The Sex Myth: Why Everything We're Told is Wrong by Brooke Magnanti -- review.

(From Guardian Unlimited)

There are so many myths and misunderstandings surrounding sex that I was puzzled as to which one warranted a whole book. It turns out that Dr Brooke Magnanti (previously known to most of us as the blogging call girl Belle de Jour ) tackles most of them. She accomplishes this heroic task with humour, skill and passion in a book that is as entertaining as it is erudite.

Magnanti exposes the weak, even non-existent, evidence base for periodic moral panics surrounding sex. She dissects the factoid evidence on the new "disease" of sex addiction, the sexualisation of children, the way pornography humiliates women, the dangers of porn on the internet, the evils of prostitution and trafficking.

Her book should be required reading for all newspaper readers, and for anyone interested in understanding how advocacy research (popular with some academics …