Let's talk about sex

Pamela Stephenson-Connolly is behind schedule. A former actress, telly shrink, sex advice columnist with The Guardian and wife of comedian Billy Connolly, the release of her new book seems to be causing a bit of a media scramble. The fact that she is rather glamorous doesn’t hurt either, but it perhaps belies the seriousness with which she takes her work.

Stephenson-Connolly spent a year-and-a-half interviewing hundreds of men and women, married, single, old, young, gay and straight about their sex lives and experiences. These stories have been collected in Stephenson-Connolly’s Sex Life: How Our Sexual Experiences Define Who We Are, a book exploring human sexuality from infancy to death.
Asking people to discuss their sexuality honestly can present some challenges.
“Once I got them there, it was fine. I’m used to talking to people about their sexuality, I know how to do that, but just getting them in the room was a bit harder,” she explains.
But once that threshold had been crossed, people were eager to open up. This, says Stephenson-Connolly, is that many of us need reassurance that our desires are not abnormal.
“That’s the biggest thing that people worry about sex. People suffer in silence all the time,” says Stephenson-Connolly. “The letters I get for The Guardian… So many people are unhappy with some aspect of their sexuality and a lot of them I can’t help with a column. There’s only so much you can do.
“But here, I wasn’t offering them help, I was asking them to tell me about their sexuality. In organising it this way, across your lifespan, I wanted to illustrate that sexuality is an ongoing process – it begins before we are born and can last until the day we die – which is not a notion that is commonly held. I also wanted to illustrate the diversity of sexuality, whether that’s our orientation or behaviour.”
While many people are uncomfortable with the thought of older people having sex, others are unwilling to admit that sexuality is present in children, and that this aspect of being human does not arrive at the onset of puberty.
“People are very frightened of it. We’re worried about abuse, or children being manipulated, but I was simply stating a fact – that we do have sexual thoughts and feelings and there are sexual behaviours from early on. If we look back to our own childhoods, and can be honest, we’ll remember that there were times when we were sexual. We like to think of childhood as an innocent time. We do need to protect children, but I don’t think we can do that best by pretending they don’t have sexual thoughts and feelings.”
Children often play with the genitals and masturbate. A parent’s reaction to this behaviour can be fundamental in shaping the child’s sexuality in adulthood, Stephenson-Connolly believes.
“It’s the first time that parents or caregivers realise that their children are sexual and it is the first time for children about how their parents feel about them having sexual feelings. This pleasurable feeling that they are having is mysterious and if it is never spoken about it becomes a curiosity or bound up with guilt. Sex can become seen as unspeakable, dirty or wrong.
“There’s two things,” she adds. “There are the sexual images that are out there, that are everywhere. Children are going to see sexual images whether we want them to or not. There’s a sense that sexuality is something desirable, something that occurs, that is common. And there is what they are experiencing. That’s where the parent’s role is so vital, to help them make sense of it.”
Parents, of course, vary in their reactions to sexuality and in what they are willing to discuss, meaning that sexual education not necessarily available at home.
“Kids are desperate for information. If they don’t get it from a reliable source, they are going to get it from other kids in the playground or from the internet. The parents have to put it all together for them, even if they are not directly doing the education for them. Being an askable parent is so vital.”
Having practised as a sex therapist for 15 years, there is very little about human sexuality that surprises Stephenson-Connolly.
“There are things that raise my compassion,” she says. “People with disabilities who are very keen to continue enjoying their sexuality, who had gone out of their way to make it happen. Many people in that situation don’t get the help or information they need. There are also people in residential homes struggling with privacy. They had a partner they wanted to be sexual with, but everybody was making it their business.”
One of the greatest barriers to sexual fulfilment is our suspicion of pleasure, notes Stephenson-Connolly.
“Sexuality is a combination of anatomy, physiology, yes, but even more importantly, religion, social mores, messages we received as children, messages we glean from the media, beliefs, our body image is a huge one. One of the hardest things for people is to stop focusing on everything else except pleasure, and simply enjoy giving and getting pleasure. The real trick with sex is to try and be in the moment and focus on sensation.”
If readers take anything from Sex Life, perhaps it should be the message that experiencing pleasure is a vital part of being human.
“I talk about this in the last chapter, about how we don’t really like to admit that pleasure is a good thing. We don’t like to allow ourselves it very often. We rarely use the word ‘pleasure’ without the word ‘guilty’.”

Sex Life is out now on Ebury Press.