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An Icon for Sexual Liberation

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Carlin Ross

Yesterday, the AASECT listserv was a buzz with news that Betty made the list of the Top Ten Sexual Revolutionaries You Should Know compiled by Cosmo. Thanks to Showtime's Masters of Sex - a scripted drama about Masters and Johnson's sex research - people are interested in sex history (Betty and I love the show).

Margaret Sanger...Kinsey...Mary Steichen Calderone...their all there. I'm so happy for Betty. She made so many sacrifices. There were so many moments when she second guessed herself - so many deals she walked away from because it would pervert her message. She was clit-centric at a time when no one wanted to hear it. She was the "mother of masturbation" at a time when you couldn't use M word on television.

Here's how they described her work:

"An advocate of masturbation, this sex educator became an icon for sexual liberation with her bestselling 1996 book Sex for One. For 30 years, she conducted workshops on solo sex, during which women would, yes, explore their bodies all together in one room, and she even had a TV show on public access in the '80s so that the ladies at home could join in from afar."

Betty did have a public access show in the '80's but it didn't include Bodysex workshops. But the whole idea of having women "tune in" to a group and virtually sit in the circle has us thinking.

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