epublishing store: Intro

Sexual Health eBook Volume1
Chapter 2

1) Introduction: The Health Benefits of Sexual Expression 2) The Health Benefits of Sexual Expression 3) Sexual Activity is a Cornerstone of Quality of Life: An Update of ‘The Health Benefits of Sexual Expression’, 1) Beverly Whipple 2) Beverly Whipple, Jon Knowles & Jessica Davis 3)Woet L. Gianotten, Beverly Whipple & Annette Owens

In 1994, the 14th World Congress of Sexology adopted the Declaration of Sexual Rights. This document of “fundamental and universal human rights” included the right to sexual pleasure. This international gathering of sexuality scientists declared, “Sexual pleasure, including autoeroticism, is a source of physical, psychological, intellectual and spiritual well-being” (WAS, 1994).

Despite this scientific view, the belief that sex has a negative effect upon the individual has been more common in many historical and most contemporary cultures. In fact, Western civilization has a millennia-long tradition of sexnegative attitudes and biases. In the United States, this heritage was relieved briefly by the “joy-of-sex” revolution of the ’60s and ’70s, but alarmist sexual viewpoints retrenched and solidified with the advent of the HIV pandemic. Today’s public discourse about sexuality is almost exclusively about risks and dangers: abuse, addiction, dysfunction, infection, pedophilia, teen pregnancy, and the struggle of sexual minorities for their civil rights. Public discourse about the physiological and psychosocial health benefits of sexual expression has been almost entirely absent (Reiss & Reiss, 1990; Davey Smith et al., 1997).

However, pioneering researchers have demonstrated many of the various health benefits of sexual expression, including its positive physical, intellectual, emotional, and social dimensions (Ogden, 2001). Although this body of research is limited and often only suggestive when compared with the vast sexological literature on dysfunction, disease, and unwanted pregnancy, we are accumulating data to begin to answer many questions about the potential benefits of sexual expression, including:

• What are the ways in which sexual expression benefits us physically?
• How do various forms of sexual expression benefit us emotionally?
• Are there connections between sexual activity and spirituality?
• Are there positive ways that early sex play affects personal growth?
• How does sexual expression positively affect the lives of the disabled?
• How does sexual expression positively affect the lives of older women and men?
• Do non-procreative sexual activities have benefits for society?
• Is recreational sex good for people?
• Can having sex be therapeutic?
• Are there psychosocial benefits in sexual abstinence until marriage?
• Are there differences in the health of the sexually active and the sexually abstinent?

The studies cited in this chapter provide suggestive insights to these and other important questions about the various potential health benefits of sexual expression. This paper is neither a meta-analysis nor a critique of the research—it presents some of the published findings that suggest the positive benefits that sexual expression may have for physical and emotional health. The following studies, while often not definitive, are suggestive, intriguing, and point to the need for more rigorous research in this important area.

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