Why all this fuss about sex?

PERSONAL COLUMN JOHN ROWAN WILSON

When men develop increasingly elaborate and complex rituals in relation to some form of activity it usually means that they are not very sure about what they are doing. Societies, as well as individuals, are prone to obsessional tendencies. The vestments, the repetitive phrases, the stereotyped movements, are somehow re- assuring. Surely, the participant thinks as he intones the anthem or taps three times on the floor with his stick, there must be some sense in all this. But behind it all lies a deep uncer- tainty, an utter lack of conviction au to what the whole process is really about By far the most ritualised of activities in our present civilisation is sex. Of course sex, being a fundamental human activity, has always been surrounded by ceremonies, but in primitive societies these are fairly simple in nature and restricted in extent. They are a long way from the massive cult of teenage dating, the living sexual symbols ranging from Brigitte Bardot to Mick Jagger, the hysterical chanting and the orgasmic tribal dances which are a feature of our own time. And they are always related in some way or other to fertility and reproduction.

Nowadays we are threatened with over- population, and fertility has ceased to be a praiseworthy objective. We live in an anti- reproductive society. But the sexual drive, evolved to deal with a situation now obsolete, still remains to plague us. We cannot hope to remove it by education—it is inherent Three successful sexual acts in a lifetime are more than sufficient for any man to discharge his duties towards the perpetuation of his kind. Yet nature, locked into its age-old pattern of wastage and survival, cries: copulate. And copulate we must.

Many of the freakish developments in sexual behaviour over the past generation can be seen as man's desperate attempts to adapt himself to this unprecedented biological situation. Since modern science has made it undesirable for him to be fertile and contraception has made fertility avoidable, what, his innermost self asks him, is he performing the act for? Is

it a release of pent-up energy, like taking a brisk morning walk? Is it a sensual pleasure, like eating and drinking? Is it an immensely complex and all-pervading psychological in- fluence? Is it some kind of deep, mystical, semi-religious experience?

All these explanations have been offered. Kinsey, Freud, D. H. Lawrence—one can take one's pick. None of them is entirely satisfac- tory. In particular, there is a constant tendency to become obsessed with orgasm. Orgasm has been spoken of as if it were a psychological necessity, without which life was hardly worth living. Spinsters have been regarded with pity, celibates with total incomprehension. The word 'frustration' has come to refer to one thing, and one thing alone. This is surely to over- rate the sexual act beyond all reason. To do Without orgasm is, indeed, to be deprived of an important form of human satisfaction, but it is not the end of the world. Life is full of deprivations and frustrations. Men can be equally frustrated in their desire for status, in- dePendeuce, or physical action as they can about' UM And indeed most of them are. Frus-

tration, in some degree or other, is a normal part of life.

This great concern with orgasm is essentially a male preoccupation. As Pamela Hansford Johnson pointed out in a recent book, few women enjoy the sexual act unless their emo- tions are involved. Orgasm for its own sake means little to them, and they are not naturally promiscuous; they become so in order to hold on to men or because they have been per- suaded by books written by men that it is the correct and healthy thing to do. The sexual customs of our present society are largely due to the successful imposition of male standards on women. Perhaps we need to fight for a new form of freedom for women—the freedom to say no.

The trouble with learning about sex from books is that books are not for the most part written by normal people leading normal lives.

The novelist forms a particularly misleading guide to human behaviour. For the most he leads a solitary life, cut off from action or ex- citement or the struggle for power. His occu- pation is such that he cannot work for more than four hours or so at a stretch. During the rest of the day he has little to do with his time. It is perhaps significant that when the baboon, an animal famous like man for his intelligence and activity, is confined in a zoo and deprived of the excitements, dangers and stimuli of the wild, he directs his interests towards sexual experiments. Men of letters are subjected to the same temptation.

Some of the so-called sexual scientists are not much better. They have the tendency to become over-involved with their own subject and to set ideal standards for sexual activity. This perfectionist approach has the effect of causing anxiety among obsessional people about their own performance. When all is said and done, sexual activity is a physical skill and not everyone has the same degree of natural talent for it, any more than they have for golf or tennis. Instruction and advice are valuable, but like all teaching they should take account of the inherent limitations of the pupil. Some people are sexually eighteen-handicap types. They will be much happier if they learn to accept this and stop striving to beat par.

When one visualises the magnitude of coping with this great revolution in our lives, it is no wonder that everyone is confused. But we need to keep our heads and avoid falling into the trap of thinking that the sexual anarchy caused by these special circumstances is a sign of a break-up of our society as a whole. It is really very little to do with anything else but itself. There is no satisfactory historical evidence linking changes in sexual customs with the decay of nations or civilisations. The fact that the regiment spends a night in the brothel may be regrettable. It says nothing one way or the other about its ultimate resolution in the face of the enemy.

It is plain enough that there are dangerous features in our society at the moment, par- ticularly in relation to adolescents and young people. The adolescent culture is pervaded by cheap commercial sensations, trivial satisfac- tions, and purposeless violence. But in the minds of many people these tendencies have become associated to an excessive extent with sexual promiscuity. For example, a Times leader, discussing discipline in the universities, said of university teach:

'Sharing, as many of them do, a tolerant atti- tude towards sexual experimentation and in- dulgence, they would feel frauds playing the heavy parent. This places them in a predica- ment in face of the new immorality of drug taking.'

Good heavens, why? There is no connection at all between interfering in sexual relations

and enforcing the law of the land. It is surely hopelessly irresponsible to relate the two. When I was a medical student I was never subjected

to any attempt to interfere with my sex life. But in regard to the taking of narcotics, restric- tion was total and unquestioned. Everybody recognised the necessity for this, and so they do in medical schools to this day. There is no genuine predicament here.

The problem with young people is not sexual —it is to do with the breakdown of education.

By education I don't mean simply the con- struction of large new comprehensive schools in which classes of forty and fifty children re- ceive lessons in trigonometry. I mean the instruction of children by parents and teachers in the kind of behaviour necessary to make our

society a tolerable place to live in. Such in- struction will, of course, encounter a measure of resistance. It is healthy that this should be

so. The disciplinary content of education is, in a sense, a psychological game which the child plays with the parent and the teacher, matching his own independence against the demands of society, exercising his will in the same way as he exercises his growing muscles. As in all games, the contestants need to be reasonably evenly matched or the game turns sour. If one side wins too easily, the loser becomes discouraged and tends to withdraw from- the game altogether. The winner, on the

other hand, is tempted to become increasingly aggressive and provocative in the hope of stimulating his defeated opponent to a renewal of the contest.

This is why, in the days of the Victorians, the ,eicessive dominance of the father led him to a position verging on tyranny, and why at the present time children and adolescents exhibit such a desperate desire to provoke and shock their elders. They are reacting to the fact that tte game has become too easy for them —their opponent has gone home disgruntled and they are left with nothing to do. Until the parent and the teacher are prepared to come back and play their parts—to be stuffy and dog- matic, to be scorned, ridiculed and yet secretly respected—the problem will remain.

The university teachers, and perhaps even The Times as well, have got the problem the wrong way round. What education must do is not so much to teach sex as to teach considera- tion for others and some kind of dignity in human relations. If the student can be taught this principle, he will apply it to sex and to drug-taking, and to everything else. The sexual instinct runs through deep and mysterious channels. Now its evolutionary function is dis- torted and it is overflowing in directions which we have not anticipated and do not under- stand. It is inevitable that we have trouble in containing it. But to use this as an excuse for abandoning education in behaviour altogether is the utmost defeatism. And nobody will despise us for this more than our children.