It is not unexpected that delicious desire, undulating arousal and stupendous orgasms are not reserved for a specific age group, gender, marital status, sexual orientation or another social category or group. Or are they? If we take a brief look at the politics of sex and sexual behavior, a variety of social and religious groups are hell-bent on limiting erotic pleasure and fantasies for someone.
In my book for teenagers, The Naked Truth About Sex (2006), I observe that some parents contend that teenagers are too young to have sex (usually they include intercourse, oral sex and more). Although most teenagers would be smart to learn about sex before they have intercourse, most of them aren’t waiting very long.
Perhaps in retaliation, some teenagers say their parents and other adults are too old to have sex. These teenagers believe that sex is just for the young, and that anyone older than age thirty is beyond their sexual prime.
To make matters worse, the same parents who disapprove of teenagers being sexual often think their parents are too old to enjoy sex. I call this the tyranny of middle-age. Middle-aged people often think they are the only group who should be having sex. The irony of the middle age group is that many of them are too stressed from work and children to have much sex, or at least much quality sex.
So who is too young, and who is too old for sex? Infants have been observed having orgasm. Some in their 80’s and 90’s still have some sex, including oral sex and intercourse. Still others masturbate whether they have a lover or not.
Age discrepancy between lovers is another common turn-on or complaint, depending on the values of those making observations. Age differences matter more for the very young when emotional maturity is an issue, than for those who are not teenagers. If sex is consensual, what is the problem? Our society likes to make sex a problem one way or another. Sex doesn’t have to be a problem!
With the graying of America, older people are active socially and sexually. With proper health habits, sex, like wine, can improve with age. And yet our society negatively labels the aged as nonsexual or inappropriately sexual. There are no commercials for Viagra for those in their eighties and nineties. This is because the medical profession and nursing homes often treat the aged as sexless while failing to offer older people credit and compassion for their sexual capabilities and concerns.
Older people often rightly do not buy the age bias when it comes to reveling in sexual pleasure. It is not surprising that the natural, concentrated health capsule Reservatrol intended to extend life coexists with a variety of medications and herbal formulats with horny goat weed, damiana, Tongkat ali and other herbs designed to enhance sexual desire, arousal, and orgasm.
All people—whether heterosexual or not, married or not, and young or old—have a sexual right to healthy erotic pleasure. No one has the right to censor or restrict consensual, responsible, non-exploitive sexual expression (which includes masturbation) for any age group. Despite rigid religious edicts (Wilhelm Reich, a famous twentieth century Austrian American sexologist observed that rigid religion and sex are arch enemies), human beings will prevail in their normal and natural quest for intimate pleasures.