SEX & THE POLITICS OF PLEASURE

Give and take
Given with love to someone you trust, sex can be joyful, passionate play. But taken by force, coerced with fear, sold on the street or shrouded in shame, sex can be a nightmare. Debbie Taylor reports.

Power and pleasure
Emmanuel Reynaud argues that men are frigid: so obsessed with power that they are unable to enjoy sex.

Paradise lost
What men and women want from sex, and the statistics showing how disappointed they are with it.

Safety in numbers
Nigerian novelist Buchi Emecheta writes about polygamy in Africa.

Sons and daughters of Islam
The Islamic religion was originally intended to ensure women's independence, according to Enver Carim. But men have interpreted it to suit their own needs.

Understanding porn
Eight rules for decoding the secret language of pornography

Sex - THE FACTS

Reluctant lovers
Rosalind Coward looks at so-called 'natural' heterosexual sex

The coming-out crusade
There are more homosexuals today than ever before - and their numbers are still increasing. John D'Emilio explains why.

High moral principles
But should the Church move with the times? Roman Catholic psychiatrist Jack Dominion answers some thorny moral questions.

The longing to belong
Transcendental love and good, earthy sex don't seem to mix. Tara de Silva reports

No Kidding
Is it moral?. Answers to questions people seldom ask about sex.

I NEVER read the Letter from the Editor in other magazines. I find myself getting too irritated with the pally, intimate tone and the fact that it usually tells me things I don't really want to know - the name of the subeditor they've just hired, for instance, or how drunk the staff got at the Christmas party. It all rings a bit false. So why am I sitting here writing one? For the same reasons any other editor does, I suppose. In order to justify my editorial position, to engender a bit of 'readership identification' - and because the bosses told me to.

In my case the bosses include me. The NI is produced by a co-operative, which makes all the decisions about the running of the magazine. The actual contents of the magazine and its political 'line' (oh, didn't you notice we had one?) is controlled by an editorial collective and thrashed out in interminable meetings, at which all members of the co-op are welcome, but which no-one but editors can bear to sit through.

It was at one of these meetings that we decided the magazine needed a bit of a facelift. If you've been reading the NI for several years - either because you actually like the magazine, or because you never seem to get around to cancelling your subscription - you will have noticed that we have become much more concerned with personal politics recently: with things like racism and feminism, as well as with poverty. It's a reflection of our belief that poverty and inequality - like charity - begin at home. And it's a belief culled directly from the women's movement.

This shift of emphasis has had a mixed reception. People seem to read the magazine more avidly. But they also object more vociferously if articles challenge their personal beliefs and lifestyles. We would argue that both responses mean that the NI is doing its job better than it used to. What point is there in preaching to the converted?

So, having gradually effected an ideological change, we decided to alter the look of the magazine too. You will already have noticed the new logo ('New Internationalist' is such a mouthful, we decided to keep the concept, but dispense with some of the syllables). Inside there are changes too: more visual features, new page layout, new features - like this Letter from the Editor, for instance.

I should mention the subject of this month's issue: sex. It's a topic we've been planning to tackle for years. But we've never quite plucked up the courage before: because it's a subject which - more than any other - touches people where it hurts most: in their most personal of personal lives. I found researching the topic harrowing. The dark side of sex - pornography, persecution of gays, genital mutilation, rape, incest, child prostitution - overwhelmed me and turned me away from my (male) partner for a while. It seemed almost indecent to look for pleasure in an arena where so much pain is inflicted. And it's the pervasiveness of that pain that makes sex a subject for the NI.

Psychiatrist David Cooper once said that if sex is the joyful joining of two people in mutual pleasure, then we should do it as much as possible, because there is not enough joy in the world. I agree with the sentiment. But at the moment I'm not sure it's possible to equate sex with joy.

Letters
Letter from Murinye
Update
Briefly
Endpiece: by Elena Poniatowska
Reviews: including the NI Classic
Country profile: North Korea

COVER PHOTO: Claude Sauvageot
ONLINE MAG MAINTAINED BY SIMON LOFFLER