Heterosexuality

National Review, May 30, 1994 by Digby Anderson

I WAS recently reading a manuscript for publication about what we in England now refer to as health fascists. These are the chaps who are forever warning that death awaits anyone who enjoys a glass of wine, a cigar, pate de foie gras or sweets, who likes sitting down or presumes to lie out in God's sunshine. And not just warning either. They are political activists who want more government regulation to make us behave healthily and correctly.

The author of the manuscript gave a list of the pleasures the health fascists hate, a list very similar to that above, with one difference. He added sex. Now here he is absolutely wrong. The health fascists are for sex. They would make it compulsory if they could. They want as much of it as possible, in as many ways as possible, however filthy and perverted, with as many partners as possible, inhibited by as few morals as possible, all provided, of course, that the sex athletes never remove their condoms.

So here is a puzzle. If they are against pleasure, these so-called New Puritans, why are they for sex? There are many answers, not least that they are against traditional values and use sex as a way to destroy them. But the key to the puzzle is that, when you look closely at how they write about sex, it is not a pleasure at all they are advocating but a sport. Waht is more, a "healthy" sport, and one to be mastered, achieved, something for which you get into training.

Masters, Johnson, and Kolodny--sorry, Masters, MD, Johnson, and Kolodny, MD, for this is that sort of book--are not, to my knowledge, health fascists or against pleasure; but they too make sex a sport, to be worked at. By the way, it might be easier if we refer to them here more briefly, and with apologies to Virginia Johnson, as the Threesome, MD. The Threesome, MD, are deeply and remorselessly serious about sex. Their treatment makes it hard, forbidding work. What you won't find in this book is a touch of humor, irony, any joy in elegant amateurism, or the faintest awareness of how ridiculous sex and talk about sex often is.

It is not that they focus exclusively on "the mechanics." They explicitly and intentionally focus on the emotions, or at least the sensations. But they treat them in a bizarrely mechanical way. They take themselves very seriously--no, earnestly--and clearly, genuinely believe that what they and others like them are up to is, to use their word, a profession.

Professions are characterized by specialized knowledge and a value base. What, for instance, are the Threesome's values about abortion, infidelity, or perversion? They refuse to discuss any ethical issues about abortion and simply discuss its legal history, techniques, and whether it does serious harm subsequently to the mother. They think not. Affairs get much the same treatment. They produce "a typology" of affairs. When talking of pedophiles, sadists, and other perverts, they object to the "moralistic" tone of the word "perversion," which was used "in the past," and is still used "in certain quarters" that regard anal sex as aberrant or repugnant. The Threesome, MD, prefer to call these things "paraphilias" since it is more "neutral-sounding."

This remorseless amoralism is, of course, a value system itself and one dependent on highly questionable beliefs associated with therapy and psychoanalysis. I noticed only one highly charged prohibition in the six hundred pages. It appears on page 145: "Cautionary Note: it is DANGEROUS to try to use a vacuum cleaner on your penis. Serious injuries have been reported from this activity."

Which raises the question: just whom is Heterosexuality for? The biological details and thousands of words suggest quite a literate, brainy type, types not known, in my admittedly limited acquaintance, for putting Hoovers down their trousers. The reader of Heterosexuality, apart from the vacuuming tendency, must be someone who likes weighty chapters citing "research" on sensuality, low sexual desire, potency, and sex in old age. He will enjoy figures such as "the vector model of sexual desire" with lots of arrows, quadrants, negative and positive axes, and acknowledgments. He will be shown pictures showing the application of the daunting "penile squeeze" and the milder "basilar squeeze." These are to be used in what is appropriately called "training." The Threesome are very keen on training. Indeed the flyleaf announces that "here for the first time ever is Masters, Johnson, and Kolodny's practical program of exercises for all seeking to enhance their responsivity." Now there's a word, "exercises."

And what a program. It starts with non-genital touching, commencing with the feet or neck, to learn sensations--for instance how much smoother the skin on the neck is than the skin on the feet. The exercise has a Part A and B and continues for 15 minutes, after which you "graduate" to other stages, pages and pages of them. And the text is broken up with other matters: quizzes to administer to yourself to learn whether you have "impaired sexual desire," and statements, such as "I generally feel unattractive and undesirable," to rate on scales of agreement. There are case studies--chaps complaining that the "sizzle" has gone out of their sex lives--and jaunty little aphorisms: "different strokes for different folks," and "women express, men repress."