PARTISAN REVIEW
desirable
aims
that are conceived of in specifically human terms. We
may leave out of account any ideal reasons which would lead a
man to solve the human situation of the discrepancy-arising from
conditions of biology or of culture or of both-between his own
orgasmic speed and that of his mate, and we can consider only that
it might
be
hedonistically desirable for him to do so, for advantages
presumably accrue to him in the woman's accessibility and respon–
siveness. Advantages of this kind, however, are precisely the matters
of quality in experience that the Report does not consider.
7
And its attitude on the question of male potency is but one
example of the Report's insistence on drawing sexuality apart from
the general human context. It is striking how small a role woman
plays in
The Sexual Behavior of the Human Male.
We learn nothing
about the connection of sex and reproduction; the connection, from
the sexual point of view, is certainly not constant yet it is of great
interest. The pregnancy or possibility of pregnancy of his mate has a
considerable effect, sometimes one way, sometimes the other, on
the sexual behavior of the male; yet the index gives but one entry
under
Pregnancy-"fear of."
Again, the contraceptive devices which
Pregnancy, fear of
requires have a notable influence on male sexu–
ality; but the index lists only
Contraception, techniques.
Or again,
menstruation has an elaborate mythos which men take very seriously;
but the two indexed passages which refer to menstruation give no in–
formation about its relation to sexual conduct.
Then too the Report explicitly and stubbornly resists the idea
that sexual behavior is involved with the whole of the individual's
character. In this it is strangely inconsistent. In the conclusion of its
chapter on masturbation, after saying that masturbation does no
physical harm and, if there are no conflicts, no mental harm, it
goes on to raise the question of the effect of adult masturbation on
the ultimate personality of the individual. With a certain confusion
of cause and effect which we need not dwell on, it says: "It is now
clear that masturbation is relied upon by the upper [social] level
7
It is hard not to make a connection between the Report's strong stand against
any delay in the male orgasm and its equally strong insistence that there is no
difference for the woman between a clitoral and vaginal orgasm, a view which
surely needs more investigation before
it
is as flatly put as the Report puts it.
The conjunction of the two ideas suggests the desirability of a sexuality which
uses a minimum of sexual apparatus.
472
