Excerpt From 'Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism in America'

Many women say sex improves after young adulthood. Thirty or forty years of enlightenment — contraception, abortion rights, same-sex activism, greater acceptance of divorce and psychotherapy; feminist, disability, and anti-racist empowerment — have made possible enormous changes in consciousness and behavior. Women don't find it hard to tell a progress story if they started years ago with brutal or incompatible partners, forced pregnancies, unsafe abortions, ignorance of their own erogenous zones and fantasies, a gender ascription that didn't accord with their sexual selfhood, an ideology of marital "duty," religious proscriptions against passion and against various forms of sexual expression including masturbation, exhaustion at work plus child-rearing, or frightening phobias. ... … Back to Article