Good Sex Illustrated (26 page)

In addition, the sexual freedom of the minor is, in my opinion, the first of the political problems to pose: with it, and only with it, can the process of the reproduction of power be checked and cancelled. When it comes to the sexuality of minors, all the countries of exploitation, whether capitalist or communist, socialist or fascist, have the same ideology, which involves the familial sacrifice of the child for the satisfaction of those who are already exploited. And everywhere the body has the same status, suffers the same proscriptions, the same insipid or police-like indoctrination, whether it’s the unctuous style of the West or themilitary style of the Chinese; and from this comes the essential importance of any struggle that, releasing childhood and adolescence from the clutch of adult power, disinvesting desire of any quest for ownership, commandeering and profit, can undermine the domination of exploitive structures—because obedience, privatization, attainment of power will no longer be the only chances imposed upon the existence of desire.

Notes

1.
Encyclopédie de la vie sexuelle; de la physiologie à la psycholope
, by (male) Doctors Cohen (gynecology) and Tordjman (psychosomatic medicine); and (female) Doctors Verdoux and Kahn-Nathan (gynecology); and by Madam Masse (sociology); with Madame Morand, psychotherapist, for the second volume, Hachette, 5 vol., 1973. The photos reproduced here were taken from these works.

2. In a next brief volume, using the same analytical focus, I’ll try to tackle some risque themes and other nasty subjects that are not within the framework of this book or only lightly touched upon within it: pornography, impotence, group sexuality, anal sex, prostitution, etc. I will use (within the strict limits of my resistance to the reading of them, which is trying enough) certain liberal-repressive texts on sex information intended for adults: journals, books, official publications.

3. I am counting only images where the baby is alone: those in which he appears in a situation (thighs of mother, arms of parents, the family circle, etc.) are also very numerous.

4. A recent example of the latter:
The Erotic Function
, by Dr. G. Zwang—a monument to scientistic mania, false liberalism, café psychology and the erotology of the hospital staff room. Nevertheless, certain doctors have sung the authors praises for his “advanced” opinions about conjugal life. This doesn’t prevent Dr. Zwang, starting with his preface, from admitting being a fanatic paternalist, double-fisted moralist, supporter of Western Progress, heterosexual with a hard one, guide and censor of humankind—and he goes to it with a furor that leaves far behind the fascism-in-good-taste to which old-fashioned sexology restricted itself. Note that Dr. Zwang is a “mad scientist”—because there’s no longer anything scientific about him. Sexology is definitely the only modern discipline where—just because he is a doctor—somebody can “turn science upside down” to such a degree without anyone being shocked by or even conscious of it.

5. Excerpt from the presentation sheet (“A Few Words to Parents”) inserted in vol. 1 of the
Encyclopedia
(ages 7–9).

6. Three insignificant drawings aren’t classifiable.

7. The word itself is only written once, although the book implies it from beginning to end: “Do you know how Aunt Nicole and Uncle John knew each other before getting married?”

8. Unless otherwise indicated, the passages in italics are quotations from the volume commented upon.

9. According to the
Simon report,
73% of French men (93% of Americans, according to the
Kinsey report)
do. On the other hand, only 19% of French women were familiar with masturbation (62% for Americans). Generally, this very low figure has been attributed to the extreme guilt women feel about the matter—but no one wants to say whether they’re ashamed to the point of not jerking off, or if they do jerk off but refuse to “admit it,” even for an anonymous survey. Note that when it comes to this subject, 14% of the men and 17% of the women in France explicitly refused to answer this question about their “pleasures for one”; and that, along with homosexuality, the subject seems to represent the most guilt-ridden aspect of French sexuality.

10. Obviously I wanted to say that many homosexual amusements at that age are as normative as they come, conforming to conjugal orthodoxy, to its inequalities and restrictions. Moreover, homosexuality in itself is not always exempt from this.

As for the shocking comparison between buggery and being pregnant, it goes without saying that as soon as the pleasure of having a cock inside your body stops being depreciated, the honor of having a fetus there won’t be overemphasized. And it isn’t my fault if the
Encyclopedia
repeats in every manner that the thrills of pregnancy arc due to the presence of a little male who is “moving” inside a woman. Jeans exclamation—
he’ll play rugby!
—has what it takes to awaken in the ladies some very appealing fantasies (cf. the female public hysteria at sports events), and in certain homosexuals as well, of course. Not to mention the fathers themselves…

11. It should be pointed out that among pubescent and prepubescent children, there is no difference in
capacity
for pleasure; all that changes, more or less, is the acting out of this pleasure, its codes, its roles, its socialization.

12.
Le Figaro
, July 23, 1973.

13. ibid.

14.
Le Monde,
July 20, 1973.

15.
Agression/violence dans le monde moderne
(Agression/Violence in the Modern World), Calmann-Lévy, 1972. Doctor Hacker claims to have democratic convictions, faith in the saving power of science, Christian humanism full of emotion about the suffering of humanity in prey to violence. Thus he makes an expert psychiatrist for American federal courts, which means that he helps determine whether a criminal should be sentenced to electroshock or the electric chair, to a cell in an asylum or the gas chamber.

He also tells about having put his talents at the service of the police in order to help them identify, uncover and arrest certain psychotic criminals whose idiosyncrasies put cops off the track.

16.
France-Soir
, September 13, 1972. Here again, what’s said confirms the “normality” of the torturers: they seem reassuring, “as expected.” These are people like everybody. Like you and me!

17. Doctor A. Haim,
Les suicides d’adolescents
, Payot 1970. The figure for attempts is very difficult to establish: each time that it is possible, they are hidden or bowdlerized by the “guilty” one’s circle.

In addition, we observe two times as many suicides among boys as among girls. Without commentary, since no one knows what a boy or a girl can be. We only know into which kind of truly distinct machine each infant is transformed by society, based on biological sex, and consequently it is probably these artificial psychosocial data that also determine the difference between the dead.

18.
Hachene Encyclopedia
, volume 3 (14–16 years).

19.
Le Monde,
February 18–19, 1973. The citations that follow are extracted from this article.

20.
Hachette Encyclopedia,
vol. 14–16 years, caption for a photograph.

21. These reflexes of obedience are due only to an acquired docility, and we can guess how: they are exactly those of the battered child. Whether mentally or physically doesn’t matter; the result is the same, and it happens to the majority of kids in families.

22. The passages in italics that follow are taken from the volume commented upon.

23. Preface
For Teenagers
at the beginning of the volume. This whorish foreword is followed by another that (behind the young readers back—with stunning bad manners, since he can read it, too) is inrended
for parents.
It is explained to them—while dealing carefully with their oversensitivity as owners and their touchy morality—who the adolescent is: an unhappy, anxious, sexually obsessed, wretched rebel whom they just had to address in a familiar, informal way. For several virtuous reasons, they go on to say, he must be granted “complete sexual information” (sic)—
it’s better that there be no censorship at all,
the authors declare courageously. No, the adolescent must be faced head on, gendy, you should play it with tolerance, invite him to pour out his “problems,” cleanse him of his disturbances, because
he must achieve a certain identification of the image that he has of himself with the parental images.
Something that the violent parent/child relationship endangers and that the good educator will know how to manufacture:
all dialogue has a therapeutic virtue.

One will appreciate the quality of the “dialogue,” the elegance of the technique—and the incredible crudeness of the avowal.

24. From the preface
For Teenagers.

25. Some data on conjugal mores in France (The Simon Report, 1970). Minimum age of the interviewees: 20.

Positions practiced by the couples: 11% seated, 13% standing, 20% dad on mom’s buttocks (but not inside them), 55% mom on dad’s tummy-tum-tum. 98% dad on top of mom. Apparently mom-on-top-of-dad is quite widespread; but adolescents mustn’t “identify” with that upside-down “parental image,” so not a word is said about it. We’ll see when the basis for good roles will be firmly asserted (98%), after marriage. That is when the book will tell you everything.

The privatization of coitus: only 10% of the men claim to have had sex “in the presence of a third”; 4% have done it “often.” But only 1% of the women have done it. Does this indicate that threesomes are done 90% of the time with whores, or that it happens among men?...

Do they have sex a lot? All the sexologists will answer that it’s the quality that counts, and not the quantity—since it’s obvious that the less you do it, the better you know how to do it. Statistics: 57% of the interviewees had sex during the month before the study. These 57% are composed of: 17% who screwed 1 to 4 times, 20% 5 to 14 times, 10% 15 to 25 times. This also means that 60% of French people only had sex 0 to 4 times during that month. They have to have done it too much the month before. In any case, we are told that French people 20 to 30 years old, living in cities and not going to church, fuck more than the others.

How do they have sex? It happens that 59% of the couples masturbate together, 58% indulge in sucking (but only 8% come that way “frequently”). 19% of the men say they’ve lucked women in the ass; 14% of the women admit to having been.

The most interesting. During their lives, on average, the men have 12 partners, the women 2. (The exact statistics are 11.8 and 1.8; I’m rounding them off.) 46% of the women have only been intimate with one man; 2% have been intimate with 6 to 14 of them. As for males, 16% have had more than 15 partners in their lives.

5% of the men and 2% of the women have said they have had homosexual relations in their life; 11% of the men and 17% of the women refused to answer. In the U.S.A., 37% of the men and 13% of the women answered yes (Kinsey Report for the period 1930–1950).

26. The Simon Report: 56% of the men and women state that the amount of time they devote to “foreplay” is satisfactory (0 to 9 minutes: 43%, 10 to 14 minutes: 21%, 15 to 45 minutes: 23%).

31% of the interviewees find “foreplay” insufficient, and the majority of these dissatisfied people are… men.

27. A “confusion” the
Encyclopedia
will not spread, as indicated by several questions dealt with: Can a boy be a father before puberty? At what age should you have an operation to preserve normal testicular function if the balls don’t descend into their sac? How many spermatozoa do you need to have in your sperm for fertilization to be possible? Not to mention drawings and their ovule-sprinkling erections.

28. Volume 17–18 years will clearly go to the limit in the expression of these cautions: masturbation leads to narcissism, which leads to homosexuality, a psychological disease and social deviance. Such is the theory and “thought” of our doctors.

29. Masters and Johnson (the only famous “American scientists” to which the Hachette text is able to allude about this subject) have, on the contrary, discovered the opposite.

The authors of the Encyclopedia wish in this case to discourage unhealthy curiosity, dangerous admiration, emasculated humiliation that would cause, apparendy, fearfulness in the presence of girls. In addition, the latter must be taught that all “penises” are the same and therefore be dissuaded from playing the bird-catcher.

But to get back to the American researchers, they observed the following point (leaving us dumbfounded in the face of such “experiments”—soon state-of-the-art sexology will know as much about this as the crude sexology of women who like to iuck and homosexuals): the longer a cock is when it’s limp, the less it changes size when it gets hard—all its proportions remaining the same. Example: limp cocks of around 9 cm will become hard cocks of around 14–15 cm; limp cocks measuring from 12 to 15 cm will become hard cocks of 16.5 to 18 cm.

We can see that the difference in length between limp cocks doesn’t go away when they harden: they are transmitted to the differences between hard cocks, lightly decreasing or not at all.

Consequently, the dimensions are and remain quite variable, regardless of the mood of the sex object. What is the range of these differences in dimension? Up to twice the size, and even more. 99% of the hard cocks measure between 10 and 22.5 cm, depending on the individual (adults). The remaining 1% corresponds to micro- or macro-exceptions.

The extremes, of course, are in the minority. If you go hunting for them, and start considering 90% of the hard cocks rather than 99%, the range becomes narrower: 11.5 to 19.5 cm. Outside the “quagmire” of the 13-16 cm (a variation that is already enough to create a lot of discrimination, humiliation and pride), one notices two important and equal groups: firstly, the 11.5–12.5 cm, and secondly, the 17–18 cm.

(As a parenthesis, jerking off, according to Science, definitely does not wear it out and doesn’t make it grow, either; maybe it ends up making cocks puff up a little fuller than they did).