Customer Reviews

The Joy of Gay Sex: An Intimate Guide for Gay Men to the Pleasures of a Gay Lifestyle

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

What does a gay man have to benefit from this book? I have asked myself this many times as I sat and flipped through this book, laughing aloud, feeling silly (having bought it only because I wanted to shock the old woman at my book store who adored me and talked poorly about gay men).

Having bought this book years ago, when I was 22 -- I knew what I needed to know then. This seems like a crash course for those outside of the gay community, to those closeted types who need to do research, to know more about who they are, or those bisexual couples merely wishing to explore.

At this book's worst, it's there to hold up and shout "freaks". Funny, when I flipped through the Joy of Sex for heterosexuals I don't ever recall seeing a chapter on SEX WITH ANIMALS!

It seems this book is not so much a book on how to enjoy sex, but a rudamentary book of what gay life is : insurance, wills, choosing a doctor, marriage. If as gay men we were instructed about our lives and the choices we were to make later on, this is the stuff we'd learn starting with our first sex ed book in grade school on up through high school. Nothing more than a bore to shock the libraries.

Readers who hope to find in this book a how-to manual of gay sex will be very sadly disappointed. Rather it tries (unsuccessfully in my opinion) to be an "encyclopedic" reference from A to Z (with the emphasis on zzzzzz) on the "joyful" life of gay sex, and even then, the book turns out to be only alphabetized, not encyclopedic. Even on those terms it fails. E.g., how can a section about wills be part of the "joys". If anything, wills are a problem about being gay, and irrelevant to gay sex, joys or not. I would say that this book is not at all directed towards gays, who I'm sure will know much , much, much more about the subject than has been written here, but towards those who have a prurient interest, are mere gawkers, or who are timidly venturing towards it. If that is the case, none of these groups would be well-served by this book.The text is antiseptic, pedestrian, and boring, and the illustrations are grotesque, not to mention degrading.

I have to give this book a ten. It was one of the first things I read on the subject when I was going thought that PAINFUL coming out process as a teenager in 1984, and it made my life much easier. Re-reading it a few years ago, I realized that, while some aspects of it are outdated (HIV and AIDS info, in particular), it still conveys the joys of being gay. It's follow-up, "The New Joy of Gay Sex" does a lot to make up for these lacks. And, of course, if you and your partner get into a rut, you can try some of the interesting positions described (the "crab" comes to mind). Enjoy. Michaelw

This book is pretty descriptive in all aspects, But the illistrations are poor.
If your curious about what it's like to be intimate with eachother, I would have to say, Shop around for a better book.

This book gives you a whole new perspective on gay life in general. Gay sex, lifestyles, community and identity are just part of the information you will find in this book... You also enjoy the tastfull drawings showing a variety of couples in lovings situation... Note that this book was written in the pre-AIDS era and you must take into account this when reading the safe sex recommendations..

This book has helped me through many hard times. Being a gay male is made much easier by reading this book. It teaches you a lot about yourself. Now my sex life is great, and I couldn't be happier! Recommended!

i juste loved this book. it gave me and my partner so many new ideas and things to try and really opened our minds to a whole new arena of pleasure. thank you!

Just the title of this book used to get me off, to say nothing of the subtitle. The first (certainly mainstream) how-to-book for homosexuals made history. I was a little disappointed that oral sex was portrayed as little more than foreplay (a qualm I have about the updated edition), but the book was still excellent all around, with beautiful, breathtaking illustrations. Of course, this edition was written before AIDS
reared its head, but if you're gay and can find a copy of this first edition, buy it anyway. It's importance to gay literature cannot be emphasized enough.

I first read this book in 1983-1984 and it was a complete eye-opener. Silverstein and White wrote what I would call the ultimate gay sexguide. It's so complete and so beautifully and clearly illustrated that all your questions are answered thoroughly and your self-esteem, self-knowledge and self-pleasure are brought to a new level. Absolutely a must have. Whether you are from San Antonio or from Zaragossa!
The updated, the NEW gay guide is good too, but the illustrations is this one are hard to beat!

Fifty or five hundred years from now, some archeologist of knowledge will unearth "The New Joy of Gay Sex" and marvel at its utter weirdness. Its sequence of subjects (Fetish ... Fidelity ... Finding a Physician) will suggest authors who are either mad or possess a very dark sense of humor, while its illustrations will project a bestiary of beefy humanoids with remarkable tumescence. The archeologist will wonder: for what race of creatures could such a manual have been intended?

We don't have to wait to wonder. It's for us. Read it and shriek.

"The New Joy of Gay Sex" is not so much about enjoying gay sex as surviving it. Inevitably, the specter of acronyms casts a certain pall across once-joyful texts detailing the fine points of rimming, scat and glory holes. When the first "Joy of Gay Sex" appeared in 1977, the worst its readers had to fear was Anita Bryant and the purple prose of Edmund White. Now we need a degree in medical technology to make it to the second date.