“The Hot Guide to Safer Sex” is a book written by Yvonne K. Fulbright and published by Hunter House. The book, while having a gorgeous front colored-cover, is all black-and-white pages inside the book. It’s a surprisingly thick book at 334 pages which are divided into 19 chapters. There are some illustrations included in the book in various areas.
You might think this book is a bit large for a book that’s supposed to just be about safe sex (I did!), but the book includes a lot more than just that. The book basically takes you through some basic sex techniques as well as takes you through ways to make safer sex fun for the both of you. One of the biggest ways that I think most people would be interested in is that it teaches you how to put a condom on with your teeth, and it also talks about some comfortable ways to discuss safer sex with your partner before the two of you get into it.
The book chapters include: Your Sexual Plumbing, Orgasm!, Solo Sexplorations, You Always Can in Fantasyland, Navigating your Love Life, Who Me? Get an STD?, The Lowdown on HIV/AIDS, The Bare Essentials of Pregnancy and STD Prevention, Something to Get Sexcited About: Safer Sex, Fabulous Foreplay, Between the Sheets and Sensational, Sacred Spots (G-spot, prostate, female ejaculation), Talk Dirty to Me, You Want Something to Play With? (Sex Toys), Y-Bo with Y-Vonne (PC muscles), Making a Multi-Orgasmic Man, Horny and High: What Drugs Really do to your Sex Life, Why don’t we Get Drunk and Screw? The technique chapters are not really the focal point of the book and better resources exist for that information, but there’s definitely a lot of good, safe-sex information included.
While this book is definitely a good resource, please do remember to take the advice with a grain of salt. Why, Kayla, would you say that we shouldn’t listen to a sex educator? Well, this book was written 8 years ago. A LOT of things have changed in terms of STDs, birth controls, and sex toys in eight years. The techniques she talks about for pleasure are pretty much the same, but stuff tends to change as time goes on. For example, in the sex toys section, it recommends using glass Ben Wa balls anally which we know is a bad idea. It also talks about saliva being an okay lubricant for anal sex, which, again, we know isn’t so good compared to regular lubricants. Some of the birth control information is out of date as well – the one I noticed being that the book said that the Norplant isn’t available in the United States, and at the time of writing this book, it doesn’t look like the copper IUD had its brand-name yet: Paraguard.
Another thing that seems to be missing a lot of is sex toy information. There’s a sex toy chapter, but it just talks about the different types of sex toys (vibrators, dildos, etc.) and really doesn’t have much information about safer sex toys. It doesn’t talk about the different materials at all (including phthalates) nor does it talk about the importance and ability to sterilize toys. This is definitely a large section that’s missing from a book on safer sex, but understandably, they may not have had the knowledge or the concern about it at the beginning of this century.
The section I really DID like and thought was original, though, was the section on drugs and sex. Very few books actually include this in their books, so I was extremely impressed (and excited to read!) that section. The section talks about the effects of drugs and what effects they have on sex. The book does not take a for or against stance, but it does tend to highlight the negative effects more than the positive, but it does lay it all out – both goods and bads. It also, in this section, has an entire chapter about alcohol and sex, and it talks about how alcohol comes with higher risks of STDs, rape, and bad sexual performance. This chapter is certainly negative-slanted, but considering all of the pro-alcohol messages we get, I can definitely understand that. She does also put a disclaimer in noting that she is pretty against the idea of alcohol being used as a way to shirk responsibility and that that specific chapter is pretty negative.
The author writes this book in a way that is pretty factual. The birth control and STD information is organized in an easy-to-find manner, and the author takes a very responsible stance on all of the issues included in this book (getting tested, having safe sex, talkinga bout communication, etc.) However, at times, the book can definitely get a bit boring because of all of the factual information, so I recommend reading it in smaller spurts as it tends to break the information up and make it easier to digest.
Overall, if you take the book’s age into account, I do think it’s a really well-written book on safe sex that includes a lot of good information. It lists out STDs, birth controls, and contraception options really nicely, and it gives you all of the information you need to talk to your partner about safer sex and to actually have it – in a sexy manner. However, the sex toys chapter could definitely use an update, and some of the birth control methods are a bit out-of-date, so do make sure to check online at a reputable source (Planned Parenthood or Scarleteen) before being 100%-set on any information. Thanks to Hunter House for sending me this sexuality book for my “The Hot Guide to Safer Sex” book review.
