I'm older than most of the people who were quoted saying crap my own parents would laugh at.

I've lived most of my life in the Bible Belt and can't believe anyone who's ever stood in line at the grocery store doesn't know more about sex than these doofuses.

Great for them that they're finally joining the civilized world, but please stop implying that these freaks represent even a minority of middle-aged Americans.

There’s some pretty sweet moments: One man, Larry, says of his wife of 15 years: We’re past the Kama Sutra part of life. Like the other night, my wife was singing to me, and I said, ‘Oh you’re making love to me.’” While one single woman in her 40s says she feels sexually invisible to men her own age, another woman, Elizabeth, whose handsome Spanish husband sounds like a hottie, confesses that she loves being middle-aged. “When I was young, I’d see these older women and they just seemed as if they had confidence and were wise -- and more comfortable in their skin. I’m much more comfortable in my skin today than I was at 30, 25, 20, and definitely 15.”

My husband is never sexier when he is in two specific situations: 1) when he takes his turn with the baby at night, singing him to sleep in the nursery rocking chair and 2)when he's negoitating a deal in our shared home office and in mid patter, he either winks at me and smiles the dreamiest smile or tickles the baby into fits. There are so many ways of making love when you're in a strong, long-term relationship, and I can definitely identify with the man who perceives his wife's singing as a form of lovemaking.

As for being invisible to men in my 40's, I"m kinda hoping that happens to me. When you're not looking for a sexual or romantic relationship, the whole "I'm sexy...look at me!" experience just gets in the way, especially professionally. I'm looking forward to a period in my life where looks matter less than intellect. I'm sorry that the single woman in her 40's hasn't met any men who can enjoy her company for her own sake instead meeting some societal standard of "young" and "sexy." Considering all the men hitting on me these days (despite the growing strands of silver gray in my hair) are in their early to late twenties, I suggest she move to Manhattan. She'd have the time of her dating life. :-)

And I really hope I become like the last woman mentioned. I already feel a huge boost in my confidence level since I hit my late thirties. If things get better from here, I can't imagine how comfortable in my own skin I will be in my 60's. I definitely think sex in my late thirties is far superior to anything I experienced in late adolescence and my early twenties. I'm actually excited about growing older.

While it's wonderful that older adults are learning about sex education so late in life, wouldn't it be great if we could educate youngsters right now, who are learning all kinds of silly nonsense they'll hopefully unlearn before they hit 40? I was a pretty sexually stupid teenager, but I've read some things online from teens which alternately shock, sadden and make me laugh (and not in a good way.) Sexual education and confidence is truly the last frontier for all ages. Too bad the internet can sometimes set us all back about 100 years.

...but I'm still left trying to imagine the group masturbation exercise. So everyone just sits in a circle and touches...their hands?

Delia Lloyd

www.realdelia.com

I probably learned more about sex at the age of 14 secretly watching porn than I did in sex-ed classes. By the time I was 15 I knew that most women weren't adverse to giving blow jobs (or at least that was what I had thought), and that licking pussy was a lot of fun for the man.

No way in hell was a public high-school sex-ed class going to touch the subjects of blow jobs and cunnilingus, yet we find that an increasing number of high schoolers engage in oral sex, because they know that can't get pregnant through oral sex, and I suspect they learned about oral sex from secretly watching porn or cable network television.

Is it really a harmful thing to tell boys between the ages of 14 and 16 that women really like getting their clitorises gently massaged and licked?

Is it really harmful to teach teenagers that they have nothing to be ashamed of when they masturbate in private where no one can see them?

Is it really harmful to teach teenagers that they should not be ashamed when they find porn (the good kind) and erotic entertainment interesting and inspiring?

I'm an adult man and I like receiving and giving oral sex (69ing is divine), I masturbate on occasions in total privacy when I need some alone time, I enjoy watching porn and erotica, and I am a more or less an average man.

I hate the term "normal", because there is no such thing as normal, but my sexual interests are comparable to what other men have, I just have no shame in admitting my sexual interests.

"A big story in this month’s edition of O. magazine starts out with a sex educator in the basement of a church teaching a room full of students how to masturbate in public."

Ummm...I like to get my freak on as much as anyone, but masturbating in public may not be such a wise idea-unless, of course, done pretty discretely (unlike the guy in the car next to me.) Perhaps you meant to say "...[publically] teaching a room full of students how to masturbate."

On the serious side, shame, embarrassment and silence regarding sex, while perhaps serving some evolutionary telos, is largely the result of indoctrination into religious dualism. Mind, good; body, evil. It's the Puritan ethos of shame constraining the free deployment of the libido; and because orthodox religion is so rife with hatred of the body, it's negative effects tend to fall disproportionally upon women (who are identified with the body in most philosophic systems and religious dogma.)

To put it another way: we tend to identify ourselves with this monadic oasis of consciousness shut up inside of our heads, rather than as a locus for infinite amounts of sensory input/data which overturns the subject/object split. We divorce ourselves from the reality of the sensation, and thus sex becomes a function of habit, a means to an end, a mere chore.

In that case, taking sexual desire and behavior back to its primordial elements (masturbation, flirting, arousal, verbal and non-verbal cues, mutual masturbation) is probably a good place to relearn the art of desire and touch.