Sex Education in the Eighties (eBook)

The odd reader (here in England "e;odd"e; means occasional) may be interested in how a book comes about. Members of the SIECUS Board of Directors were planning a Festschrift and dinner for Mary Calderone on the occasion of her 75th birthday. One planning idea was to have a booklet, filled with brief essays from prominent sex educators, distributed between the roast beef and the ice cream. My reaction was that such "e;souvenirs"e; find their burial place in the same dusty drawer as the program from the high school prom and ticket stubs from South Pacific. I suggested a more lasting, noticeable "e;monument,"e; a "e;proper"e; (as the English say) book which would draw contributions from both SIECUS and non-SIECUS scholars. 1 was too clever to be trapped as editor (in a 1974 preface, I had written "e;I swore 1 wouldn't edit another book"e;). And so I seduced Lorna Brown (into being editor). I contacted a few potential con- tributors, suggested a few others, convinced Leonard Pace at Plenum Press that this was a worthwhile venture, and left the country. To my amaze- ment, six months after settling in Cambridge, England, the rough draft of the book arrived along with areminder from Lorna that during the se- duction I had promised to write an Introduction.