European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - January 29, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse Tease for tables of males at $25 or $30 per Couch. And for the ultimate in no risk adventure pc programmers found ways to make video smut interactive that is controllable by the operator. Software packages with such titles As strip poker Andy s porno show and girls want to have fun Are proliferating at As yet a reckoned Cost to mental health. Two recent research studies suggest unwholesome repercussions. The first indicates that when men Are exposed to even a modest amount of pornographic material they tend to become sexually dissatisfied with their current mates at least in the Short term. The second published last year in the archives of sexual behaviour found that video eroticism is conspicuously More arousing to males than still photos written spoken words or fantasy the aids scare is diminishing for heterosexuals but some researchers predict that caution May remain the watchword for reasons of psychology rather than pathology. The whole aids thing has Given people an Opportunity to step Back and do what they have wanted to do for a Long time says Lillian Rubin which is sex in the context of a relationship men too Are hungry for Rubin author of intimate strangers is now researching her next Book on whatever happened to the sexual she has found that the newest new morality among teens is highly Complex and has Little to do with who puts what where. The Good girl bad girl distinction is not gone. A bad girl is a toss up that is she tosses it up to anybody who happens to be around. Whereas the Good girl May have sex but it s in the context of a relationship even though it May Only be a and although Over half the kids she s talked to have Intercourse before graduation a lot of them subsequently say i Don t want it i m not ready.1 " or they will attempt that elusive reputation Al status of the 50s, technical virginity As amended by contemporary standards Oral sex for example is a commonplace part of pre Intercourse among adults the Range of Behaviours is much wider now Rubin says. For example fellatio once regarded As degrading to women has become virtually ubiquitous doubling in frequency since Kinsey s time according to the new Urcla Survey. Rubin found it practice by 90 percent of her female subjects. Still fear of aids May have affected us in unanticipated ways. After a 20-year Wallow in Pill protected no fault lubricity sex is again being associated with sin danger and the consciousness of death. It s a return to a premodern attitude says the Village voice s columnist Richard Goldstein brought on by the whole ambiance of he perceives a move away from the whole health movement the notion that the body is a and Back to the primitive. Increasingly there s a feeling of violence associated with sex. A movie like fatal attraction makes the connection Between sexual heterodoxy and violence. It says mess with me and i la boil your kid s bunny.1 " which is to say that sex has become dirty again. Another indicator Goldstein suggests is the return to a sort of soft Core fetishism a fascination with paraphernalia of sex. Look at the current revival of lingerie the ads the costumes worn on to the astonishing Success of Victoria s secret the Lacy Lusty boudoir. Dud Chain seems to confirm that thesis. As does the recent upswing in Garter sales As Well As Maidenform s to Campaign last year in which sundry grinning gents enthused about the thrill of buying underwear for their women. Ironically if there s a clog in the nation s erotic plumbing it appears to be in the Michael Douglas and Glenn close in fatal attraction a movie that makes a connection Between unorthodox sex and violence. Has a fear of aids created a daydream decade of sensible sex group least prone to aids married couples among whom inhibited sexual desire is suddenly said to be pandemic. Newsweek reports that anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of the general population May experience it at some one researcher Calls it the new Yuppie others speak of dins syndrome dual income no sex. Suspected contributing factors include depression quarrelling diet fear of intimacy work exhaustion and performance anxiety. Anxiety can shift control of the vascular system from the parasympathetic nervous system which governs digestion excretion sex to the sympathetic system that handles threat and aggression the fight or flight syndrome thus drawing blood away from the genitalia and associated mucous membranes and nowadays women Are the chief complainants in the 60s, says or. Peter wish a Massachusetts psychologist husbands dragged their wives in for sex counselling. Now it s the opposite. Women Are no longer willing to Settle and men Are under More pressure to of course the reported sexual slowdown among married couples May derive from the new Fertility itself. Parenting Magazine surveyed 6,000 of its readers and reported last March that after the birth of a baby Many parents go into a sexual hiatus that lasts for at least a the respondents were couples married Between two and 10 years. When asked about frequency of Intercourse a whopping 22 percent clocked in at once a month or less with 33 percent at Between once a week and twice a month 33 percent at one to three times a week and a Mere 9 percent at three plus. When asked the main reason i have sex less often 43 percent of parenting s Sample said i am too tired and another 26 percent cited my Lack of one under loved mom seeking to rekindle the con nubian flame told parenting that her solution was to schedule sex two nights a week. I find that having it on the Calendar helps me to gear up for it mentally As if i were single again and planning for a but Don t Mothball that peekaboo Nightie 1988, which saw some 3.8 million births in the United states was probably the Peak of the Booklet that began in 1977, according to estimates by the National Center for health statistics. With most baby Boomers now Well into their thirties annual infant output is expected to drop to around 3.5 million by the year 2000, freeing up some bedroom Quality time. Or maybe not. In truth our knowledge of americans sexual behaviour is meager at Best. The most credible surveys tend to involve relatively Small samples and numerous studies Are conducted in idiosyncratic ways and with tendentious Agenda often making results impossible to compare. As a consequence contradictions abound. Soon after Newsweek s report about erotic underachievers the new York times quoted a new Survey of married couples averaging 34 years of age. Queried about How often they preferred to have sex 12 percent of men stipulated More than once a Day and the most commonly agreed frequency by both sexes was three or four times a week. That s Well ahead of the ostensible National average of 2.4. And there is always some question about How sophisticated the respondents Are. One Rural wife asked to identify her sexual preference for a recent study replied Well there s just my husband and me so i guess i m f people remarry associated presso be of every three men and women walking Down the aisle in the United states has been married before but the remarriage rate for divorced americans has been declining. A National Center for health statistics study also found that most divorced men marry divorced women. Of those divorced americans remarrying in 1983, the women were on the average 34 years old and the men an average 37 years old. The report is based on samples of records from states that compile marriage and divorce statistics. It studies data collected from 1970 to 1983, the latest year for which most of the figures were available. The number of remarriage increased during the period studied rising from 404,000 in 1970 to 736.000 in 1983 for divorced women and from 423,000 to 773,000 Over the 14-year period for divorced men. But although the number of remarriage was growing Over those years the Pool of divorced men and women was growing faster the report said. In 1983, the remarriage rate for divorced women was 91.6 per 1,000 compared with 123.3 per 1,000 in 1970. The rate for divorced men was 142.1 per 1,000 compared with 204.5 per 1,000 in 1970, the report said. Thus Only 9 percent of divorced women and 14 percent of divorced men remarried in 1983, compared with 12 percent of divorced women and 20 percent of divorced men in 1970, the report said. The figures also show that most women marry men of the same marital status. In 1983, the report said 55 percent of All women and men who married were both single 19 percent were both divorced and 2 percent were both widowed. Men traditionally Are older than the women they marry and this generally holds True for remarriage As Well As first marriages according to the study. The Only combinations in which that trend is broken is for divorced and widowed women who marry single men. In 1983, widowed women were an average 2 years older and divorced women were an average 1 year older than the single men they married. Many of the patterns for first marriages Don t hold up for second and subsequent marriages the report noted. While More than three quarters of first marriages Are performed in religious settings the proportion drops to about 60 percent for marriages involving divorced men and women. Also first marriages have a typical seasonal pattern Many More Are performed in the summer than in the Winter the report said. But second and subsequent marriages tend to be spread More evenly throughout the year. Sunday january 29, 1989 the stars and stripes Page 17
