Bonk (28 page)

Masters points out that the heterosexuals were at a disadvantage, as they do not benefit from what he called “gender empathy.” Doing unto your partner as you would do unto yourself only works well when you’re gay. “Since rapid forceful stroking was the pattern of choice during male masturbation,” Masters wrote, “it was also a consistent pattern during the male’s manipulation of his female partner’s clitoris.” The lesbians’ lighter touch was “generally the more acceptable….” For no doubt similar reasons, the straight women, their husbands told the researchers, “did not grasp the shaft of the penis tightly enough.”

But the empathy gap is not insurmountable. One has only to speak one’s mind. The other hugely important difference Masters and Johnson found between the heterosexual and homosexual couples was that the gay couples talked far more easily, often, and openly about what they did and didn’t enjoy. Gay men and women simply seemed more comfortable in the world of sex. Masters gives the example of the heterosexual men’s finger insertions: “Though many heterosexual women evidenced little pleasure…and were obviously distracted by [it],…only twice did they ask their husbands to desist.”

It seems to me that heterosexuals have come a long way since 1979. The media’s ubiquitous coverage of sex and sex research—as well as the genesis and population explosion of TV, radio, and newspaper sex advisors—have chipped away at the taboos that kept couples from talking openly with each other about the sex they were having. Bit by bit, sex research has unraveled the hows, whys, why-nots, and how-betters of arousal and orgasm. The more the researchers and the sexperts and the reporters talked about sex, the easier it became for everyone else to. As communication eases and knowledge grows, inhibitions dissolve and confidence takes root.

Sadly, the main thing people recall about
Homosexuality in Perspective
, if they recall anything at all, is that Masters and Johnson spent the second half of the book touting a therapy for helping homosexuals convert to heterosexuality. The team went out of their way to assure readers that they screened clients carefully, accepting only those who had turned to homosexuality after a traumatic experience with heterosexuality (rape or abuse, for instance). They insisted that no gay man or woman who came to them for therapy was ever pressured or encouraged to pursue heterosexuality. However, as one critic pointed out, many should probably have been encouraged
not
to pursue it.

But let’s give Masters and Johnson their due. And while we’re at it, Alfred Kinsey and Robert Latou Dickinson and Old Dad and everyone else in these pages. The laboratory study of sex has never been an easy, safe, or well-paid undertaking. Study by study, the gains may seem small and occasionally silly, but the aggregation of all that has been learned, the lurching tango of academe and popular culture, has led us to a happier place. Hats and pants off to you all.

acknowledgments

s
ex research is a little like sex in that most people who engage in it are more comfortable without an audience. The researchers who invited me into their labs did so at the peril of their funding, their privacy, their academic standing, their sanity. For saying “yes” when “no” was the sensible answer, I am deeply grateful to Jing Deng, Anne Marie Hedeboe, Geng-Long Hsu, Barry Komisaruk, Roy Levin, Ken Maravilla, Ahmed Shafik, Marcalee Sipski, and Margot Yehia. I am extravagantly indebted to Kim Wallen for his contributions to not one, but two, chapters, and to Cindy Meston, my sex research swami, for all the help, hospitality, and hilarity.

For graciously enduring my demands on their time, I thank Kim Airs, Jennifer Bass, Irwin Goldstein, Stephanie Mann, Robert Nachtigall, Michael Perelman, Anne Pigue, Carol Queen, Harold Reed, Arlene Shaner, Ira Sharlip, Marty Tucker, and Alice Wen.

This is my third book with W. W. Norton, and there is good reason for that. The list of Norton folks to whom I’m indebted is practically their phone directory. Boldface must be applied to a few of those names: Jill Bialosky, whose editing pencil should be bronzed should she ever retire (an event I will do everything in my power to prevent); Erin Lovett and Winfrida Mbewe, who make me feel bad for every author whose book is launched by someone else; and Bill Rusin, a man born to sell books. I thank you all for your commitment, creativity, and enthusiasm.

Beyond the halls of Norton, praises must ring for photo curator Deirdre O’Dwyer. My agent, Jay Mandel, deserves another 15 percent, and my husband, Ed, deserves a medal.

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