What You Can Change . . . And What You Can't*: The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement (27 page)

Sexual orientation—heterosexual or homosexual—is a close neighbor of sexual identity in its depth and inflexibility, and it is deeper than sexual preference. Once orientation is dictated, the sexual preferences are elaborated around it: breasts or bottoms, peeping, lace panties, calves or feet, rubber textures, the missionary position or sixty-nine, sadism, blond hair, bisexuality, spanking, or high-heeled shoes. These preferences, like mouse-killing, are not, once acquired, easily shelved. Unlike exclusive heterosexuality or homosexuality, they surely do not arise in the womb (the fetus may “know” men from women, but he doesn’t know from spiked heels). Rather, our sexual preferences have their beginnings in late childhood as the first hormones of puberty awaken the dormant brain structures that were laid down in the womb.

At this time, play begins to lose its innocence and becomes tinged with sex. Dreams and fantasies do, too. In a survey of third-graders, I found that only about 5 percent could recall having a “love” dream (e.g., dreaming that they are cuddling a boy or girl their own age), though they all recalled monster dreams. On the other hand, the vast majority of sixth-grade children had love dreams, and the monster dreams were on the wane. Most sexologists believe that the intense dreams and fantasy and play at this age are just coincidental with sexual development, or that they simply reflect what the facts of underlying sexuality are. I have a different view: I believe that these events are the crucible out of which our sexual preferences are forged. I believe that the content of dreams, play, and fantasy has a causal role in creating our sexual preferences.

Leopold was eight when his half sister taught him to masturbate while they were playing “doctor.” As he came, she accidentally touched his penis with her slipper. Within a year, he began masturbating regularly. His masturbatory fantasies revolved around girls’ feet and shoes. He got in trouble at school for caressing his teacher’s shoes. He eventually married, but was unable to have intercourse unless he was caressing his wife’s feet or fantasizing about shoes. Leopold took a job as a shoe salesman in an expensive boutique, and spent his days in a constant state of arousal as he assisted female customers with their footwear
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Sammy was ten when he had his first wet dream. In this never-to-be-forgotten event, his playmate Susan had taken off her bathing-suit bottom and let him rub his penis between her buttocks. It felt great and he came. He woke up gooey, confused, and shocked. Up until that dream he had not the slightest intimation that his penis was for anything except peeing. When he began to masturbate three years later, he found that his fantasies focused on girl’s bottoms, particularly as climax neared. As a thirty-five-year-old, he ejaculates only during intercourse from behind. Everything else is foreplay
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These two stories are typical of the histories men give when asked how they come by their sexual preferences. The stories fit the prepared conditioning theory we used to explain why phobias are selective and so resistant to change. Like phobias, the objects of sexual preference are selective. Panties, feet, hair, breasts, velvet, spanking, and about a dozen other objects are the common ones. Phrases like “whatever turns you on” and “polymorphous perversity” miss the mark. Almost all objects of male sexual preference are somehow related to female body parts and to intercourse. Colors, sounds, flowers, and food are never fetishes. Occasionally, as with phobias, a truly bizarre proclivity sneaks in: dead bodies or feces, for example. But these are usually the fetishes of psychotic people. Also like phobias, the sexual preferences, once acquired, endure.

The prepared conditioning view holds that there is a “short list” of evolutionarily significant stimuli that are potential sexual objects for men. Once there happens to be a pairing of one of these conditional stimuli (feet for Leopold, buttocks for Sammy) with a sexual unconditional stimulus (masturbation for Leopold, wet dream for Sammy), conditioning begins. Late-childhood sex play and wet dreams provide ample opportunity for pairing of the prepared objects with sexual excitement. Once this happens, the objects themselves become imbued with sexual excitement.

Masturbation is the answer to why your sexual preferences continue for a lifetime once they start. After these objects have become arousing, you start to masturbate about them. Masturbation in men is always accompanied by fantasy. You are again in the presence of the conditional stimulus, and you have an orgasm. This is yet another conditioning trial—and it happens a dozen times a week in the lives of most adolescent males. That’s a lot of practice. Usually, intercourse for men is either accompanied by variations on the core fantasy, or it actually enacts the fantasy. That’s a lot more practice. In my view, evolution has selected masturbation and its concomitant, fantasy, for the purpose of investing men, lastingly, in the erotic practices of their tribe, their race, and their culture.

Females and fetishes
. Evidence suggests that women acquire sexual preferences by a subtler process. The major difference between the sexes is that almost all men are “fetishists.” When the preference is frowned upon, intrusive, illegal, or hurts others, we label it a “fetish.” When the preference is socially acceptable, practiced between consenting adults, and legal, it has no name (“behind closed doors”?). But the process is just the same. Both fetishists and “normal” men harbor highly specific erotic images. These images are the core of their masturbatory fantasies and of their actual sexual pursuits. Many of the preferences are acceptable, and so, with reasonable impulse control, men who are turned on by large breasts or sleek buttocks or being spanked or ripping lace panties or wearing rubber underthings don’t get into trouble. Those men whose preferences are socially unacceptable, immoral, illegal, or injurious (or are otherwise acceptable but are pursued by men with little impulse control) get labeled with the nasty name “fetishist.” In my view, these men have the same process of sexual preference as normal men, but they differ in the peculiarity or unacceptability or hurtfulness of their preferences, or in their inability to delay gratification, or in getting caught.

Nearly two-thirds of a random sample of rural Oregon college men admitted (under conditions of anonymity) to sexual misconduct: sex with children, forced sex with women, peeping, or frottage (rubbing up against a stranger in a crowd). Even more of them wanted to commit improper acts.
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These figures testify to the social definition of “fetish” and to the stereotyped, concrete nature of male sexual preferences.

It is not just that
almost all men
are fetishists that distinguishes male preferences from female ones. Rather, it is that
almost no women
are fetishists. Clinical lore has it that absolutely no women are fetishists.
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I think this is an overstatement. There are rare reports of fetishism in women in the journals, and at least one systematic exploration.
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In this study, a group of enterprising academics advertised in an S-M magazine, soliciting sadists and masochists. There were 182 responses, 25 percent of them from women—excluding professional dominatrixes. The respondents took a sex questionnaire. Some important average differences emerged between the men and women of the “velvet underground.” The men said they acquired their preference when they were boys; the women said their preference took hold when they were adults. The women said they were introduced to S-M by another person, but the men said it was a natural, spontaneous interest from childhood. The men were heterosexual, while the women tended to be bisexual or homosexual (androgenized women?).

I believe that men and women are vastly different in their erotic preferences and maybe even in the process of getting their preferences. Men easily—perhaps universally—acquire very strong arousal to specific, concrete objects. It is the look, the feel, and the smell of these objects that turns men on. Many a man centers his whole life on pursuing them. The objects of male preference are at a lower level than a whole person (Cher’s legs are more of a turn-on than Cher). This happens rarely—perhaps never—to women. Women, rather, acquire erotic preferences for subtler scenarios, involving plot lines, intimacy, and character. The essence is that female sex objects are not objects at all; they are at the level of the whole person, and they focus on personal relationships.

I don’t know why this is so. The proposed theories are little short of silly. One claims that men know when they are aroused (because the hard penis protrudes), and so they can easily find out that something has turned them on. Women, in contrast, have no external signal to tell them they are aroused, and so they cannot easily be conditioned. This theory explains neither why the objects that come to arouse men are so selective nor why women select very different, more social situations.

Another theory—unsatisfying but not silly—says that women, having to bear and raise children, must, if they wish to pass on their genes, be very selective as to the character and prospects of men (with regard to fathering). Muscular forearms, swarthy complexion, shapely calves—in short, appearance—are very poor predictors of successful fathering and sheltering. Sympathetic conversation, wealth, success, social rank (remember Henry Kissinger’s aphorism: “Power is the world’s greatest aphrodisiac”), love songs, vows, and poetry about eternal devotion augur better that the man will help parent the children and not abandon them when the woman’s childbearing is over. Women who adopt this reproductive strategy are more likely to pass on their genes than women who get aroused by superficial appearance. Men, so this theory continues, merely want to spread their sperm around as far as it will go, and being guided by a pretty face, wide hips, nubility, and large breasts ensures the most offspring.
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This explains the facts, but provides no mechanism.

Changing sexual preference
. In the natural course of life, the sexual preferences of adolescence abide, though new ones can be added. Bisexuals, for example, often start out having heterosexual experience only. In their twenties or thirties, however, they begin to act on their secret fantasies, happen into a homosexual encounter, and become actively bisexual. Married couples are introduced to group sex by other “swingers” and sometimes acquire a taste for it.

The old preferences, however, which rarely die of their own accord, can—with explicit therapy—sometimes be altered. There have been extensive studies on the power of therapy to change sexual preference, but their subjects are mostly atypical men: sex offenders. An exhibitionist (flasher) or a pedophile (child molester) may be arrested and then have therapy mandated in addition to, or instead of, jail. Similarly, men who are overcome with guilt and shame or who want to undo their preferences to avoid jail seek out such therapy. In all these cases, there is strong external pressure to change.

The treatment of flashers is typical, and all of the following are used extensively, alone or in combination:

• electric shock or chemical nauseants:
  The patient reads aloud, in the first person, an exciting sequence of vignettes about flashing. When he gets to the climax—exposing his erect penis—painful shock, or smells that are so bad they produce retching, are delivered. As the climactic act becomes aversive, the aversive stimulus is now delivered earlier and earlier in the sequence.
  

• orgasmic reconditioning:
  The man masturbates, narrating his fantasies aloud. As he comes, he substitutes a more acceptable scene for the flashing fantasy.
  

• masturbatory satiation:
  He continues to masturbate for half an hour after ejaculation—a deadly and humiliating task—while rehearsing every variation of flashing aloud.
  

These are mildly effective. In one study with a six-year follow-up, only 40 percent of treated men continue to flash, whereas 60 percent of untreated men reoffend. More recently, therapists have started to treat this problem cognitively. For example, the patient carries cards with exciting vignettes about flashing. On the back of each card is a horrible consequence of flashing and getting caught. Whenever the flasher is tempted, he reads a sequence, turns the card over, and then ruminates on the awful consequences. This may drop reoffending to about 25 percent.
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Patients report changes both in their overt behavior and in their desire to flash. I believe, however, that what they
want
is largely unchanged. But what they
do
is substantially changed. It is very much in the interest of the offender to tell the therapist, the judge, his probation officer, and the world that he no longer wants to flash, and so his reports are not completely believable. But the objective record documents that he actually flashes less. I suspect the offender learns in therapy to restrain himself from acting on his wants. While not a cure, this is all to the good. It also suggests that some change—perhaps not in desire but in action—can occur in sexual preferences.

There is a substantially more effective way to curtail sex offenders: castration. It is used in Europe for very serious offenses—brutal rape and child molesting. Castration is done surgically—cutting off the testicles—or with drugs that neutralize the hormone produced by the testicles. In four studies of more than two thousand offenders followed for many years, the reoffense rate drops from around 70 percent to around 3 percent. Drug castration, which is reversible, works as well as surgical castration.
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In America, castration is called “cruel and unusual punishment” and is not done. When I consider all the wasted years in prison, the high likelihood of repeating the offense, and the special hell that other prisoners reserve for child molesters, castration seems less cruel to me than the “usual” punishment.