"The Sensuous Man" (1971) was a landmark bestseller that finally put an emphasis on sensuality in sex. It's a book that I had not thought of in years, but it came at a critical moment in American culture where the sexual freedom made it possible to publish a book that frankly discussed physical intimacy instead of the clinical details of penetration. And for the first time, a book popularized the idea that a man should enjoy making make sure his sexual partner is satisfied.
In the late 60’s youth culture was well a lot like young people in general – awkward, skeptical, and filling in the blanks with bad information. Sex was definitely part of the youth culture, but it was in many ways more taboo than drug use. Fans were more upset by Yoko Ono than the Beatles experiments with LSD.
Sex was still in a weird area of taboos and legal ambiguity. The Griswald decision of 1965 had effectively legalized contraception, at least for married people. But information was still spotty, and the Freudian monopoly on psychoanalysis only heightened the sense of shame and perversity attached to the most mundane sex acts. If you heard about celebrities having sex, it probably involved the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis marrying his 13 year old cousin or Chuck Berry serving 18 months for driving a 14 year old white girl over a state line in violation of the Mann Act.
In addition to the legal complexities, there was a thicket of sexual social taboos. Interracial sex was rare, and it was still difficult to marry someone of a different religion. If you heard about a neighbor’s sex life, it was probably something like a Catholic getting divorced and basically getting thrown out of their church. Scandal free sexual romps were for the discreetly affluent, and while the executive could dump his wife for his secretary, he still had to pay alimony, which itself was as dreaded as cancer.
By the late 60's, youth culture became more mainstream and commercialized, and middle class sexual taboos began to break down. The sun was setting over the chaste beach party movies, and Doris Day had finally given up her pursuit of Rock Hudson (only years later would we figure out just how ironic that was). Clearly, America was on the brink of a cultural change that would make sex a more socially acceptable topic. But it was not clear how the entertainment industry would handle sexual content, or how much factual information about sex would be available. And in 1968 there was still a lack of even basic information about sex.....
Medical students might have a dog-eared copy of Krafft-Ebing’s 1898 Psychopathia Sexualis, a non-Freudian forensic study of sexual perversion. It contained a great deal of accurate information, despite embracing the Victorian idea that masturbation was a vice at least as damaging as alcoholism. In its description of actual cases, such as the Frenchman who lived near army bases so he could chew soldiers dirty socks, the reader could get an objective sense of what was “perversion.” By the 1960's it was being published in English and not the original Latin version that was intended to keep this information from the general public. But anyone looking for a clear understanding of what sex is would be frustrated by the lack of a discussion of intercourse.
"The Kinsey Reports" on "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (1948) and "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" (1953) were the results of thousands of interviews. At a time when masturbation was taboo, Kinsey et al. found that all sorts of sexual practices including homosexuality, bestiality, and sodomy were far more common than previously believed. Kinsey's penetrating study provided hard data to show that chronic masturbation would not lead to physical illness or insanity.
Masters and Johnson were the first researchers to study human intercourse in the laboratory. Their explicit descriptions of intercourse were based on observations of thousand of couples having sex under controlled conditions. This climaxed in the publication of "Human Sexual Response" in 1966. It was deliberately written as a dense medical textbook, at least partly to avoid being characterized as pornography. Despite being written as an academic scientific text book, it went on to be a best seller.
Probably the first mass market sex book written by a medical doctor and intended to sell a lot of paperback editions was “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask” (1969). Many of you would recognize the bright yellow paperback edition, which was a national best seller Written as a simpler level than Masters and Johnson, the book still avoided titillating the reader. It wasn't porn, it wasn't even The Song of Solomon. However, it provided a graphic if mechanical description of the genitals and intercourse, in a style more suited to the average reader than Masters and Johnsons' academic style. And it included information of venereal diseases and contraception. Strangely, it was much more hostile to homosexuals that previous publications.
American culture was definitely shedding its sexual taboos in 1969. The number “69” was spray painted on bridge abutments, and it wasn’t in reference to the year. Penthouse magazine started publication in the US in 1969. Before that, most female nudity was in the Playboy style, showing only breasts. Penthouse broke a taboo by putting pubic hair on the map. And brother, there was a lot of pubic hair back then, so it wasn’t hard to find. (Personally, I don't see the eroticism of completely untrimmed thatch, but, if that is your thing, you can Google for Demi Moore's 1981 Penthouse photos. Yikes! No wonder they called it "The Bush Era!")
But even with Penthouse it was till sort of a mystery what lurked under the crotch-fros of that era. I recall walking home from the YMCA through the city park when I was about 13 and two boys of about 11 ran up to me with serious expressions. One of them demanded “Hey, do girls have balls?” I said “Uhhhhh.....no.” With that, my questioner whirled to his companion and said “I told you!” To my relief, they both ran away, because I wasn’t really prepared to handle any follow up questions.
As various porn magazines became available to the public, some copies would find their way to us. Strangely, I would find ragged copies of various porn magazines on the railroad tracks near the train station, and it was never clear if travelers were dumping their porn from the train just before arriving home, or if some local philanthropist was sailing them off the high embankment over the tracks. Years later I mentioned this to my neighbor and he said “Yeah I used to find those too!”
Neither of us had thought to mention that these magazines kept appearing, and the point is that boys exchanged information a lot less than you might expect. It was not “American Pie,” we didn’t sit around talking about this stuff, possibly because we didn’t know anything worth repeating. Maybe if I were more of a joiner, I would have gotten more information at places like band camp.
I’m guessing the average 12 year old with internet access is far more knowledgeable today and possibly has seen things that he’s better off not knowing about. Heck, children with access to Animal Planet probably know more than we did.
By 1971, certainly sex was the subject of many movies, although the act of love was still scarce. Where sex in the cinema did show up, it was usually for shock value and part of a violent act. In other words, 1971 was about when our current standard seems to have appeared - rape is OK, but passionate headboard banging sex by two people drenched in sweat is just wrong. In "A Clockwork Orange," "the old in-and-out" must be be a horrifying exercise in "ultraviolence" (and show tunes!)
This period of sexual revolution was the setting for the 1971 publication of “The Sensuous Man” by “M". For the first time, an author dealt mostly with foreplay. If detailed descriptions of intercourse had been hard to find, foreplay was the Loch Ness Monster of sex: never taken seriously, poorly documented, and widely believed to be a myth. Probably the biggest draw of this groundbreaking book (admit it, you thought I was going to say “seminal”) was its detailed instructions for cunnilingus. Of course, techniques learned from a book are no substitute for good communication, but TSM certainly encouraged men to dive right in. And even if we don’t remember exactly what it was, “The Velvet Buzzsaw” was the first time we actually thought of giving an oral sex technique a name outside of the Kama Sutra. Unlike previous sex books, it talked about pleasure, and described how a woman's body is beautiful in explicit terms, and they smell nice, and they taste good. Probably the other most startling idea was that a normal woman might appreciate anal sex, and TSM describes how to segue into anal foreplay.
This was pretty bold stuff for the time, not like today when naughty hedgehogs sing the praises of the Spam* purse.
Even though I was still in braces and hadn’t kissed a girl, TSM reached me at a good time. It helped define what was normal, and that is important for a young person trying to decide who they are and what is worth feeling guilty about. It was good to know about techniques, even though it would be years before I edid anything daring. Certainly it was prurient, exactly the sort of thing a young man files away in the mental “spank bank,” even though the thought of masturbating because of something you read is almost archaic today.
There were a lot of things that weren’t covered in TSM, like the use of the hands. And TSM didn’t try make sex a cautionary morality play or clutter it up with descriptions of distasteful perversions to convince censors the book was actually a text of abnormal psychology. At the age of 14 there are plenty of things that would have been way too much information. For instance, at that age I would not have cared to know about obscure venereal diseases or Japanese fecal porn. And I still don’t, so don't send me any. Seriously.
It seemed like America finally lost its cherry in 1971 and 1972. Probably the first American star to do a sexually "explicit" film was Marlon Brando in "Last Tango In Paris." Filmed in Italy, its US premier in late 1972 was enormously controversial. By today's standards, the sex was soft-core simulated intercourse, but one of the scenes involved anal sex and butter, and that was the controversy.
Comedy is always an indicator of where society is heading, and things had changed enough by 1972 that Woody Allen could do a satirical movie version of “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex, which grossed $18,000,000 on a budget of $2,000,000. In three years, the title had gone from minor scandal to profitable parody. Sex was going mainstream in America, and so was "blue" humor. The movie follows the book's format of vignettes framed by questions, in this case "What is ejaculation?" Woody has a cameo as the cowardly sperm afraid to be launched, while Tony Randall and Burt Reynolds run a NASA-like Mission Control center in the brain:
And so, through the Seventies, people smoked a lot of weed and had lots of unprotected sex. Gay people were coming out of the closet, and it was becoming cool to have that sassy gay friend who knew about the best clubs. There was no safe sex, because AIDS was still a decade in the future, herpes was basically unheard of, and the garden varieties STDs were all treatable with generic antibiotics. For many people, that decade was a blur of bong hits and spurting bodily fluids. If you are in your 30's, don’t take my word for it - ask your mother.
When AIDS finally arrived during the 80’s the GOP base was delighted to declare it God’s judgment on a modern Babylon. Herpes and AIDS ruined sex the same way Altamont buried the Summer of Love.
Sexuality continues to change and mutate in unpredictable ways. Sometimes we can only gain perspective by looking at the past. Whatever happened to bustle fetishists? When did furries come out of the closet (or the barn, or wherever furries hang out) and start selling orange juice?
I’m afraid we’ll never return to those days of getting high and having hours of sloppy unprotected sex with casual acquaintances. Call me “old fashioned,” but I still miss it. But if you are finally in that committed monogamous relationship and ready to exchange some fluids, or if you are in the relationship where caution gets thrown to the wind, The Sensuous Man is a good starting point.
Bonus -What would I have told my younger self that wasn’t in TSM?
Here's a few things I've learned over the years, in no particular order
I was shocked by a lot of things women were willing to do (which I’m not going to list). However, you will probably never convince your female partner to include her wild girlfriend, any more than you are going to bring in another dude and be gay with him for her entertainment (which she would probably be totally OK with, speaking of things that might shock you).
Just reading a book is not going to make anyone a ladies man. Like this guy for instance:
I’ve learned that if you take your date swimming at a lake and both her nipples escape from her bathing suit, this is not as accident, this means you are about to move beyond being friends. Ditto for the peasant blouse with no bra. Nobody bends over and gives you a full view of both breasts by accident. If she shows you pictures of herself in Victorias Secret poses, this is a signal. Get a clue. You only need to dial up your level of interest from 3 to 4 out of 10 to let her know the signal has been received.
You will lose at least one girlfriend/boyfriend who dumps you to be with an alcoholic. It won't make any difference if this rival is mean, dihonest, and unfaithful. Or you may be the one that dumps someone nice for a loser.. Try not to do that more than once.
A man who does not respond to girl-on-girl porn is gay. No really, this has been studied by clinical psychologists. He might still object to girl-on-girl porn for some ideological reason, but if he is actually immune to it, then he's a "friend of Judy." If someone is questioning their own sexual identity, that's a good test. And if it bothers a woman to see sapphicerotica.com in your browser history, then tell her to go date a gay man. Or learn to delete your browser hostory. Or ask her WTF she's doing looking at your browser history? Really, WTF?
If you aren't comfortable with intimacy and couldn't climb two flights of stairs, don't worry, there's plenty of attractive people out there looking for an intimacy free relationship. Just talk about how you want to get married and settle down. Don't be intimidated by potential partners that are sexy and vivacious, a lot of them are looking for some schnook who will leave the porch light on for them.
Don't get a vasectomy and then tell women in bars that you want to settle down and have kids. That would be wrong.
If a woman you are having a sexual relationship with tells you that you are “too interested in sex" or that she has lost all desire because sapphicerotica.com was in your browser history two months ago, it usually means she is a fucking your best friend, or maybe fucking your worst enemy, or both. Or maybe she’s fucking your ex-girlfriend on sapphicerotica.com. Again, get a clue.
Any time a woman mentions “ass,” even in passing, even seemingly out of context in a way that doesn’t really make sense, it means “Go buy Astro-Glide.” If you don’t, years later you will hear from her girlfriends how she used to complain that you weren’t going “there.” Often this request will take the form of projection or displacement so she doesn’t seem to be asking for herself. When she asks if you want a specific sex toy, she really wants one for herself.
Complement her shoes.
Buy your date a glass of wine. If she massages the stem of the glass as if she were milking a cow, you can suggest you go somewhere more quiet. Unlike flashing you with both breasts, this motion seems to be entirely unconscious. Or if you take her home, and she has a shoulder bag, and she is making a similar hand motion on the shoulder strap, you’d better have brought protection (no, not pepper spray.)
If you figure out how to give your girlfriend seven or eight orgasms almost every time - don't. Stop at four or five - every time you have sex is not "Death by Chocolate." Maybe sometimes she wants to drive, so dial it back. And tell her to not go sharing details of her sex life. If she tells her friend at work she had seven orgasms, this will become gossip that will get around to the boss, who will suddenly put her on night shift and weekends. Yes, this is what people are like.
When in doubt, drop your pants. My favorite example is in the movie “Earth Girls Are Easy” where a ditzy Geena Davis is being seduced by Jeff Goldblum, an alien who does not speak English and was covered with blue fur until they shaved him (it's a comedy). Geena says “I don’t know if we can do this, I mean I’m from the Valley and you are from outer space, and how do we even know if it would be physically possible (ziiiip). Ohhh, OK.” Of course, your mileage may vary. If her expression says “This is the best Christmas ever!” then maybe dropping your pants should be one of your standard moves. If that’s not the typical reaction, then work on your personality. Or buy a convertible.
*Spam is a registered trademark of Hormel Foods.
Mon Mar 02, 2015 at 7:27 PM PT (Anonymous Coward): thank you for share!
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