Sexual Suicide

305 Pages·1973·40.217 MB·English

by  George F. Gilder

SEXUAL
SUICIDE
George F. Gilder
Id
Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co.
©
Copyright 1973 by George F. Gilder. All rights reserved,
including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in
any form. For information, address: Quadrangle/The New
York Times Book Co., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, New York
10022. Manufactured in the United States of America.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside,
Ltd., Toronto.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73-79913
International Standard Book Number: 0-8129-0381-1
Jacket design and book design by James S. Ward, Inc.
Set in Linotype by Pyramid Composition
Production by Planned Production
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Acknowledgments
Si—nce this book was written among people who disagree
with it and s—ince I often learned most from those who resisted
most strongly the author's claim of full responsibility for his
conclusions will be received with unusual enthusiasm. In many
instances I will be acknowledging those over whose protests,
objections, and reproaches this book now reaches publication.
I was introduced to the subject by feminists so appealing
and persuasive that it took me several enjoyable and edifying
years to discover that they were wrong. In addition, my chief
preparation in writing this book was immersion in feminist
literature.
The best of all the some hundred books I read were by
that somewhat ambivalent feminist, Margaret Mead, from
whom I suspect I learned more than most of the feminists who
quote her works. I feel Male and Female is the most important
book published in the social sciences since World War II.
I am told that I am a sexist. I do believe that the differ-
ences between the sexes are our most precious heritage, even
though they make women superior in the ways that matter
most. The feminists refer often in their books to "human be-
ings," but I do not care to meet one. I am only interested in
men and women.
I first discovered this prejudice at a dinner party given by
Peggy Dulaney, a longtime friend and an intelligent feminist,
who is too generous to imagine that men are not her equal.
Knowing her has offered me a continuous education in the
superiority of women. But this prejudice would not have
spurred me into writing a book without the discovery that
even the moderate Republican ladies—of the Ripon Society
and some of their powerful husbands were sexual revolution-
aries. It is Ripon Republicans of both sexes who are largely
responsible for the Nixon administration's contin—uing commit-
ment to job "targets" (i.e., quotas) for women exemplified
in what The New York Times has called the"shift of equal em-
ployment opportunity from ... a predominantly 'black is-
sue' to a woman's issue." As a Ripon member and editor of the
Forum, I felt I should reject this betrayal of the civil rights
movement.
Sally Stafford Nelson, of Baton Rouge, one of the lead-
ing feminists in Louisiana, provided me with both her library
v
Acknowledgments vi
and the generous hospitality of her friends during the writing
of much of this book. I hope she is treated clement—ly by her
Women
colleagues in the National Organization of as well
as by her male antagonists.
David and Peggy Rockefeller made completion of my
writing possible by their encouragement and hospita—lity. The
faith and kindness they have continually shown m—e and the
values of family and service they have embodied are an en-
during part of my life and an inspiration for this book.
Among those who read parts of the manuscript at various
times and gave valuable criticism were Alison Clapp; Susan
ArensbergofAlfredA.Knopf;LeeandKateAuspitzofHarvard;
Jeffrey Bell; and Irving Goldman and John Nields of Sarah
Lawrence College. Professor Goldman's criticism of the an-
thropological sections was especially helpful, as was Alison
Clapp's early aid in developing most of the thematic ideas.
A
useful, generous, and tenacious combatant from the be-
ginning has been Michael Brewer, over whose encouraging
protests much of this book was written. I also should acknowl-
ege the opportune enthusiasm and diligent, incisive editorial
work of Nelson Aidrich Jr. of Harpers.
My family's help has been a vindication of my belief that
it is the crucial institution of civilized society. This book is
dedicated to my parents, who gave me their profound support.
Walter and Cathy Palmer managed the manuscript and the
author at their most ramshackle stages, making the book into
something that could be submitted to a publisher. My sister
Comfort Gordinier contributed several valuable ideas.
Rodand Mellie Gilder accommodated me andthe book at
several important and trying stages, read and offered close
criticism for key chapters and thematic ideas, and in general
gave me the benefit of their long experience in the teaching
and practice of psychology and psychiatry.
I should acknowledge that the book would not be appear-
ing now or in its present form without the continually wise and
valuable counsel of Sidney Gruson of The New York Times or
the resolve and decisiveness of Herbert Nagourney of Quad-
rangle. Together, moreover, they found me a perfect editor,
Carol Southern, who delicately reshaped and socialized the
manuscript and made me like it.
Acknowledgments vii
I would also like to pay tribute to Dr. Reese Alsop, the
best writer in the family who introduced me to the world of
writing; to Rosamond Gilder, who years ago showed me it is
possible to use the word "brobdingnagian" with the same grace
and propriety she uses all the others (it took me several years
of sesquipedalian wrestling to get over it); and to William
McCurdy, the best teacher at Harvard.
And finally a special tribute is due to Jane Stanton, who
still lets me wear my track shoes in public.
George Gilder
Tyringham, Massachusetts
July 8, 1973
To my mother and Gilly.
Contents
Acknowledgments v
Introduction 1
Part One: Love and Family
1. The Balance of Potency 12
2. The Necessities of Love 28
3. The Myths of Open Marriage 46
4. Multiple Mirage 62
Part Two: Work and Society
5. After the Hunt 78
6. Men and Work 90
7. Ghetto "Liberation" 110
8. Women vs. Blacks 120
9. The Sexual Sources of Demagoguery 130
10. The Moderate Extremists 146
11. The Child Care State 154
12. Supporting Families 166
13. The Liberated Job Disaster 178
Part Three: The Sexes at Bay
14. The Male Imperative 192
15. Six Inches for the Holy Ghost 206
16. Sex and Sports 214
17. The Perils of Androgyny 226
18. The Woman's Role 240
19. The Sexual Suicide Technocracy 252
Notes 263
Bibliography 289
Index 299
It is time to declare that sex is too important a subject to
leave to the myopic crowd of happy hookers, Dr. Feelgoods,
black panthers, white rats, answer men, evangelical lesbians,
sensuous psychiatrists, retired baseball players, pornographers,
dolphins, swinging priests, displaced revolut—ionaries, poly-
morphous perverts, and Playboy philosophers all bouncing
around on waterbeds and typewriters and television talk shows,
making "freedom" ring the cash registers of the revolution.
Nothing is free, least of all sex, which is bound to our
deepest sources of energy, identity, and emotion. Sex can be
cheapened, of course, but then, inevitably, it becomes ex-
treme—ly costly to the society —as a whole. For sex is the life
force and cohesive impulse of a people, and their very
character will be deeply affected by how sexuality is managed,
sublimated, expressed, denied, and propagated. When sex is
devalued, propagandized, and deformed, as at present, the
quality of our lives declines and our social fabric deteriorates.
Even the attitude toward sex and sexuality as concepts
illustrates the problem. The words no longer evoke an image
of a broad pageant of relations and differences between the
sexes, embracing every aspect of our lives. Instead "sex" and
"sexuality" are assumed to refer chiefly to copulation, as if our
SEXUAL SUICIDE 2
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sexual lives were restricted to the male limits as if the experi-
ences of maternity were not paramount sexual events. In
fact, however, our whole lives are sexual. Sexual energy ani-
mates most of our activities and connects every individual to
a family and a community. Sexuality is best examined not in
terms of sexology, physiology, or psychology, but as a study
encompassing all the ulterior life of our society.
Our current deformities make a familiar catalogue. This
has been the decade when priests and homosexuals marry and
politicians divorce; when Playboy philosophers in pulpits
preach situational ethics ("if you itch, scratch") to dwindling
audiences, who are already sore from scratching. It has been
a period when all the technology of advertising and publicity
has been applied to arousing sexual excitement, while nothing
new at all has been offered for the relief of the man with his
hand on the bottleneck; a period when every group of com-
—
plainants and protesters, however well situated from Ivy
—
League students to suburban women are decked out in the
heroic vestments of the civil rights movement: "the [student]
[woman] [junior professor] [professional baseball player] is
the nigger of the world"; when the whole crowd is fitted with
the Marxist trappings of a ''new proletariat": Women, stu-
dents, children of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose.
It has been a time when fashionable psychologists pro-
claim that all orifices were created equal ("I'm okay, you're
okay"), and the "missionary position" (which we are all pre-
sumed to know means the man upstairs) is casually dismissed
as the way squares peg round holes. It is a time of wife swap-
ping, group swinging, and gay liberation; a time of dildoes in
drugstore windows and perfume sprays in men's rooms; a time
of oral sex and vaginal sundaes, with a Howard Johnson's
array of flavors advertised in McCalVs. —
It is a time when few things are as they seem and when
appearances are propagated everywhere. In no realm are things
—
less as they seem to the—media to the observer-kings of the
American consciousness than in sex. What is described as the
sexual revolution is a terminal spinning, without traction: the
sexual suicide society.
Among the popular books of the day is Dr. Phyllis Ches-
Introduction 3
ler's Women and Madness} A professor of psychology and a
poet, she believes that American society is driving women
crazy by sexist discrimination and oppression. The only solu-
tion she offers is sexual suicide: the abolition of biological dif-
ferences between men and women. "Science must be used,"
she —says, "to either release women from biological reproduc-
tion or to allow men to experience the process also" [sic].2
At the end of her book is one of those analogies to Nazism.
"How does the Nazi use of the human body for industrial pur-
poses —. . ." she a—sks, "differ from [the American system's]
female or male prostitution?" Ms. Chesler's incredible
book, a best seller, was celebrated on the front page of The
New York Times Book Review.
Also well received was a tract for lesbianism called
Sappho Was a Right-on Woman? Again The Times led the
way. In the past, it observed in its Book Review, lesbianism
had been a burden for the women's movement. But this book
would change all that. In particular it would help overcome,
in the words of The Times review, "the nuclear family, that
cradle of evil." 4 The Times did not explain why the nuclear
family is a "cradle of evil." Perhaps it has something to do with
Nazi Germany (though the Nazis also opposed the nuclear
family and encourag—ed illegitimate births to counteract it.)
A
typical scene a cocktail party in a fashionable Massa-
chusetts suburb. The young woman's voice shook with emo-
tion: "I couldn't bring a child into the world. I just couldn't
do it. It wouldn't be fair." No one in the room seemed sur-
prised. A few n—odded assent. It is a—common refrain of educated
young women from age 15 on in current-day America. /
have no interest in having children. —
A
less fashionable revolutionary mecca the singles bar.
Depicted as a great sexual marketplace in newspaper and
magazine accounts, and groovy indeed to the tourist's eye,
it is deadly to those who seriously partake. Most of them are
essentially unavailable on any profound level. The men are
self-pitying, impotent with girls they like; or they are married
and searching for an image of sexual bliss advertised in all
the magazines as a province of shapely youth performing sex-
ual exotica. The stable and serious girls rarely come back. And