To Our Readers

By ELIZABETH VALK LONG President

Ah, sex -- "the most mysterious, misunderstood and rewarding of human functions," as TIME wrote in 1970. The subject then was Masters and Johnson's book Human Sexual Inadequacy, one of four studies of Americans' sex habits to which TIME has devoted cover stories. The others: Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), Shere Hite's Woman and Love, a Cultural Revolution in Progress (1987) and The Social Organization of Sexuality, the University of Chicago study that is the subject of this week's cover.

Kinsey had some shocking news for mid-century America: women enjoy sex. In the cover story Henry Anatole Grunwald (later a TIME managing editor and TIME Inc. editor-in-chief) elegantly examined the emergence of 20th century American women from "under Queen Victoria's long shadow." These liberated souls were "by no means as frigid as they have been made out." Nearly all of them "went in for petting." Even older generations engaged in such hot pastimes as "flirting, flirtage, courting, bundling, spooning, mugging, smooching, larking, sparking." And all women needed romantic attention -- "generalized emotional stimulation," in Kinsey's starchy words -- to get in the mood. Added Grunwald: "This is an ancient truth, known to scientists in the field and to every successful husband . . . "

Human Sexual Inadequacy had a different message: Sex is a skill that can be perfected. The 1970 cover, written by associate editor John Koffend, placed sexual "dysfunction" (a word Masters and Johnson popularized) in the context of "an era of pop sex, which fictionally and visually glorifies coition." Though at the time the two researchers were considered architects of erotic fulfillment, TIME underlined their mission as marriage savers: "The best communication of all is conjugal sex."

By 1987 women had made the vertical Long March to respectability in the office and the bedroom, but according to Hite, they felt abused and desperately confused. The book's statistics and haranguing tone troubled TIME writer Claudia Wallis. Yet under the sheer hype, she discovered a bitter truth that transcended sexual specifics. "Women are finding that they cannot have it all," concluded Wallis. "They are staggering under the burden of trying to be all things to all people -- the nurturing parent, the successful ) careerist, the sexual athlete. Today they are asking men to play all these roles too."

Now, seven years later, Wallis, a senior editor, has supervised our cover on the Chicago sex survey. "There's a world of difference between this week's study and Hite's in 1987," she says. "Hite was provocative, eager to shock, but there were serious credibility problems with her data. Her report probably reflected more about her notion of the war between the sexes than about anything that was happening between the sheets. This Chicago survey has the feel of science. It may not be gospel, but it's the closest thing we've had to an honest picture of America's sex life."

Senior writer Philip Elmer-DeWitt, who wrote the cover story, acknowledges the Shame Factor -- the problem of accepting uncorroborated testimony on practices that many people would be embarrassed to declare. "Everybody loves to talk about sex," he notes, "but not many want to talk about their own sex lives -- especially if they don't have any. Still, I'm impressed by how much dirt the boys from Chicago were able to dig up."

Among the less reticent were people who are paid to discuss sex: therapists, Cosmopolitan editors, Penthouse publishers. "Dr. Ruth Westheimer suggested that one option left out of the study's sexual-preferences section was sex under the armpit," says New York correspondent John F. Dickerson. "Helen Gurley Brown explained her 'rent a husband' theory, where an older single woman can get a married man who 'would be happy to oblige because he's probably not getting it at home.' And Bob Guccione told me he had never met a man who had not masturbated or a woman who had not had a homosexual encounter. He was also rare among the people I spoke with because, in describing sex acts, he did not use the familiar four-letter words."

TIME's reporters pursued their own extensive, intensive survey of Americans, ranging from the founder of a support group for "asexuals" to a member of Sex Addicts Anonymous. Los Angeles reporter Martha Smilgis found that the people she talked with "either believed the report fully or thought it was nonsense. And it was according to their own prejudices and proclivities: Hugh Hefner didn't buy it, but the marriage counselors and Ph.D. types did." If anyone was initially reticent, it was the University of Chicago social scientists who conducted the poll; Edward Laumann, Robert Michael and Stuart Michaels allotted only 90 minutes for their TIME interview. But once the session began, notes Chicago reporter Wendy Cole, "our discussion of sexual fantasies, adultery and homosexuality was so engrossing that more than four hours had passed before we noticed the time. Fortunately, stamina was not a problem for any of us."

In this week's cover story you will find everything you need to know about everything you want to know about sex. And the information will be definitive -- until the next survey.