James McConnachie.
For more than three years, James McConnachie had sex on his mind.
While this may sound like a deliciously titillating way to spend your time, sleeping, eating and breathing sex can eventually take its toll.
For McConnachie, a UK-based writer, this endlessly intriguing subject brought with it some rough patches, but also one large bright spot: the first-ever Rough Guides book about sex, entitled, Sex: The World’s Favorite Pastime Fully Revealed, released this year.
“I went through various stages,” explains McConnachie.
“At first, I was a bit of a teenage boy – even the driest book on on sex had me feeling the slightest bit aroused. Afterwards, I found myself so immersed in sex, I just had my work hat on,” he says with a laugh.
Being all-consumed with the subject, delving into everything from body parts and history to the nature of desire, fantasies and techniques, could easily run the risk of one’s own libido taking a hit. Much like a chef doesn’t feel like cooking after his shift, working on sex all day begins to feel a lot like, well, work.
In an article written by McConnachie about his experience, he says “writing the book half killed me.”
“It wasn’t the impossible volume of research – or only that. It was the constant need to finesse other people’s reactions to my work. I quickly ran out of ways to good-humoredly deny that ‘the research must be fun.’”
He also suffered a lot of ribbing from his mates.
McConnachie spent long hours writing alone in his garden office, which one friend promptly dubbed “the masturbatorium.”
For the book, McConnachie interviewed numerous women, among them friends and acquaintances, about their sexual experiences. Sample questions included, could they orgasm through penetrative sex alone? Or, did they indeed need a little help via foreplay?
While this could be understandably awkward, it was one very detailed response that stunned McConnachie into silence.
“Have I shocked you?” the woman asked. He quickly composed himself, responding that he’s “heard it all before.”
Of course, he hadn’t. Far from it.
Writing about sex, as opposed to other subjects, can bring with it some added pressure. For instance, many folks assume you must be a master in the art of pleasure, with an entire treasure chest full of bedroom-pleasing skills. Because of this, McConnachie was thankful to be a married man.
“There would be this terrible thing I had to live up,” McConnachie admits.
“(For me) sex really is about the relationship – the emotion of the experience. I didn’t have to worry about importing all of this stuff into the bedroom, but some of it is bound to sneak in.”
Among the nine comprehensive chapters (among them, the laws of attraction, orgasm, sexual health and contraception), McConnachie also explores the serious side of sex, such as the controversial tradition of female genital mutilation (FGM) in some parts of the world.
“This was a difficult one to deal with,” he admits.
“I consider myself a feminist, as much as a man can be, so I felt quite angry about this happening on a routine basis when it’s not necessary. I still feel this is a very big issue of our time and people don’t talk about it.”
He writes, “FGM deliberately damages young girls’ sexual organs with the broad aim of reducing sexual pleasure.” An estimated 130 million women have undergone some form of FGM, predominantly in West, Central and the northern part of East Africa.
While he writes in depth about women’s issues and sexuality, he frequently found himself pitying the plight of men.
“Men can be quite anxious about having sex,” he says.
“They’re worried about doing it, not being able to get it up, not being able to satisfy. I actually feel quite badly for men.”
5 sex-filled films that were banned:
I am Curious Yellow: This Swedish art film from 1967 was banned for boldly showing sex acts and body parts (including a flaccid penis).
Eventually the ban was lifted by the Supreme Court and in 1971, folks could get their hands on a copy of this erotic offering.
Last Tango in Paris (1972): While this film is packed with drama, it gained negative attention for a horribly uncomfortable scene depicting ‘backdoor’ sex, using butter as lube. The man behind the film, Bernardo Bertolucci, was jailed for a brief time and the Supreme Court ordered negatives of the film to be burned.
Ai No Corrida: This arty 1976 film out of Japan shows genitals up close, but what really disturbed censors were scenes of asphyxiation and castration. It was seized by US Customs and suppressed by the British Board of Film Censors.
Caligula: This sexually explicit 1979 film by Bob Guccione (founder of Penthouse magazine), starring Helen Mirren and Malcolm McDowell, was panned by critics and, until 2008, only censored versions of the movie were permitted.
Crash: If you’ve seen this 1996 flick, you’re familiar with its disturbing story line – fetishists who get off on getting in car crashes that sometimes cause severe injury. It was banned by the Westminster Council in London.
Hey, man, nice smell:
When it comes to the laws of attraction, look to the sniffer.
For monkeys, the nose plays an intricate role in sexuality, using their scent skills to to determine whether a potential sexual partner is in heat.
While we may believe humans have risen above this tactic for snagging a suitable mate, we too sniff out possible matches unconsciously. What are we sniffing for? Likely we’re catching a whiff of the presence of pheromones.
Care to kiss?
For women, a kiss is never just a kiss. Kissing tests chemistry, technique and genetic compatibility. This steamy exchange was described by author Jane Vandenburgh as a “little haiku of how the sex will be.”
No wonder, then, this can present some difficulty for guys.
“Kissing is just the first stage of foreplay (for men),” suggests McConnachie.
“They can be worried about what’s coming later … I’d say kissing is one of the most intimate acts. That may just be too intimate.”
To be a great kisser, one cannot be too rushed, sloppy, greedy or passionately restrictive.
“The techniques can be even more important than other sexual tricks … they stand out a mile in kissing,” McConnachie says.
Did you know?
- While we may get dreamy-eyed about hotter-than-life celebs, we’re likely to end up with a mate roughly equal to our own levels of attractiveness
- When we encounter someone we’re attracted to, we blink more frequently and often expose our palms or wrists to display vulnerability and encourage intimacy
- The clitoris is “typically the most sensitive part of a woman’s body,” writes James McConnachie in Sex. The area has between 6,000 and 8,000 nerve receptors, “roughly four times the number found on the head of the penis.”
- According to the famous Kinsey Report, the average erect penis stands at six inches, however experts suspect participants’ fibbed about an extra inch in some cases
- Modern surveys find the average penis length is about five inches
- The first person to ever view sperm close up was 17th Century cloth merchant, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Using a microscope, Leeuwenhoek discovered the liveliness of sperm: “I have seen so great a number of living creatures in it, that sometimes more than a thousand were moving about in an amount of material the size of a grain of sand.”