From private passions to sexting: how Britain's sex life has gone public

The Joy of Sex, edited by Dr Alex Comfort, was billed as the first richly illustrated "cordon bleu" lovemaking manual, for "sex that works". It was divided into Starters, Main Courses, Sauces and Pickles, followed by Problems (including "waterworks" and bisexuality). It promised to show "the novice how to tackle a live lobster". First published in 1972, it sold in millions and, no doubt, will sell again, as the book now carries a bright red sticker: "As seen in the movie Sex Tape."

The comedy, released in the autumn, stars Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel, as a couple with children and no sex life. They pick up a copy of the book, try out various positions and make a film, which the husband then accidentally syncs to a number of iPads which they try to retrieve, leading to episodes of blackmail and robbery.

It's a neat parody of how our private carnal world is now a narcissistic public playtime with no established rules and boundaries.

The confusions, contradictions and inclination to moral panic of this coming together of sex and technology, at a time when for many the traditional restraints on behaviour provided by church, state (patrolling, for instance, homosexual life), and a clear moral consensus have dissolved, is strongly reflected in the uncertainty around how to police female behaviour (a preoccupation for hundreds of years), cyber-safety and sexual activity.

Criminal sanctions were recently proposed on "revenge porn", in which a person releases online explicit images of a former partner without his or her consent. Last month a 17-year-old in the US state of Virginia, who sent his 15-year-old girlfriend a picture of his aroused penis, was arrested for "sexting". In one survey of 1,280 teenage girls and young adults for US Cosmogirl, 20% of 13- to 20-year-olds and 33% of those aged 20 to 26 said they had sent nude or semi-nude images electronically. One survey does not flag up a trend (or moral degeneration for that matter), but potentially that is an awful lot of young people to criminalise for what is arguably, in many cases, a modernised version of playing doctors and nurses.

Concurrently, in these unpredictable sexual times, there are frequent throwbacks to the 1950s, when "nice" girls didn't, and innocence/ignorance was the prerequisite, either simulated or real, of the virginal bride. Last week Turkey's deputy prime minister, Bulent Arinc, said women should not laugh in public. "Chastity is so important … it's an ornament for women," he said to global titters.

So what are we to make of it all? How far have we really travelled in the 40 years since The Joy of Sex appeared, long before the arrival of Aids? Indeed, in these contradictory times – Tesco withdrawing pole-dancing kits for little girls even as the campaign against female genital mutilation finally gathers pace – and amid the maelstrom of influences that include faith, culture, individualism and the commodification of all experiences, is progress possible to detect, never mind map?

The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles has been published every 10 years since 1990. According to the latest survey, teenagers have sex on average for the first time just before they turn 17 and the number of partners for all, on average, is relatively modest. Oral sex has grown in popularity, but anal sex is still a minority interest. More than 60% said they were satisfied with their sex lives that now, unsurprisingly, continue into older age. Sodom and Gomorrah this isn't.

The Joy of Sex was published several years after the arrival of so-called "free love". The Pill had made contraception a female responsibility; legalised abortion had limited shotgun marriages; and homosexuality was no longer a crime. Men could have sex without strings; young women were expected to comply or risk being called frigid. But sleep around too much and then, as now, a young female could earn the label of slag.

"The double standard still exists," says Sharon, 33, a photographer and a lesbian, who lives in Brighton. "Women are still judged negatively by how they dress and appear. Gender and sexuality is much more fluid in Brighton, but I wouldn't hold my partner's hand in much of the rest of the country."

Ideas about women remain quaint. Thirty-five years after Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, for instance, Caitlin Moran's novel, How to Build a Girl, has a heroine who masturbates. "It takes a long time for real change to happen," says Dr Rebecca Langlands of Exeter University, author of Sexual Morality in Ancient Rome. "In the 1960s and 70s, sexual liberation was largely about male pleasure. Female sex drive and pleasure has mainly been left out of the story so far."

In a moving book, Sex Before the Sexual Revolution, Professor Kate Fisher and Simon Szreter talked to people who had married in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Lack of knowledge, shame, ignorance and fear existed, but there was joy, affection and pleasure there too, Fisher says – sex as part of a much bigger picture to do with mutuality, caring and sharing. "I didn't find that people were very inhibited and crippled by no sex education," she says.

Felicity, born in 1919, wife of a claims assessor, for instance, says of sex: "They do say it's the most important and the least important thing." Fisher writes: "Some of our respondents did not find themselves enjoying sex despite their 'inhibited' and private culture but rather because of it."

Today privacy is a luxury. Sexual activity, changing partners and exhibitionism seems to crowd the centre stage. One of the national survey's darker statistics is that one in 77 men and one in 10 women have had non-volitional sex. TV presenter Kirsty Wark is among critics who say access to porn risks reshaping expectations and any understanding of intimacy.

"The Joy of Sex normalised sex because the couple looked like they could live down the road," says Christina Fraser, a therapist with Coupleworks. "Porn has created ridiculous expectations and the hairless dolly. Sex should be about empowerment, not the opposite. Intimacy is about an authentic relationship and, following the gourmet analogy, while sex can be the occasional exotic treat, regular cheese on toast has its place, too."

"Most parents are worried about what their children are learning in the playground and from the internet, and they think schools are doing more than they are," says Simon Blake of Brook, which advises the under-25s on sex and relationships and is now in its 50th year. "It's ridiculous that sex and relationship education is still not compulsory. At the same time, we have to take care that that whole conversation around sex isn't about abuse, exploitation and harm. We need to say this is what a good relationship looks like with a determined focus on gender equality. We need to say, 'Only have sex when you can enjoy it and take responsibility'."

Prompting debate around such issues is the Sex and History Project, a new award-winning project, established by Kate Fisher and Rebecca Langlands. It uses historical sexual objects – a ring with metal teeth to deter masturbation; an 18th-century chastity belt – to trigger discussion. "They often see these objects as 'cool' and it starts them thinking about how sex is controlled and whether it needs to be controlled," Langlands says.

"In the classroom, teenagers are intrigued by these objects and start talking about why people feel the need to control sex and what it reveals about underlying attitudes towards gender and sexuality," she says. A group of sixth-formers were looking at a 19th-century Chinese portrait of a woman's genitalia. "It was beautiful,but one pupil's reaction was, 'She's got so many pubes – that's disgusting.' So we had a discussion about where that attitude comes from and how other cultures think differently."

Studies tell us "risky" sexual behaviour is often associated with low self-esteem, few aspirations, little income and poor education. Fix that – and the sexual health and wellbeing of the country might improve considerably; the earth will move.

Professor Andrew Oswald, a researcher into happiness, co-wrote a 2004 study, which is still relevant today, he says. It indicates that the married have 30% more sex than the single, widowed and divorced – they are happiest with one partner and that happiness equates to receiving an extra $100,000 each a year. Odds on, that is not what the experimental Comfort would have predicted.