to label people's sexual orientation. But just because we use labels, like “straight” or “gay,” that is not the determining factor in what makes up someone's Sexuality. The Encyclopedia Britannica simply isn't big enough to encompass all of the possible variations of human sexual orientation.
If someone's sexual orientation happens to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual, it means that the person has the tendency to fall in love with people of the same sex (for bisexuals there is room for diversity). Your sexual orientation refers to how you think of yourself in terms of who you are sexually and romantically attracted to. Pure and simple, it's about who you love, desire, and in some cases, pine for.
Every person has a unique sexual orientation—people are not just gay, lesbian, straight, or bi. The best way to explain the subtle differences in people's individual sexual orientations is to help you view Sexuality as a continuum, that is, a range of all of the possible sexual orientations that change gradually from one orientation to the next. The next section will explain more about what I mean.
The Sexual Orientation Continuum
In the 1940s famed sexologist Alfred Kinsey developed The Kinsey Scale for Sexual Orientation, which is still the most used source for distinguishing different sexual orientations by describing the range of possibilities. It's a helpful starting place as you examine the wide range of sexual expressions that are often represented too simply by the words “gay,” “lesbian,” and “bisexual.”
Kinsey advised that we not characterize people as either heterosexual or homosexual, but rather as individuals who have certain amounts of heterosex
