SEX GUIDES BOOKS & FILMS (Garland reference library of social science)

The history of the sex guide for adolescents documents the quite unconscious movement of our culture's ideas about sex and youth, revealing the heritage of our own sexual beliefs and codes of behavior. As we shall see, the one characteristic of sex education for young people in America from Victorian to modern times has been the reluctance of sex educators, other professionals and parents to tell teenagers what they really need to know about sex. Indeed, from their first appearance, sex guides for young adults have aimed primarily at preventing them from engaging in any sexual expression whatsoever outside of marriage.While the theme of sex prevention is most blatant in the earlier manuals, as recently as the 1960s (and now again in the conservative eighties) sex guides have continued to emphasize the dangers of venereal disease and illegitimate pregnancy rather than the cure and prevention of these conditions. Spreading that helpful information was often defined by society in the past as obscene and/or illegal. Generation after generation American teenagers have been taught to fear and deny the impulses of their own bodies. Along with this learning they were indoctrinated with rigid gender roles: girls have been taught to muffle their humanity, to pretend and withdraw and reject, and boys have been indoctrinated with the idea that becoming a man means rigid