Masters & Johnson on Homosexuality

No doubt about it. Gynecologist William Howell Masters, 63, and Psychologist Virginia Johnson, 54, are a contemporary phenomenon. Since 1954 the famous sex-research duo have sold nearly 750,000 hard-cover copies of their five books, trained 7,000 sex therapists, observed more than 10,000 orgasms in their St. Louis lab, and treated 2,500 "sexually dysfunctional" couples, achieving a remarkable success rate of 80%. Along the way, they have become undisputed stars of a burgeoning sexual research industry, a fact acknowledged last year when the board of their Reproductive Biology Research Foundation finally persuaded them to change its name to the Masters and Johnson Institute.

Like their predecessor Alfred Kinsey. they have found that poking into the sex lives of Americans can be unsettling. Their first and most impressive book. Human Sexual Response, published in 1966, was a meticulous, pioneering inquiry into the physiology of sex; it dispelled myths about this taboo subject that even doctors believed in-for example, that sexual activity stops with age. But their work, especially such controversial aspects of it as their use of sexual surrogates as partners assisting in the treatment of impotent men. brought upon them the wrath of the pious.

Now M & J apparently feel that the public is ready for their clinical findings on a more controversial form of sex: homosexuality. They can hardly be accused of rushing into print-the homosexual research project began in 1964 and the laboratory work was finished in 1968. The book reports on the sexual performance of 176 homosexuals-94 men, 82 women -ranging in age from 21 to 54. The homosexuals were compared with two groups of heterosexuals: 567 men and women culled from the original participants in the Human Sexual Response study and 114 new volunteers. As before, these human guinea pigs went through their sexual paces in the M & J laboratory, with the ever vigilant scientists standing by notebooks in hand.

Masters and Johnson are at last letting the public in on what they found. In Boston next week Little, Brown and Co. is publishing their widely awaited Homosexuality in Perspective ($17.50), a densely documented 450-page tome that has already prompted gossipy guesses about what it does and does not reveal.

Voyeurs will have to search hard for easy delights. The study concentrates on the bodily processes of sex. in highly technical language, and has almost nothing to say about the psychology, ethics or origins of homosexuality, nor does it address (he question of whether the lack of any procreative aspect to sex affects homosexuality. The conclusions are stated with caution and caveats-the sample is small and may not be representative of the general homosexual population. There is also a warning that sex in the lab may differ from sex at home. As Masters told TIME Correspondent Ruth Galvin: "We can't say what happens beneath the sheets when the lights are out." The prose is opaque, studded with such assaults on English as "stimulative approach opportunity" (foreplay) and "vocalized performance concerns" (talking about sex). Still, Masters and Johnson have produced a thought-provoking inquiry into the sexual life of homosexuals. Some highlights:

> Committed homosexuals (those who have lived together at least one year) have a more relaxed understanding of their partners' sexual needs than most heterosexuals, married and unmarried, presumably because it is easier to understand one's own sex than the opposite sex.

> Homosexuals and heterosexuals they studied-all of them preselected for "sexual efficiency"-have about the same low rate of failure to reach orgasm: 3%.

> "Ambisexuals." M & J's term for their admittedly small sampling of twelve bisexuals who are equally attracted to both sexes, have few sex fantasies and rarely fantasize about real people.

> In lesbian lovemaking. which many sex researchers believe can teach heterosexual males a thing or two about how to approach women, committed couples devote an "extraordinary" amount of time to sexual play. For example, stimulation of the breasts, usually begun by heterosexual men within 30 seconds of sexual activity, begins much later among lesbians.

> Prolonged lovemaking without orgasm can cause lower abdominal pain in women, comparable to the familiar testicular pain in men.

> Heterosexual sex fantasies are common among homosexuals, mirroring the homosexual fantasies occasionally indulged in by many heterosexuals.

Perhaps the most intriguing finding is not about homosexuals, but about heterosexuals. As Masters and Johnson tell it, heterosexuals are generally bumblers in their lovemaking: they hurry sex, misread signals, and communicate poorly. Men usually assume, wrongly, that lubrication of the vagina means that the woman is ready for intercourse. Many women have no idea how men like to be touched sexually, and most men massage the female genitals in a straightforward gung-ho style that women find harsh. And enjoyment of sex is clouded by the fear of not reaching orgasm. Say Masters and Johnson: "Preoccupation with orgasmic attainment was expressed time and again by heterosexual men and women during interrogation after each testing session."

A third of all heterosexual women said that their breasts are not a particularly important erogenous zone, yet many considered breast play exciting because men seemed to enjoy it. Unlike lesbians, who knew that touching the breasts can be painful during certain times of the menstrual cycle, heterosexual men almost always touched the breasts in the same way. Even when breast play caused pain, the wives reported the fact to the researchers, but not to their husbands. Say Masters and Johnson: "When the husbands were queried separately, they expressed surprise at their wives' cyclic distress, and the unanimous reaction was 'Why didn't she tell me?' "

The sex researchers suggest an obvious answer: poor sexual communication between men and women rests on the assumption, shared by both sexes, that men are natural leaders and experts in sex and therefore must be doing the right thing. "The burden of sexual performance is on the man," says Johnson, "the burden of trying to guess when she's interested, what she wants, how she wants it, and so on." Adds Masters: "What we have established in this book is that the male will have to give up his position as sex expert and the one with the greater sexual facility -which he doesn't have.".

Homosexuals, who do not have the burden of deciphering the opposite sex, generally communicate better. Committed, attached homosexuals are less preoccupied with orgasm than married heterosexuals, and more aware of the exact level of their partners' sexual excitement. And single gays did better than single straights. Masters and Johnson found the same patterns among the am-bisexuals: they acted like homosexuals when they were with homosexuals (e.g., more communication) and like heterosexuals while making heterosexual love (e.g., an assumption that the male should take the lead). To Masters and Johnson, this is clearly a result of "cultural influence" -ambisexuals pick up different cues on how heterosexuals and homosexuals make love.

The ambisexuals seemed well adjusted. They had no psychiatric or work problems, but were detached and lonely, and fantasized very little, a fact that the researchers cannot explain. The chapter on sex fantasies conies with a deflating warning: don't make too much of the findings because they came from only 132 people, were gathered a decade or more ago, and will not be reported in full until the next Masters and Johnson book, Human Sexual Inadequacy II, due in 1981. Still, the preliminary findings show that fantasies of forced sex were the most popular fantasies among lesbians and the second most popular among homosexual men, heterosexual men and heterosexual women.

The primary fantasy found in the two heterosexual groups was a recurring daydream of sex with a different partner. On the other hand, the leading fantasies of gay men involved body parts-usually the genitals and buttocks. Homosexual fantasies about forced sex were more violent and sadistic than those among heterosexuals. Straight women repeatedly conjured up images of gang rape but the assaults were relatively tame: although the woman is given no choice in the matter, she is treated lovingly by a circle of panting admirers. In most cases the lesbian version of these fantasies showed a theme of revenge against another woman. The daydreamer engineers the humiliation of the woman and then stands by enjoying it. Straight men had less violent fantasies about forced sex than gay men, and in fact played the part of rapist slightly less often than they did that of the rapee-a helpless male ravished against his will by a group of lusty women.

The finding that homosexuals often fantasize about having heterosexual sex confirms reports from some psychologists and counselors. For instance, in the recent book on female homosexuality Our Right to Love: A Lesbian Resource Book, Los Angeles Clinical Psychologist Nancy Toder reports that many of her lesbian patients talk of sexual feelings or dreams about men. Toder thinks that these musings are partly out of curiosity, partly reminiscences of sleeping with men. There is no evidence, however, that homosexuals dream of straight sex any more than heterosexuals dream of gay sex.

One of the book's most unexpected findings did not come out of the homosexual research project, but from sex therapy provided for gays-itself something of a pioneering venture. Between 1968 and 1977 the researchers treated, for various sexual problems, 151 homosexuals, including 54 men and 13 women who wanted to convert or revert to heterosexuality. M & J do not list a success rate for such conversions, only a known failure rate. That failure rate is now at 35%, and is not expected to exceed 45% when all the five-year follow-ups are completed. For professional therapists, many of whom believe that such conversions are rare or impossible, this is likely to be the book's most surprising statistic. It would mean that a permanent, or at least longterm, switch to heterosexuality is possible more than half the time among gays who are highly motivated to change.

Masters and Johnson consider these findings subsidiary to the main, and really not very surprising, point of the book: there are no differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals in the physical processes of lubrication, erection, ejaculation and orgasm. Says Masters: "The entire orgasmic experience is indistinguishable." Indeed, the researchers believe that their demonstration of "nearly identical response vectors" will gradually lead to more public acceptance of homosexuality.

That judgment is questionable, for public opposition to homosexuality hardly depends on the notion that gays have different kinds of orgasms. M & J are probably right, however, to suggest that one significant byproduct of their book will be better medical care for homosexuals, who have been badly treated by doctors. In the past, for instance, some doctors refused to give them rectal examinations for fear of causing arousal, a concern that has never been shown by gynecologists conducting vaginal examinations. Says Dr. Robert Kolodny, M & J's heir apparent at the research institute: "Documenting the similarity of physiological process gives less excuse for the health-care professional to shrink from treatment of the homosexual patient, under the pretext that his health problems may be in some way different."

Though Masters and Johnson are scrupulously neutral in their attitudes toward homosexuality, their latest study is sure to have a social impact simply because it devotes so much attention to the gay life. As Johnson says: "People who stop and think will say, hey, these are somebody's brothers and sisters, wives and husbands, sons and daughters, friends and neighbors, and they are loved and loving human beings." The book has another implicit message for heterosexuals: it is that homosexuality is not going to go away, whether society ignores it, accepts it or rejects it. In fact, by looking honestly, if critically, at the gay life, straight men and women may learn important lessons in lovemaking. Among them: that nothing succeeds so much as treating sexual partners with consideration, understanding and unhurried gentleness. Says Masters, "These are the big things to come out of this book at long range, I have a hunch."

And perhaps something more general and therapeutic as well. Masters and Johnson's physiological approach in all their work has drawn much fire from those who rightly point out that there is more to human affection than rates of orgasm. But that same narrow focus on biology has given to many readers both knowledge and a sense of legitimacy about sex that they never had, and that can be a liberation for men and women of any persuasion.

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