Talking about sex may once have been a sign that society had lost its hang-ups. But today, it seems that the more obsessed society gets with discussing sex, the less people want to do it - in the old-fashioned way, where two people have actual physical contact.
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So just so you don't get your hopes up next time you hear talk about good sex, here are the top 10 fashionable alternatives to penetration in 2001.
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Push your own button
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Scientists have developed an implant that can give a woman an orgasm, just through pressing a button on a remote control. Stuart Meloy, who had the idea for the device, stressed that the implant will be programmed to limit its use. 'But whether it's once a day, four times a week - who am I to say?'
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New Scientist
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Masturbation
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It was once a sin, destined to make you blind and your hand drop off. Not any more. Now, the ultimate 'safe sex' is as acceptable to do, and talk about, as brushing your teeth. Teen agony aunts and uncles have been endorsing it for years: 'Masturbation is actually a perfectly normal and natural way to learn about your body,' says Anita Naik. While Nick Fisher has reassured young men that 'practised in moderation, masturbation is a wholesome exciting release,' he has cautioned: 'Too much is just an indulgence.'
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Masturbation guru Betty Dodson is more prosaic: the sensation you get, she says, is comparable to that following 'a massive evacuation of the entire large colon'. 'I can hear the Romantic Feminist Matriarchy screaming, "That's disgusting! She thinks an orgasm is like taking a dump"', she writes. 'And I'd answer, "A lot of orgasms aren't nearly so satisfying".'
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Read Sex for one?: Betty Dodson PhD and Timandra Harkness exchange views.
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Cyber-sex
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…or porn for the computer literati? Getting off on email has become the thing to do for rising young stars of the dotcom world. You can be who you want to be, fantasising about whatever you'd like to do - provided it involves no bodily proximity with a real person.
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Read Net lovin' - no e-fun by Brendan O'Neill
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Read First Time - online
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Sex on TV
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There may be little actual sex in Sex and the City, but there's plenty everywhere else on the network. Who needs the stigma of getting porn from the video shop, when now it's okay just to watch?
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Read Screen test UK by Dolan Cummings
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Non-practising bisexuality (and all the rest)
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Whoever it was who came up with the line 'I am a non-practising bisexual' wrote the script for today's anything-goes youth. If you think the gay lifestyle is that much more fun, but the reality turns you off, hey! You can show your tolerance while keeping your back firmly against the wall. Funnily enough, it doesn't work the other way round - 'non-practising heterosexuals' are still given grief. As for 'non-practising homosexuals' - just look at poor Jack in the US teen series Dawson's Creek. He's not out of high school, he's never had a bloke, but he's already faced a revolt by the parents of the kids he coaches in football. Maybe the moral of this story should be, 'Do first, define later'.
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Sex changing
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Time was when the phrase 'I'm a man in a woman's body' would have been taken as a description of a stud's Saturday night activities. Now it just seems to mean an anaesthetic and a new wardrobe. Changing your sex won't stop you from being in the army or teaching in a school - even preaching in the church. But flirting with members of the opposite sex could get you chucked out of all of these professions (although, indeed, how would you know?).
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It's cool to be a virgin
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When the UK government considered launching a sex abstention campaign for teenagers under this banner, it was laughed into the middle of next week. But why? From Jessica Simpson to Britney Spears, 'Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll' has been overtaken by 'Abstinence, orange juice and pop'. The only acceptable defence used to be, 'I am a virgin by choice - but not my own'. Now we are expected to believe that it's all quite trendy really.
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Outercourse, etc
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The drive to find ever-more inventive safer sex initiatives to promote in schools has resulted in programmes like 'Outercourse', where young people are taught by diagram the exact position of the clitoris and the moral superiority of non-penetration. Following Clinton's 'what's sex anyway?' fudge in the Lewinsky case, the latest news from the USA is that teenagers are increasingly enjoying 'noncoital sex'. It shows how far our definition of 'all the way' has moved - didn't this used to be called 'heavy petting'?
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Read Talking of oral sex by Ann Furedi
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Three in a bed
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…and the little one said, 'Whasssuuuup!'. A decade ago, if you'd said to somebody, 'Can't we just sleep together? I mean sleep?' you would have lost all credibility. Now it's just a way to make friends. Any young person refusing an invitation into bed with his mates will today be castigated for his emotional frigidity - but if you assume it's an offer of greater things, you'll be hauled up for date rape. Who said making friends was easy?
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Zoophilia
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Maybe it was just UK terrestrial TV getting off on one - but I doubt it. Apparently, there is a whole (if small) movement in the USA, of people who love (as in really love) their animals. Bestiality? Don't be so crude! If that man wants to marry that horse, it's obviously the start of a beautiful relationship.
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