Bureau of Lost Culture The Man Who Wrote the Joy of Sex
Oct 15, 2024
Eric Laursen, social justice journalist, activist and author, profiles Dr. Alex Comfort — poet, scientist and anarchist behind The Joy of Sex. He explores how Comfort brought the sexual revolution into mainstream middle-class life. Short takes cover the book’s tone and visuals, its legal and cultural battles, Comfort’s activist life, communes and later gerontology work.
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How The Joy Of Sex Normalised Sex Talk
- The Joy of Sex found a middle voice between clinical manuals and cheesy pornography to normalise sex for mainstream readers.
- Eric Laursen credits Alex Comfort's casual, disarming tone plus tasteful drawings for making sex discussion feel unembarrassed and ordinary.
Illustrations Made The Book Approachable
- Visual choices crucially shaped reception: drawings showed ordinary, affectionate people rather than pornographic models.
- Publisher James Mitchell insisted on illustrations and a middle-aged, hippie-ish couple which reduced distance and embarrassment.
The Book Met A Longstanding Cultural Shift
- The Joy of Sex timed into a deeper postwar sexual shift, not a sudden fad, meeting a widespread hunger for accurate, nonjudgemental information.
- Comfort had been researching and writing about sex since the 1940s and used that knowledge to calm anxieties stirred by earlier books.
