COVER STORY

Inside Your Dad’s Favorite Sex Book

Behold ‘The Joy of Sex,’ the book that begs guys to go down on their wives

Released in 1972, The Joy of Sex, a “gourmet-guide to love-making,” shaped the sex lives of Boomers worldwide, selling a mammoth 12 million copies. In the last five decades, it’s been tweaked, updated and re-released multiple times. There was even an accompanying video game — a distinctly ‘90s CD-ROM manual, with expert narration and very graphic illustrations.

Dr. Alex Comfort, the legendary British physician behind the book, had already authored a bizarre, comedic, sexy sci-fi novel about a guy who opens a sex clinic with his girlfriend and develops a chemical that turns people on by removing shame around sex. In one climactic scene, an explosion outside Buckingham Palace causes a mushroom cloud of libidinous chemicals.

Evidently, Comfort was more than just a sex-ed author, and he famously told Publisher’s Weeklythat he “didn’t want to be known as Dr. Sex.” The book earned him around $3 million, most of which he donated. Comfort was an anarchist, a poet and a pacifist, but at his core, he was just a bearded wife guy on a mission to improve the world’s relationship with sex.

The book itself isn’t that scandalous by today’s standards, but it is unintentionally hilarious, doggedly wedded to a cookbook concept that makes for a deliciously weird read. Thankfully, it’s been preserved in its entirety online.

In a restaurant, in these days of tights, one can surreptitiously remove a shoe and a sock, reach over, and keep her in almost continuous orgasm with all four hands fully in view on the table top and no sign of contact — a party-trick which rates as really advanced sex.

—The Joy of Sex, on big toes

So, What’s on the Menu?

The contents page is divided into different courses: “Starters,” “Main Courses,” “Sauces & Pickles” and “Problems.”

The book promises such culinary delights as a “semen” starter, a “tongue bath” main course, as well as side dollops of “anal intercourse” and “big toe,” which, we learn, is a “magnificent erotic instrument” to be used sensually during “armpit or mammary intercourse.”

It’s a comprehensive sex-ed book, but before you even get to the sex, there’s a lengthy diatribe about beds. Most beds on the market are for sleeping and therefore incompatible for the kind of sex the book promotes. One solution is buying a special, designated sex bed with a firmer mattress, although Comfort admits this is “the counsel of luxury.”

The compromise? Buy a sex mattress and keep it on the floor next to your regular sleeping bed.

Comfort also gives an early articulation of post-nut clarity, describing the aftermath of an orgasm as the time we’re most “spiritually naked.” You should never quote a partner’s post-nut words back to them, he argues.

Let’s Talk About the Illustrations

The book’s iconic black-and-white illustrations have “1970s” written all over them. There’s full bush aplenty; a lithe, naked hippie guy sports an impressive beard, whereas a brunette woman with hairy armpits is splayed out in different positions, usually in the throes of intense pleasure.

The illustrations also pushed The Joy of Sex into controversial territory. In a BBCinterview, artist Chris Foss recalled, “We were a bit nervous when we took this on. The publisher had to write a contract which confirmed that they would pay our defense if some old fart decided to make an issue out of it.”

“I’m A Man. I Can’t Be A Woman”

In a 1996 Guardian interview, lost to the internet but partially preserved in a New York Times obituary, Comfort said, “My wife says you can tell this book is written by a man. That’s true. Women have to write their own book. I can’t be a woman.”

Women were seemingly consulted, but some passages read like a guy massaging someone’s clit vigorously, asking through gritted teeth: “Are you close?”

Others come across like excerpts from the r/menwritingwomen subreddit, which mocks guys who describe women as sexy, busty aliens from some foreign planet. In his “vulva” section, Comfort acknowledges the “biologically programmed anxieties” that condition us to see vulvas as “slightly scary: it looks like a castrating wound and bleeds regularly, it swallows the penis and regurgitates it limp, it can probably bite and so on.”

Apparently, the vulva is “usually moist, or women would squeak while they walk.”

And, if you have a vagina, Comfort writes, don’t forget that “you have two lips to his one.” Plus, he’s a huge advocate for guys going down on women.

—The Joy of Sex, on pubic hair

Comfort’s Legacy

By some accounts, The Joy of Sex was written in two weeks. That’s probably an exaggeration, but it’s true that Comfort offers words of wisdom with zero scientific basis. Basically, the book could use a thorough fact-check, and at least a few sources.

For example, did you know that everyone is bisexual? “That is to say,” Comfort clarifies, “that they are able to respond sexually to some extent towards people of either sex.” He then goes on a tangent about gay apes, and diatribes about “males in most cultures” playing sex games together. These broad-strokes comments about other cultures crop up regularly: Apparently, the “Japanese-special-massage-treatment may be the one good thing America gets out of the Vietnam War.”

Not everything in The Joy of Sex has aged well, but it’s a product of its time, a relic of a globalist era that reeked of racial fetishization. You can tell from Comfort’s writing that he’s a progressive at heart, a man who just wants us all to make love, not war.

More than 50 years later, The Joy of Sex would still cause a minor scandal across the Bible Belt, with its “unanxious account of the full repertoire of human heterosexuality.” It’s the loving, well-meaning product of one guy on a mission to remove shame from sex, and to begvagina-fearing hetero dudes to go down on their wives.

For that, we salute him. — Jake Hall

OFF THE (NEWS) RACK

Boobs of the Week

Here are all the breasts that bounced before our eyes this week…

Katy Perry’s Canceled Boobiversary

September marks the 15th anniversary of Perry’s boobs getting censored on Sesame Street. Per the Muppet Wiki, Perry’s outfit during her and Elmo’s rendition of “Hot N Cold” was too revealing, hence the decision to pull the segment from the episode. (Yes, you can still find it on YouTube.)

All Boobs Are Good Boobs

Jenna Ortega caught a stray. During Monday’s episode of The View, political commentator Ana Navarro appeared to subtly slam Ortega’s boob size. Referring to Ortega’s bedazzled Emmys look, Navarro said that only someone with “really small titties” could pull that off. “I mean, those [gemstones] were so strategically placed,” she added. “I couldn’t [pull] that off. I’d need a rock.”

Baby Bumps and Booby Bumps

Speaking of adorned boobies, after announcing her pregnancy with boyfriend Stefon Diggs, Cardi B showed off her baby bump and more at her Apple Music album launch event on Wednesday night. She wore a black lace catsuit bejeweled with cascading pearls on her breast — talk about expensive boobs!

Holy Cleavage

Madonna is making her much-awaited return to music, and hinted at a 2026 dance album with Warner Records in a recent Instagram post, where she stunned her fans by wearing a sheer corset top. Do not ask me the color of anything.

Everything Reminds Me of Her

Relax, nerds — this isn’t a real image. It’s an artistic rendering featuring Mars’ moon, Phobos, in the foreground.

FASTER, PUSSYCAT! WATCH! WATCH!

The Wildest Sexploitation Movies of All Time

Expect lesbian nuns, horny housewives and murderous girl gangs

The trailer for the 2013 documentary That’s Sexploitationis gloriously deranged. In under two minutes, we see scantily-clad women slap guys in powdered wigs, lick machetes, crab-walk in their underwear and chase giant birds. All the while, their chests are covered by pasties and censorship bars.

These are the highlights of sexploitation, a film subgenre that blossomed in the ‘60s and ‘70s against a backdrop of free love and sexual revolution.

To be clear, sexploitation movies embrace the art of sexual tease, edging their viewers with plenty of cleavage and sexual innuendo, but you’re unlikely to see sexualized nudity. Instead, you’ll find hot women being tied up, hot women murdering men and hot women dressed as candy-striper nurses, cheerleaders and nuns.

It’s a wild world, but here’s a beginner’s guide to ease you in…

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!(1965)

“Beware, the sweetest kittens have the sharpest claws!” In 1965, sexploitation legend and self-professed “breast man” Russ Meyer sent three go-go dancers on a mission to seduce and swindle an old rancher. Tura Sutana was the breakout star of this chain-smoking girl gang, even doing her own stunts. The film is possibly the best the genre has to offer — an accidental feminist classic with added cleavage.

Bad Girls Go to Hell(1965)

Sexploitation has subgenres of its own, and one of the most uncomfortable to watch is the “roughie.” Some of these movies are straightforward dramatizations of women being tied up and abused, but this film, directed by the late Doris Wishman, is all about retribution. It’s the story of Doris, a housewife left to fend for herself in a New York City populated by predators. Yes, there’s a lesbian lover and even the pummeling of a sleazy janitor with an ashtray.

Venus in Furs(1969)

There are two ‘60s sexploitation films called Venus in Furs. There’s a 1967 movie, which centers the kinky fantasies of a hunky shoe salesman, but this 1969 release is better. In it, Klaus Kinski plays a jazz trumpeter haunted by the sight of a dead woman washed up on the beach, whose ghost (or is it?) appears in his life, with sexy results. It’s perhaps best described by one Letterboxd user: “Lesbians, voyeurs, dreamers, Klaus Kinski. So much to love. So many questions.”

School of the Holy Beast(1974)

This 1974 film is a mash-up of nunsploitation (yes, it’s really a thing) and the Japanese “pink” movie genre, or pinku eiga, which was essentially their version of sexploitation. School of the Holy Beast is a visual feast of hot lesbian nuns tying each other up and peeing on pictures of Jesus. The plot surrounds a woman’s quest to discover what happened to her dead mother inside a shady convent, but the movie works best if you suspend disbelief and just enjoy the sadomasochistic nuns.

The Student Nurses(1970)

Director Stephanie Rothman was given $120,000 and a brief to make a film about “very pretty student nurses with as much nudity as an R-rated film could have.” You’ll get the sexploitation basics, but Rothman delved into other issues too, like the Vietnam War and the criminalization of abortion. It’s a very smart movie in very sexy packaging, and one of the most subversive sexploitation movies ever made. — Jake Hall

Brainteaser

Riddle Us This

You’re gonna want to get your brain out of the gutter for this one

I begin with P and grow with stimulation — what am I?

Scroll all the way to the bottom for the answer.

FOREIGN RELATIONS

The Gayest Soviet Propaganda

Don’t forget to kiss your comrades!

In 2014, artists responded to the Russian government’s banning of “homosexual propaganda” by slapping rainbow flags all over Soviet propaganda.

In the images, there’s a hunky blond waving a Pride flag, a gay astronaut brandishing a hammer and sickle on the moon and a mustachioed daddy with his arms around his two children, with the text underneath him reading: “A Father Should Be Proud.” These reworkings are loud, proud and political, but they work so effectively because the original Soviet propaganda alreadylooked super gay.

The 1950s in particular were all about building bridges between Russia and China, the world’s leading communist superpowers. Propaganda was rooted in love, friendship and camaraderie, but the posters looked like homoerotic ads for gay relationships.

In fact, communism is sogay that tóngzhì — the Chinese word for “comrade” — has been adopted as a term of endearment by Chinese queer communities, and Instagram accounts like @homocommunist showcase the gayest corners of Communist history.

There are plenty of images to pick from, but here’s a few of the best…

We’re Just Friends, We Promise!

If you told me an Instagram-famous gay couple had commissioned this artwork to commemorate their wedding anniversary, I would believe you. “Let Chinese-Soviet Friendship Live Forever” reads the text of the wholesome, homoerotic image, just two bros holding hands in front of a peach tree.

Gays at Sea

The history of sailing is already really gay (just Google “sea queens”), but these two guys look like they’ve emerged from a quickie in the cabin — hats and all.

Thank You, Sir!

Socialist guys didn’t greet each other with a handshake; they made out instead. Known as the “fraternal kiss,” it’s depicted most famously on the Berlin Wall, but this commemorative postage stamp shows a peasant slapping a big, fat smooch on the lips of a Red Army soldier.

Happy Families

In Soviet propaganda, Chinese and Russian guys introduced each other to their kids and formed their own adorable little families. It’s best exemplified by the image above, which can only be described as a wholesome gay family portrait.

There Were Women, Too

The invisibility of lesbians in queer history is a long-running joke, but there’s a rare, homoerotic example of women in Soviet propaganda. Their smiling, cheek-to-cheek faces were a beacon of female friendship and solidarity, but viewed through modern eyes, this looks like a photo of your spinster aunt and her “best friend,” who just happens to have lived with her for 20 years. — Jake Hall

READ BTW THE COMMENTS

Typo, or No Typo?

THE BIG QUESTION

Have Big Penises Always Been More Desirable?

Strap in for ancient masturbation myths and seriously huge codpieces

The Great Dick Size Debate has been ongoing for millennia, and we’re still no closer to settling it. The general, uncomplicated consensus used to be that bigger was better. Guys with sizable schlongs were thought to be more virile and masculine, whereas small penises simply didn’t measure up.

That’s been changing over the last few years, thanks to the rise of “husband dick.” This specific cultural imagining of a penis is around seven to eight inches long, and moderately girthy. According to Urban Dictionary, it’s “a dick that you could take all day, every day, for the rest of your life.” This stands in sharp contrast to “vacation dick,” a member so big that it’s “not for everyday use.”

But we aren’t the only society to spend so much time thinking about penises. And throughout history, dick size desirability really varied — you only have to look as far as a few cave paintings and marble sculptures for proof.

Ancient Fertility Symbols

About a decade back, archaeologists in Turkey stumbled across cave paintings from 8,000 years ago. In one of them, there’s a stick figure with a seriously huge dick, pointed straight down at the ground.

There’s other evidence that prehistoric societies saw big penises as symbols of fertility, and that jerking off wasn’t necessarily stigmatized. In fact, there’s an Ancient Egyptian myth that a god named Atum brought the world into being by masturbating, presumably with his big, virile member. The logic follows that if it weren’t for a big dick, we wouldn’t be here.

Those Ancient Greek Sculptures

If marble sculptures are anything to go by, the guys of Ancient Greece almost always had firm butts, chiseled six-pack abs and itty bitty dicks. Even the most hulking athletes are depicted with small penises, and this is no accident. In a 2018 Artsy article, historian Paul Chrystal describes them as “a badge of the highest culture and a paragon of civilization.”

This theory is backed up in writing, too. In his play The Clouds, Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes described the ideal male body: “a gleaming chest, broad shoulders, tiny tongue, strong buttocks and a little prick.”

Big Dicks Equal Depravity

In Ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt, guys with big dicks were represented as hapless fools, or depraved, sex-crazed maniacs. The best-known example is Priapus, a fertility god whose gigantic erection popped up (pun intended) on a mural in Pompeii.

Depending on who you ask, Priapus was either a tragic god who was “permanently erect but helplessly impotent,” or a sexually aggressive tyrant. The depictions aren’t exactly flattering either way, and they sum up Ancient Greek attitudes toward guys with big members.

Does My Codpiece Look Big in This?

By the 15th and 16th centuries, we saw guys stuffing their pants with comically oversized codpieces. These are the chicken fillets of the penile world, used by men — most famously, Henry VIII and his giant bulge — to make their junk look huge.

These are the aspirational origins of Big Dick Energy, which cemented a dick size hierarchy that remains in place centuries later — well, at least until husband dick came along.

Big Dicks Still Equal Aggression, But in a Good Way?

It’s in Medieval times that the “bigger is better” mantra really takes hold. In one anonymous poem, a group of women complain about their husbands’ maggot-sized penises; in other stories from the time, women daydream about guys with huge hogs. Big penises are still associated with aggression, but empires are rising, and dominance is now seen as a desirable, masculine trait — depending on who it belongs to.

As Western colonizers scrambled to invade new countries and both enslave and “study” the populations they came across, they also began documenting the Black male form. White anthropologists painted Black men as sex-crazed savages, and in the era of U.S. slavery, this racist fearmongering took hold. (For what it’s worth, the actual science around race and penis size is pretty questionable.)

Behold, Husband Dick

For the last two centuries, guys worldwide have been subjected to jokes about the size of their dicks. The general consensus has been that bigger is better, until the more recent rise of “husband dick,” or “boyfriend dick.”

It makes sense. According to Pornhub stats, we’re increasingly horny for “demure desires” and “tradwives,” and “husband dick” — the roomy, reliable, family-friendly sedan of the penile world — is the genital embodiment of this conservative shift. After centuries of inspiring lusty fantasies, big dicks are now apparently a vacation-only luxury. — Jake Hall

TWITTER BOP CRUSH

Tease Frame

Say hello to @‌onlysabrena. You can find her on both Instagram and OnlyFans.

WE’RE ALWAYS RIGHT

Answer to the Riddle Above: A pupil — we told you to get your mind out of the gutter.

Closing CREDITs

The XXXtra Spicy newsletter is edited, written and curated by Serena Tara, with contributions from Jake Hall, Braden Bjella and Peter Rapine.