Good Sex Illustrated (23 page)

A lot of feminine frigidity is connected to shortcomings or clumsiness on the part of her partner… when a couple sees a doctor, each case must be considered separately.

(Heavy petting, nonpenetrative sexual relations,
the penis remaining in contact with the vulva without pushing through thehymen
—this type of relations)
leads to a state of tension due to the dissatisfaction of the two partners. The boy must understand that the girl doesn’t have the same reasons as he does to give in, and that she may fear an unwanted pregnancy.

Can sexual relations be painful? In general, no. But losing one’s virginity can be.

Impotence for boys:
it’s the impossibility of having an erection
—
an impossibility connected to not enough desire or too much desire: in such cases, it will pass. Feelings of love that are too strong can paralyze a young boy.

When you’re in danger of being “paralyzed,” you’re a “young boy,” and when you “can tell that a girl isn’t a virgin any more,” you’re a “man.” These are girls who, when they screw, “prefer” chaste caresses to coitus, whether its reserved and frustrating or “complete” but damaging to the-hymen-that-isn’t-important or would risk a pregnancy. Then what causes the “feelings of love that are too strong” that lead, it seems, to male virgins losing their hard-ons, that “too much desire” that produces
premature ejaculations
, which must be associated with impotence, the pain of deflowering, the clumsiness of your partner,
the inhibitions that involuntarily contract the vagina to prevent the penetration of the penis,
and those that slow down to such an extent
the development of a womans sexuality?
A mystery. The remedy for all that? A mystery. Oh, there is one: let frustration demolish your brain and your sex organs, and when you’ve brought your infirmities together within the legitimacy of marriage, go
see a doctor.

So much for the
pleasure
that is
added
to
reproduction.
Now that we’ve come to the end of this chapter full of laughs, let’s get back to serious things:
the couple and motherhood.
Bizarrely, the chapter with this title, which begins with a full-page photo ofmom-baby, is devoted to contraception. We’ll soon discover that it’s not as contradictory as it seems.

The best method of contraception?
The pill, unquestionably.
How do you get it?
A general practitioner, or preferably, a specialist
, distributes it. Do they really give that to 14–16-year-olds?
According to law, minors younger than 21 will need written permission from one of their two parents.
But that’s disgusting!
No, because that law hasn’t been applied yet, and for the time being, there are no legal restrictions to prescribing contraceptives for any age.
Translation, which minors know so well: the only restrictions are moral ones that the doctor can apply if he feels like it. The-story-of-the-pill is repeated everywhere: the right-thinking middle class doctor might say yes to middle class girls if they’re between 18 and 20 and if he knows the family; unfamiliar patients will have a lot less of a chance; he’ll laugh in the face of minors aged 14 and 16—before holding forth with a moralistic speech. Those kids swallow pills that have been pinched and that aren’t right for them, this makes them sick, and the job is done. When girls lack those “womens inhibitions,” we know how to make them come back.

What about other methods of contraception?
The temperature method?
Complicated,
with a failure rate of at least 10%.
The Ogino method?
No good.
No “guffawing” this time? Coitus interruptus:
failure rate of 25% to 30%. It requires an effort of the will that is especially difficult at the moment of orgasm
—but its
most serious
drawback
is its ineffectiveness.
On the other hand,
there are no mental repercussions
for men or women,
provided that it doesn’t make them feel frustrated.
The best kind of tautology: there are no mental drawbacks to this method, the proof being that there is no drawback—on condition that there is no drawback.

Condoms: a
very effective
method, but
does it entail any mental disturbance?
No,
except if using it results in a feeling of being unfulfilled.
And does it?
Everything depends upon the individual and circumstances.
But in general, is it disturbing, frustrating, or not? No answer, since the question isn’t asked. A well-maintained pattern of information: is it black? No, it isn’t black, except when it’s black. When is it black? That depends on its color. End of the “dialogue.”

Condoms can
be easily bought in pharmacies.
They protect against
venereal diseases.
They can be used
without danger while waiting to employ a more appealing method. Is their use advised during sexual relations for the first time?
—
It’s better to choose a method that is in no way bothersome for the two partners—the pill, in particular.
Oh, so in the end condoms that can be easily bought by minors are
bothersome
? And the pill is
preferable,
that prohibited pill that they give you by prescription when they do give it to you unless they don’t give it to you or until the law prevents their giving it to you unless your parents O.K. it? If I know how to read, the good advice being proffered by the authors is saying: rather than be bothered by a condom while having sex today, don’t have sex until you’re old enough to
employ a more appealing method.

The female forms of contraception
the most used? Diaphragms. Can you use them during sexual relations for the first time? No, because usually
the-hymen-that-isn’t-important
isn’t flexible enough to allow the introduction of a diaphragm.

Besides, its use
requires some training and an active contribution on the part of the woman,
because you have to put in the diaphragm before fucking and
take it out 8 hours after.

An
IUD
is much better,
if it is tolerated.
It has to be put in by a doctor, its stays there
permanently and requires no cooperaton on the part of the woman.
Why is it the doctor who puts it in? Because, in the uterine cavity,
strict laws of asepsis must be observed,
if
not you risk getting severe infections.
And there is still, in the end, a
2% risk of failure.

After this cheery and succinct survey of the allowed but ineffective or bothersome methods and the methods that are effective but furnished only by a doctor, we come back to the pill. If you do take it, how do you avoid
getting fat?
The
risk is a lot less
today. Does it make you
nervous? Sometimes,
because it
aggravates preexisting conditions.
Do you get
nauseous?
No,
it passes.
Any other dangers? Lets recall those
small drawbacks
, which end when you stop using the pill:
nausea, weight gain, nervousness, to which must be added changes in pigmentation, hair loss, the occurrence of abnormal loss of blood or a lack of bleeding.
Let’s enumerate
the dangers that can result because after-effects: eventual dangers for the children
that you’ll have, though this hasn’t been proved.
Vascular problems,
yes, admittedly, but that depends on the product. Risk of cancer? It doesn’t seem to be increased by the pill. Risk of
sterility
? No, of course not. The chapter ends with a discussion of the pill for men (no, not for a long time, it’s complicated medically, and psychologically,
too many men still confuse their virility with their fertility
), {
27
} irreversible sterilization, legal therapeutic abortion, male and female sterility due to malformations. It will cite a few countries in which abortion is legal.

This, then, is how the libertarian world of pleasures-without-babies is described. Though you may search in vain for a line fit for helping that legendary “full development of a woman” about which the authors—as long as it’s not about the full development of a minor—nobly pretend to care, you will, however, find 26 pages devoted to preparing in the minds of girls the full development of the Mother: the long chapter minutely studying
pregnancy.

A beautiful pregnant blond, full page, naked, in color; then text and images on fertilization, the egg, the embryo, the fetus, pregnancy, delivery, cesareans, premature births, nursing, the baby. In this case, finally, the information is detailed, carefully thought out, calm, soothing; we no longer hear talk about a “danger” in order to say that it doesn’t exist but that it exists even so; and if this work reminds us that deflowering hurts, here there are gentle explanations of painless childbirth.

This untroubled chapter completes and crowns the “physiological” part of the work. We’ve gotten our fill of knowledge about the body, there is now nothing we don’t know about mothers and fathers, we’ve heard about the organs through descriptions of their diseases, about “first relations” through their setbacks, about contraception through its problems and about motherhood through its pleasures. All that remains is to distort desire, caricaturize childhood, make adolescence seem ridiculous and spread fear one last time. The mission of “psychology.”

We must tell the minor about his family and sexual history, his past, his present, his situations, by showing “causalities” in order to conceal the repression. References to Freud will help a great deal. The goal, which is never lost sight of for an instant, is for the reader to be persuaded at the very end of the book that
precocious sexual relations risk channeling the young toward a mere search for embittered and illusory pleasure
, and that
sexual relations reduced purely to physical pleasure are dissatisfying
(p. 152).

In the preceding chapter, I commented upon these sterling principles. We observed—and will continue to see—how the authors, joining action to words, composed all their work in such a way that even adolescents not sharing this philosophy are at least endowed with the healthy fears and the doctored ignorance of hazy learning to keep them virtuous.

The psychological account conforms to the usual principle of inversion. It describes the internalizations of Order practiced by the child as if they were natural stages in his development; the repressive, socio-familial cultural elements are not a system of pressures that ought to have explained these stages, but only an interesting setting in which each child develops, the place of an exchange and not an incarceration. The legitimate medical discourse universalizes and eternalizes these actions of the social order.

Passages from forbidden-for-your-own-good:

AT WHAT AGE DO YOU BEGIN TO HAVE SEXUAL NEEDS?
An inattentive observer might believe that the ten-year-old child hardly shows any curiosity for sexual matters… This is because he has had to apply all his energy to the first steps of going to school. However, during that difficult period, sexuality may be in a lull but it certainly exists. Some mornings the boy wakes up with an erect penis. The phenomenon is completely normal.

MUST YOU DEVOTE ALL YOURTIMETO WORK?
No, there is a time for play and a time for work… Play, which devebos curiosity, imagination and intelligence, is also good schooling for discipline and sociability.

WHY AREN’T MEN LIKE WOMEN?
Their sex organs are dissimilar, although complementary, and contribute to the same function, reproduction, the birth of a baby. Family and society require different behavior from boys and girls. A boy is naturally aggressive, stronger, more forward and bolder, he’s better at math. A girl is softer, more patient, she devotes herself to working with her hands (decorating, cooking), she exhibits thoughtfulness and consistency.

The boy models his attitude and his behavior on the heroes of the latest western, the little girl on the gentle and timid heroine of a soap opera.

The father and mother represent the entire universe for the child. Toward them he or she feels love mixed with jealousy, demanding complete possession of dad or mom, depending on whether the child is a girl or boy. Thus, learning about affection begins with the parent of the opposite sex.

Encounters between girls and boys, which continue to increase, allow each to become more familiar with the opposite sex, but also to differentiate from them. Until the age of 10, the two sexes were in close contact, teased each other, stopped talking to one another, despised each other, made up, but their games are very different; the boys take refuge in marbles, fighting, boxing or football; the girls prefer dancing, sewing, hopscotch or knitting.

Even in co-ed schools, boys and girls learn in this way to distinguish between masculine and feminine roles. These roles are different but of equal importance, neither can claim superiority over the other.

WHY ARE WE SO INTERESTED IN SEXUALITY AT 15 AND SO LITTLE INTERESTED IN IT AT 10?
The child of 10 is rich in experience, he lives a balanced life in the environment of his family, where the parents serve as exceptional models, and in the environment of school, where he learns essential tasks: he disassociates himself from sexual elements in order to complete his physical, intellectual and social development; in order to become a civilized being, Freud would say, you must pass through such a phase of sexual lull and latency.

Puberty signals the awakening of the instinct.

IS IT ONLY THE BODY THAT CHANGES DURING PUBERTY?
No, the body is not the only beneficiary of this transformation. Intelligence
undergoes, at the same time as the sex instinct, new development. The adolescent’s relations with those around him also change a lot.