Conference on Sex Invites Controversy
They came to ask, and sometimes answer, what they acknowledge society often considers to be the improper questions: questions about sex.
What will ultimately stop the spread of AIDS?
Can women who work in the sex industry--prostitutes, erotica writers, managers of nude dancing establishments--live happy and fulfilled lives?
In the age of AIDS, what will happen to sex surrogates, people who assist the sexually dysfunctional to regain sexual function, usually working in conjunction with a therapist?
The Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, western region, and the Center for Sex Research at Cal State Northridge recently sponsored a three-day conference to explore such “Issues and Controversies.”
This was not a conference where the views of the Meese Commission or the Moral Majority were expressed. And though there were feminists (both male and female) present among the estimated 175 psychologists, biologists, lawyers, academics, psychiatrists, epidemiologists, social workers and others attending the conference, these feminists were not of the persuasion that wants to ban pornography.
Rather, these are the people who would rather study the effects of pornography (and most everything else dealing with sex) than judge or suppress material others consider obscene.
“In any science, and sexology is no exception, controversy is actually healthy,” said western region president Milton Diamond, a professor of anatomy at the University of Hawaii Medical School and author of “The World of Sexual Behavior, Sex Watching.”
“Without it (controversy), movement stops and the field stagnates. Instead of a science of sex, we’d have a religion of sex,” he told the group gathered at the Beverly Hilton. “In science there is no such thing as an improper question. Any question can be asked and it’s unfortunate that too many questions go begging in our field because they may offend or they’re politically inappropriate.”
Some prevalent notions that are still largely unexplored by sex researchers, Diamond said, include “love always makes sex go better,” “all women are orgasmic,” and “sex is most enjoyable when the partners are equal in power . . . .”
Several speakers at the conference bemoaned the fact that because sex research is controversial it’s not well funded. Perhaps as a result, there were few sessions devoted to the presentation of new research. Rather, this conference offered numerous panel discussions on where the research is heading and what is influencing it.
Indeed, most of the best-attended sessions were not research-oriented in the strict sense. Rather they presented informal reports on trends regarding sex. And they offered anecdotal evidence and opinions on the political and moral concerns surrounding sex research.
The topic of AIDS (and how it may affect everything from sex education materials to fidelity in marriage) was addressed in many of the presentations on the conference’s three-day agenda. In a session called simply, “AIDS, Where Are We?,” Dr. Michael Gottlieb (the UCLA researcher who first reported AIDS cases to the Centers for Disease Control and who is now in private practice in Santa Monica) didn’t waste any time saying what he thinks will be the ultimate answer to the AIDS epidemic: development of a vaccine.
“We’re still a long way from seeing a vaccine come to market,” he told the group, enumerating some of the “serious obstacles” such development faces. Among the barriers Gottlieb cited are a relatively short supply of chimpanzees in the United States for experimentation, ethical and practical considerations in the testing of the drugs on humans and drug manufacturers’ fears regarding future legal liabilities.
The issue of AIDS fear/safe sex practices was addressed in a number of sessions, nowhere more dramatically than in one covering the topic of surrogate partners in sex therapy. (According to a brochure published by the International Professional Surrogates Assn., a surrogate is “a member of the three-way therapeutic team--supervising therapist, client, surrogate--who acts as partner to a dysfunctional client in the therapy program and participates in experiential exercises involving sensual and sexual touching, as well as social and sexual skills training.” The brochure also states that “the legal status of surrogates is at present undefined” but that “there have been no criminal charges filed against a surrogate.”)
Four sex surrogates (including one who trains surrogates) agreed that panic initially swept their industry--until AIDS guidelines were established.
“We decided we were not going to mix body fluids anymore,” said Adele P. Kennedy, a Los Angeles surrogate. She and other surrogates she knows have begun demanding that their clients wear condoms, Kennedy added, and some surrogates now refrain from kissing, except on entirely external areas such as the neck.
Cheryl Cohen, a San Francisco surrogate, told the audience that she has an AIDS test every six months, insists clients wear condoms but still continues to kiss. “I can’t imagine not kissing,” she said. Frederick A. Schotz, director of Counseling Associates in Davie, Fla., said that clients at his clinic are not required to wear condoms--but that they (and their wives) are required to be tested for AIDS before they can begin surrogate therapy. In addition, Schotz said his firm, which specializes in treating sexual dysfunctions of the elderly and the disabled, requires its surrogates to undergo 18 months of training and to be tested for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases every 90 days.
When Rosalie Chapman, a psychotherapist and assistant clinical professor of psychology at UC San Diego, checked into the Beverly Hilton, she and her roommate were asked “What type of bed would you like?”
She was a little surprised at the question but remembered that she was in Beverly Hills, where hotels might well be offering new, deluxe and possibly exotic bed options. So Chapman asked what sort of beds were available, whereupon the hotel clerk told her, “That was just a polite way of asking if you’re going to sleep together. It’s easier to ask you because you’re with that sex group. Most people are sensitive about that.”
Why include a panel of “women in the sex industry” at a scientific meeting? As moderator Elizabeth Rae Larson, a Seattle educator/writer, explained, “We wanted to bring people forward to contribute to the broadening of stereotypes.”
Each woman on the panel said that working in the sex business need not be a demeaning, joyless experience. In fact, June Cade, who manages sex arcades in which women dance nude, titled her presentation, “What Happens to Women in the Sex Industry When They Are Employed With Dignity, Responsibility and Integrity. . . .”
According to Cade, many women she has employed have improved their lives substantially--kicking drugs, going to college, settling down in married relationships--while working in the adult entertainment industry.
“I’ve been called a pimp and (people say) that the things I do legitimize the sex industry and encourage women to work in it. I take the position that the sex industry is here . . . and it’s always going to be here. I’d like to make it nurturing for women rather than exploitative,” she said.
Norma Jean Almodovar, a former Los Angeles civilian traffic officer who became a call girl and ran for the office of lieutenant governor of California in 1984, told the audience, “We (women in the sex industry) are not all damaged individuals” and pointed out that she has been “in a married relationship for the last 12 years.”
San Diego-based Warren Farrell, author of “Why Men Are the Way They Are,” proved to be one of the conference’s most popular speakers. Among other things, he distinguished between male and female-oriented pornography, observing that men’s fantasies run toward women pictured in magazines such as Playboy, Penthouse and the annual swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated. On the other hand, women’s fantasies, in Farrell’s opinion, are found in magazines such as Better Homes & Gardens and Family Circle.
“There are brides’ magazines but there are no grooms’ magazines,” he told the group. “In female pornography, every man is a success object. Women want access to the success object without fear of rejection. Men want access to the sex object without fear of rejection. Both sexes are addicted to a fantasy they cannot fulfill.”
While this meeting of sex researchers was a serious undertaking, it was far from humorless. In the course of presenting a paper on “The Rude Joke as Sex Education,” Jan Dailey, secretary of the L.A. chapter of the society, regaled her listeners with a number of raunchy jokes. She got such a good response from her audience that she decided the conference should include a “joke-telling breakfast.” Though it was added at the last minute, the meeting induced eight conference participants to gather at 7:30 a.m. to further their sex educations.
