SEX AND SCIENCE
bring the woman to climax. This is also the psychoanalytic view,
which holds further that the inability to sustain intercourse is the
result of unconscious fear. This view is very strongly controverted by
the Report. The denial is based on mammalian behavior-"in many
species" (but not in all?) ejaculation follows almost immediately
upon intromission; in chimpanzees ejaculation occurs in ten to twenty
seconds. The Report therefore concludes that the human male who
ejaculates immediately upon intromission "is quite normal [here
the word becomes suddenly permissible] among mammals and usual
among his own species." Indeed, the Report finds it odd that the
term "impotent" should be applied to such rapid responses. "It
would be difficult to find another situation in which an individual
who was quick .and intense in his responses was labeled anything
but superior, and that in most instances is exactly what the rapidly
ejaculating male probably is, however inconvenient and unfortunate
his qualities may be from the standpoint of the wife in the relation–
ship."
But by such reasoning the human male who is quick and intense
in his leap to the lifeboat is natural and superior, however incon–
venient and unfortunate his speed and intensity may be to the wife
he leaves standing on the deck, as is also the man who makes a snap
judgment, who bites his dentist's finger, who kicks the child who
annoys him, who bolts his-or another's-food, who is incontinent
of his feces. Surely the problem of the natural in the human was
solved four centuries ago by Rabelais, and in the simplest naturalistic
terms; and it is sad to have the issue all confused again by the naivety
of men of science. Rabelais' solution lay in the simple perception of
the
natural
ability and tendency of man to grow in the direction
of organization and control. The young Gargantua in his natural
infancy had all the quick and intense responses just enumerated; had
his teachers confused the traits of his natural infancy with those of
his natural manhood, he would not have been the more natural but
the less; he would have been a monster.
In considering the Report as a major cultural document, we
must not underestimate the significance of its petulant protest against
the inconvenience to the male of the unjust demand that is made upon
him.
This protest is tantamount to saying that sexuality is not to
be involved in specifically human situations or to be connected with
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