Group Sex as Belonging, Status, Identity, and Affirmation
For my friend Doug’s bachelor party, he booked a huge suite in Vegas. There were five of us, including a guy named Jason whom I’ve privately called “Manwhore” since high school. Jason was a big, good-looking guy, about 6′ 3″ and very athletic. Well dressed, smart. He was kind of an asshole, but we all still hung out. He was fun to party with because he was always picking up girls. He could drink a lot and handled his liquor well.
Doug was on a mission to get laid before getting married. Friday night, we all got really drunk and no one hooked up. Even Jason decided not to, because the girls who were hanging on him weren’t good-looking enough or something like that. By Saturday, the situation was dire. Doug was not going to be happy if he didn’t have sex on this trip. Early in the evening, we met some girls in the casino. Doug started hitting on them hard but one of them really liked Jason—it was obvious. Jason looked good that night. He was even wearing a sports coat. So Doug decided he would take the other one. At that point, he didn’t care. But she and her friend had already made a pact, and eventually, even though she liked the attention, Doug’s girl told him the truth. She was not going anywhere with him unless her friend could have sex with Jason.
By this time, Jason was already off chasing other women.
Of course, now Doug was pissed—his friend had bailed on his bachelor party and he’d spent a lot of time on this girl—but he still wanted to get laid bad enough that we started hunting for Jason.
How do you find a manwhore in Vegas?
Everyone was drinking a lot of Red Bull and vodka. We looked all over the casino. Doug left several messages on Jason’s phone. “Dude, come back. We have to fuck these girls.” He also kept texting his girl, asking her to wait a little longer. We went to other clubs and casinos. Still no luck. Now the night was all about looking for Jason. We weren’t focused on meeting new girls anymore or having fun.
When we found Jason, he was drinking at a bar in our hotel with two women. Doug said something lame to him, like, “Dude, you have to fuck that other girl. This is my last chance to get laid. This is it. It’s your gift to me.” Jason said he didn’t want to fuck that one. He didn’t like her. He had two girls at the bar and wasn’t leaving.
Doug was angry. I don’t remember much about the fight or what else they said to each other. Finally, the security guards told them to cool it. A few of the guys tried to talk Jason into “taking one for the team” but Jason turned his back.
The rest of us returned to the room to sleep. Doug was barely talking to anyone, but sometimes he’d go off on a tirade about how much of an asshole Jason was and how they weren’t friends anymore. He muttered something about changing the key to the room, but we were all too drunk to seriously consider doing something that complicated. I think we were all both mad and envious of Jason.
A few hours later, the manwhore bursts in and turns on the light. He’s with a petite, very young, very hot Asian girl. They’re both wasted and loud. “Look what I won at the craps table,” he yells. “She’s got a great ass.” He picked her up, carried her towards us, and lifted up her dress. The girl didn’t say anything, just giggled a lot like a drunk college girl. We affirmed that she had a nice ass. One of the guys told him we were trying to sleep—we had the pull-out couches in the main room—so Jason carried the girl into Doug’s room with her dress still hiked up and threw her on the bed. Doug and the other guy woke up. Doug yelled, “What the hell are you doing in here?” A few seconds later, we heard laughing.
Doug forgot that he was never speaking to Jason again.
I grabbed my camera and went in to check out what was happening. All three guys were on the bed. They were all muscled, big dudes, and the girl looked really waify by comparison. Doug and the other guy were touching her, while Jason kissed her and pulled off her clothes. He threw her dress on the floor and slid her underwear down her legs. She seemed very drunk but wasn’t protesting. She kept laughing. I started snapping pictures. The guys noticed that her tampon string was hanging out, and they moved her around so I could get it in the photos. The bloody string grossed me out, but there I was, taking pictures of it to document Doug’s success.
After taking pictures, I went back to the other room. That was when they started having sex with her. I suppose I could have joined in. Part of me wanted her and wanted to be on the bed with them. It was 5:00 a.m. She was naked and hot and we’d been talking all weekend about getting laid so I was horny.
But I just couldn’t do it. I was feeling more sober at that point, and still hung over from the night before. I was also feeling sorry for the girl. It’s not like she didn’t want to be there but they weren’t really being that nice to her. I’ve always been the voice of reason with that group, the one whose superego worked overtime.
There’s not enough room, I told myself.
I went to sleep.
They all had sex with her and sent her home sometime in the night. I doubt they called a taxi for her. The next morning, there were bloody condoms all over the room and the sheets were bloody. The guys high-fived when they saw the mess in the daylight, celebrating, but the two of us who didn’t have sex with her told them they were disgusting for leaving everything out like that.
I still think Jason brought her back to the room that night to share her with Doug because he felt bad about the fight. He was an asshole, especially to girls, and to all of us that night, but he was also a proponent of Doug having a “last hurrah.” In the end, he was the one who delivered it.
In Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá argue that “socio-erotic exchanges” (or S.E.Ex) “strengthen the bonds among individuals in small-scale nomadic societies (and, apparently, other highly interdependent groups), forming a crucial, durable web of affection, affiliation, and mutual obligation.”[1] The Canela, a Brazilian Indian tribe, is presented as an example of people who exhibit a “community-building, conflict-reducing human sexuality.” The Canela practiced ritual group sex between multiple males and a female until at least the 1970s, minimizing jealousy and sexual possessiveness in relationships.[2] Quoting from anthropologists William and Jean Crocker, who first went to study the Canela in 1957, Ryan and Jethá propose that in a cultural context where sharing and cooperation is valued over individual accumulation and competition, “it is easy to understand why women chose to please men and why men chose to please women who expressed strong sexual needs. No one was so self-important that satisfying a fellow tribesman was less gratifying than personal gain.”[3]
Ryan and Jethá view the development of similar rituals of socio-erotic exchange across unrelated cultures—the Matis, the Mojave, the Tahitians, and so on—as evidence that such exchanges “probably serve important functions” for humans. In an ancestral environment, nomadic foragers lived in highly interdependent and “fiercely egalitarian” groups, sharing food and resources—and each other—to survive. Multiple intersecting sexual relationships, what Ryan and Jethá refer to as “promiscuity,” although without today’s negative connotations, created communities where children were cared for communally and men shared paternity.[4] In such an environment, women did not need to barter sex for male protection and access to resources; instead, female sexual availability increased “sharing, cooperation, and peaceful stability” in the group.[5] Asserting that “human sexuality probably evolved and functioned as a social bonding device and a pleasurable way to avoid and neutralize conflict” is not silly romanticism, they argue. Rather than being “noble,” such a communal orientation was an effective way to survive given the conditions in which foragers lived.
Examples of “shamelessly libidinous behavior,” Ryan and Jethá maintain, can be found “throughout the world, past and present,” providing “voluminous scientific evidence” for “an alternative narrative of human sexual evolution” where women’s libidos rivaled men’s, paternity was not necessarily an issue, and nonmonogamy was the norm.[6] “Many explorers, missionaries, and anthropologists support this view,” they write, “having penned accounts rich with tales of orgiastic rituals, unflinching mate sharing, and an open sexuality unencumbered by guilt or shame.” (Although evidence for sperm competition in humans is presented to support their challenge to the traditional evolutionary narrative, the name is somewhat unfortunate, a Hobbesian interpretation of “each sperm for itself” that might have taken a different tone if named by a Canela scientist. So, even if reproductive access underlies these exchanges, a belief in shared paternity results in goodwill rather than competition—“the cells fight in there so males don’t have to fight out here.”)[7] Despite the fact that monogamous marriage, nuclear families, and the elevation of self-interest over cooperation are considered “natural,” then, Ryan and Jethá suggest these are historical aberrations—a claim that has important social and political implications to those who wish to either liberalize or restrict sexual behavior. The development of agriculture, they surmise, initiated a significant departure from prehistorical human subsistence patterns of foraging and was responsible for these sea changes in human sexuality and social life, causing us to veer “into misery, scarcity and ruthless competition a hundred centuries ago.”[8]
Ryan and Jethá’s argument about human sexuality extends back into prehistory through debates about whether humans are more similar to chimpanzees or bonobos, primates that are both 98.5 percent genetically similar to humans. Chimps and bonobos also share 99.6 percent of their genomes with each other, although they have different reputations: Bonobos for being female dominated, peaceful, and oriented toward sharing; chimps as male dominated, violent, and hierarchical. Bonobos resolve disputes and bond through sex, sometimes in groups; chimps, on the other hand, rape and kill. For reasons beyond the scope of this book to evaluate, Ryan and Jethá embrace bonobos as more representative of ancestral human sexuality than chimpanzees. The traditional Canela way of life, with its bonobo-like lack of possessiveness and acceptance of—even insistence on—female sexual availability, thus serves as a fascinating foil to contemporary Western social organization and sexual mores, descended from the Victorian era. Their argument also probes tentatively into modern times, as they speculate that perhaps athletes who “share” women, musicians who sleep with their “most enthusiastic female fans,” and even swingers are practicing similar types of S.E.Ex that “offer a measure of security in an uncertain world.”
That there is an alternative narrative of human sexual evolution certainly seems reasonable, although I leave it to evolutionary psychologists, biologists, and historians to duke it out over the specific claims raised in Sex at Dawn. After all, whether humans are ultimately “supposed to be” monogamous is not at issue for me. My focus is on those humans who are decidedly not monogamous, and their ranks are full enough for me to have explored this topic for almost a decade already and probably for many more years in the future. Studying group sex means routinely encountering examples of women whose libidos rival men’s and of nonmonogamous socio-erotic exchanges that create alliances. Ryan and Jethá’s assertion that “our species has an innate capacity for love and generosity at least equal to our taste for destruction, for peaceful cooperation as much as coordinated attack, for an open, relaxed sexuality as much as for jealous, passion-smothering possessiveness” also makes sense. I am less certain, however, as to how these conclusions fit together—at least using the ethnographic data available to us. Does a community-building, conflict-reducing sexuality based on female sexual availability, nonmonogamy, and frequent socio-erotic exchanges necessarily lead to a particular kind of society (peaceful, cooperative) or experience of sexuality (pleasurable, less problematic, “unencumbered by guilt or shame”)?
My reading of the Crockers’ ethnographic work on the Canela, for example, was more ambiguous. Granted, the Crockers painted a compelling picture of tribal ideals based on sharing resources and minimizing conflict. Noncompetitiveness and cooperation were considered “manly” while fighting was associated with women, animals, and other Brazilian tribes. Multipartner sexual encounters were important in fostering such an environment, although sexual behavior was still subject to restrictions. Children were taught that sex was a “joyful” experience, and sexual joking was frequent. But virginity was economically valuable, and masturbation and homosexuality were thus forbidden. By age 6, female relatives sheltered young girls from gangs of boys who tried to experiment with them sexually. Girls began having sexual relations between the ages of ten and thirteen and boys between twelve and fourteen. If a young man had sex with a virgin, his kin paid a fine if he decided not to marry her; if the couple stayed together, the girl’s family delivered a large “meat pie” to his house in celebration. Although marriage did not imply monogamy, young women lived apart from their husbands in the early phase of their marriages and faced restrictions on the age of their sexual partners and the frequency of intercourse, practices that presumably delayed conception. However, after her “belt-painting ceremony,” which demonstrated her husband’s family’s acceptance of her, but before childbirth, a woman was expected to “please most men with her sexual favors.” This period of a woman’s life was also considered her opportunity for “great sexual freedom and fun”; after her first child, she curbed her sexual activity and took on more domestic responsibilities.[9]
Sharing one’s body was a “cornerstone” of Canela cultural identity, behavior akin to offering meat, water, or other resources to tribe members. Some Canela women were recruited for kuytswe‘, or ceremonial multipartner sex. The film Mending Ways: The Canela Indians of Brazil (1999) uses video shot over several decades to chronicle the changes occurring since the Crockers’ initial visits, spinning a story about the demise of traditional sexual practices under the force of Western materialism. In one segment of the film, a narrator describes Wild Boar Day, a festival where men who have reached puberty participate in sequential multipartner sex with selected women in the fields—like a “pack of wild boar”—while the women’s husbands remain in the village. A Canela man recounts his experiences:
The great thing about Wild Boar Day is that it means that a man has a chance to have sex with a woman who has refused him in the past. And the women have to yield so the men will have good memories of the festival. Still, it’s just this one time, not every day. So a woman can even be generous to an ugly man. Yes, the women enjoy it because it’s a joyful game, an ancient and honorable custom.
Another man boasts, “During the Fish Festival, we had six women for our group. That’s a lot of women. Many, many men had sex with them. All the men were satisfied and none of the women were worn out. It gave me great joy.” While few women speak in the film, one woman discusses watching the men’s preparations for Wild Boar Day: “I loved all the men,” she says. “They were so handsome in their wristlets and other decorations. They were so beautiful and there were so many of them.”
“I like this way very much,” a man declares.
Under the weight of additional detail, however, the “web” formed by this system of socio-erotic exchange appears fairly coercive at times. Sexual generosity was more easily practiced by some individuals than others, for example. Canela husbands often encouraged their wives to participate in ritual group sex, which Ryan and Jethá interpret as evidence of a lack of jealousy. “Anyone who can pretend not to be jealous as his wife has sex with twenty or more men is someone you do not want to meet across a poker table,” they joke. But the Crockers’ ethnographic work suggests more emotional ambivalence. When a woman was recruited for kuytswe‘, Crocker explains, “her husband must not be jealous although he increasingly objects these days, and maybe always did even in aboriginal times.” Women chosen to participate in ritual group sex—serving up to twenty or more men in the Crockers’ ethnography but reported as “maybe fifty” in the film—describe being “taken away” from the village. Sometimes, these women earned payments of meat from the men. But why was the woman featured in Mending Ways chosen twice for kuytswe‘ and others not chosen at all? Why were payments (or gifts) necessary in a society where people were expected to freely share resources, from bodies to meat pies? Were women who traded sex for meat different from the women who were “taken away” or the women who “loved all the men”?
Some festive occasions allowed for more female choice than others, but few women wanted to earn a reputation for being “stingy” by declining to participate. Women could gain popularity, lovers, and resources through participation in sequential sex. A woman who refused to share her body was considered stingy and antisocial; not only would she be seen as undesirable, but she risked violence if she did not change her attitude: “a group of men will waylay her to teach her to be generous.” “Young girls rarely resisted carrying out their sequential sex obligations to an assigned ceremonial men’s society,” the Crockers write, “but when they did, they were taken forcefully into it anyway.”[10]
The system of nonmonogamous socio-erotic exchange did not mean an absence of power struggles or hierarchy. Despite a noncompetitive ideal, men jostled for status, even during sex: “There were stories of fierce men pulling weaker ones away from women in the very act of sexual intercourse and simply taking over.” Canela men and women gossiped about one another’s sexual abilities and, given the small size of the community, knew many intimate details about one another. Pressure to conform is heightened in small groups where dissent is handled with violence; gossip can be a subtle means of either resistance or intimidation. Most disputes in Canela society supposedly occurred between spouses, although Crocker claims that women are “so secure” in their social positions that “they can afford to be irritable, changeable, and demanding, while their husbands must put up with such treatment.” But isn’t putting up with someone who is “irritable” different from being ambushed by a group of men as a lesson in sexual “generosity”? In fact, the Crockers refer to the Canela extramarital sex system as their “most immediate and therefore their most effective institution of social control,” although they also point out that we are all coerced, to some extent, as we are socialized into the expectations of our cultures. Whether one faces the repercussions of being labeled “stingy” or “slutty,” the underlying social mechanism is one of disciplining individuals into the expectations, norms, and power structures of a community.
Ryan and Jethá would agree that conflicts can arise between individuals’ desires and the interests of the group. What is most essential to their argument is that the sexual practices of the Canela promoted a “fiercely egalitarian” and cohesive community that ensured the survival of its members. This might involve suppressing self-interest in some socio-erotic exchanges, even though people likely still displayed preferences for certain partners in other interactions. Certainly, Canela beliefs and practices prioritized the group over the individual in ways quite different from those of contemporary Western culture. Maybe I can’t imagine being kuytswe‘ on Wild Boar Day, but perhaps a traditional Canela woman would laugh at the possessiveness of a “same room, soft swap” lifestyle couple, let alone monogamous American spouses. Maybe, as Mending Ways suggests, internal conflict increased after contact with the outside world, when belief systems clashed, power dynamics changed, and the economic basis of Canela life shifted. “Waylaying” persisted among some villages but disappeared in others. Possessiveness became more pervasive. From a traditional perspective valuing sexual generosity, the jealous husband who beat his wife for taking part in Wild Boar Day acted aberrantly, inappropriately, and even irrationally. Yet despite the assumption that tribal societies were internally harmonious until explorers, missionaries, or capitalists intruded, the reality is that we don’t actually know how people felt in the past about Wild Boar Day or anything else. Canela men talking about Wild Boar Day in the 1950s, 1970s, or 2000s are still Canela men talking to Westerners after contact and in a modern world, regardless of whether they are wearing loincloths or traditional face paint. The Crockers note that while forced participation in multipartner sex was reportedly rare during the 1930s and 1940s, force was increasingly necessary during the decades leading up to the 1980s, when the practice was finally abandoned. Perspective, then, can sometimes be the difference between peaceful cooperation and highly effective social control.
Let’s consider another ceremony based on socio-erotic exchange. In the late 1920s, anthropologist William Lloyd Warner spent three years studying an aboriginal tribe he called the “Murngin.” The Murngin, now properly referred to as the Yolngu, reside in Arnhem Land, in the northeast part of the Northern Territory of Australia. Conflict and violence in the region was frequent, usually erupting over disputes about women or during “blood feuds.” Ceremonies were symbolically opposed to warfare for the Murngin and thus used to maintain peace over a large region and across the many different tribes. According to Warner, the Murngin practiced group sex and partner exchange during an elaborate ritual known as the Gunabibi, which lasted several days. The Gunabibi included songs and dances, prayers and chants, and symbolic costuming (fertility, totemic, etc.). The ceremony, believed to keep participants from becoming ill or injured, was rooted in beliefs about kinship and connection; a ceremonial exchange of wives was the “grand finale.”[11]
The socio-erotic exchanges occurring in the Gunabibi reduced conflict and increased social cohesion. The Murngin were an age-graded, clan-based society where marriages fortified alliances between clans. Marriage was permitted between one set of cross cousins, the mother’s brother’s daughter, but prohibited with the other set, the father’s sister’s daughter. The terms “brother,” “father,” and many other kin terms were used widely to include distant relatives, however. The resulting kinship system was complicated enough to stir up decades of debate among anthropologists, causing distinguished scholars to hurl insults at each other over competing genealogical charts (the academic equivalent of a blood feud).
Gunabibi ceremonies drew men from distant clans, and sorting out the complex kinship ties required a bit of discussion even for these cultural insiders. “When a local man discovers that a certain visitor from a far clan is his tribal brother,” Warner explained, he sends his younger brother, bearing gifts, to inform the visitor “that he may have the local man’s wife for ceremonial copulation at the end of the Gunabibi ceremony.” The recipient, through his own younger brother or a messenger, then “offers his own wife in ex- change, and also sends presents.”[12] Men could set up the swap in less formal ways, but ceremonial wife exchange supposedly occurred only between distant kin. Given that brothers shared property and respected certain prohibitions against fighting, recognizing men from distant clans as such was strategic. Some of Warner’s informants also suggested that the ceremony functioned as a safety valve, a form of sanctioned deviance that made for more stable social relations: “It is better that everybody comes with their women and all meet together at a Gunabibi and play with each other, and then nobody will start having sweethearts the rest of the time.”[13]
Each night of the ceremony, after the evening meal, women danced and were given presents by the men they were assigned to for Gunabibi. Ideally, there was no sexual contact between the ceremonial couples until the final night, although Warner admitted that for some, copulation “starts early in the ceremony, and in the minds of the natives it is purely a pleasurable act.” Such early meetings were supposed to be secret, but “it is generally known which people are having these assignations in the surrounding bush or jungle, and many broadly humorous remarks are passed by both sexes about their various lovers.”[14] Unofficial trysts took place in relative privacy, like everyday sexual relations. Ceremonial sex, on the other hand, took place in front of witnesses who played supporting roles. For example, after a man “has had sexual intercourse with another man’s wife, the latter male comes to him and puts his sweat on the legs and arms of his wife’s partner so that the one who has been with his wife won’t be ‘sick’ from it.” Men painted their bodies with blood in preparation for the final night, as in other important rituals. The sexual position used in the Gunabibi ceremony also differed from the customary one: “The woman sits on the ground on the back of her buttocks. The trunk of the body leans back and at an angle from the legs, with the hands on the ground in back of the body to support it. The man puts his legs under hers and his hands around her so that the pudenda meet in closer contact than if he lay on her.”[15]
Participation was supposedly obligatory; anyone who objected was told that he or she would become ill. Men reported threatening women who balked at their assigned partners. “We don’t take this blood out of ourselves for nothing and paint ourselves with it,” a man explained. “We don’t sleep that night, and if a woman says, ‘I won’t go to that corroboree [ceremonial meeting] place with you,’ the man says, ‘If you don’t go with me you are going to be dead.’ Sometimes we kill that woman by magic, and throw spears at them if they won’t do it.”[16] Some women had sex with several men at the ceremony, Warner notes, because “as always a larger proportion of men than women attend.”
Warner claims that Murngin women exercised independence and power in their role as wives: “She is not the badly treated woman of the older Australian ethnologists’ theories. She usually asserts her rights. Women are more vocal than men in Murngin society. Frequently they discipline their husbands by refusing to give them food when the men have been away too long and the wife fears they have a secret affair.” But he also reports on women being beaten or murdered for suspicion of infidelity, “stolen” for wives, and traded to other men during political and economic negotiations—fates hardly equivalent to being sent to bed without dinner. And while the men told Warner that there were “no cold women”—that is, all Murngin women were willing to have sex—he also notes that male pride was such that “no man would admit that women were not interested in him.”[17]
Or, apparently, a man might rely on spear pressure.
One cannot fully understand the meaning of the Gunabibi ceremony with- out studying the kinship system of the Murngin in depth and developing a more nuanced understanding of gender relations at the time. This part of the ceremony is not practiced among contemporary clans, however, and the existing data is sparse, as is also the case with the Canela Wild Boar Day and many other instances of non-Western group sex. But Warner’s analysis of the Gunabibi differs from many accounts of ritual group sex because he focuses on the complexities of social interactions. Participants negotiate with and occasionally resist each other from different perspectives—local, visitor, husband, wife. The point of the ritual group sex associated with Gunabibi was to build, express, and maintain relationships—a function that group sex fulfills in both myth and actual practice—even if there is no ultimate agreement as to whether this is accomplished or for whom. Among other Australian aboriginal tribes, group sex was also reportedly used for the purposes of social cohesion, as when tribes were signing peace treaties, when men were leaving for battle, or to avoid a raid—“a woman would be sent over for the sexual use of the whole group of men.” Again, participants reported varying interpretations and experiences: women did not necessarily mind sexual relations under everyday conditions, for example, but expressed “dislike and disgust” at being with hostile men.[18]
Ryan and Jethá do not discuss the Gunabibi ceremony because the Murngin are not “immediate return foragers” and thus not “representative of our hunter-gatherer ancestors” (as they believe the Canela to be). The Murngin, they assert, “are not typical even of Australian native cultures, representing a bloody exception to the typical Australian Aboriginal pattern of little to no intergroup conflict.”[19] The Marind-anim of southern New Guinea, on the other hand, have a single paragraph cameo; their wedding ceremony is offered as an example of paternity uncertainty and nonmonogamy that challenges the traditional narrative of human sexual evolution. This argument is reasonable given Marind-anim sexual practices, beliefs about reproduction, and acceptance of foreign children as their own. Additional details, however, again complicate any general claims about their society or sexuality. Their internal affairs, for example, were described as relatively peaceful and egalitarian, and they allied with many of their neighbors, albeit in a somewhat fickle manner.[20] It was best to stay on their good side—the more distant tribes whose villages became frequent headhunting destinations would debate whether Marind-anim were “peaceful.” Violence aside, despite frequent nonmonogamous socio-erotic exchanges, available evidence also suggests that their attitudes toward sexuality were neither completely open and relaxed nor fully encumbered by shame and guilt.
Granted, it is impossible for any researcher to survey every society and more could be written about each of these groups. Complexity is often lost, to some extent, in representation. But arguing either for or against a functionally “promiscuous” human past isn’t just about compiling data but telling a story—and as we have seen repeatedly in this book, stories can be political. Stories about sexuality become central to debates about human nature: Are we naturally promiscuous or monogamous? Are we sharing, loving, and cooperative or selfish, violent, and individualistic? Are we more like bonobos or chimps? Are we more like the Canela, the Murngin, the Marind-anim, or the “real housewives” of Beverly Hills?
Here, the devil really is in the details. Polyamory activists have championed bonobos as our closest ancestors, for example. But what happens when researchers found that bonobos sometimes hunt, kill, and eat other primates? Journalists report that these “hippie cousins” of the chimps have a “carnivorous dark side.”[21] And when females were observed exhibiting a keen sense of social order, acting differently around alpha females and using sex to make hierarchical alliances? These once egalitarian and “peace-loving” bonobos were exposed in the media as “sleeping their way to the top.” Did bonobos change? Or did the story told about them become more complex? As Ryan and Jethá point out, representations are motivated: “Nothing sells newspapers like headlines of ‘WAR!,’ and no doubt ‘CANNIBALISTIC HIPPIE ORGY WAR!’ sells even more, but one species hunting and eating another species is hardly ‘war’; it’s lunch.”[22] Of course, they are correct. Stories are told with a purpose and the details presented—or left out—matter. Ryan and Jethá also dismiss overly general questions about human nature; it depends on the context, they insist. Yet oversimplication and homogenization is, in fact, what happens with the Canela and the Marind-anim in Sex at Dawn. The traditional sexual practices of both groups support Ryan and Jethá’s arguments that monogamy was not the only norm in human populations and that socio-erotic exchanges can contribute to community building and conflict reduction. But to further imply that these exchanges were homogeneously experienced—whether as pleasurable, gratifying, shameless, unflinching, relaxed, etc.—or result in peaceful, cooperative, or egalitarian societies requires overlooking numerous details and perspectives.
Maybe the real story is always complicated.
Group sex is as much about the group as the sex, but group bonding through sex, when it happens, is not necessarily conflict-free or associated with any particular outcome.[23] Group sex can promote connections and strengthen bonds among all participants, among only some participants, or among some participants at the expense of others. Some men and women are enthusiastic participants in such exchanges while others respond to social pressure, bribery, or coercion. The wish to be accepted by a group has a counterpart in the fear of rejection and the very real dangers that can accompany exile—being “put on the prairie” when there are no other options for survival is quite a different threat from losing favor with a peer group in a more individualistic society. Nonetheless, some individuals in any society are more susceptible than others to threats of exclusion.
S.E.Ex is a reality, but it isn’t equally rosy for everyone.
On December 16, 2006, twenty-two-year-old Megan Wright killed herself in her bedroom. Her mother, thinking Megan was napping, found her daughter’s body covered with blankets on the bed like a pile of laundry. Megan had suffocated herself using a plastic bag.[24]
Six months earlier, in the spring of her freshman year at Dominican College in New York, Megan was raped in a campus dormitory. When she woke up wearing different clothes than she’d worn the night before and discovered that she was bleeding vaginally, she went to White Plains hospital, where a rape examination established that her “substantial injuries, including bruising and lacerations, indicated forcible rape.” The nurse on duty that day said that “in fifteen years of practice, [she] has rarely seen a victim evincing more physical trauma than Megan Wright.”[25] Megan believed she had been drugged at a party she attended with friends earlier, as she could only vaguely recall sensations from the assault, like a “nightmare.”
A campus surveillance camera provided some evidence of the evening’s events, as it showed Megan “stumbling down the hallway” before being led into a room in Hertel Hall, first by one man, and then joined by two others. After a long period of time, one of the men came back into the hallway. He waved a poster at the camera that read, “I want to have sex.” It was signed, “Megan Wright.”
After viewing the surveillance tapes, a detective on the case decided not to prosecute, believing the signature could indeed have been Megan’s. An examination of the handwriting, however, suggests that she was likely intoxicated even if she did sign her name, knew that she was signing a statement consenting to sex, or understood that there would be multiple men involved. Authorities did not interview the young men involved, and the case was not pursued. Wright’s parents later sued Dominican College for mishandling the case, including failing to inform Megan that her assailants left the college. She hadn’t returned for her sophomore year because she was worried about running into the men on campus.[26]
Megan’s experience is unique because she took her own life, not because she became a victim of gang rape. The statistic that one in four women will be raped during her college years is widely cited; there is debate over this number due to a lack of consistent reporting and varying definitions of sexual assault in surveys, although competing statistics—one in five or one in six women—do not range too widely. Many of those rapes involve multiple assailants or witnesses. While each case of gang rape on campus is unique, patterns emerge. First, the perpetrators are often men who are unlikely to commit violent crimes in other settings. Why do relatively privileged young men—well educated and from socially upstanding families, athletes or fraternity members with professional futures—gang-rape when they would likely balk at robbing a gas station? Second, there has historically been a reluctance to view campus gang rapes as crimes. Like fraternity members, athletes are involved in a disproportionate number of rapes and sexual assaults. Dr. Claire Walsh, director of the sexual assault recovery program at the University of Florida, stated that when athletes are involved, “the entire group will fall behind the accused and deny any offense has been committed.” In every case, she said, “they will deny there was gang rape” and insist that it was just “group sex.”[27] Why do these men repeatedly believe they did nothing wrong? And why do authorities often agree with them, sometimes even suggesting it was the victim’s fault for putting herself in a situation where things were likely to get out of hand?
Some researchers suggest that such rapes are manifestations of patriarchy, arguing that many men “have the attitudes and beliefs necessary to commit a sexually aggressive act” and rape “can be viewed as the end point in a continuum of sexually aggressive behaviors that reward men and victimize women.”[28] But if this is the case, why do some men gang-rape while others do not? Even in cultures or settings where rape is frequent, some men publicly oppose sexual coercion. And why are gang rapes more likely in particular settings?
When anthropologist Peggy Sanday learned that one of her students had been gang-raped at a fraternity house, she drew on her previous research on rape patterns around the world to analyze “pulling train” on American campuses. Structural factors such as the way reported sexual assaults are handled, she argued, make some campuses “rape prone.” Fraternity initiations, rituals, and parties may draw on sexist ideas and images or even downplay violence against women. In 2010, for example, a video posted on YouTube depicted Delta Kappa Epsilon pledges at Yale University marching through campus chanting, “No means yes! Yes means anal!” After the Women’s Center accused the fraternity of “hate speech,” the DKE president apologized, calling it “a serious lapse in judgment by the fraternity and in very poor taste.”[29] Whether college authorities, campus personnel, or other students challenge such messages affects the sexual environment; some colleges make awareness of sexual violence a priority while others pretend it does not exist.
Other aspects of campus social life can make rapes more likely as well; for example, “party cultures” based on the denigration of sexually active women or the acceptance of high levels of coercion to get women to say “yes” to sex, such as plying them with alcohol or drugs at campus parties. GHB, ketamine, or other “date rape drugs” make women easier to coerce and can affect a victim’s ability to recall the incident. By the time a rape is reported, it is often too late to test for substances. But the issue is thorny, as some young women purposely use substances to overcome sexual inhibitions. Drinks do not have to be forcibly poured down women’s throats at parties. Many college students dose themselves with GHB for fun. Allegations that women cry rape to deal with morning-after regret—even though false rape accusations rarely occur—complicate the issue. Further, while a woman may consent to part of the experience, such as having sex with one of the assailants, withdrawing consent is not always possible when she is outnumbered or things get “out of control.”
The men who had sex with Megan Wright knew consent was an issue: why else go to the trouble of preparing a statement and showing it to the surveillance camera? Other assailants, however, seem not to realize that consent is required when participants are “partying” (even though most legal definitions of consent require an individual to at least be conscious) or assume that consent has already been obtained. Shaming individuals who “pass out” is common practice among college students; part of the ritual involves making the intoxicated party eventually bear witness to his or her lack of control. Remember shaving off your roommate’s eyebrows, stuffing a cold hot dog in his mouth, and photographing him with his pants around his knees? “Markering”—writing on an unconscious person’s face or body with a permanent marker—has been popular for decades. Supposedly, you can also make a passed-out-partier “pee his pants” by submerging his hand in a cup of warm water. In my college days, we had to anxiously await double prints from the one local drugstore willing to develop nude pictures; Facebook now provides instant gratification. For some young men, having sex with a woman while she “sleeps it off” may feel like an extension of this tendency to see an inebriated person’s body as fair game for such violations, treated as jokes rather than assaults.
But group rape is also about belonging. Focusing on the group processes involved helps us understand why individuals who do not exhibit psychopathology can be influenced by their environment or a group leader to participate in activities they would ordinarily avoid. Individual fraternity members who were interviewed after gang rapes, for example, were found to know “the difference between right and wrong, but fraternity norms that emphasize loyalty, group protection, and secrecy often overrode standards of ethical correctness.”[30] Sanday argues that gang rapes are a way that “insecure” young men bond with each other and become part of a group. Young men may enter college already accepting cultural beliefs supporting male dominance, such as that heterosexual male desires are naturally aggressive and uncontrollable (“boys will be boys”) or that women should act as gatekeepers (“she was asking for it”). When a young man then joins a fraternity, the initiation experience and house activities further affect his identity and beliefs. His insecurity and desire for belonging makes him vulnerable to peer pressure to prove his loyalty.
Fear of being rejected by the group—or a desire to gain acceptance, status, and recognition within it—can be as much of a motivation for gang rape as the desire for sex or dominance over women. Dumisani Rebombo, now a South African gender equality activist, took part in a gang rape at fifteen years old. At the time, he faced ridicule because he was poor and did not own goats or cattle, and because he had not been circumcised in the traditional rite of passage. “There was constant jeering that I wasn’t a real boy,” he says. A group of local boys suggested he help “discipline” a girl in the community, and Rebombo saw an opportunity to improve his situation. Despite “trembling” with fear, he recalls, “I made the decision to agree to it. I was given beer and I smoked. I remember that, after the act, it was reported to the whole soccer team and my friend and I were given a standing ovation.”[31] Rebombo was allowed to associate with the other boys afterward and “did not think much of the incident” for decades, until he began working for an NGO and listening to women’s stories about sexual violence. He decided to return to his hometown and asked the woman for her forgiveness. Although it had taken him twenty years to realize he had committed a rape, the young woman told him that she had “never been the same.”[32] Rebombo’s willingness to discuss his motivations and publicly recount his experience is rare and valuable, illuminating the variability in how an event can be interpreted.
As “scoring” with women is often a sign of heterosexual prowess, men participating in group sex scenarios maintain a superior status to both women and to men who don’t “prove” their heterosexuality. Men may fear having their sexuality called into question if they do not participate. During group rapes, participants often “ritualistically take turns, converse about taking turns, watch each other, and engage in simultaneous sex with victims.” The use of a “symbolic penis”—a bottle, broomstick, or baseball bat—is common as a way to emasculate and degrade victims of either sex. Not me. Witnessing is central: the rape may “be experienced by participants as a dramatic contest in which one’s peers evaluate one’s sexual, or masculine, prowess” and thereby prove themselves worthy of belonging.[33] But acts of sexual violence can also become “celebratory dramas,” where the group creates an atmosphere of “recreation and fun.”[34] Convicted gang rapists describe feelings of “male camaraderie” during and after sexual assaults, for example; the assaults also provide a sense of adventure. One man said participating in gang rape was “the ultimate thing I ever did.”[35]
Purposely engaging in an irrevocable and forbidden “bridge-burning” act, or participating in intense physical or emotional trials, can be part of the process of taking on a new identity as the member of a particular group.[36] Sometimes, initiations involve violence directed toward an outsider; other times, the initiates themselves undergo the tests to prove commitment to the group and establish hierarchy. Mara Salvatrucha 13, or MS-13, is one of the most violent, fastest-growing, and well-organized gangs in the United States, with an estimated thirty thousand members operating in thirty-three states. For males, initiation into MS-13 may require being “jumped in,” or beaten for thirteen seconds by gang members, or committing a physical assault, rape, or murder to prove competence. Female recruits may be given the additional choice of being “sexed in,” or gang-raped by existing members. MS-13 members have been associated with numerous high-profile gang rapes, including a 2002 assault on two young deaf girls in Massachusetts. Many other gangs have been linked to group rapes as part of their initiation process. There are political aspects regarding how such attacks are reported and to which groups they are attributed, but group sexual violence as a means of fortifying hierarchy and connection is widespread.
“Hazing” is practiced worldwide in militaries, fraternities, sororities, and other institutional settings. Sex has a number of features that make it ideal for ritual incorporation, as it involves the boundaries of the body and the self (even if both are variable) and may already be shrouded in mystery, secrecy, taboo, or fear. Many—although certainly not all—hazing rituals are sexualized, and can involve manipulation or torture of the genitals, penetration with objects (dildos, candles, wooden poles, etc.), forced nudity, the ingestion of body fluids or their application to the body, and humiliation. Some practices are widely reported: for example, in the United States, the “elephant walk,” might require initiates to walk in a line while holding the erect penises of the men in front or back of them, or require each man to insert a thumb into the anus of the man in front of him. Other practices may be unique to a particular group, embellishing on general themes of pain, deprivation, disgust, or humiliation. Same sex contact carried out in a special space and time (such as “Hell Week”) is not necessarily interpreted the same way as it is in other contexts. Hazing can be dangerous; deaths due to hazing or “ragging” have occurred in the United States, Japan, Russia, the Philippines, India, and elsewhere. Individuals may choose to undergo initiation rites in order to belong to the group, but get more than they bargained for because of the secretiveness involved; some individuals have committed suicide to escape ongoing hazing. Yet despite deaths and injuries, negative public opinion, and potential legal penalties, people continue to undergo, replicate, or produce hazing rituals. Most of the time, hazing does not cross the border into abuse or violence, and if hazing were only interpreted as abuse, it wouldn’t keep reappearing. The point here is that witnessing and being witnessed in sexually transgressive situations can be emotionally powerful, impacting both individual and group identities.
Whether we draw on psychoanalysis, attachment theory, or another way of explaining how humans create and maintain emotional connections, some relational strategies are more successful, culturally or personally, in a given time and place. Bonds might be created through affection—love, respect, friendship, and so on—and obligation. Bonds can be created imaginatively through practice, such as ritual, or suffering. What some researchers have called “trauma bonds”—“strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other”[37] —can be remarkably stable. On the other hand, bonds created through shame, anger, humiliation, or fear can be weakened if one of the parties becomes stronger and more independent. Cycles of abuse can be found in the life histories of many, though not all, perpetrators of violent crimes. Conscious and unconscious desires to overcome past experiences of shame and humiliation, take revenge for previous hurts, or feel a sense of power or control over one’s life can underlie both the processes of bonding with others and the selection of others with whom to bond. The impact of a charismatic leader—especially one who demonstrates aggression against noncompliant group members—can be exponential if the group is composed of individuals who are processing emotional wounds. But, as is evident in instances where men without such abuse histories gang-rape, sometimes the quest for acceptance is all one needs.
Many elements of the group process—the desire to belong, the influence of a sadistic and charismatic leader, the thrill of adventure, and a link between sexual activity and group identity—came together in South Africa during the reign of the “Jackrollers.” The Jackrollers were a gang led by Jeff Brown, a notorious South African criminal. (Despite his notoriety, however, there seems to be relatively little information available about him; his mythological status is itself revealing of how some stories are retold.) In 1987 and 1988, Brown supposedly became known as the “most feared man in the township” of Diepkloof, a relatively affluent area of Soweto.[38] In addition to abduction, car theft, and bank robbery, the Jackrollers were known for ba dla abantwana (“they eat the girls or children”) and for raping girls and women in public places.[39]
During the 1990s, “jackrolling” became popular among other youth gangs in South Africa. According to researchers, jackroll was different from ordinary rape because it was recreational. Rapists did not try to conceal their identity and jackroll was committed in public places such as “shebeens (informal township bars), picnic spots, schools, nightclubs and in the streets”[40] as a way to develop reputation. Racial and class conflicts, as well as political unrest and a lack of cohesion in black communities, set the stage for street gangs to become a means of surviving and claiming identity for disenfranchised youth. The political, economic, and educational systems were stacked against them. One young black man, forced to leave school and earn his living stealing car parts, was quoted as saying, “If you were nowhere in the past, so will you be nowhere in the future.”[41] Left without legitimate job opportunities or outlets for creating a meaningful life, young men turned to gang membership and jackrolling to increase self-esteem and gain status among peers.
Though jackroll is purportedly less of a problem today, South Africa’s history of colonialism and apartheid continues to shape patterns of sexual violence. Authorities are often reluctant to intervene in “corrective rapes,” meant to “cure” lesbians of their sexual orientation, or in sexually violent relationships.[42] Rapes are underreported and inconsistently prosecuted; when cases make it to court, perpetrators tend to receive light sentences. In some surveys, South Africa ranks first for number of rapes per capita; in 1995, South Africa was named “rape capital of the world.” There are also high incidences of child and baby rapes, some of which are motivated by beliefs that having sex with a virgin can cure AIDS. (Up to one in eight South Africans may have been infected with HIV, giving South Africa a dubious status as the nation with the highest number of HIV-positive citizens.) Antirape organizations estimate that a woman is raped every twenty-six to eighty-five seconds in South Africa, depending on the source; gang rapes are said to account for 75 percent of all cases.[43] In 2002, Rachel Jewkes and Naeema Abrahams, researchers at the South African Medical Research Council, detailed the problems with arriving at accurate rape statistics: differences in popular and legal conceptualizations of “rape,” inconsistencies in reporting, and diverse methods of data collection across regions. As statistics are repeated in the press, on blogs, and by human rights organizations, they can become decontextualized. The finding that a 1999 survey of 1,500 schoolchildren in Soweto found a quarter of the boys interviewed calling jackrolling “fun” is widely reported, for example, although the original study is elusive. Yet Jewkes and Abrahams believe that existing statistics on rape and attitudes toward sexual violence, however variable, are more likely the tip of an “iceberg” than overinflated.[44] In 2010–2011, 56,272 rapes were reported in South Africa, an average of 154 per day. In 2013, Jewkes, now acting president of the South African Medical Research Council, was interviewed following a violent gang rape and murder in Bredasdorp. Between a quarter and a third of South African men still admit to rape, Jewkes stated, suggesting little progress even though the issue has been politicized for twenty years.
Because attacks now usually involve groups of friends rather than organized gangs, they may be referred to as “group rapes” instead of “gang rapes”; the term “streamlining” sometimes replaces “jackrolling.”[45] In a country fighting high levels of poverty, unemployment, disease, and violence, youth face daunting political, economic, and social problems. Sexual aggression is still one of the few recreational outlets for marginalized young men.
We could call this society “rape prone.”
Is it surprising that the Rape-aXe—an antirape female condom—originated in Cape Town? The device, unveiled in 2005, is inserted like a tampon. When an attacker attempts penetration, sharp barbs grasp his penis, causing severe pain and preventing him from urinating until the device is surgically removed. The assailant will thus be identified when he seeks medical attention. How a woman is supposed to relay this information to a potential attacker is unclear, and in situations with multiple assailants, she might face continued violence as retaliation. Still, Rape-aXe inventor, Sonette Ehlers, stated, “The device should become part of every woman’s daily routine, just like brushing her teeth.”[46] While critics call the invention “vengeful, horrible, and disgusting,” it is at least somewhat kinder than a device created in 2000 by Japp Haumann, a South African man, which deployed a spring blade to cut off the tip of the penis.
And it beats slowly evolving a counterclockwise, corkscrew vagina like a duck’s.
Gang rape can establish the identities of the perpetrators in relation to each other, symbolizing belongingness to a group and status within it. Violent group sex can also dramatize the relationship between perpetrators and victims.
In 2005, South African immigrants were blamed for spreading jackroll to the English town of Northampton. After five gang rapes in ten days, police warned women to be careful on the streets. Suspects were said to be black and young, with heavy South African accents. The media reported on the random selection of victims, who were supposedly abducted by car, and the growing panic of residents.[47] Townspeople were “terrorized” at the possibility of being victimized as sport, especially on the sole basis of ethnic difference. But when three men were eventually arrested in connection with the case, they turned out not to be South African and not to identify themselves as “jackrollers.”
In the United States, a similar panic emerged after the rape of Trisha Meili, the “Central Park jogger.” On April 19, 1989, twenty-eight-year-old Meili was found in a gully, near death after being beaten with a metal pipe and a rock and having lost around 80 percent of her blood. Later that evening, police picked up a group of teenagers who supposedly confessed to Meili’s assault, among other crimes, as amusement, a diversion they called “wilding”: “It was fun”; “It was something to do.”[48] Meili was not an easy victim to blame. Sure, she’d been out jogging alone, but she wasn’t swilling beers at a neighborhood pub or doing a drunken striptease at a frat party. There was no logical motive in the wilding story—no stolen car or money, no disrespect by the victim, no infringement on the attackers’ territories or property—and no clear reason why Meili had been victimized, something that was reportedly “chilling” to residents of New York City and people around the country. She was simply an outsider.
Meili survived but spent six weeks in a coma and emerged with severe brain damage. She remembers nothing about the attack. After a high-profile, emotional trial, five of the young men went to prison.
In 2002, the men were cleared when Matias Reyes, a convicted rapist, confessed to Meili’s rape.
The details of Meili’s case were certainly disturbing. Yet in 1989, 3,254 rapes were reported in New York City—almost nine a day. A week after Meili’s attack, a black woman was raped, beaten, and thrown from a rooftop by a group of black men. She “miraculously grabbed hold of a television cable, where she dangled, naked and seriously injured, until she was rescued by neighbors.”[49] Her story was not widely reported until commentators began to question the incessant coverage of the “Central Park jogger” story. Some critics argue that stories with white victims and black assailants automatically garner more attention; others suggest that racial slant can be affected by the local politics and fears of the day. In 2007, for example, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, a young white couple, were gang-raped, tortured, and murdered after a carjacking in Knoxville, Tennessee. Their assailants, one of whom was a woman, were all black. Once again, the gruesome story received little national attention until protestors—joined by white supremacist groups and conservative bloggers—questioned why the media was ignoring the murders. But, as one public defender mused in response, “Why is this worthy of national news coverage? Unfortunately, this probably happens in major metropolitan areas every month.”[50] His point is clear, if disquieting: until the Christian/Newsom murder became entangled in debates over racism, hate crimes, and the objectivity of the media, the story simply didn’t have an angle that differentiated it from all of the other rapes, tortures, and murders happening every day around the world.
So what was the angle that made the Meili story an object of rabid consumption by the American public for months on end? Race certainly played a part, although it was not the full story. Headlines such as “Teen Wolfpack Beats and Rapes Wall Street Exec” or “Wolf Pack’s Prey: Female Jogger Near Death after Savage Attack by Roving Gang” went beyond race, contrasting the identities of Meili and her supposed attackers in terms of age (teen versus adult), social class (“wolf pack” versus “Wall Street”), employment status (gang versus executive), and leisure choices (roving versus jogging). These differences between the victim and her alleged attackers reflected highly politicized and emotional social divisions. Meili’s story also evoked the powerful fear of gang rape as cold-blooded recreation, with a victim so dehumanized by perpetrators that collective sexual violence becomes “just something to do” when you can’t afford a movie.
Being overwhelmed by an out-of-control horde with no respect for human pain, dignity, or life is perhaps a primal fear. Responses to these crimes hark back to discourses discussed in chapter 2 of group sex as a force destructive of civilization, symbolizing social and moral corruption. This fear, in fact, propelled the “Central Park jogger” case forward even in the face of shoddy evidence. Although the real rapist acted alone, many people still remember Meili as the victim of a horrific gang rape, and the term “wilding” has entered the English lexicon.
Even more chilling than the frenzied, aimless horde, perhaps, is the organized, purposeful one. When gang rape becomes a tactic of war, it is precisely this fear that is mobilized.
Doctors without Borders is an international medical humanitarian organization that sends volunteers to more than sixty countries where warfare or disasters threaten the population. DWB maintained a presence in Sudan from 2003 to 2011, where thousands of people were affected by the conflict between the Sudanese government, aided unofficially by Arab militias known as the Janjaweed and Darfur’s non-Arab, or “black,” tribes, especially the Fur, Massalit, and Zaghawa ethnic groups. Roaming Janjaweed militias systematically targeted non-Arab blacks by burning their homes and villages, destroying crops and livestock, stealing food or other resources, killing civilian men, and kidnapping and raping young women and girls. The two main ethnic groups of the south, the Nuer and the Dinka, also warred with each other. By 2005, experts estimated that approximately 1.9 million people had died due to violence, disease, and starvation stemming from the conflict.[51] Some refugees escaped to camps in Chad, a country that has also seen violent conflict. Others set up mud huts and tents made of plastic scraps in isolated desert areas.
During the Darfur conflict, DWB estimates that 82 percent of rapes in the area—of which most were gang rapes—occurred when women ventured away from their refugee camps or villages to graze their cattle or seek food, water, or firewood. Riding camels or horses, the Janjaweed surrounded the women, who were unarmed, on foot, and often accompanied by babies or children. Women who tried to escape could have their arms or legs broken. Sometimes the women were raped and killed; sometimes they were raped and left for dead or helped back to camp by their companions. Other rapes occurred when the Janjaweed stormed camps and villages, as women attempted to flee with their children. Designating daily chores thus became a ghastly calculation of life and death. Gathering food was essential. Protecting the camps around the clock was also critical. So who was sent out? As one report suggests, “Families face the decision of who should bear the brunt of assault—if they send their sons, they will be killed. If they send their daughters, they will only be raped.”[52]
The actual prevalence of rape during the conflict in Darfur is difficult to determine. Some victims did not survive. For those who did, reporting a rape made them vulnerable to police harassment, fines, and rejection by their community. Given the extreme stigma, rape victims are considered “tainted” or “unmarriageable” and may be abandoned by husbands or families. A woman from Silaya describes being abducted from her village with eight other women in July 2003: “After six days some of the girls were released. But the others, as young as eight years old, were kept there. Five to six men would rape us in rounds, one after the other for hours during six days, every night. My husband could not forgive me after this, he disowned me.”[53] Rape, another Sudanese victim explained, “is a shame, and women will hide this in their hearts so that the men do not hear about it.”[54] This “social death” and loss of respect in the community was frequently considered more traumatizing than sexual violence, resulting in widespread silence among women who were able to keep their experiences private. A refugee explained that she would not dare go to a gynecologist even when she arrived in the Netherlands, out of fear that the doctor would write down what had happened to her and her community would somehow discover her secret.[55]
The numbers that were reported are sobering. In March 2005, DWB reported that more than 28 percent of the women they interviewed reported being gang-raped and that they had treated almost five hundred rapes in four and a half months.[56] Halima Bashir, a doctor attempting to draw attention to rapes committed at a school near where she worked, was abducted and gang-raped by Janjaweed in retaliation—three men a night until she was rescued.[57] Over 89 percent of women in Darfur have undergone infibulations for cultural and religious reasons—a form of female circumcision where the labia majora, or outer lips of the vulva, are sewn shut, leaving just a small opening for urine and menstrual blood. The procedure, which is designed to ensure chastity and prove virginity, may also involve removing the clitoris and the inner lips of the vulva. Injuries caused by forced intercourse are thus often quite severe.[58]
Pregnancy resulting from rape brings more suffering: women who do not know the name of the father of their baby can be arrested for “illegal pregnancies” and charged with “fornication”;[59] married women can also be charged with adultery. Some pregnant victims were given the choice of either paying 15,000 dinars to the police (approximately fifty US dollars, or around two months’ salary) or being raped forty more times.[60] Some women committed suicide on finding themselves pregnant through rape. Others killed the infant after birth. Still others raised the children, a new generation with a new family drama. Babies born as a result of rape were believed to be Arab, not black, which accounts for warnings given to victims: “We want to wipe you out” or “We want to finish you people off.”[61] Messages were written on—and in—women’s bodies: “You blacks, you have spoilt the country! We are here to burn you. . . . We will kill your husbands and sons and we will sleep with you! You will be our wives!”
“We will make a light-skinned baby.”
Violence in Darfur peaked in 2010. The southern area of Sudan seceded on July 9, 2011, prevailing in a long battle for independence and becoming the Republic of South Sudan. By early 2012, the United Nations reported a “cautious improvement” in Darfur as around one hundred thousand refugees reportedly returned to the region, setting up squatters’ camps when their homes and villages no longer existed.[62] Conflicts in the region have persisted, however, and DWB continues to aid refugees fleeing from the border zones of Sudan into South Sudan and Ethiopia.[63] Although the target of Sudanese military forces has shifted to the Nubans, an ethnic group living in the mountains that was aligned with southern rebels before the split, humanitarian reports from the area suggest that gang rape continues to be a problem, reinforcing boundaries of belongingness and exclusion.
Martial rape has been viewed as an unavoidable by-product of violent conflict, resulting from the misuse of power by psychologically conflicted or unstable individuals or “undisciplined troops.” The gang rape and massacre of civilians is sometimes committed by rogue individuals, as in the 2006 Mahmudiyah killing and gang rape of a fourteen-year-old girl by US Army soldiers in Iraq, or by isolated military units, perhaps even following orders, as with the Charlie Company at My Lai during the Vietnam War. Wartime rape can bond together young men who are expected to be brave but who may feel fearful, lonely, and vulnerable. Some perpetrators are willing participants; others obey orders or go along with the group out of fear of exclusion or retaliation. The combination of risk, secrecy, and emotional ambivalence is powerful. Soldiers may feel hatred for the “enemy’” but have mixed emotions toward their own country, leaders, or peers for endangering their lives or requiring the loss of comrades. Conquered women (and men) become “easy and fulfilling targets” on which soldiers can release aggression.[64]
But when organized by a military and systematically deployed against specific ethnic groups, mass rape becomes a tactic that should be distinguished from the sexual violence unleashed for centuries against prisoners of war and political prisoners. Mass rape of civilians occurred during the Nanjing Massacre in China, in the former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and elsewhere. For both perpetrators and victims, mass rape is more symbolically and emotionally loaded than isolated outbreaks of sexual violence, as it is meant to send specific and repeated messages to the populations in conflict. In mass rape, according to philosopher Claudia Card, there is a dual target: the victim and the community. The victim is raped for who she is and then used to warn others in the community about the risk of noncompliance with soldiers’ demands. For the victim and the men and women connected to her, the experience “breaks the spirit, humiliates, tames,” and produces a “docile, deferential, obedient soul.”[65] In the context of already violent conflict, the exclusion of the victim is proof of the perpetrators’ ability to permanently undermine the population. She is living evidence of inferiority.
Mass rape thus works as a form of terrorism. Social media and networking sites such as YouTube and Facebook have been demonized for retraumatizing victims as their stories spread across the Internet. But victims can be retraumatized regardless of the state of technology. Often, that is the very point of nonlethal violence. For a gang rape to send a message, there must be an audience, and in mass rape, the audience for those messages increases in size. News certainly travels more quickly when soldiers upload video directly from cell phones to YouTube than when assailants wield handmade machetes in lands without electricity. But even then, messages of mass rape are effectively disseminated to the populace. Survivors share their stories or are identifiable through their injuries, a resulting pregnancy, or abandonment by their families. People may be forced to witness rapes. Those who do not experience or witness the violence directly are meant to hear tales, reinforced by preexisting fears about the enemy. When the Serbs moved in on Kosovo, their sexual cruelty toward Bosniak women was already known. As one woman said, “I wasn’t afraid of the killing. I was afraid of the raping.”[66] If five supposedly ethnically motivated sexual assaults could “terrorize” an English town, and if one woman raped and left for dead—no matter how gruesome—could change New York City “forever,” it is difficult to imagine the impact of thousands of targeted, bloody attacks.
Mass rape in warfare can also be a means of genocide. Genocide can be accomplished through mass murder, “killing individual members of a national, political, or cultural group,” or “decimating cultural and social bonds” such that a group’s identity is destroyed.[67] In his 658-page tome, Worse Than War, Daniel Goldhagen surveys outbreaks of genocide around the world. Mass rape, coupled with “excessive cruelty,” is one of the tactics included in his research. During the Bosnian war, Serbs reportedly raped twenty thousand to fifty thousand women. The Serbian leadership used a combination of “rape camps” and roaming rape gangs to terrorize Bosniak[68] Muslims and as a strategy of ethnic elimination. Raped women were polluted, shamed in their home communities and in the eyes of their assailants. The repeated raping of women in the camps was designed to ensure that at least some of them became pregnant; those who did were sometimes incarcerated and forced to carry the fetuses to term. Victims reported rapists who sang or celebrated during the attacks. A Bosniak woman recalls her attackers saying, “Fuck your Turkish mother,” and “Death to all Turkish sperm.” Another woman was told: “You will have a baby. You will bring new life. It will be Serbian. . . . Just Serbian people. We will destroy you, all of you.”[69]
As such measures were believed to be producing future generations of Serbs, this example might seem to return to the simplicity of arguments about rape as a primal reproductive strategy. Yet if we dig deeper, we find ourselves in territory far afield from Thornhill’s ducks and scorpion flies, in a world of meaning.
Forced pregnancies can shatter ethnic and community ties. Had the Serbs been operating under a “one-drop rule,” or a belief that children of mixed ethnicity should be assigned to the group with lower status, forced pregnancies would have increased the Bosniak population rather than shrinking it. But for these rapists, who were also occasionally the fathers of children, the goal was ostensibly to produce a future with more Serbs and fewer Bosniaks, a commitment to their ethnic group exceeding personal evolutionary legacies. Although some Bosniak women raised the children they bore from such violence, others abandoned them in orphanages. These orphans, who are now entering their teen years, face emotional and legal difficulties in contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina. Schools and social life may be segregated by Serbs, Bosniaks, or Croats. The long-term effects of being without a fixed ethnic identity in such a social milieu are still unknown. In Darfur, pregnancy was often similarly a goal of mass rape, as ethnicity is traced through the father. Janjaweed attackers reportedly told rape victims they wanted to produce “Arab” children who could repopulate the land. But Dinka leaders also stressed women’s reproductive role in war, and their soldiers demanded access to women’s bodies as “national property.” The saying, “I should have as many children as I can in case I die in war,” was widespread.[70] Babies born from wartime rape face unpredictable futures, regardless of which ethnic group—if any—claims them. “Janjaweed babies” may be killed or abandoned. Those who survive face challenges in their communities and families. “I will love the child,” one woman said, “but I will always hate the father.” Some women tried to hide the fact that their children are born of rape—“If the color is like the mother, fine. . . . If it is like the father, then we will have problems. People will think the child is an Arab.”[71]
Pregnancy is not always a goal of mass rape, however. In the Nanjing Massacre, Japanese soldiers were ordered to kill women after raping them. Soldiers systematically sought out young women, who were gang-raped, mutilated, and murdered. These soldiers cut off breasts and stuck bayonets or sticks of bamboo into women’s vaginas. Pregnant women were bayoneted in the stomach. Survivors understand the message of the sexual violence similarly—through such violent interventions in reproduction, the “future” has been stolen from them. Yet precisely how this future is stolen, and through which types of violence, is linked to beliefs about ethnicity and heredity, gender and sexuality, as well as existing systems of social control.
In the neighboring countries of Burundi and Rwanda, Hutu and Tutsi have murdered each other for decades. In Burundi, Tutsi killed thousands of Hutu in 1965, over one hundred thousand in 1972, around twenty thousand in 1988, and three thousand in 1991; Hutu and Tutsi each lost around twenty-five thousand in 1993. In Rwanda, Hutu killed around ten thousand Tutsi in 1963 and around eight hundred thousand Tutsi in 1994. In this latter conflict, mass rape was deployed as a means of genocide, with estimates of between 250,000 and 500,000 women raped. Tutsi were supposedly taller, thinner, more beautiful, and more intellectual than Hutu, who were portrayed as short, stout, and suited for physical labor. Because Tutsi women were thought to manipulate both Hutu and foreign men with their beauty, propaganda was used to incite sexual violence against them. Hutu Power cartoons featured Tutsi women engaged in orgies with Belgian troops. The Rwandan minister of justice, Tharcisse Karugarama, noted that perpetrators justified violence against Tutsi women in part by claiming that Tutsi women despised Hutu men and believed themselves to be superior to Hutu women. Hutu women even encouraged their husbands to rape, “humiliate the victims,” and enact vengeance for perceived acts of dishonor.[72]
In these outbreaks of ethnic violence, mass rape was regularly coupled with the murder of the victim; babies and children were killed along with their parents. Women (and sometimes men) were raped with spears, knives, or other objects instead of, or in addition to, penises. Goldhagen references a Human Rights Watch study of Hutu raping based on interviews with victims which found that rape was often accompanied by ritualistic mutilation of the sexual organs: disfiguring the vagina with boiling water or knives, penetrating the vagina or anus with weapons, cutting out unborn children, slicing off breasts, and slashing the pelvic area. One woman described her experience after being raped by Hutu men:
When he finished he took me inside and put me on a bed. He held one leg of mine open and another one held the other leg. He called everyone who was outside and said, “you come and see how Tutsikazi are on the inside.” Then he said, “You Tutsikazi, you think you are the only beautiful women in the world.” Then he cut out the inside of my vagina. He took the flesh outside, took a small stick and put what he had cut at the top. He stuck the stick in the ground outside the door and was shouting, “Everyone who comes past her will see how Tutsikazi look.[73]
Goldhagen found her story so disturbing that he almost left it out of the book; however, he included it to illustrate his point that perpetrators of mass violence are not dispassionate or clinical. In such acts of “excess cruelty”—gratuitous physical, verbal, and symbolic violence—Goldhagen believes that we can read the specific messages sent to the victims by the perpetrators as well as see evidence of the preexisting beliefs, prejudices, and fears held by each side.
Group sex is mythically associated with breakdowns in social structure. Because participation requires abandoning inhibitions, individuals involved are feared to risk a loss of individuality and self-control, insanity, and even death. When group sex begins with violence, as in gang rape, it can stir fears that the disintegration of human culture has already begun and is about to rage out of control. Yet, as we have seen here, even violent group sex is highly organized and shaped by social processes. More information is necessary to fully analyze these examples of gang rape, and some of these narratives are contested in addition to being incomplete. Alternate cases from around the world might have been chosen. But although limited, this discussion sheds light on the symbolic potency of group sex more generally. Whether we are talking about aborigines at a Gunabibi ceremony, college athletes, Jackrollers, or soldiers, group sex can reflect existing relationships and forge new ones. In violent gang rape, the conflicting perspectives of perpetrators and victims, and even among perpetrators, are often relatively clear. Other group sex scenarios, however, still involve participants with diverse aims, social positions, and experiences and can thus similarly be used to realize human desires for respect, status, and identity.
Group sex, to me, is tribal. There’s this connection between people, this bonding that happens. There’s a lot of affectionate touching, not just sex. It’s really special. One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older is that being open sexually is less about sex and more about family. I have people to share the aging process with. We are all experiencing changes in our sexuality, and it’s nice to have people to talk with about it. And, you know, your family changes as people die. When you’re in your seventies, the people around you are dying. I’ve already lost two partners in their sixties. Desire is still important, but now I really crave the intimacy. Sometimes you don’t need pounding sex, but someone to just be with you while you take care of yourself. My past sexual experiences have taught me that. Sometimes, I just look around the room at all these naked old people and think about how lucky I am to have people to share this phase of my life with. I know now that getting old doesn’t mean the end of sex or of intimacy with others. It’s different but still satisfying.
I don’t worry about loss. Even though I’m almost eighty, I know that I’ll find women to connect with, even if I somehow end up single again. I’m a sexual man and I like myself. Deep down, I enjoy who I am. I know there are women out there who will be attracted to me at any age. I went to check out an old folks’ home, because I’m moving into one soon, and the woman who runs it told me, “Jay, you’re lucky you’re bringing your girlfriend because if you came here alone, you’d be inundated with casseroles!”
My partner is almost sixty, and I’ve opened her up to new experiences also. I took her to Hedonism and she had oral sex with a woman right by the hot tub while I watched. We’ve been together a few years and are still exploring. I’m visual. I love watching my partner fuck, though she is less comfortable with it. We had sex with another man a few times. At one point, I was watching from the couch and I could tell she was getting turned on. I enjoyed them being together. But she felt horrible guilt about it later. “I’m supposed to be in love with you,” she said. Some things get easier as you age, but other things stay the same—like the need to check in with each other. I think she was worried about my feelings. But I enjoy watching so much that I don’t need to always be in the middle of things. I’m thankful to have a committed partner who understands my need for occasionally being sexual with others and accepts it.
I go to fewer sex parties nowadays, though they are still fun and exciting when I do. I threw a party for about twenty people a few weeks ago. The youngest person was a sixty-five-year-old woman. I introduced her to BDSM. She’d been with other men before with her husband in the room. He’s eighty-four and likes to watch her have sex with other men while he masturbates. They’ve done that for a while. But she’d never had someone take the time to really expose her to all the sensory aspects of BDSM, like bondage or feathers.
Sometimes things happen more slowly when it’s a bunch of old folks, but people still play. Our parties are loving, accepting. It’s not just about getting off, because some of the guys don’t even get off! But the women are still hot and have lots of orgasms. Most importantly, everyone laughs together.
In a group sex environment, there’s a different thing that happens. When you are having sex 1-on-1, there’s an immediate, close sort of thing. Just “you and me,” sort of personal intimate contact. But in a group sex situation, you magnify that. It’s not about “you and me,” it’s about us [waves his hands to indicate others]. There’s a community, a tribe, a bunch of people who share something.[74]
Bachelor parties ostensibly originated as a way for sexually inexperienced young men to learn about sex before their wedding night. Few men need such instruction nowadays, although the ritual persists among some groups of men. In the United States, bachelor parties can take place at strip clubs or feature strip shows at private homes; occasionally, the bachelor participates in sexual activity with performers, privately or in front of the group. Bachelor events might also involve seeking attention or sex from women in everyday settings. Although some brides are accepting of the bachelor’s possible transgressions, others are resistant beforehand or notably hurt afterward. The bachelor’s willingness to participate in the ritual anyway, however, is an important declaration of solidarity with certain male friends. How far he is willing to go in terms of sexual activity and whether he is willing to keep secrets from his future spouse can be similar statements. Yet even taking part in the ritual does not guarantee that bonds among the men will be preserved; in fact, the bachelor may change status in the group afterward.
Humiliation of the bachelor is sometimes a goal during parties. He may be stripped, taunted, or tempted onstage at a strip club in the name of “fun,” but these sanctioned forms of aggression can also be seen as symbolic punishment for his betrayal of group loyalty through his upcoming marriage. While working as a stripper, I observed firsthand the challenging emotional position into which many bachelors were thrust during these celebrations (not to mention the difficult position of the father of the bride, closeted gay friends, etc.). The stress did not necessarily mean the experience was unpleasant; ambivalence can contribute to excitement if the balance is right. Although it is impossible to generalize extensively about bachelor parties and the social dynamics involved, the point is that while participating in either erotic or sexual activity can be an important means of demonstrating or experiencing belongingness to a group, developing and maintaining status among group members, and claiming identity, these interactions can be fraught with ambivalence and even hostility. Bonds can also be created between some individuals at the expense of others without overt physical violence.
When group sex occurs among an apparently heterosexual group of men and a woman, the scenarios are often termed “homoerotic.” Sharing the body of the woman (or women) is believed to be arousing because it draws erotic power from feelings the men have for each other but cannot express directly. But while unacknowledged same-sex desires might exist, it would be a mistake to overlook the other processes and attachments involved. Medical anthropologist Carol Jenkins found that even though institutionalized men’s cults have vanished in Papua New Guinea, masculinity is still seen as vulnerable (and valuable) and intense male bonding occurs, sometimes to the detriment of marital bonds. Boys learn about sex from older boys, search for girls together, and eventually may move into group sex scenarios (called lainap, “lineup,” or singel fail, “single file”) that are biased toward multiple males and a single female. Jenkins’s research team included both male and female interviewers. Men talked about lainap, which often took place after meeting women at discos or video parlors, in detail with the male interviewers —“All the young fellows who go around together have turns on one woman. . . . She wouldn’t know that we are having turns on her until we have gone to a place where there’s no house or no people around and then we start having sex one after the other.” The female interviewers found it difficult to elicit stories of group sex from women, however. Because the women considered the sex rape, it was shameful; women bear the responsibility of avoiding male advances and lainap. Occasionally, women took part willingly or were paid to participate; if more men joined in than they expected, however, women believed that they had no choice but to submit. In these scenarios, the woman became a form of “booty,” shared between men in particular ways—successful, dominant men allowed older men and younger male relatives to “have a chance” (sans) at sex with her, for example. The men formed a line, watching each other perform while they took turns having sex with her, occasionally engaging in anal sex with each other as well. “Instead of fighting over a woman,” Jenkins writes, in lainap “the men show their capacity to cooperate, enjoy each other’s sexuality, and totally ignore the woman.”[75]
Like many other anthropological examples, Jenkins’s research troubles the applicability of a heterosexual/homosexual division across cultures. Condoms were not always used in lainap, and participants could be exposed to STDs or HIV directly or through the mixing of body fluids. But while women who contract HIV during lainap do so through heterosexual contact, Jenkins points out that when men are infected through the mixing of semen during such events, neither homosexual nor heterosexual transmission makes sense of the circumstances.[76] Same-sex activity, which the men explained as a result of overstimulation, or “going crazy,” is not overtly connected to claims of sexual identity (gay, straight, or bisexual) and emerges in a context where male same-sex relations have historical, cosmological meaning.
Even when men do not have physical contact with each other, there is more to consider than repressed sexual desire. Researchers working with Mexican migrant laborers in Northern California found that almost half visited prostitutes while in the United States and 13 percent reported participating in a bonding ritual where several men had sex with the same prostitute in succession. Afterward, the men referred to themselves as hermanos de leche, or “milk brothers.”[77] Sharing a prostitute could be a financial decision, but it could also be related to feelings of loneliness experienced by migrant laborers, many of whom have left wives and families in Mexico.
Sociologist Clifton Evers suggests that men on sports teams “are familiar with bonding through their bodies”—they “go through physical pain together . . . train together . . . get inked-up together.”[78] Group sex, consensual or not, can become another way of forging connection through doing rather than talking or sharing emotions. Athletes who share women often display a surprising lack of jealousy toward teammates during these encounters—at least when it comes to women who fall into the “share” category. Desmond Morris, known for applying a zoological perspective to human behavior, suggests that sharing sexual conquests serves a leveling function, even temporarily, when ability or compensation varies across players; Ryan and Jethá refer to this as “prehistoric egalitarianism.”[79] English “football groupie” Amanda Hughes (a pseudonym) began having sex with famous soccer players when she was eighteen. “Once you were in a player’s hotel room,” she explained, “he would encourage you to allow his mates to join in. I never understood why—the argument seemed to be that it was ‘only fair’ that they have the same as he was having.” Sometimes a player’s friends would “suddenly ‘appear’ in the bedroom doorway,” she explained, “and it would be assumed you didn’t mind.” Hughes was never gang-raped, but she also did not protest when teammates arrived.[80] Yet as we saw in violent scenarios, bonding does not preclude conflicting interests or competition. As in campus rapes or lainap, some women report acquiescing to unwanted group sex with athletes out of fear or helplessness—cooperation can result from the expectation of coercion.
In Thailand, visiting prostitutes serves as a “rite of passage” for some groups of young men. As a way to demonstrate heterosexuality to their peers, the young men visit brothels alone or in groups; condom use in such situations is inconsistent. The men vie for status through both drinking heavily and boasting about sexual conquests, leading one researcher to analyze the excursions as “an avenue for one-upmanship, competition, and demonstration of merit.” Another researcher, though, maintains the outings are “an opportunity for irresponsible fun,” to escape from a restrictive social environment, and a way that friends demonstrate support for one another. These explanations, however, are not mutually exclusive. Both researchers note the influence of peers on patterns of condom use and sexual activity—men were sometimes ridiculed for insisting on condom use, for example, and men admitted that they would rarely turn down a friend’s request to visit a brothel. Given local beliefs about male sexuality as impulsive, nonmonogamous, and risk oriented, along with cultural norms valuing “community and social harmony,” it is unsurprising that men claim to make independent decisions while at that same time exerting powerful influences on one anothers’ behavior.[81]
While the sexual practices of working class men, migrant laborers, and street prostitutes have been studied around the world, often in the name of public health, far less is written on more privileged individuals. This pattern is related to scholarship norms, but also to the fact that privilege affords invisibility. If I were able to share the details of the many stories I’ve been told about relatively privileged American men arranging sex for friends, colleagues, clients, or club members, this section would be far longer: raffles and contests at retreats where the winner is treated to sex acts while the others watch, prostitutes competing for the chance to accompany a wealthy man into private quarters by displaying sexual skills, golf “tournaments” where politicians were served beds of well-paid Barbie look-alikes along with their sushi and Cristal—in exchange for other gestures of good will, of course. Given the transgressions required by participants when illegal behavior is involved, all are implicated—the man who wins the favors of a hooker, reaping momentary sexual rewards or status, is simultaneously the group member who is most at risk of exposure and thus the most dependent on the others for protection.
Sex workers and groupies probably know some of the most intriguing private details about the wealthy and powerful men of this world. But even though a few women make headlines by divulging these secrets, why do so many others keep their mouths shut? Bonds are not created just between the men in consensual group sex scenarios, but also between the men and women. Women’s participation in group sex, especially encounters involving many men, is often skeptically or simplistically attributed to coercion or psychological dysfunction. Yet professional athletes—and even high-school competitors—can attest to the fact that some women seek these central roles and even compete for them. Professional Australian surfer Nat Young wrote about the sexualized and masculinized beach culture in his 1998 autobiography. During his teen years in the early 1960s, he spent his time surfing on Collaroy Beach north of Sydney and thinking about sex. While a few girls surfed, they did not necessarily have sex; by default, “sexual intercourse became a group activity, involving several surfers and one of the more promiscuous girls who hung around the scene.” The sex was consensual, as Young tells the story, and although the girls “weren’t well-respected in the normal sense of the word,” “strong ties” developed between them and the young male surfers.
The Grunter was really into group sex and we all greeted her with open flies every time we saw her getting off the school bus. This began happening a few times a week on a regular basis, then every weekend when all the crew at Collaroy would join the queue. . . . Other girls from our beach started to get a bit jealous of all the attention the Grunter was getting and some decided it was better to join her if they couldn’t beat her. The competition was terrific. “Brenda the Bender,” “Sally Apple Bowels,” the list got longer and longer and we had plenty of activity down at the beach in between riding waves.[82]
In some cultures, sexually active women can make no claims to deserving respect (and safety), or very weak claims to it, whether in the eyes of their peers, relatives, or the law. In other locales, respect becomes an axis of distinction. But the belief that women should want men’s respect “in the normal sense of the word”—and should align their sexuality with mainstream norms in order to get it—can cause us to overlook the complexity of motivations involved and the benefits some women perceive in stepping outside of gendered expectations. Pamela des Barres, a classic 1970s groupie turned author, reminisced that although groupies were thought of as “sluts” by outsiders, the women sought more than sex. They wanted to be part of something “important” and close to the “incredible musical brilliance” of the performers.[83] Some women still relish the glamour and rewards that come with having powerful associations or enjoy the pursuit and conquest of men they find highly desirable. “Jersey chasers” follow most professional sports teams. NFL groupies fill entire hotels in cities that are hosting important football games. Sex with multiple players is just another menu option. CEOs may find themselves similarly pursued by women, although given that the business of running companies is rewarded independently rather than as a team sport, group sex scenarios may vary. Women also willingly engage in group sex with men who are not famous or wealthy for reasons ranging from the desire for protection to their own sexual pleasure or adventure. Just as all men’s participation in group sex should not be reduced to homoerotics, all women’s participation cannot simplistically be attributed to low self-esteem, masochism, or other psychological disturbances—even if homophobia or misogyny emerge during some of the encounters.
Although not all women want to bargain for “respect” in the traditional sense, respect becomes a recurring topic in discussions about groupies in the United States and Europe. Groupies should “respect themselves.” Players should “show some respect.” Hughes suggests that players be taught basic courtesy to avoid scandal: “show a girl some respect, be nice and don’t ignore her the morning after.”[84] But the “morning after” is light years away nowadays, especially given the ease of replacing a woman who is too demanding. Another groupie is already on her knees. (“Gutter groupies,” one writer suggests, are women willing to do almost anything to service an NBA player, including providing oral sex in the parking lot of the arena.)[85] In some ways, talk about respect reflects the lack of bonds created during exchanges, especially in an atmosphere of seemingly endless supply and constant turnover. On the flip side, the days of waiting, like des Barres did, until one’s conquest retires from the public eye to report on his anatomy, sexual preferences, or skills are over. Websites and message boards allow contemporary groupies to share personal and practical information about athletes, rock stars, and other celebrities. Digging through GroupieDirt.com, for example, you can find some interesting nuggets and an occasional gem: Eminem supposedly once hired a “groupie wrangler” to cull the herd of hopefuls and asks to videotape the sex on his cell phone. The members of Whitesnake like “to line their women up and take turns.” Kid Rock loves orgies and fisting. The band members in Orgy like to have orgies. David Bowie likes orgies (but not airheads). Sting likes orgies (and hookers). And so on.
But the game is still played with a set of unwritten rules. Groupie Kat Stacks, for example, became a “divisive” figure in the hip-hop community by talking too much and too scandalously while using more expletives than a gangster flick. Stacks, a former Florida stripper, started propositioning celebrities on Twitter and then reporting about the sex on her blog, calling out men for having a “little ass motherfucking dick” and even publicizing rappers’ phone numbers if it did not go well (“harrass that fat motherfucker”). With a quarter of a million Twitter followers and over twenty million hits on her blog, Stacks found an audience—and trouble. In 2010, she was assaulted by two men on video. The men demanded that she “apologize” and “watch her mouth,” possibly in retaliation for insulting the rappers Fabolous and Lil’ Bow Wow. Considered one of the “most hated” contemporary groupies, Stacks is frequently called a “ho” who “exploits” rappers for fame. Her position on the matter, however, is that she is standing up for women by publicizing her exploits and didn’t do anything more than what “most rappers rap about, hoes . . . and spending money.” If one is going to seek fame through controversy, though, even if only for fifteen minutes, it is probably best to have a green card—Stacks was deported to Venezuela after spending two years in jail for residing illegally in the United States.[86]
The Minnesota Vikings found themselves in hot water in 2005 after some of the players rented yachts and hookers for an evening excursion on Lake Minnetonka. (“If it floats, flies, or fucks . . .”) In hindsight, the athletes should have hired their own crew as well, because while their antics didn’t shock the working girls flown in from Atlanta and Florida for the occasion, the small-town crew members were appalled at the party that began shortly after pulling away from the dock. Alarms were initially raised when the women used the downstairs rooms to change into G-strings. Then the lap dances started. Dancing became “grinding,” grinding became “groping,” and groping became full-scale “debauchery,” escalating until the captain ordered the boat back to shore several hours ahead of schedule. The crew members were responsible for identifying seventeen Vikings players and providing juicy details about the party to police investigators: naked women, a man performing oral sex on a woman on top of the bar, men receiving oral sex in deck chairs, and a sex toy demonstration in the lounge.[87] Fred Smoot, a defensive back signed to the team earlier that year, was exposed as the player “manipulating” the double-headed dildo into the vaginas of two women while teammates shouted instructions. Smoot was also declared the “ringleader” of the event. Although he denied the masterminding allegations, Smoot had indeed signed the contract with the boat rental company. His teammate, Lance Johnstone, used a credit card to cover the security deposit.
Each year, rookie players planned a party for the veterans of the team. This wasn’t the first time that strippers or hookers had been recruited for the traditional festivities, nor was it the first time that Vikings players stripped down and partied with girls on Lake Minnetonka. Publicly chartering the two 64-foot boats from Al & Alma’s Supper Club was a mistake, however. As a former Minnesota Viking explained to Sports Illustrated, in the past, they used a boat that one of the players owned. These commercial yachts, on the other hand, were usually rented for romantic moonlight cruises, not sex parties; the employees, portrayed as “innocent” in court documents by the lawyer for Al & Alma’s, hadn’t ever seen a lap dance before, much less a live dildo show. “To have a wild party out there,” the former player said, “it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that’s a horrible idea.”[88]
The “Love Boat scandal”—named because sports talk-show hosts played the “Love Boat” theme when discussing it—was an instant media favorite. Smoot and a teammate eventually pled guilty to “disorderly conduct” and “being a public nuisance on a watercraft” and paid thousand-dollar fines. The NFL imposed a one-game check fine on the players—a harsher punishment in financial terms, given that Smoot’s penalty was $82,352.
Smoot was supposedly disliked by his Eden Prairie neighbors for failing to pay his homeowner’s association fees, neglecting to water his grass, and throwing loud, late-night parties with lots of “naked ladies in the hot tub” (according to a teenage boy living nearby).[89] But had he not bungled the logistics of the rookie party, he might have still been quite popular with his teammates. After all, from another perspective, the “Love Boat” incident could be an example of community-building, conflict-reducing sexuality. Smoot was a newcomer, trying to win favor with the more established males on the team. He was being paid a large salary and hadn’t proved himself yet. The rookies were presumably footing the bill for the evening’s entertainment, an act of generosity. Morale was low among the Vikings, as recent weeks had seen team bickering, an angry owner, a proposal for a new $790 million stadium defeated, and a depressing 28–3 loss to the Chicago Bears. Instead of claiming a hoped-for status as a Super Bowl contender, the team was facing the harsh reality of being considered “the biggest flop of 2005.”[90] If there was ever a time when group cohesion was at stake, this was it. The message Smoot sent to his teammates when he asked the hookers to lie on the floor and share the purple double-dildo wasn’t quite the same as what Annie Sprinkle hopes to convey to her audiences during her “Public Cervix Announcement.” But it was a message of solidarity, nonetheless, with ardent audience participation. If the Vikings players hadn’t disastrously clashed with the “outside world”—from the “innocent” servers and boat captains of Al & Alma’s, to the local police, to the higher-ups at the NFL, to the general public, each of whom had different grievances—the sexual practices engaged in during this annual tradition probably would have brought great joy to the team.
As for the Vikings players’ female consorts, much less is known. The working girls most likely knew the culturally acceptable ways to be “generous” with their bodies—which are supposed to be exchanged only for love, indirectly for material goods such as shoes, diamonds, cars, or houses, or occasionally for pleasure (though not too frequently or enthusiastically). They simply chose to accept money instead, possibly the reason they didn’t talk to the press.
The United States is a large, highly stratified society that can only be compared tongue in cheek with a small-scale tribal group such as the Canela. Smoot had signed a six-year deal with the Vikings for $34 million, including an $11 million signing bonus, an amount of money that most upscale escorts couldn’t dream of earning (without marrying a football player). The party, though based on an ideal of female sexual availability, would have unfolded differently in a context where such sharing was a community-wide norm rather than an aberration. My point, however, is that even when socio-erotic exchanges among group members contribute to community building and conflict reduction, this doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about sexuality or society more generally. What sex means, or does, depends on the context and perspective. It matters whether you’re the rookie teammate, the veteran player, the blonde escort squashed into 14B, the brunette hooker sipping cocktails in first class (rewarded for last year’s generosity), the young waitress horrified at being asked to give a lap dance, or the captain wading through used condoms on the deck of the boat. It matters how many of these parties you’ve been to already—while sports commentators couldn’t get enough of the salacious details, Smoot later told an interviewer that the party was “overrated.” (I’m with Smoot—on that detail, anyway. The proceedings sound tame for the amount of press it received.) It matters whether you are analyzing the evening from the perspective of a journalist, evolutionary biologist, social psychologist, feminist theorist, or all of the above. And it matters what story you want to tell about sexuality.
Consider “key parties.”
Journalist Terry Gould suggests that modern swinging originated among World War II air force pilots as a way to cement bonds between families in case one of the men was killed in battle, a claim that seems to have originated in the work of sexologists Dwight and Joan Dixon in the 1980s.[91] The frequency with which this account is put forth in popular discussions of swinging shows that it strikes a nerve, possibly because tracing swinging back to these highly skilled and “often extraordinarily attractive” risk takers (“with every pilot carrying a set of genes that was probably in the top 1 percent of the nation,” Gould asserts) is appealing to current-day lifestylers. Another reason this chronicle is retold is probably because it ascribes a social purpose to behavior often viewed as deviant. Swinging as a form of socio-erotic exchange that strengthens communal bonds sounds almost virtuous, no longer just a kinky or selfish way to spend a Saturday night. And finally, the account resonates because it is at least partially true—for some participants, important bonds are created through these sexual exchanges—regardless of whether air force pilots figured that out first. Gould traces the term “key club” to the same military legacy, although he points out that “it remains unconfirmed whether airmen actually threw keys in a hat, their wives then randomly choosing one and making love with the owner.”[92]
Ryan includes the story of the fighter pilots in Sex at Dawn and blogged about it for Psychology Today. Ryan quotes from Gould’s interview with the Dixons, proffering swinging as an example of how “these warriors and their wives shared each other as a kind of tribal bonding ritual.” Yet although he doesn’t claim outright that the pilots transacted these swaps using a key-based lottery, he doesn’t mention the ambiguity either; he also invokes the film The Ice Storm (1997), which includes a memorable key party scene with disastrous effects.[93] This gloss is inconsequential in terms of his argument about socio-erotic exchanges as a means by which humans build community and reduce conflict. Similarly, whether some Inuit women thought that “wife exchange” in the name of hospitality was a bad idea or whether some Canela women resisted tradition and had to be taught generosity does not detract from a claim that monogamy is not the human evolutionary pinnacle. But when the story being told shifts from being about what sex does for a community to assuming how it feels for participants—when mate sharing is “unflinching,” sexuality is “relaxed” or “unencumbered by guilt,” or behavior is “shamelessly libidinal”—these details begin to matter quite a bit.
In middle school, we played a game called “Two Minutes in the Closet”—a group of boys and girls sat in a circle around an empty Coke bottle, which was spun to determine with whom we would retire to the small, dark space (in our case, not a closet but a basement laundry room). Given that my partner and I sat in silence, surrounded by dirty socks, for what felt like eternity the only time I participated, we were lucky we weren’t playing “Seven Minutes in Heaven.” But despite this preteen experience in (relatively) random partner selection, and even though I have attended hundreds of erotic events, I have never been to an actual key party, been invited to a key party, or interviewed someone who has personally attended a key party, whether in the 1960s or in the decades that followed. I haven’t found reliable scholarly accounts of key parties, though they are sporadically mentioned. Such a lack of evidence screams “urban legend,” although as with other scandalous but unverified sexual practices from “rainbow parties” to the “soggy biscuit game,” once the idea is out, someone, somewhere has tried it—even if only a writer at Nerve.com, “doing it for science.”[94] Call it the power of suggestion. (Now that I’ve written these words, maybe I’ll find out that key parties happen all the time and I’m just not making the cut.) I’ve heard of lifestyle events with themes of “key party” or “lock and key,” where participants draw a key that fits the lock assigned to another guest—but the new pairs do not even necessarily hook up, much less leave the premises together. I’ve heard of dozens of other creative party themes, some of which are specifically designed to get guests unclothed or interacting quickly. Overall, though, the logistics of a true key party just don’t fit the desires of most contemporary American lifestyle couples for ongoing negotiation between spouses, consent to each encounter, and bifurcating domestic space from space used for sexual recreation.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who eroticize random, even anonymous, sex or who do not want the responsibility or hassle of choosing their partners—there are plenty. They just don’t need to throw a key party to get it. Craigslist and Grinder work just fine. Sex clubs with dark rooms. Bars and nightclubs.
Stories are told for a purpose and circulated because they strike a chord with the community consuming them. Tales about key parties, I believe, often betray both outsiders’ and participants’ ambivalence toward randomness or absence of choice in contemporary swinging. In fact, one of the myths that lifestylers routinely confront is that they are open to any and all sexual partners; certainly, both this assumption and lifestylers’ defensive responses to it is affected by negative connotations of promiscuity. Lifestylers also repeatedly confront myths that women must be coerced to participate, even though they place an overt value on female agency—“wife swapping” went out of style long before “free love,” and the contemporary lifestyle isn’t either. (In fact, women’s freedom to choose their partners is often so emphatically stated that it is difficult to even broach the topic of power differentials that impact men’s and women’s experiences in the lifestyle, even if the spears have been laid aside.) If one wants to argue that female sexual availability and frequent socio-erotic exchanges produce a social milieu where sexuality is relaxed, shamelessly libidinous, and nonpossessive, though, key parties certainly make for a better example than the couple locked in the bathroom at a swingers’ party, negotiating heatedly about which couple they should invite back to their hotel room and whether doing so would be “taking one for the team.”
Key parties, bachelor parties, Wild Boar Day, Gunabibi ceremonies, and Smoot’s “Love Boat” excursion are all examples of how community members forge and sustain relationships through group sexuality. The process, however, is complex—and I believe that it always was, whether or not it appears that way from a modern vantage point. (For some individuals, the possibility of opting out of traditional practices they find unfair or unappealing is one of the benefits of industrialized, capitalist, mobile and fragmented societies.) The sexual exchanges engaged in by the Canela contributed to community building and conflict reduction—but so did those of the Murgin and the Marind-anim. Bonding is not inconsistent with the existence of hierarchy, power, or competition, as bonds can be created out of fear as well as affection. Sometimes sexual bonding rituals reaffirm existing hierarchies or spawn new ones; other times, “sharing” momentarily levels an unequal playing field. Socio-erotic exchanges might be ritualized or casual, violent, affectionate, or indifferent; some individuals may benefit more than others even when everyone consents. Bonding can bring some individuals closer while others are literally or symbolically excluded. The social impact of such inclusions and exclusions varies depending on one’s position—whether the unsuspecting woman at the center of a lainap, the young man pressured into visiting a brothel, the executive who turns down his opportunity to lick a whipped-cream bikini off an escort at a retreat, or the wife-to-be sitting home while her fiancé rages in Vegas. Individuals participate for varying reasons, from a belief in sexual generosity to the desire for pleasure, to gain resources or because of a lack of options. One can encounter danger, even violence, in sexual activity even as one also, at times, experiences “great sexual freedom and fun.” As sexual experiences are interpreted and reinterpreted, what sex does or means for a group and for individuals depends on a broader social, political, historical, and economic context. Both Rebombo and the woman he raped told stories of shame and fear, although he did not interpret his act as criminal until years later. Among some tribes, sexual practices labeled “deviant” and suppressed by colonial forces actually increased in importance and frequency for a time, even if driven underground.
Is it only because I live in an individualistic, capitalistic, competitive society that my thoughts immediately turn to my own selfish preferences when hypothetically contemplating a key party: Do I really have to have sex with that irritating guy whose keys I just picked? Is he going to crash the car or ask me to cook him breakfast? Does my husband remember that he’s not allowed to have sex with anyone else in our home? No other woman can see the dozens of animal print outfits I left slung around the bathroom like the aftermath of a big game safari—how embarrassing—maybe they can have sex in the SUV instead? Why couldn’t I have drawn the other set of BMW keys, the ones belonging to the hot new neighbor?
Might I be overlooking the significance of such an exchange because, unlike ancestral foragers, the tribal Canela, or air force pilots, my survival is not directly interdependent with the “group” whose shiny keys are beckoning from the bottom of the bowl?
Now, maybe if I were being offered a meat pie . . .
1. Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality (New York: Harper, 2010), 93.
2. Whether ritual multipartner sex occurs in an actual group or sequentially is somewhat at issue in the literature, but I have included a discussion here because the Canela appear as one of the few documented examples of “group sex” in non-Western societies.
3. Ryan and Jethá, Sex at Dawn, 103 (emphasis in original).
4. Ibid., 93.
5. Ibid., 102.
6. Ibid., 48.
7. Ibid., 292.
8. Ibid., 180.
9. William H. Crocker, “Canela Marriage: Factors in Change,” in Marriage Practices in Lowland South America, ed. Kenneth M. Kensinger (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984), available at http://anthropology.si.edu/canela/literature/marrriage.pdf. Also see Mending Ways: The Canela Indians of Brazil (1999; co-produced by National Human Studies Film Center, Smithsonian Institution), DVD.
10. (Crocker & Crocker p. 113)
11. William Lloyd Warner, A Black Civilization: A Social Study of an Australian Tribe (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937), 311.
12. Ibid., 306.
13. Ibid., 308.
14. Ibid., 217.
15. Ibid., 307.
16. Ibid., 308.
17. Ibid., 233.
18. Joan Kimm, A Fatal Conjunction: Two Laws, Two Cultures (Sydney: Federation Press, 2004), 52.
19. Ryan and Jethá, Sex at Dawn, 185.
20. Bruce M. Knauft, South Coast New Guinea Cultures: History, Comparison, Dialectic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 157.
21. Ewen Callaway, “Loving Bonobos Have a Carnivorous Dark Side,” New Scientist, October 13, 2008, http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14926.
22. Ryan and Jethá, Sex at Dawn, 198.
23. While “bonding” hormones such as oxytocin may play roles in connections between some individuals involved in group sex, the term “bonding” is used here to talk about social processes rather than biological processes.
24. Cynthia McFadden, “Many Campus Assault Victims Stay Quiet, or Fail to Get Help,” Nightline, September 6, 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/college-campus-assaults-constant-threat/story?id=11410988#.UNvDWKX3Dq1.
25. “Family Sues College after Daughter’s Suicide,” WABC-TV Eyewitness News, July 11, 2008, http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=6259518.
26. McFadden, “Assault Victims Stay Quiet.”
27. Gerald Eskenazi, “The Male Athlete and Sexual Assault,” New York Times on the Web, June 3, 1990, http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/03/reviews/glenridge-athlete.html?_r=2.
28. Diana Scully and Joseph Marolla, “‘Riding the Bull at Gilley’s’: Convicted Rapists Describe the Rewards of Rape,” Social Problems 32, no. 3 (1985): 262.
29. Tracy Clark-Flory, “Yale Fraternity Pledges Chant about Rape,” Salon.com, October 15, 2010, http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/2010/10/15/yale_fraternity_pledges_chant_about_rape/index.html.
30. Patricia Yancey Martin and Robert A. Hummer, “Fraternities and Rape on Campus,” in Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology, ed. Margaret Anderson and Patricia Hill Collins (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1989), 162.
31. David Smith, “It Took Me 20 Years to Realise That I’d Done Something Wrong,” Guardian, June 17, 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/17/rape-apology-south-africa.
32. Moni Basu and Nkepile Mabuse, “He Raped as a Teenager and Now Works to Stop Sexual Violence in South Africa,” CNN, May 7, 2012, http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/05/world/africa/south-africa-rape.
33. Karen Franklin, “Enacting Masculinity: Antigay Violence and Group Rape as Participatory Theater,” Sexuality Research & Social Policy 1, no. 2 (2004): 35.
34. Ibid.
35. Scully and Marolla, “‘Riding the Bull at Gilley’s,’” 260.
36. Peggy R. Sanday, Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus (New York: New York University Press, 1990), 14.
37. Donald G. Dutton and Susan L. Painter, “Traumatic Bonding: The Development of Emotional Attachments in Battered Women and Other Relationships of Intermittent Abuse,” Victimology: An International Journal 6, no. 1–4: 139–155. Quoted in Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitative Relationships (Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 1997).
38. S. Mokwena, “The Era of the Jackrollers: Contextualizing the Rise of Youth Gangs in Soweto” (paper presented at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, Johannesburg, October 30, 1991).
39. Janet Maia Wojcicki, “‘She Drank His Money’: Survival Sex and the Problem of Violence in Taverns in Gauteng Province, South Africa,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 16, no. 3 (2002): 270.
40. Lloyd Vogelman and Sharon Lewis, “Gang Rape and the Culture of Violence in South Africa,” Der Überblick, no. 2 (1993): 39–42.
41. Mokwena, “The Era of the Jackrollers.”
42. Annie Kelly, “Raped and Killed for Being a Lesbian: South Africa Ignores ‘Corrective’ Attacks,” Guardian, March 12, 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/12/eudy-simelane-corrective-rape-south-africa.
43. Jonathan Clayton, “Where Sex Crime Is ‘Just a Bit of a Game,’” Times Online, August 12, 2005, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article1936778.ece.
44. Rachel Jewkes and Naeema Abrahams, “The Epidemiology of Rape and Sexual Coercion in South Africa: An Overview,” Social Science & Medicine 55 (2002): 1231–44.
45. Kate Wood, “Contextualizing Group Rape in Post-apartheid South Africa,” Culture, Health, and Sexuality 7, no. 4 (2005): 306.
46. Heather Jones, “Rapex in South Africa,” Wilder Voice 3, no. 5 (2008).
47. Ben Hoyle, “‘Jack Rolling’ Link to Rape Gang,” Times Online, August 12, 2005, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article1936777.ece.
48. Nancy Gibbs, Mary Cronin, and Melissa Ludtke, “Wilding in the Night,” Time, May 8, 1989, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,957631,00.html.
49. Pamela Newkirk, Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 28.
50. Jamie Satterfield, “Slaying Victims Lost in the Furor,” Knoxnews.com, May 27, 2007, http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/may/27/slaying-victims-lost-in-the-furor/.
51. Marian T. A. Tankink, “The Silence of South-Sudanese Women: Social Risks in Talking about Experiences of Sexual Violence,” Culture, Health & Sexuality: An International Journal for Research, Intervention and Care 15, no. 4 (2013): 391–403.
52. Nicholas D. Kristof, “A Policy of Rape,” New York Times, June 5, 2005.
53. Amnesty International, “Sudan, Darfur Rape as a Weapon of War” (report, July 2004), available at http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AFR54/076/2004/en/f66115ea-d5b4-11dd-bb24-1fb85fe8fa05/afr540762004en.pdf.
54. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity (New York: PublicAffairs, 2009), 456.
55. Tankink, “Silence of South Sudanese Women,” 395.
56. Kristof, “A Policy of Rape.”
57. Adrian Croft, “Doctor, Gang-Raped in Sudan's Darfur, Wins Rights Award,” Reuters, October 6, 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/10/06/us-sudan-award-idUSTRE69552320101006 .
58. National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence, “Darfur: Gendered Violence and Rape as a Weapon of Genocide,” available at http://www.ncdsv.org/images/DarfurGenderedViolenceRapeWeapon.pdf.
59. “History,” Global Grassroots: Conscious Social Change for Women website, http://www.globalgrassroots.org/history.html.
60. Katharine Houreld, “Women and Girls in Darfur Raped, Jailed, Fined,” The Age (Australia), March 14, 2005, http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Women-and-girls-in-Darfur-raped-jailed-fined/2005/03/13/1110649052906.html.
61. Kristof, “A Policy of Rape.”
62. Jeffrey Gettleman, “A Taste of Hope Sends Refugees Back to Darfur,” New York Times, February 26, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/world/africa/darfur-refugees-returning-home.html?ref=sudan&_r=0.
63. Andrew Green, “Humanitarian Crisis Worsens as Fighting Escalates in Sudan,” Lancet 381, no. 9863 (2013): 281, available at http://www.lancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2813%2960118-X/fulltext.
64. Goldhagen, Worse Than War, 455.
65. Claudia Card, “Rape as a Weapon of War,” Hypatia 11, no. 4 (1996): 3.
66. Goldhagen, Worse Than War, 453.
67. Card, “Rape as a Weapon of War.”
68. “Bosniak” is the term used to refer to ethnic identity; the term “Bosnian” refers to all residents of Bosnia regardless of ethnicity or religion.
69. Goldhagen, Worse Than War, 460, 465.
70. Tankink, “Silence of South Sudanese Women,” 392.
71. Emily Wax, “‘We Want to Make a Light Baby,’” Washington Post, June 30, 2004.
72. Goldhagen, Worse Than War, 461.
73. Ibid., 463.
74. David McInnes, Jack Bradley, and Garrett Prestage, “The Discourse of Gay Men’s Group Sex: The Importance of Masculinity,” Culture, Health & Sexuality: An International Journal for Research, Intervention and Care 11, no. 6 (2009): 650.
75. Carol Jenkins, “The Homosexual Context of Heterosexual Practice in Papua New Guinea,” in Bisexualities and AIDS: International Perspectives, ed. Peter Aggleton (London: Taylor & Francis, 1996), 188–203.
76. Gary W. Dowsett, “The Gay Plague Revisited: AIDS and Its Enduring Moral Panic,” in Moral Panics, Sex Panics: Fear and the Fight over Sexual Rights, ed. Gilbert Herdt (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 130.
77. Kurt C. Organista, “HIV Prevention Models with Mexican Migrant Farmworkers,” in Practice Issues in HIV/AIDS Services: Empowerment-Based Models and Program Applications, ed. Ronald J. Mancoske and James Donald Smith (Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press, 2004), 136.
78. “After Matthew Johns Affair, Why Sports Stars Like Group Sex,” Sunday Telegraph (Australia), May 17, 2009, http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/sport-biography/after-matthew-johns-affair-why-sports-stars-like-group-sex/story-fn34og81-1225712999651.
79. Ryan and Jetha, Sex at Dawn, 93.
80. Amanda Hughes, “I Was a Football Groupie,” Guardian, November 14, 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2004/nov/15/newsstory.sport7.
81. Mark Vanlandingham and Nancy Grandjean, “Some Cultural Underpinnings of Male Sexual Behaviour Patterns in Thailand,” in Sexual Cultures and Migration in the Era of AIDS: Anthropological and Demographic Perspectives, ed. Gilbert Herdt (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 136–37.
82. Matthew Gault-Williams, “Nat Young—From Collaroy to Hawai’i,” Legendary Surfers: A Definitive History of Surfing’s Culture and Heroes (blog), February 29, 2008, http://files.legendarysurfers.com/surf/legends/lsc215.html#nat_young_begins.
83. Patrick Doyle, “Exclusive: Former Stones, Dylan Superfan Pamela Des Barres on ‘Greatest Groupies,’” Rolling Stone, December 15, 2010, http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/exclusive-former-stones-dylan-superfan-pamela-debarres-on-greatest-groupies-20101215.
84. Hughes, “I Was a Football Groupie.”
85. Lisa DePaulo and Kyla Jones, “The Days and Nights of an NBA Groupie,” GQ, July 2006, http://www.gq.com/sports/profiles/200606/nba-men-women-groupies.
86. Katy Kelleher, “‘Super Groupie’ Kat Stacks Assaulted on Video,” Jezebel, June 1, 2010, http://jezebel.com/5552387/super-groupie-kat-stacks-assaulted-on-video; Arati Patel, “Notorious Hip-Hop Groupie Kat Stacks Petitioning Obama Administration to Stop Her Deportation,” Hollywood Reporter, August 23, 2012, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kat-stacks-hip-hop-groupie-deported-obama-petition-364907.
87. Jeff Baenen, “Culpepper, Three Other Vikings Charged in Boat-Party Scandal,” USA Today, December 15, 2005, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/vikings/2005-12-15-boat-party-charges_x.htm#.
88. Michael Silver and George Dohrman, “Adrift on Lake Woebegone,” Sports Illustrated, October 24, 2005, http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1113465/3/index.htm.
89. Jonathan Kaminsky, “Former Viking Fred Smoot Continues to Terrorize Neighborhood,” Citypages News, October 1, 2008, http://www.citypages.com/2008-10-01/news/former-viking-fred-smoot-continues-to-terrorize-neighborhood/.
90. Silver and Dohrman, “Adrift on Lake Woebegone.”
91. Terry Gould, The Lifestyle: A Look at the Erotic Rites of Swingers (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1999).
92. Ibid., 30.
93. Christopher Ryan, “Not All Military Adultery Results in Scandal,” Psychology Today , November 16, 2012, http://www.psychologytoday.com/em/111037.
94. Jen Miller, “I Did It for Science—Experiment: Key Party,” Nerve, March 1, 2006, http://www.nerve.com/love-sex/i-did-it-for-science/i-did-it-for-science-key-party. Other preteen and teenage games I heard about while writing this book use dice, playing cards, straws, or blindfolds to select partners; these games aren’t usually completely “random,” however, but played at parties where the participants already know one another.
Some theorists suggest that public and group sex was central to the processes of identity formation that eventually burst into the US gay liberation movement of the 1970s. Activist Patrick Moore asserts that “in the 1970s gay men used sex as the raw material for a social experiment so extreme that I liken it to art.” Sex, he argues, became like theater or performance art, a means of “creative exploration and expression.”[1] But why sex? And why group sex in particular? Certainly, the development of gay male identity in the United States has a multilayered history that might be traced differently through rural and urban populations or across social classes and races. Men have been having sex with other men in parks or bathhouses as long as there have been parks or bathhouses, and not all gay men of the time participated in sexual culture or saw it as a path to social change. This section is not meant to generalize about all gay men, then or now, but to illustrate how forces combined at that historical juncture to make group sex meaningful as a mode of personal and political rebellion for a specific population.
For many same-sex-desiring men in the United States living midcentury, life was about invisibility. This had not always been the case. In Gay New York, historian George Chauncey argues that the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw an “extensive gay world” taking shape in New York City, where “fairies” interacted with sailors in the Bowery and lesbians gathered with bohemians in Greenwich Village. In the 1920s and 1930s, antigay laws were instituted as a response to the challenges this growing visibility posed to the social order. Gay life was forced underground. As gay men adopted styles of masculinity enabling them to “pass” instead of performing openly as “sissies” or “fairies,” they were demonized: “The fact that homosexuals no longer seemed easy to identify made them seem even more dangerous, since it meant that even the next-door neighbor could be one.”[2] In the 1950s, as well as being a crime, homosexuality was considered a psychological disorder. Many establishments did not allow openly homosexual patrons; police harassment, entrapment, and arrest were common. If discovered, men with same-sex desires risked violence from gay-bashers and ostracization from families and friends. “The dangers gay men faced increased rapidly in the postwar decades,” Chauncey writes, yet at the same time, new bonds were being forged among them. The growing gay enclaves in cities since the turn of the century provided safety, connection, and some degree of escape from the closet.
In the 1960s and 1970s, gay men continued migrating to urban centers seeking relief from social and familial pressures. Organized resistance to antigay legislation and public violence was already underway in New York; so, too, was the creation of what historian Jeffrey Escoffier has dubbed a “new gay sexual culture,” which “gave gay men a chance to learn about sex and about other gay men in a public setting rather than in more furtive personal encounters.” Watching others was educational and exciting. The sheer availability of sexual encounters—especially for men who had grown up with a sense of lack and shame—was also thrilling. A man could “cruise someone on the way to work, pass a phone number to him, and meet him for sex in the office during lunch time”; men could “dart off into doorways for quick blow jobs and orgasms.” New York’s raunchy sexual landscape, from Christopher Street to Fire Island, Escoffier writes, “generated a rich body of personal stories and in later years achieved a mythological status—marked iconic references such as ‘the trucks,’ ‘the piers,’ and ‘the tubs.’”[3] Individual experiences, along with stories of those experiences, were shared, generating a sense of belonging.
Participating in public sexual culture was about pleasure but also about developing new understandings of bodies and desires. Although illegal until 1976, when the Consenting Adult Sex Bill was passed, bathhouses had operated in the United States since the turn of the century. Police periodically raided bathhouses, but they were still safer than outdoor locations. Ira Tattleman argues that while some saw the baths as an extension of the closet—gay men pursued orgasms but remained relatively invisible unless raided—others saw the baths as places where men could finally express themselves “outside the language of a homophobic society” and “experience commonality.” Patrons gained confidence by watching other men and learned about sex “as performance, technique, and mutual satisfaction.” Patrons shed outside identities and followed a uniform dress code, wearing a single white towel; the dim lighting required them to “favor other senses over sight.” Bathhouses also displaced a focus on speech, as “behavior was coded by location, posture, eye contact, and hand gestures.” Water, which engaged on a tactile level, and continuous music enveloped patrons in a “timeless” and “secluded” world that helped “loosen long-imposed restraints” on their sexuality.[4]
Group sexuality engaged in at the sex clubs, bathhouses, parties, and other public sex locations on each coast became “at heart, a form of political resistance to a so-called ‘normal’ world that attempted to control queerness through shame.”[5] Through witnessing and being witnessed, gay men participated in rites of passage and initiation rituals. Sociologist Michael Pollack argues that “homosexual rites,” such as fisting, “combine individualistic elements with others which reveal a collective belonging.”[6] “In spite of their communal, affirmative nature,” he writes, “specifically homosexual orgies are first of all actions of apprenticeship and promotion of individual sexual freedom.”[7] For some participants, gay male leather communities permitted them “to be something not allowed in more ordinary life,” providing empowerment and companionship on the “long struggle toward selfhood.”[8] This newfound affirmation of the self was coupled with a sense of belonging. S/M could “initiate” a gay man into a community of men with particular ideas about what it means to be masculine and gay at a given point in time and into a new physical relationship with his body beyond the “disdain, shame, and hatred” patriarchy had heaped upon it. Although the body is tested and marked in BDSM, it is also “resurrected.”[9] Participants could achieve new awareness and personal transformation. The desire to be witnessed in such rituals is not simple exhibitionism, Tim Dean notes, but a wish “for cultural rather than individual sanction that is particularly important in the case of nonnormative or stigmatized erotic activities.”[10]
The Catacombs was an underground gay BDSM club that operated out of a private residence in San Francisco during the 1970s. Events were invitation-only. Anthropologist Gayle Rubin describes the Catacombs as a place that engendered “camaraderie and loyalty” and allowed for “intense bodily experiences, intimate connection, male fellowship, and having a good time.” Patrons engaged in “wild excess,” serious physical trials, and playful Crisco fights or poppers-sniffing contests in an environment that offered acceptance, protection, and comfort. Part of the legacy of the Catacombs, Rubin believes, was “a very deep love for the physical body” and “its capacities for sensory experience.”[11] The Catacombs also “offered men the opportunity to further diversify and specify their sexuality whether or not they perceived any political implications to doing so. Instead of generic homosexuality, it delineated a community of men who were drawn to masculinity, fisting, and S/M.” Even then, differences arose. “Some old-fashioned leathermen,” Patrick Califia writes, “thought fisting was dreadful and had nothing to do with S/M. They were not about to get Crisco on their leather. Some fisters thought S/M was violent and extreme. Old-guard leather was a beer and bourbon scene; fisting was MDA and poppers.” Mainstream gays and lesbians were often hostile toward both BDSM and fisting, worried such practices would thwart their attempts at assimilating with heteronormative culture.[12] Despite the divisions and disagreements, however, sexuality provided a realm for identity construction among men that would become important in the decades to come.
Although there were overlaps with the sexual ideals of 1960s “hippie” youth movements, the notion of sex as a means of political rebellion took on a particular shape and importance in these gay male worlds of the time. In a context of violence, illegality, stigma, pathologization, and isolation, group sex became a route to intense feelings of liberation—not for all men and not the only route, but an important one nonetheless. In some writing of the time, witnessing each other, or being witnessed, during group sex or in bathhouses became an explicitly political act. The magazine Fag Rag debuted in 1971. Charles Shively contributed articles such as “Indiscriminate Promiscuity as an Act of Revolution” or “Cock-Sucking as an Act of Revolution.” He positioned “gay male sexuality and sensibility as the central tools for revolutionary change in America” because they posed challenges to “the morals (monogamy) and institutions (marriage and the church) that were at the center of American capitalism.” “The greatest empire in the world fell apart because of self-indulgence and lack of personal discipline,” Shively reasoned. “Now if cock-sucking could bring down Rome, think what we might do to Capitalism and the American system of imperial terror . . . SHOW HARD. MAKE DATE.”[13]
The utopian ideals of sexual revolutionaries were not always realized, of course. Even before the AIDS epidemic, some gay men criticized the objectification and competitive masculinity expressed in public sexual cultures. The figure of the “clone”[14] —a tough, macho, muscular man—displaced stereotypes of gay men as effeminate but was accompanied by pressure to live up to a narrow physical ideal. Clones followed masculinized sexual scripts emphasizing anonymous, experimental, occasionally rough sex, often in groups. Sexual performance became a competitive way to claim status. Some critics claimed the focus on sex made for shallow relationships; socializing revolved around sex partying rather than intimacy or sustainable connections. Transgression provided only ephemeral thrills, and after their orgasms subsided, the men remained isolated, sometimes experiencing even more self-loathing. Drug use progressed throughout the 1970s, occasionally enhancing men’s experiences but sometimes becoming excessive to overcome inhibitions, escape emotional pain, or engage in ever more extreme sexual practices. For some men, then, the culture “delivered acceptance, even spiritual transcendence, while for others it was filled with cliques and cruelty.”[15]
In 1976, one of the more infamous New York City clubs, the Mineshaft, opened alongside the slaughterhouses of the meatpacking district. Patrons entered through an unmarked door, where a guard controlled entry. The activities became progressively more extreme as one moved farther inside—first past the “glory hole” wall and fisting area, then down another stairway into a basement featuring bathtubs for “piss pigs” and dark back rooms, where men who were less attractive or more interested in edgier activities congregated.[16] Escoffier analyzes the Mineshaft as an entertainment complex where paid performers created grand sexual spectacles for patrons but also acted as “coaches” and guides. The “real” and the “fantastic” were separate realms; the Mineshaft was “a portal into an erotic fantasy world” where patrons could enhance their sexual pleasure and stimulate their imaginations.[17] Other theorists, however, took a less celebratory view of the extreme S/M found at the Mineshaft, arguing that it wasn’t liberating or creative but instead a manifestation of deep psychological wounds. Journalists of the time described scenes that, when decontextualized, supported interpretations of degeneracy rather than playfulness: “a circle of men stand around a bath tub, urinating upon a semi-nude man who fondles his penis and moans, ‘Piss on me, Yeah, piss on me.’”[18] “The cluster of bathtubs was an otherworldly sight,” Moore writes, “and the piss pigs lying in them, ready for use, seemed to have reached an altered state not just from whatever drugs they might have been using but from the act in which they were absorbed. Their pleading eyes looked elsewhere.”[19]
In 1978, outspoken activist Larry Kramer published Faggots, a satirical look at gay male culture that became one of the best-selling gay novels of all time. His characters seek sex incessantly at places named the Toilet Bowl, the Meat Rack, and Fuckteria, believing that plunging into the “pit of sexuality” is a necessary part of “the faggot lifestyle—to find abandonment and freedom through ecstasy.”[20] One of the characters eventually finds himself voyeuristically watching a man
fucking himself by sitting on a stationary twelve-inch rubber dildo while being bound hand and foot, the dildo impaled to a cross, the cross mounted on a stage, and the fellow also sucking the cock of a gentleman clad entirely in chain mail, except of course for his genitals, which were exposed, and enormous, and holding in his hand while mouth-fucking the impaled acolyte, not one but two hissing rattlesnakes, reputed to have been defanged but dripping something from their mouths nevertheless, all of this witnessed by forty-nine other members, each donged with grease, each jerking off either himself or a fellow clubber.
He then has an epiphany: Was he going to be left endlessly playing “‘Can You Top This?’ every time he wanted to get his rocks off?”[21]
How far did they need to go to bring down an empire?
Some critics declared the revolution a failure. Author John Rechy, who based some of his novels on his own sexual exploits, wrote, “What kind of revolution is it that ends when one looks old, at least for most? What kind of revolution is it in which some of the revolutionaries must look beautiful? What kind of revolution is it in which the revolutionaries slaughter each other, in the sexual arenas and in the ritual of S&M?”[22] Sex alone, even transgressive orgy sex, proved unable to overthrow heteronormative society just as, for the hippies, it wasn’t enough to vanquish capitalism. As Rechy acknowledged, unrelenting “outside pressures” from the straight world, such as hatred or “imposed guilt,” meant that radical gay male sexual cultures could never live up to their promise as a “noble revolt.”[23] With the dawning of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, bathhouses and other public sex spaces became demonized as “killing fields” rather than sites of liberation, revolution, or salvation. Even men who had experienced a “baptism” in the public sex culture of the previous decade, such as Marco Vassi, grew disillusioned. In 1985, the Mineshaft was closed by the New York City Department of Health. Sexual encounters become “weighed down with a roster of questions about safety and the nagging aura of self-destruction and shame.”[24] In his retrospective commentary, Moore acknowledges that while repression may lead people to respond creatively, it also creates emotional damage, “meaning that the sexual explorations of the 1970s, while creative, would also be marked by extremity.”[25] The “triumphant act of coming out and living an open life does not erase the damage done by living in fear during one’s development,” he cautions, and the more destructive side of the 1970s sex scene must be analyzed in “the context of men who faced enormous emotional challenges.”[26]
Still, the process of claiming space, participation in group sexual rites and rituals, and the experience of witnessing and being witnessed in transgressive sex, led at least some gay men—albeit relatively privileged ones—to construct powerful cultural critiques. As they finally began to “explore their sexual fantasies in public,” they started to envision a world “where homosexuality was not demonized but celebrated.” They began to “learn from and support other men, exchange ideas, build community structures, and raise a political ruckus.”[27]
Further, the relationship of emotional wounds to sexual pleasure is complex. Pain and pleasure transform into each other. One’s man degradation becomes another man’s ecstasy. Barry Charles, known as “Troughman,” describes being a “piss pig” in the Mineshaft as “sexual heaven.” His first night in the tub was intensely exciting: “I knew I was never going to get over this moment of identification with my innermost sexual desire and I never have.”[28] Charles resists explanations for his love of watersports: “One part of me would like to go into the psychology of it, and another part of me says, no, just enjoy it.” The point, for him, of the public “piss orgies” he participated in—which he did not abandon after the Mineshaft closed—was to indulge his “central sexual turn on”; the point of his activism was to push boundaries and increase tolerance of sexual practices and desires. “What’s the point of gay politics if it’s not about sex? What’s the point if you can’t do it?”[29]
Some writers and participants embraced sacred sexuality as the next step, a cultural progression toward a more authentic existence. In 1984, Canadian biochemist Geoff Mains published Urban Aboriginals, a book using tribal themes to critique Western culture’s disavowal of the body. After exploring the West Coast gay communities in Vancouver and San Francisco, Mains had come to believe that alternative sexuality could have a significant impact on society. Gay leathermen, he argued, had created a new tribal culture based on both universal, primitive human capacities and experiences that evoked extreme sensation or emotion. As leathermen shared erotic and sexual scenes with each other, they also enabled magical connections, healing, and transformation.[30] Leatherfolk, a volume released almost a decade later, also highlighted the potential for erotic practices to serve as initiation rituals or tools for spiritual growth, valorizing some as “magical,” “tribal,” “primal,” or “primitive.” One of Purusha’s followers, Ganymede, writes: “Intense erotic experience often leads to alteration of consciousness and transcendence of limitations. Through it comes the divine release of ego, pride, and attachments, and the healing of deep psychological wounds.”[31] The focus on cultural transformation was still present: “Raising one’s personal Kundalini power through direct sexual stimulation,” Ganymede argued, is “the most potent tool for transformation we have available.” Contributors also stressed the need for reflexivity and continually increasing one’s self-knowledge to avoid becoming abusive in sexual relationships.[32]
Despite assertions that gay sex is about politics, spirituality, or cultural evolution, most sex between men occurs outside of the spotlight of such discussions and does not necessarily carry those meanings. Men meeting on Casual Encounters for group sex, for example, don’t necessarily feel baptized into commonality or consider themselves to be routing the “American system of imperial terror” as they do so. One man in the room may indeed feel liberated; another man may consider himself straight and live in fear that his wife will discover his secret life. The sexual behavior and beliefs of a mere slice of the gay population easily become sensationalized through the discourse of both inspired activists and their opposition. For right-wing opponents of gay rights, a focus on sex can be used to delegitimize political claims. Stereotypes of gay men as “sexually deviant” or insatiable can also become self-fulfilling prophecies: as “gayness” becomes associated with certain types of transgressive behaviors, those behaviors provide a means of defying heteronormative expectations and claiming identity.
Transgression, always lashed to the taboo.
Some writers are nostalgic for the utopian ideals of pre-AIDS gay sexual life, despite the limitations. What might have happened, Moore wonders, if AIDS hadn’t cut the experiment short? What was begun then was in the service of revolution, he points out, not self-destruction: “Is it too late for us to pick up those threads of revolution and become artists again?”[33] To do so would not mean recreating the 1970s but once again imagining new possibilities. “Creating and maintaining a public culture of queer sexuality in a heterosexist society,” Wayne Hoffman argues, “is a political act in any decade.” Young gay men today, he argues, cannot even imagine the experiences of freedom and communion felt in the back rooms of 1976.
Then again, could a young man of the 1970s imagine gathering with five thousand other openly gay men for a weekend circuit party, wearing silver booty shorts, and strolling through the barricaded streets of New Orleans arm in arm with his lover while local businesses compete for his “pink dollars”? Could he imagine 65,000 gays and lesbians from around the world congregating at the Circuit Festival in Barcelona for twelve days of parties, dancing, and sex in dozens of languages?
Hoffman believes a renewal in public sexual culture occurred in the 1990s that represents not “a step backward in gay men’s sexual development—either to the days of liberation or from the horrors of the epidemic—but rather a step ahead in time toward a new kind of sexual and political expression.”[34]
But what exactly does this new kind of sexual and political expression look like?
1. Patrick Moore, Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Sexuality (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), xxiv.
2. George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 356–58, 360.
3. Jeffrey Escoffier, Bigger Than Life: The History of Gay Porn Cinema from Beefcake to Hardcore (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2009), 91.
4. Ira Tattleman, “The Meaning at the Wall: Tracing the Gay Bathhouse,” in Queers in Space: Communities/Public Places/Sites of Resistance, ed. Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthillette, and Yolanda Retter (Seattle: Bay Press, 1997), 403, 404.
5. Michael Bronski, The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom (New York: St. Martin’s, 1998), xx.
6. Michael Pollack, “Homosexual Rituals and Safer Sex,” Journal of Homosexuality 25, no. 3 (1993): 308.
7. Ibid., 312.
8. Mark Thompson, ed., Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice (Boston: Alyson Publications, 1991), 159.
9. R. H. Hopcke and M. Thompson, “S/M and the Psychology of Gay Male Initiation: An Archetypal Perspective,” in Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice, ed. Mark Thompson (Boston: Alyson Publications, 1991), 72.
10. Tim Dean, Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 129. Dean is specifically referring to bareback gang bangs, although his comments refer to sexual witnessing more generally.
11. Gayle Rubin, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, ed. Carole S. Vance (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 139.
12. Pat Califia, “San Francisco: Revisiting ‘the City of Desire,’” in Queers in Space: Communities/Public Places/Sites of Resistance, ed. Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthillette, and Yolanda Retter (Seattle: Bay Press, 1997), 193.
13. Moore, Beyond Shame, 8, 9.
14. Martin P. Levine, Gay Macho: The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 92.
15. Moore, Beyond Shame, 49.
16. Ibid., 25.
17. Escoffier, Bigger Than Life, 149.
18. Levine, Gay Macho, 53.
19. Moore, Beyond Shame, 23.
20. Larry Kramer, Faggots (New York: Grove Press, 1978), 48.
21. Ibid., 86.
22. John Rechy, The Sexual Outlaw: A Documentary (New York: Grove Press, 1977), 285.
23. Ibid., 287.
24. Moore, Beyond Shame, 112.
25. Ibid., 13.
26. Ibid., 49.
27. Quoted in Dangerous Bedfellows [Eva Hoffman, Wayne Pendleton], Policing Public Sex: Queer Politics and the Future of AIDS Activism (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2008), 339.
28. Robert Reynolds and Gerard Sullivan, Gay Men’s Sexual Stories: Getting It! (Binghamton, NY: Haworth SocialWork Practice Press, 2003), 67.
29. Ibid., 73.
30. Mains, Geoff. (1984). Urban Aboriginals: A Celebration of Leathersexuality (Daedalus Publishing).
31. Thompson, Leatherfolk, 301.
32. Comparing contemporary Western practices to tribal initiation rites is problematic in that we cannot assume that meanings translate across time and space. On the other hand, if a given practice—fisting or BDSM, for example—feels like an initiation rite or rite of passage to participants and is used for those purposes, a scholar can focus on that subjective experience.
33. Moore, Beyond Shame, 73.
34. Dangerous Bedfellows, Policing Public Sex, 351.
Group Sex as Rebellion, Liberation, and Entertainment
Here, when we go to parties, of course our bones are shaking, but we go with shaking bones. And I’m telling you, we are scared . . . every time the doorbell rings, delet mirize (your heart sinks). . . . Could it be [the morality police]? It’s scary. But you know, we have to do something . . . to remind ourselves, Hey, we are alive!
—Iranian woman[1]
There are two levels where we can lead our lives. The real and the fantastic. We have to disco and do drugs and fuck if we want to live fantastic!
—The Devine Bella, Faggots
It’s liberating to watch other couples fuck. There’s something primal about it. We watch them and either have sex in a private room or, less often, have sex in full view of the others. It’s terribly exciting to have sex while others watch. It’s the closest thing to being a rock star that most people will ever experience.
—American swinger, male[2]
When Iranian American anthropologist Pardis Mahdavi first visited Tehran in the summer of 2000, she expected to encounter the Iran she grew up imagining. Her family remembered violence and extremism, and these were the images that stuck: “women clad in black chadors, wailing and whipping themselves,” “black bearded men with heavy hearts and souls,” arranged marriages, and the fierceness of the “morality police.” But while she encountered this repressed side of Iran, she also heard stories of and witnessed signs of what some friends and informants called enghelab-e-jensi or enghelab-e-farangi, a sexual or sociocultural revolution. Her interest in how an “insatiable hunger for change, progress, cosmopolitanism, and modernity” was being linked to sex by young Tehranians sparked the beginning of seven years of anthropological study.[3]
During repeated visits, Mahdavi found that despite the strict moral policies of the Islamic Republic, young Iranians were listening to music, dancing, drinking alcohol, and socializing in new ways. Western dress and makeup were ubiquitous. She attended parties where famous DJs played techno music, Absolut vodka and Tanqueray gin were served, and female guests mingled with “western guys.” Although house parties were common among the middle and upper-middle classes, lower-class youth threw parties in abandoned warehouses or at secluded outdoor locations, serving homemade liquor and playing music on “boom boxes” or car stereos.[4] Young Iranians also indulged in premarital and extramarital sexual escapades. As a twenty-three-year-old man explained: “In Iran, all things related to sex had a door, a closed one. Now we, this generation, are opening them one by one. Masturbation? Open it. Teenage sexual feelings? Open that door. Pregnancy outside of marriage? Open it. Now the youth are trying to figure out what to do with all these opening doors.”[5] Understandably, young people experience confusion in the face of competing ideals and desires—traditional expectations versus contemporary temptations—and the stakes of personal decisions remain high. In 2004, despite nationwide attention to the public execution of a seventeen-year-old girl suspected of having premarital sex, Mahdavi nonetheless found many young women willing to lose their virginity in order to participate in the changing sexual culture.[6]
Like youth in other countries who lack private spaces to retreat to, some Iranian youth reported having sex at parties and in cars (which sometimes allowed them to escape the morality police) out of necessity. But some also purposely sought group sex. Shomal, in northern Iran, had a reputation as a popular destination for these sexual explorations. One informant told Mahdavi that young men and women “go there, deep in the jungle, and have lots of sex, with lots of people; it’s really something to see. I love it.” Another young man said: “Have I ever had group sex? Well, yes, with a few women at a time, but who hasn’t done that? But I’ve watched really elaborate orgies too.” He had observed “a big group orgy in Shomal,” after being convinced to attend by a girl he knew.[7]
Although Mahdavi did not visit Shomal, she attended other sex parties in Iran. One evening, she accompanied her friend Babak to a party held in a huge garden with beautiful hanging trees. “Welcome to the jungle,” a young man said as he greeted her. After stripping off her Islamic dress, including her head scarf and manto, she followed the men further into what felt like “the hanging gardens of Babylon.” Babak squeezed her arm and whispered into her ear, “Take a deep breath, Pardis.” As they walked closer to the swimming pool, she noticed it had been drained of water. Voices drifted up from the bottom of the pool. With surprise, she realized that “a full-blown orgy was taking place.” As Babak took off his shirt and “started to wade into the group of young people,” Mahdavi perched herself on the diving board, which seemed like a safe place to observe: “I continued to watch as bodies moved from one trio to another. A group of five men and women huddled together below me. I couldn’t tell who was kissing whom, and I couldn’t see how much oral or penetrative sex was taking place, but it seemed that most of the people were completely naked, and from the movements I could see, it looked as though half were having some kind of sex.”[8]
Another sex party Mahdavi attended was held at a garden estate outside of Tehran, hosted by a young woman whose parents had gone on religious pilgrimage to Mecca. Upon arrival at the property, she heard techno music coming from a bathhouse. She followed her friends inside. When her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, she saw “forty or so young people present, all naked or in undergarments, kissing, touching, dancing, and some having oral, anal, and vaginal sex.” She watched groups of men and women “engaging in sexual acts with both genders,” until she felt faint from the heat. She began searching for the friends she had arrived with, who had disappeared into the steam. The young woman was “kissing and being kissed by three men.” Mahdavi was unable to find the man who’d driven them; later, she learned that he had been in a back room procuring Ecstasy.
When talking about their weekend adventures, some of Mahdavi’s informants focused on the recreational aspect of the parties: “[There is] alcohol, there is sex, there is dancing, there is—it’s just fun! It’s what we do for fun!” Others viewed the parties as a representation of “all things Western,” a way of gaining status and claiming a cosmopolitan identity; some also expressed ideas about sex as freedom that harked back to ideas underlying the sexual revolution in the United States. Still others claimed parties offered escape and “eased the pain” of living in Iran. As one man said, “Sex is the main thing here; it’s our drug, it’s what makes our lives bearable, that’s what makes parties so necessary.”[9] “If we don’t live like this, we cannot exist in the Islamic Republic,” a woman declared. “We hate our government, despise our families, and our husbands make us sick. If we don’t look fabulous, smile, laugh, and dance, well then we might as well just go and die.”[10]
But the new sexual culture in Iran, Mahdavi believes, is not simply an embrace of Western consumerism and morality nor merely an escapist hedonism, a “last resort.” Urban young adults, the focus of Mahdavi’s inquiry, made up about two-thirds of Iran’s population; they were mobile, highly educated, underemployed, and dissatisfied with the political regime at the time. Some were directly involved in politics. Many used the Internet to make connections, blog about their frustrations, and peer into youth cultures elsewhere around the world. Willingly taking risks with their social and sexual behavior, as these Iranian young people were doing, was viewed as a step toward social and political reform—not just a means of escape and excitement. After all, the consequences of partying in Tehran were different from in Los Angeles, despite similarities in flashy dress, electronic music, and group sex. Iranian youth had “restricted access to social freedoms, education, and resources (such as contraceptives or other harm-reduction materials)” that might minimize the risk of some of their behaviors.[11] If caught, the punishments many young people would receive from their parents would likely be harsh. The punishments meted out by the morality police could be harsher. If caught drinking, for example, youth could be detained and sentenced to up to seventy lashes. Premarital sex could be punished by imprisonment and lashings; unmarried men and women caught in a car together could receive up to eighty-four lashings each. Although physical punishment has decreased in recent years, Mahdavi notes, young people are still detained and harassed by the morality police.[12]
Yet stories of being apprehended and arrested by the morality police were sometimes told with pride; occasionally, even parents were pleased that their children stood up for their beliefs. Some young adults courted run-ins with the morality police in the name of activism, boredom, or both. One couple caught having sex at a party were arrested and forced to marry. When Mahdavi talked with the twenty-two-year old woman involved, the woman explained that she and her new husband were trying to annul the marriage. Despite her ruined reputation, however, the young woman mused that her experience was “almost worth it”: “The sex was great, and the excitement and adventure of doing what we know we aren’t supposed to be doing, then being caught! Well, and it makes a great story.”[13] Mahdavi’s informants claimed that they were living the social and sexual changes they desired, reminding her that their “revolution was not about momentary acts” but was “a way of life.” This way of life included social gatherings and behavior that “could be viewed as hedonistic” but were also “a necessary part of constructing a world over which they had control, a world they could live in rather than in the world of the Islamists, who would have them stay home and obey.”[14] As another young woman said before attending a sex party:
It’s all about laj bazi (playful rebellion). Here, when we go to parties, of course our bones are shaking, but we go with shaking bones. And I’m telling you, we are scared. Everyone is. No matter what they tell you, they are scared, from the moment they leave their homes; and every time the doorbell rings, delet mirize (your heart sinks). Could it be? You ask yourself. Could it be them? It’s scary. But you know, we have to do something. Something to get back at them, something to remind ourselves, Hey, we are alive! Hey, we have a say in our lives![15]
But although the social and sexual revolution in Iran has brought change, especially in how young people express themselves, Mahdavi asks, if some of the repression dissolved, “would young people still resist this way?”[16]
Contemporary sex partying is often thought to be linked to the spread of Western values and practices even while taking on local forms and meanings. At times, even the idea that group sex is a Western phenomenon becomes important to participants, adding layers of meaning to the encounters as modern, fashionable, or evil. After the Queen Boat scandal in Egypt in 2001, thirty-five members of the US Congress wrote to Hosni Mubarak to protest the treatment of the men, who were tortured and subjected to examinations to determine whether they had had anal sex. In response, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram al-Arabi ran a headline that translated as, “Be a pervert and Uncle Sam will approve.”[17]
Some sex partying is certainly related to processes of globalization, as citizens from wealthy nations have the privilege of traveling to other locales to escape restrictive laws or take advantage of cheap labor. Tourism is regularly promoted as the answer to poor nations’ economic woes; beliefs about natives’ unrestrained sexuality in certain locales reinforce patterns of labor and leisure. It is not surprising that Jamaica became home to the notorious Hedonism resorts: “Unleash your wildest desires with open minds, open bars, and open relationships.” Other well-known lifestyle resorts exist in Mexico and Spain; lesser known, perhaps, are the resort in Pattaya, Thailand, or the swingers’ cruises offered off the coast of Turkey. Gay circuit parties have spread around the globe; as these events can last for several days, many host cities find them economically advantageous. The porn industry, similarly driven by the desire for cheap labor and the erotics of otherness, has extended into Asia and Eastern Europe (Warsaw, Poland, was the site of the Third Annual World Gangbang Championship and Eroticon in 2004).
Sometimes, sex partying draws on Western symbols, themes, or discourses regardless of where it takes place. As I was finishing this manuscript, I had the opportunity to talk with a Pakistani businessman at a rooftop bar in Los Angeles. We drank mojitos while he told me about underground “key parties” in Pakistan. From what he had heard secondhand, they sounded similar to the key parties of 1970s American folklore—where couples supposedly deposited their car keys into a bowl and each woman drew any set of keys except her own, leaving the party with the man whose keys she selected. But in Pakistan, he told me, couples use hotel keys; in the name of discretion, no one would actually go back to their own homes or drive their own cars. Unfortunately, even though he provided a few leads, I was unable to find participants willing to talk with me. Still, the reappearance of the key party in such a context—whether rumor or practice—is a fascinating example of cultural appropriation. The French sociologist Michel Fize suggests that the interest in Skins shown by French youth proves that they are casualties of pornography: “We’re living in a pornocratic world where sex is everywhere, in thoughts, words, images, and deeds. This is leading more and more young people into unconventional sexual practices.” For some adolescents, though, the parties are described as a way of expressing themselves and resisting authority, paying homage to the 1970s United States in ethos as well as practice. As a Le Skins partygoer declared: “We live in a society full of rules, control and conventions. Some people burn cars to revolt but we don’t hurt anyone. We stand for eccentricity and free love.”[18]
But sex parties aren’t just Western creations. Group sex has been depicted in art and literature for centuries, and some of those portrayals are celebratory. Some symbols and meanings loop back on each other—even portrayals of orgies as “tribal” or “Roman” can’t easily be traced to a singular origin at this point in history. Over the years I researched this book, I also heard tales about secret group sex parties for men in the South Pacific and rental houses in Dubrovnik serving as temporary, mobile sex clubs. Films about swinging in Israel and India appeared. The electronic dance music scene, with its focus on multiple sources of sensory intensity, has spread around the world. Three-day events, club drugs, and sensation-seeking youth seem to beget after-parties and group sex wherever they coalesce. Unfortunately, it remains difficult to find participants from non-Western countries willing to talk about their recreational experiences with group sex. Mahdavi’s scholarly account is a rare find.
Baudrillard claims we live in a post-orgy world. What he means is not that orgies no longer occur but that the deep referential meanings they once had have been vacated, beginning with the political events of the 1960s and accelerating as the global spread of capitalist consumerism ensured that homogeneity and surface desires would win over authentic difference and pleasure. “The myth of sexual liberation is still alive and well,” he claims, but the state of ecstatic transcendence once possible through transgression has become mere simulation, just another form of pornography.[19] We haven’t been liberated by our revolutions, sexual or otherwise, but rather, the linear progression of history has concluded. There is no longer any end game to believe in—no salvation, rapture, utopia, or apocalypse. Postmodern culture has become based on an endless play of surface signs, and meaning has sold out to capitalism: “Closing down, closing down! It’s the end-of-the-century sale. Everything must go! Modernity is over (without ever having happened), the orgy is over, the party is over—the sales are starting. . . . But the sales don’t come after the festive seasons any longer; nowadays the sales start first, they last the whole year long, even the festivals themselves are on sale everywhere”[20]
Baudrillard’s reference to the orgy, then, recalls a lost world of possibility, mystery, and even deep passion. His reliance on ideas of staunch male/female difference is irritating to many theorists; he also makes problematic statements about transsexuality and troublesome distinctions between “primitive cultures” and “our post-modern world.” But if we grit our teeth through those sections, his writing can still be provocative. After all, he isn’t the only one who mourns the supposed intensity of past political movements or human relationships; he isn’t the only one who laments a lack of depth, truth, values, goals, or ultimate significance in contemporary life. And he isn’t the only one who views sex as a realm where these losses are palpable. In fact, there will probably be critics who view the activities discussed on every page in this book as evidence of such a demise of the rightful meaning of sex.
“We’re not for anything, but we’re not against anything either.”
Free love, of course, means something different in the Parisian suburbs of 2012 than in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury of 1968, the gay baths of New York City in the 1970s, and the millennial jungles of Shomal.
But what, exactly?
Visiting the Playboy Mansion was a teenage dream.
But while I ticked off visits to other famous residences before turning twenty-five—the White House, Buckingham Palace, the Vatican—the Playboy Mansion remained elusive.
When people talk about the Playboy Mansion today, they are referring to Hugh Hefner’s property in Los Angeles, a 22,000-square-foot house located near UCLA and the Bel-Air Country Club. The property was purchased in 1971 for just over a million dollars, though its current worth is estimated at around $50 million.
For a while, I hoped that maybe having worked as a stripper and writing a book on male desire would secure my invitation to a Playboy party. I imagined myself sipping cocktails and talking politics with Hef and whichever clique of famous authors and musicians currently gathered around him, perhaps slipping off to call Gay Talese and compare notes if the action began heating up in the grotto.
But the invitation never came.
One day I discovered that my friend Amy[21], a fitness model and professional pole dancer from California, had been to the mansion numerous times. I begged her to take me. “Sign up online,” she told me, directing me to the website of the Karma Foundation. “You can go with me and my girls when you get the sponsored ticket.”
She assured me that I wouldn’t see sex of any sort at the mansion but that it would be a worthwhile experience anyway.
After some research, I learned that Hefner is now often a contracted guest at private parties hosted by other groups. The Karma Foundation, for example, founded in 2005 by entrepreneur Eric Stotz, is a networking organization hosting charity events for groups such as the Humane Society of the United States, the Marconi Foundation for Kids, and Journey Forward. But these aren’t your average charity socials. Karma selects luxurious or “unique” settings, such as the Playboy Mansion or the Celebration, a 125-foot megayacht, and hires performers like Snoop Dogg, DJ Paul Oakenfold, or P Diddy. As part of their aim is to “throw the sexiest, classiest and most outrageous high-profile parties,” they also unabashedly recruit eye candy; Kandy Masquerade, for example, advertised that “over 1000 of the sexiest girls in the world” would also be in attendance. Most of these girls, who do not work for either Playboy or the Karma Foundation, attend the party on “sponsored tickets.” To obtain a free ticket, thousands of girls compete in several invitation rounds; if selected, a girl is expected to pay her own transportation and lodging costs, along with a twenty-five-dollar donation to the featured charity.
The Karma Foundation has been criticized for primarily benefiting already wealthy individuals. Much of the ticket cost, detractors say, goes toward the event rather than the featured charity. The foundation’s stated aim—“to provide our member base with remarkable upscale lifestyles that enrich their lives, expand their networks, and benefit noble charitable causes”—seems frivolous to some, an opportunity for rich executives to mingle with underwear-clad, twenty-something girls in the name of goodwill. And the “four pillars” of the foundation—networking, revelry, philanthropy, and ultimate access—have been called elitist, given a membership that is invitation-only. This is, however, the point: “our Members prefer to socialize and party with other like minded individuals.” Stotz acknowledges his critics: “There are certainly people out there who question Karma’s philanthropic side, or who’d rather we soften our sexy image.” But there is something to Stotz’s philosophy that rings true to American pop culture and certainly to the legacy of Hefner’s empire. As Stotz told Business Today in 2009: “One thing that doesn’t change, even during a recession, is that everybody wants to hang with the cool kids, to do cool things. People still want a taste of the lifestyle that Karma offers, to be part of an amazing experience—people are 100% experience driven. With Karma, I get to be the cool kid throwing the parties. It’s pretty awesome.”[22] With general admission tickets to the parties at the Playboy Mansion running $1,000 or more and private tables or cabanas priced at around $10,000, Stotz is banking on just how much people want to “hang with the cool kids.”
I wanted to hang with the cool kids, too.
So I applied for a sponsored ticket. Creating the online profile was fairly straightforward. Height, weight, hair color, eye color, measurements. I uploaded two photos. Then I spent several hours writing and revising my answers to the essay questions on the profile, trying to second guess what types of responses would make me stand out.
Question: If you were a Kandy, what kind of Kandy would you be and why?
Answer: If I were a Kandy, I’d probably be a Nerd, because in my everyday life, you’ll always find me surrounded by books! I love learning and writing . . .
Question: Tell us about yourself and be creative. Your background, lifestyle, goals, three wishes in life, experiences would all be appropriate subject matter.
Answer: I’m a cultural anthropologist who writes on sexuality in the United States . . .
I poured it all out, discussing my research on stripping and monogamy, my goals (which I linked to furthering the project of sexual freedom pioneered by Hefner himself), and how much it meant to me to set foot on the grounds of the historic Playboy Mansion. If I was going to mingle with intelligent, successful guests, I surmised, I might as well highlight the fact that I was also well educated, well read, and able to converse on more than which celebrities would be in attendance that evening. Right?
The invitation still never came.
I missed Kandy Masquerade, the annual February party celebrating Mardi Gras.
When I called Amy to lament my luck, she asked, “Did you put up a picture?”
“Yes, of course. And I filled out everything. I wrote some damn good essays.”
“You wrote essays? What are you talking about? What picture did you use?”
When we hung up, I sheepishly returned to the site, logged in, and deleted my essays. I also deleted the photos I’d put up—publicity headshots taken after the publication of my first book—and replaced them with some snapshots of myself in a bikini.
My invitation came—a sponsored ticket for Kandyland 2009, an annual Karma party held each June, described as “a cross between Willie Wonka and Alice in Wonderland.”[23] I was thrilled.
Within a week, I was on a cross-country flight to Los Angeles.
Amy designed our outfits. The five of us attending together dressed as Hershey’s Kisses in silver metallic bikini tops and “microminis,” basically a four-inch ruffle of fabric that sits on your hips. (While wearing one, you never sit down and try not to think about your rear view). Our handmade chokers were designed to look like the candy packaging, with a white label and blue lettering: HERSHEY’S KISSES.
The night began with a shuttle ride from a parking garage, where the staff first checked IDs and issued wristbands, making sure none of the girls had scored a free ticket fraudulently. There were hundreds of girls in line—candy canes, lollipops, and snow cones—but no other Kisses. I was relieved. That would be worse than showing up in the same dress as your ex’s new girlfriend on prom night.
Upon arriving at the mansion, we swarmed out of the shuttle bus like candy falling out of a trick-or-treat bag. In the confusion, I bumped into a larger-than-life black man. “Are you the welcoming committee?” he asked. His friends laughed.
We took our place in a line of people, almost all girls, twisting around the side of the mansion.
“Wow, that guy looked like Snoop Dogg,” I whispered to one of the Kisses.
She looked at me with pity. “That was Snoop Dogg,” she said.
The line began moving forward. We were greeted by Oompa Loompas. We took photos with them. Beautiful girls passed out smoky drinks. We took photos with them, too. We posed again for photos along the walkway leading to the tents on the lawn, underneath a glowing Cheshire cat.
The first thing I learned about the mansion was that it was pure folly to wear stilettos on the grounds, which were primarily cobblestone. As a stripper I had acquired the ability to keep my footing almost anywhere in heels, including rickety tables with a diameter of less than twelve inches; negotiating the steps behind the mansion with a drink in my hand and reporters aiming news cameras at my friends and me, however, was a bit more disconcerting.
The second thing I learned was that when men expect bunnies, they see bunnies—even if you’re really a soccer mom on a free ticket. The male guests seemed confused as to which of us were working and which were tourists like themselves, so we posed for dozens of photos with random men (some of which can still be found on the Internet). I enjoyed feeling like a star, although part of me was nervous: was I destined to spend my entire fifteen minutes of fame in a micromini?
We ducked inside the steamy, low-ceilinged grotto. Two girls were topless in the water, but there was no real debauchery in sight. The rocks were slippery, so we sat down to have our picture taken by a blonde girl dressed like a cupcake (her bikini top appeared made of whipped cream and sprinkles). As I stood up again to retrieve my camera, I bumped my head on one of the rocks, nearly falling into the pool. Treacherous. Taking a last, nostalgic look around before ducking to follow the Kisses outside, I imagined the cesspools of celebrity DNA that had formed in the nooks and crannies over the years. Despite my claustrophobia, I felt a certain reverence for the cave walls that had once sheltered Warren Beatty.
The third thing I learned was that the bathroom situation was dire. After waiting an hour in a line inching forward as if the bathroom housed the only mirror at a party where “over 1000 of the sexiest girls in the world” wanted to look their best—which it did—I finally realized that there was a row of portable toilets outside. Portable toilets had never figured in my Playboy Mansion fantasies, but by my third trip to the bathroom that evening, I was grateful for them. The bathroom and porta-potty lines provided an opportunity to meet other girls who were there on free tickets. Many were from Los Angeles, although Karma events really do draw women from around the globe. A beautiful young girl from Turkey had flown in just for Kandyland at her own expense. Her family threw her a party when she received the invitation, she told me. Now, she was overwhelmed at being in the United States for the first time and starstruck over the mansion. She didn’t even realize she was part of the draw for many of the paying guests.
Hef’s cabana was under the main tent. We meandered over, and I caught a glimpse of him through a tangle of lace and limbs as young girls eagerly tried to catch his attention. He sat on a couch, wearing his trademark pajamas and flocked by beautiful blondes, just as you’d expect.
I was really at the Playboy Mansion.
The Kisses wanted to dance. They’d been to parties here before.
The fourth thing I learned—after taking photos on the dance floor, on a Victorian couch, with the Turkish girl, and underneath a life-sized lollipop—was that Amy was right. The real action doesn’t happen at the mansion, at least not on Karma nights and not for us. Maybe the VIPs and the real centerfolds were invited into the main house to frolic in the bedrooms. But for the masses, confined to the backyard and pool area, a visit to the mansion is about taking pictures and socializing. If you’re looking for sex, you’d probably have more luck at the after-parties, which spread across Los Angeles like fireworks almost every weekend. Early in the evening, I received a few business cards with suite numbers on them. As the clock struck midnight, the invitations came more swiftly. The Roosevelt Hotel. The SLS. The Mondrian. A Hollywood Hills mansion. Amy herded us toward the front of the house, as regulars at the parties knew that one should catch the shuttle long before the party ended at 2:00 a.m. or risk standing in line for hours with hundreds of other half-naked women, freezing and with no free champagne in sight. Once back on the shuttle bus, we’d make our after-party plans.
Unfortunately, when I dug the invitations out of my purse, I realized I’d lost my camera.
Stotz wasn’t lying. Kandyland was an experience. I’ve gone back to the Playboy Mansion five times—twice to Kandyland, twice to Kandy Masquerade, and once for Kandy Halloween—and I’ve lost my camera twice more. I still have no photos in the grotto. At the last party I attended, Kandy Masquerade in 2012, I finally saw the game room and the famous monkeys.
But still, no sex.
Karma’s events are sexy. For some people, that’s enough. For others, it’s already too much. As a newscaster from Fox 11 described the parties: “If I had to narrow it down to one thing . . . it would be the sex. No, I’m kidding! When I say sex, I mean that it’s sexy. You guys do that sexy thing really well.” But sexy has a point. Sexy, as long as its promise isn’t fulfilled, keeps us coming back. For some people, “sexy” is even more appealing than sex. I certainly didn’t hear any complaints from the male guests that the lingerie-clad girls weren’t getting down and dirty in the cabanas.
This wouldn’t surprise Baudrillard a bit.
Media coverage vacillates between promoting Karma events as the “ultimate parties” or as last-ditch attempts to squeeze profits out of Hefner’s faded empire. Truthfully, they are probably neither. Although rumors of Playboy’s financial demise have spanned decades, it remains one of the most recognized brands in the world. The logo, a black bunny in a bow tie, can be found on almost any imaginable consumer product from limited edition wines to expensive duvet sets to pencil cases. Something about Playboy still speaks to the “cool kids”—even if some of them are in elementary school.
Is this what happens when revolutions are won? Or lost?
Si Non Oscillas, Noli Tintinnare
“If you don’t swing, don’t ring.”
—Latin inscription on the door of the Chicago Playboy Mansion
Any book on group sex would be incomplete without a discussion of Hugh Hefner and Playboy. Hefner built his business and persona on a vision of a hedonistic lifestyle. He identified as part of the sexual revolution, standing up for the First Amendment and gay and lesbian rights. But his wars were waged on satin sheets rather than in dirty back rooms, and Hefner is more renowned for his consumption habits—lavish parties, beautiful women, and silk pajamas—than his politics. As Peter O’Toole supposedly commented after visiting the Playboy Mansion: “This is what God would have done if He’d had the money.”
Hefner created Playboy magazine in 1953, featuring a nude pinup of Marilyn Monroe in the first issue. After the first year, Playboy began using noncelebrities as centerfolds (one of whom Hefner claimed to have found in his own copy room). These “girls next door” were not only beautiful but also supposedly sexually liberated; their risqué photographs appeared alongside work by established literary figures. As an upscale men’s magazine, Playboy hit a cultural nerve. Circulation grew quickly and exponentially, reaching seven million readers by the early 1970s. Hefner expanded his business interests, developing merchandise and becoming a media personality. The first Playboy Club opened in Chicago in 1960, featuring scantily clad women and offering upscale masculine entertainment—a posh atmosphere, steak, liquor, and pornography.
As he turned “pleasure-seeking into an art form,” Hefner’s lifestyle became mythologized.[24] He dated his centerfolds and was publicly linked to multiple girlfriends at a time. Hefner’s private plane, the Big Bunny, was painted black, sported the bunny logo on its tail, and employed eight “jet bunnies,” beautiful stewardesses wearing miniskirts and knee-high boots. The rear of the plane was designated Hefner’s private quarters, housing “a six-by-eight-foot elliptical bed complete with special seat belts and a Tasmanian opossum spread, a stereo and videotape system, a motorized swivel chair, and a shower with two nozzles.”[25]
Hefner admits to consciously reinventing himself in line with his boyhood dreams. “You are handed a life,” he reflects, “and if you’re lucky enough and smart enough, you become the person you want to be.”[26] Hefner was both. He portrayed himself as a modern rebel, resisting a puritanical upbringing and questing after personal and social freedom. He criticized the institution of marriage and openly rejected monogamy. This vision resonated with Americans of the time. As biographer Steven Watts claims, Hefner’s creation of a fantasy life in Playboy magazine and through his persona, adventures, and series of essays, “The Playboy Philosophy,” captured “two powerful trends in postwar American culture: sexual liberation and consumer abundance.” Playboy addressed a “simmering male identity crisis,” offering a “reassuring model of stylish consumer” to men who were confused by a changing economy and society. In popularizing leisure culture, “Hefner helped make consumer abundance an emblem of America throughout the world.”[27]
Rumors abounded about his weekly parties at the Playboy Mansion as “sexual phantasmagoria”: “conga lines of nude bodies snaking from floor to floor, hookers imported by the dozen, horses and other stud animals delivered in the dark of the night, SM dungeons, lesbian orgies, men sleeping with children.”[28] Some insiders disputed the stories, while others confirmed them (or at least parts of them). Either way, the legend grew. Tales of celebrity indulgences added to the mystique of the Playboy mansions. In 1972, the Rolling Stones blew through the Chicago Playboy Mansion in true rock star form, engaging in a “nonstop, four-day orgy of sex, drugs, and partying” that included group sex under the dining room table and in Hef’s bathroom.[29]
In 1974, Hefner began living full-time in his Los Angeles mansion, fashioning it as a “Disneyland for adults” and hosting parties and photo shoots to promote this image. After a 1977 photo shoot where he ended up naked with seven playmates in the grotto, according to Watts, Hefner became “the center of a group-sex scene.” Even though he’d slept with multiple women before and often slept with many women consecutively on the same night, he now positioned himself in his legendary spot as the only man in the middle of a posse of women. “Instead of having to choose one girl over another on any given evening,” Hefner said, “I simply chose them all—and the more the merrier.”[30] But there were no other men allowed. Ever.
Hef, apparently, is not motivated by sperm competition syndrome.
Group sex became the norm at the Los Angeles mansion and became symbolic, in Hefner’s personal life and in the folklore surrounding him, of freedom and wealth. Wednesday nights became known as “orgy night,” frequented by an inner circle of partiers that included Linda Lovelace, Clint Eastwood, Elizabeth Taylor, and Warren Beatty.[31] Breaking free of inhibitions was celebrated: “We were all enjoying the sowing of wild oats—men and women alike . . . with absolutely no strings attached”; “old rules didn’t apply . . . it was like going to some infant’s paradise where you could eat all the candy you wanted and you wouldn’t get fat.”[32] Hefner was not a favorite among 1970s feminists, as many believed that Playboy promoted objectification and that women participating in such a sexual culture were degraded. But Hefner’s female companions expressed enthusiasm about the opportunities available at the mansion, calling the parties “a once in a lifetime opportunity to act out the fantasies we all have” and “a dream world” granting “the freedom to express ourselves in every way that felt good to us, without being labeled evil or promiscuous.” One of Hefner’s lovers recalls being overwhelmed by sexual energy during her first group sex experience in his bedroom, expressing feelings of euphoria, intense aliveness, and spiritual awakening: “I didn’t even know what I was doing. I wasn’t even aware of myself as being separate from the others. . . . It was the most amazing sex I’ve ever had. But the most amazing thing about it was that it wasn’t really about sex. It was about life.” Several of the women described their relationship with Hefner and the other women as being part of “a big happy family.”[33]
Of course, nothing lasts forever—especially a dream.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Playboy Enterprises was shaken by scandals and continued criticism from both conservative and liberal groups for its representations of women and glorification of consumption. Playboy faced competition, first from publications like Penthouse and Hustler that featured more explicit images and then from easy-access Internet porn. As in gay communities, sexual experimentation began to seem foolish rather than cutting-edge in light of the AIDS epidemic. When Hefner married Kimberly Conrad in 1989, many commentators pronounced the fall of his empire.
The marriage lasted a decade. Playboy hung on. And America continued to change.
Hefner reentered the party scene after separating from Conrad in 1998, moving her into a house nearby and once again assembling a revolving “blondetourage.” A few years later, he filmed for a reality show, Hef’s World, but producers shifted the focus to his girlfriends. This turned out to be a smart move. The resulting hit series, The Girls Next Door, debuted on E! Entertainment Television in 2005.
In her memoir, Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion, Izabella St. James recounts her two-year tenure as one of Hefner’s seven girlfriends. St. James met Hefner in a Hollywood club in 2000 and was quickly charmed by him; by 2002, she had moved into the mansion. “There was something about the Mansion that just lured you in,” she writes. “It’s not Hef himself. It’s not the house. It’s this enchanting feeling, this aura. There is a spirit to that place that makes your skin tingle, your mind relax. It makes you lose your inhibitions.”[34] She received a weekly allowance, additional funds for “beauty maintenance,” money toward a car, and other perks. Along with the other girlfriends, St. James accompanied Hefner to Hollywood parties and hot spots, hosted events with him at the mansion, and provided him with company in the evenings.
The enchantment didn’t last, however, and overall St. James paints a less-than-flattering portrait of Hefner’s regime. She whines about the boredom of being eye candy. (Having accepted this role as often as possible in my youth, I can attest to the occasional frustrations of being beholden to another’s whims. But had she taken up another form of youthful labor instead—say, waitressing or scooping ice cream—she might have had fewer complaints about sipping champagne in Hollywood nightclubs.) Once ensconced in the mansion, St. James started to notice the dirty carpets and dated furnishings more than the aura. She was not fond of Holly Madison’s dogs, which she insinuates are poorly housebroken. (One gets the feeling she wasn’t enamored with Holly, either). The girlfriends, she alleges, dealt with curfews and internal bickering, punctuated by ritualistic and unfulfilling group sex. “I guarantee more scandalous and wild things happen at college parties than in Hef’s bedroom,” she writes.[35]
To prove her point, St. James divulges the details. Upon returning to the mansion after their evening excursion, usually to a nightclub or party, the girls would change into more comfortable attire. Hef passed out Quaaludes “to put the girls in the mood for sex”; he relied on Viagra. The head girlfriend would prepare Hef’s bedroom, where other men were still never allowed, gathering “paraphernalia on the bed—toys, handcuffs, lubricants, whatever he had asked for or might come in handy.” Porn played on two screens—“never unconventional or gay porn.” Then Hef would lie on his back while the girls got stoned or drank Dom Perignon. He covered himself with baby oil and his main girlfriend, often Holly, would fellate him until he was erect. One by one, the girls would take turns lowering themselves onto his erection while he remained supine; eventually Holly would have sex with him in whichever position he desired. To finish, he always masturbated, with the girls gathered around him. The entire ritual, according to St. James, was mechanical and brief: “It is all an illusion; an illusion that he is still a swinger, a man with many women in his bed, a crazy orgiastic experience. It is just not so in reality.”[36]
Yet despite St. James’s blasé reports, many heterosexual men would likely still trade almost anything for a weekend in Hef’s pajamas, even if left finishing themselves off while a bevy of busty blondes got baked in bed. After all, the seven naked women weren’t exactly an “illusion,” even if they were bored or bitter.
But something has changed.
More recent bunnies have also spilled their carrots about what happens in Hef’s chambers. Their stories resonate more with St. James’s descriptions than with those of his 1970s lovers, with their reports of out-of-body experiences and orgasmic bliss. In a scathing description that landed on dozens of blogs and websites, including The Huffington Post, for example, former mansion girl Jill Anne Spaulding claims: “Hef just lies there with his Viagra erection. It’s just a fake erection, and each girl gets on top of him for two minutes while the girls in the background try to keep him excited. They’ll yell things like, ‘fuck her daddy, fuckk her daddaddy!’ There’s a lot of cheerleader going on! The main girlfriend wipes off his [uncondomed] penis. She’s the girl who actually shares the bed with him. . . . She’s around 22 years old.” Based on Spaulding’s report, only the order of the girlfriends has really changed: “When it first gets started his main girlfriend gives him [oral sex], then she has sex with him. She’s the first to go because that’s the safest for her. No protection and no testing. He doesn’t care.”
Kendra Wilkinson, from The Girls Next Door, described her first group experience at the mansion at eighteen years old:
One of the girls asked me if I wanted to go upstairs to Hef’s room. . . . It seemed like every other girl was going, and if I didn’t it would be weird. One by one, each girl hopped on Hef and had sex with him . . . for about a minute. I studied their every move. Then it was my turn . . . it was very weird. I wasn’t thinking about how much older Hef was—all the body parts worked the same. I wanted to be there.[37]
Weird.
When Hefner’s ex-fiancée Crystal Harris began talking to the tabloids, claiming they only had sex once “for two seconds,”[38] it seemed like Spaulding and Wilkinson had perhaps been exaggerating in their claims that he performed for a minute or two with each girl.
Like many others, St. James suggests that Playboy’s association with the sexual avant-garde is long over. As for the myths of the grotto, St. James writes that its “finest memories come from the swinging ’70s, and thankfully the water has been changed since then.” “Not much happened in the Grotto during the two and a half years I was at the mansion,” she writes, although during the parties, a “bunch of naked guys would get in and hope for the girls to follow.” Hef only ventured into the grotto himself three times while she lived at the mansion, possibly because of his heart condition.[39] (After the grotto was linked to an outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease in early 2011 affecting hundreds of visitors, avoiding the steamy whirlpool is probably advisable for anyone.) Though the mansion remains a hangout for celebrities, musicians, and beautiful girls who turn heads even in a city as jaded as Los Angeles, it has been described as squalid, crumbling, and dated. And, while Hefner remains a retro icon, drawing crowds wherever he goes, he is also portrayed as pathetically past his prime. A blogger from the Guardian, writing about a masquerade party in early 2012, likens him to “a 176-year-old Galapagos tortoise wrapped in a dressing-gown.”[40]
Who still hands out Quaaludes anyway?
Hefner disputes much of St. James’s account, including the part about the Quaaludes. “Despite what she writes,” he asserts, she was asked to leave the mansion “because she didn’t get along with some of the other girls.” Her exposé, according to Hefner, was just an attempt to exploit the publicity generated by his engagement to Harris. Hefner also stressed that he doesn’t need to hold women hostage or drug them in order to get sex: “The strange reality is that I’m more of a target today than probably at any other time in my life in terms of attention from young women. . . . I think it has to with the curious nature of iconic celebrity.”[41]
I tend to side with Hef on that one. Even if gorgeous eighteen-year-olds the likes of Kendra Wilkinson are mounting him for only a minute or less, whether out of peer pressure or youthful inquisitiveness, the truth is that there would be a line of such women outside his bedroom door any night he requested it. Just for the experience—or the fame. Weird or not.
Well, it makes a good story.
Watts writes, “The Playboy ethos has become mainstream, with its powerful current pulling along many, perhaps most, modern Americans toward a common destination: self-fulfillment in every way imaginable in a world with few restraints.”[42] The fact that young women like St. James, Spaulding, and Wilkinson can write and talk openly about their group sex exploits, pursued for the sake of adventure and a few material perks, is evidence of changed times. People around the country have online access to hard-core porn, college students plan threesomes on Wednesdays after class, and eighth-grade girls carry purses emblazoned with the Playboy bunny logo because “it’s cute.” As Hefner once declared, “The fantasy in Playboy became a reality for society.”[43] And that reality extends further than Playboy intended: the girl next door isn’t just coyly posing for pictures nowadays but marketing her own sex tapes. In an e-mail to one of her biographers in 2009, the original gang bang queen, Annabel Chong, writes,
The problem with the mainstreamization of porn is that now everybody is a pornstar—Kim Kardashian, those soldiers at Abu Ghraib, Verne Troyer. It makes performing sex for the camera common and banal. . . . Remember a decade ago . . . porn was the new rock & roll, since rock no longer has the power to shock—it has been co-opted into the mainstream. Well, I see the same thing happening to porn. It’s no longer as taboo as it used to be. It’s just what people do. And they do it all the time.[44]
The avant-garde moved on from the mansion, without a forwarding address.
But maybe it’s more fun to be a rock star than a revolutionary, anyway?
Picture one of those diagrams of the United States they use on television during presidential elections—you know, the kind where the states turn red or blue when all the votes are counted? Except on this map, the color coding is neon pink, pinpointing swinger populations instead of political leanings. California, Texas, and Florida are almost solidly pink neon—swinging might even be called mainstream in those states, as every major event seems dominated by couples from those locales. Large cities along the coasts would be densely speckled with neon, with small pepperings of color along the rest of the coastline—humans tend to mate near water. The rest of the country would be darker—except for Vegas, which, despite its lack of ocean and its decidedly uncosmopolitan vibe, is the glowing exception to the rule, a blinding neon beacon on the swinger map.
The heart of the beast.
But even Las Vegas, where supposedly anything goes, exhibits some amount of shock during the annual Lifestyles Convention week. The convention attendees descend on the desert oasis lugging suitcases stuffed with “pimp and ho” outfits, laser star machines to decorate their hotel rooms, iPods and speakers, cases of Red Bull, bottles of Viagra, and enough Trojans to conquer any other city.
Walking around the convention hotel, there is no need to even check for the neon wristbands that signal one is with the lifestyle group—you can usually guess. The usual rules of social engagement are suspended for four days, becoming exceptionally clear during elevator rides where, instead of staring at the walls, people flirt: Where are you from, sexy? Any good parties last night? Stop by Suite 256, our door is always open! Occasionally hapless tourists end up in the elevator as well, looking at each other with apprehension, or a single guy gets on and after checking out the women—who might be kissing, holding hands, or wearing see-through clothing—asks eagerly, “How do I get one of those wristbands?” Vanilla guys are always mystified when they learn tickets can be purchased only as a couple.
You really do need to bring sand to this desert.[45]
The Playcouple™ Philosophy
Adult men and women are sexual beings. . . . Many in our society, such as the religious and political right wing, proselytize that open sexual expression is sinful and worthy of condemnation, while the political left wing seeks to inhibit and restrict sincere and honest expression. Others seem to resent or are threatened that somewhere there are men and women who are fully enjoying their life and sexuality. By contrast, the Playcouple supports both freedom of expression and tolerance towards the private lives of others. . . . They are comfortable with their sexuality and willingly explore new ways to heighten their sensuality. They believe that romance is one of life’s greatest adventures just as love is one of life’s greatest joys. From sharing erotic fantasies to traveling exotic paths, the Playcouple places the highest value on the intimacy they share with each other and those around them. —Lifestyles Organization materials
Layered onto the meanings of group sex in the United States is not just decadence, à la the Romans, or the revolutionary potential of either hippie free love or the “show hard” sexual excess of gay bathhouses, but also contemporary rock star, playboy indulgence. Like Hefner, other wealthy and powerful men surround themselves with female entourages; some openly state preferences for group sex. In the 1980s and 1990s, Prince Jefri Bolkiah of Brunei was as well known for his harem as his lavish spending habits, although he seems to have preferred sex with the women individually.[46] Media reports of upscale sex parties with hookers and groupies abound, from Europe to South America, cropping up almost anywhere you find businessmen, athletes, musicians, or politicians congregating. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the sixty-three-year-old former head of the International Monetary Fund, was accused of knowingly having sex with prostitutes in France and Belgium. Although he admitted to partaking in an “uninhibited lifestyle” and having sex with multiple women at parties arranged for him by friends, he denied the women were prostitutes. “Swinging parties are about having free and consensual sex,” he explained. Strauss-Kahn never asked whether the women were paid to attend the parties—the question does seem rude—adding that he often had sex with very young women and that six girls at once “does not seem to me to be a considerable number.” His lawyer defended him, saying, “At these parties, people were not necessarily dressed, and I defy you to tell the difference between a naked prostitute and any other naked woman.”[47]
Especially if you’re not the one picking up the tab.
Thomas Kramer is a German land developer who lives at 5 Star Island in Miami, Florida. After a string of lawsuits against him alleging sexual misconduct—none of which were successful—Kramer installed twenty-four-hour security cameras in his bedroom and posted a sign warning women that they would be filmed if they entered. Women who venture in are now asked to read the sign aloud, on camera. “If I don’t show this to you I get accused of invasion of privacy,” Kramer told a local journalist. “But with the cameras on you can’t f--- with me and say what we did was not consensual.” The cameras don’t have much impact on what is rumored to be an eventful sex life for Kramer—girls arriving at his estate “by the limo-full,” late-night parties in the hot tub, and kinky paraphernalia such as whips and riding crops decorating his lair. Girls who dare to enter take home a souvenir, a T-shirt that reads: “Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go to 5 Star Island” on the front; “And all I got was this lousy T-shirt” on the back.[48]
Sir Ivan is a recording artist, peace advocate, and playboy who resides every summer in his medieval-style castle in the Hamptons. Described as the “Playboy Mansion of the East,” “Sir Ivan’s Castle” is a fifteen-thousand-square-foot estate designed as both “the ultimate party palace” and “the sexiest home in the world.” The castle has huge gates, a moat and drawbridge, a dungeon (for authenticity, not kink), and stone towers that guests can climb to watch the sunset. Dragons, gargoyles, and griffins perch along the stone walls. The centerpiece of the property is a sculpture rising out of the infinity pool—a naked woman morphing into a dragon. Sir Ivan commissioned the piece in honor of his long-time companion, Japanese model Mina. At night, the golden statue is illuminated in color and with fiery torches.
Sir Ivan throws several elaborately themed costume balls at the castle each year, donating the proceeds to charities. He also hosts more low-key, “go with the flow” parties almost every weekend during the summer season. These informal gatherings aren’t reserved solely for the wealthy, the “inner-circle,” or single females. They are, however, organized around one signature rule—“sarong or be gone.” All guests arriving at the castle are required to remove all of their clothing, to stash their cell phones and cameras, and if they don’t want to mingle in the buff, to don a Bali-patterned sarong. No underwear. No shoes. No exceptions.
On my first visit, like so many other new female guests, I was angst-ridden at the idea of padding barefoot around the pool. Didn’t he realize girls needed high heels at parties, especially if they are naked? But I quickly acclimated. After all, Sir Ivan is also known as “Peaceman,” a pop-dance singer known for his remakes of 1960s songs, and his “hippie” aesthetic is as much a part of the castle experience as the Roman, Asian, Egyptian, Balinese, and Moroccan-themed guest rooms or the “tribal” loincloths. Shedding the Louboutins or Jimmy Choos—this is the Hamptons—lends a democratic air to the gatherings. There is also a practical side to the rule. As Sir Ivan explains, “I don’t want a spiked heel through my foot on the dance floor or through my balls in bed.”
It’s hard to argue with that one.
As castle guests for an entire weekend, my friends and I were allowed to lounge in bikinis or take photos of each other when there weren’t parties going on. When Mina wandered out to the pool to greet us, clad only in teeny-weeny bikini bottoms and Ugg boots and cradling Sir Ivan’s chihuahua in her arms, any lingering hang-ups evaporated. This wasn’t going to be the kind of weekend where the guys eye each other competitively and the girls secretly size up each other’s flaws. This was going to be the kind of party where Mina makes everyone feel as gorgeous as she is, swaps stories and laughs unpretentiously at your jokes, and then gives you a tour of the castle—she prefers the “Asian” room, she jokes—after making sure you have fresh-squeezed orange juice for your mimosas. How could you not feel comfortable in your own skin when the princess of the castle—your new best friend—is so comfortable in hers?
When other visitors arrived at the gates, we were alerted over a loudspeaker system—“Guests are arriving at the castle. Put away your cell phones and cameras. Time to get naked! The party is starting!” We would obediently strip down, store our valuables in our rooms, and make our way downstairs to greet them in sarongs, like carefree natives greeting a new boatload of nervous explorers. Sometimes the new arrivals were regulars at the castle; other times, they were tourists who had met Sir Ivan at South Pointe, 75 Main, or one of the other nightclubs in Southampton. You couldn’t always guess how someone would respond to the new environment; even the most intrepid sensation seekers were often out of their element at first. Some newbies giggled a lot, tied their sarongs so low their knees were covered, and grasped their drinks with white knuckles. A college guy who’d boasted that nothing intimidated him would try to hide in the changing room or slip out the back door without his friends noticing. Then a young woman, who had arrived at the castle dressed for a society garden party, might be the first to shed her conservative sheath and dive naked into the pool.
Although he often steps out with a harem of young women befitting an Arab sheik, Sir Ivan’s female fans are more tight-lipped than Hefner’s—and he wants it that way. Reporters and regular guests are allowed to penetrate only so far inside the castle walls, and rumor has it that there is a secret passageway leading to the inner rooms, which have never been photographed. The temptation, of course, when contemplating a castle full of seminude revelers, is to focus on sex. But again, perhaps we should think about sexy first. Sir Ivan aims to envelop guests in a more extensive realm of hedonistic pleasures—the balmy pool (always kept at ninety-five degrees), platters of fresh fruit, bottomless glasses of champagne, twenty-four-hour butler service, and the freedom of abandoning the rules. “There is an erotic ambience to the environment I create,” he says, “but to focus only on sex is to completely miss the point.” The castle, he explains, is meant to encapsulate the opulence of St. Tropez, the twenty-four–seven party atmosphere of Ibiza, and the creative, hopeful spirit of Burning Man.
Not everyone has friends like Strauss-Kahn’s to plan their sex parties, with or without hookers, and not everyone can host erotic galas, whether elaborate or low-key, at home. But there are other ways to live the “good life,” at least when it comes to sexual consumption. If residing at the Playboy Mansion is what God would have done if he’d had the money, perhaps going to Vegas for a lifestyle convention is what the rest of us can do if we don’t.
In 1999, anthropologist Hal Rothman declared that Las Vegas “surpassed Mecca as the most visited place on earth.” Las Vegas is a place of glitz, glitter, and reinvention, even as it also promises “a luxury experience for a middle-class price.” Las Vegas reflects the abundance that baby boomers take for granted as well as “the hedonistic libertarianism that is the legacy of the American cultural revolution of the 1960s.”[49] While cities like San Francisco and Amsterdam are also linked with sexuality, the sexual indulgences associated with Las Vegas are heteronormative in comparison: bachelor and bachelorette parties, guys’ weekends, strip clubs, brothels, and other opportunities to cheat on the spouse back home. The sexual side of sanctioned deviance is alluded to in the tourist slogan: “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” Rather than challenging the status quo, Las Vegas beats to the pulse of the masses.
For many American swingers, a pilgrimage to the annual Lifestyles Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, was de rigueur until 2007, when it was held for the final time.
Robert and Geri McGinley founded the Lifestyles Organization (LSO) in 1969 in Anaheim, California. A few years earlier, while Robert McGinley was working as a contractor with the US Air Force, he had answered an ad in a swingers’ magazine and started an erotic correspondence with a sergeant’s wife. When his superiors found out, his security clearance was revoked for “sexual deviance” and he lost his job. During his hearing, McGinley was told that he was one of fifty thousand swingers who were being investigated and discharged because “swinging leads to blackmail by Communists, ruined lives, marriage breakups, suicides, and lost jobs.”[50] He was struck by the hypocrisy and prejudice. Although he eventually won his appeal against the air force, he had already started down a different career path. He earned his PhD in counseling psychology and continued to work toward legitimizing and organizing swingers’ groups.
What had begun as a small group associated with their on-premises swing club, Club Wide World, eventually encompassed around thirty-five thousand association members worldwide and offered a variety of leisure choices: parties in Southern California, houseboat getaways on Lake Mead, international cruises, trips ranging from a week to a month long at resorts in Jamaica and Mexico, and the annual convention. In 1980, McGinley helped found the North American Swing Club Association (NASCA), a trade organization now listing swing clubs in twenty-six countries.[51] First held in 1973, the annual convention continued for thirty-four years, settling in Las Vegas during its heyday and attracting thousands of couples. It included an erotic art show, a marketplace for purchasing sex toys and costumes, workshops, daytime pool parties, and evening dances. The workshops covered topics like jealousy, safety and STDs, sexual techniques, using the Internet to meet couples, legal issues, and the business of swing clubs.
My first trip to the convention was in 2003, when it was held at the Aladdin in Las Vegas. As an academic, I couldn’t help feeling obligated to attend panels, regardless of how many empty chairs there were. But within hours I was lounging poolside in the only slice of shade I could find, wide-eyed and slightly drowning in a sea of neon thongs. At all the conventions I attended, I found the rowdy poolside parties—which included contests such as “edible bikini” or “best buns”—and the evening dances more crowded than the workshops. The daytime seminars certainly helped legitimize the lifestyle through the testimony of experts and provided useful information for newcomers. But most of the already-initiated members of the tribe knew that the annual gathering lasted only four days, and many had begun their ceremonial preparations months ahead of time. Connections made on the first day could set the tone of whole event.
At night, the hotel became a series of party rooms, some sponsored by Lifestyles Resorts and others hosted by couples from around the country. You might walk into a suite and find two women oil wrestling in a baby pool, nervous newbies sitting in a circle talking about their boundaries, or a full-blown orgy on the beds while other people mixed drinks and talked sports near the minibar (the hallways, I suppose, were enough of an “exploration zone” for some attendees). Everyone, everywhere, every evening was welcoming. Because the social dynamics and aims were so different from everyday life, it was easy to meet people. Women commented favorably on each other’s outfits and talked up their husbands (“My husband gives great foot rubs; I can’t wait for you to meet him”). Men struck up conversations with each other at the bar, offering to introduce each other to their wives (“My wife has a killer body and spends more time in the gym than I do”). Compliments flowed in a way that felt genuine; there might have been an ulterior motive, but there was no hidden game.
The LSO focused on the lifestyle as recreation, not revolution, an approach that resonated with enough couples to support the organization over three decades. Gilbert Bartell, who published a study of swinging in 1971 titled Group Sex Among the Mid-Americans, argued that the media affected the hopes and fears of both swingers and other couples from suburbia, giving rise to “boredom with marriage.” Male swingers, he suggested, “want to see themselves as—and many groups actually call themselves—international Jet Setters, the Cosmopolitans, the Travellers, the Beautiful people.”[52] But instead of having to “sit in silence and look at television,” swinging couples “have a better relationship, both socially and sexually”:
These people are replaying a mating game. They can relive their youth and for many it is advantageous. They can get dressed up, go out together, and attempt a seduction. . . . If they do prove to be a fairly ‘popular’ couple and be in demand, they can now feel that they are both beautiful or handsome and desirable. . . . They may now feel that they are doing what the ‘in’ people are doing and living up to their playboy image.[53]
In fact, Bartell argued that swinging was not deviant behavior but rather a way to embrace both the ideal of marital commitment and the Playboy fantasy simultaneously.
A lot of change has occurred in the ten years since my first convention. The LSO was the first major player in the US organized lifestyle scene. Although the organization filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in California in 2007, this was not because swinging disappeared. In fact, throughout the 1990s, the number of lifestyle businesses—swingers’ clubs, travel agencies, erotic couples’ groups, and so on—increased rapidly. By the time the LSO began to struggle, the erotic couples market had grown highly competitive and niche-marketed. These days, one can attend lifestyle events almost every weekend in metropolitan areas like Miami, Los Angeles, New York, or Las Vegas, as well as in major cities across the globe. Organized events provide couples with “on-premise” sexual opportunities: hotels or cruise ships, for example, prohibit sexual activity in public areas, but guest rooms can be used for parties. Some groups strive for complete “takeovers”—booking every room in a hotel or every space at an all-inclusive resort, for example—to offer privacy. Many couples, of course, also still attend house parties, smaller-scale bar meets, and happy hours. As in other industries, market segmentation, differentiation, and upscaling theoretically supplement existing choices rather than replace them, although some argue that small, local businesses suffer in such a competitive market as much as an organization like the LSO. Mainstreaming is a process; legal battles are still being fought by lifestyle groups and venues faced with community opposition. Still, the special needs of lifestylers for discretion, continually meeting new partners, and venues to engage in recreational sex have been readily harnessed for financial profit.
Some growth was spurred by the Internet; many websites now cater specifically to lifestylers. A couple who has been in the lifestyle for several decades told me that before the Internet, they loitered in the sexuality section of local bookstores, hoping to run into like-minded individuals, or placed advertisements in print newspapers. Online profiles allow for more discreet exchanges and a greater selection of potential partners. Webcams, instant messaging, and chat have been incorporated as erotic practices; for some couples, online interactions are an important part of their lifestyle experience.
As in other enclaves built around recreational sex, attractiveness often trumps other qualities in selecting partners. While there is probably more intergenerational interaction at open lifestyle events or clubs than you would find in a regular bar—you may see grandparents on the dance floor dressed in skimpy attire and laughing with younger couples—there is still a great deal of segregation at play parties. Some invitation-only events require couples to submit photos, provide references, or be hand-selected by the organizers. The more “exclusive” the event, the more participants are expected to adhere to mainstream ideals of attractiveness. Some lifestylers spend thousands of dollars on cosmetic surgery, expensive costumes, and professional photographs for their online profiles. Women bear the brunt of such expectations, although men in the lifestyle are also expected to attend to their appearance through tanning, working out, dressing well, and shaving their bodies or undergoing laser hair removal.
Lifestylers often wear revealing or ostentatious attire that would be inappropriate anywhere else. Themes for some events are advertised months in advance, and couples can spend as much time preparing their bodies and costumes. Themes range widely—from “Arabian Nights” to “Pajama Party,” “Red, White, and Blue” to “Glitter and Glow,” “Eyes Wide Shut” to “9 1⁄2 Weeks.” Some themes are perfect targets for feminist analysis: “Pirates and Wenches,” “Pimps N Hos,” “Sexy Schoolgirls.” Residual guilt from my undergraduate women’s studies years inevitably arose when I donned kneesocks, spike heels, and a schoolgirl skirt. Somehow, though, the guilt made it even more rebellious. How can you anger your priest, parents, and professors all at once? Give in to sin, impropriety, and patriarchy at the same party. The 2004 LSO convention featured a Saturday night grand finale event with the theme “Hollywood Glitz and Glamour.” In promotional materials, participants were invited to “take a stroll down Saturday night’s Red Carpet into a lust filled night of Hollywood Glamour & Glitz dressed like one of your favorite movie stars or characters.” Although I didn’t spot many celebrity impersonations—outside of a few Marilyn Monroes—there was a cornucopia of long velvet gowns, boas, pearls, and elbow-length gloves, along with hats and suits on the men. Some of the more “artsy” lifestyle parties avoid costume themes in favor of lingerie or fetish attire, but one important feature remains the same—where else can you dress like this?
Contemporary lifestyle events present opportunities for sexual activity, but they also offer social worlds. Lifestyle parties provide a relatively safe space for women to dress or behave provocatively—the only “gang bangs” are those arranged by the women themselves. (This isn’t to say that power and hierarchy don’t come into play in some relationships or situations; the emphasis on couples invokes an element of male protection, if not ownership. Single women, even though highly sought after, sometimes narrate quite different experiences in the lifestyle than partnered women). For some couples, part of the appeal of events is the opportunity for grandiose self-expression, to live out fantasies of wealth, glamour, and sexiness. The parties provide opportunities to see oneself and one’s partner in a new light, as both desiring and desired by others. These fantasies infiltrate everyday life, possibly for months ahead of the event and afterward. Photos taken at the event will be posted to couples’ online profiles (It’s not just teens who use social networking to develop reputations and gauge popularity.) The competitive elements of the lifestyle—displaying attractiveness, developing networks, building a reputation, and so on—appeal to some individuals and are draining to others.
During the years I attended lifestyle events, I shopped not only for microminis but also for glitter bikinis, floor-length gowns, and Moulin Rouge burlesque outfits—not your average “mom” clothes. The ex-stripper in me loved the porn-star fashion as well as the fact that porn-star fashion changes at a glacial pace compared with regular trends. The game hadn’t changed since I’d quit stripping. Thong bikinis with rhinestone belts? Of course. In neon colors? Totally hot. Cheesy accessories? Bring on the arm bangles, anklets, dangly earrings, chokers, and belly chains. Lingerie peeking out of your clothes? How about just lingerie? Nipple peek, visible thongs, or butt cleavage? Sure, at the right party. Satin, lace, leather? Daisy dukes? Mesh shirts? Thigh-high stockings with boots? Yes. Just wait for the right theme.
My partner and I were almost always preparing for the next big event by working out, eating healthfully, making connections with new couples online, and staying in contact with the friends we’d already made. We weren’t afraid of the morality police, although we sometimes had difficulty explaining to vanilla friends why we were again headed to Las Vegas or Miami—and why we never invited them to join us.
In a time when much of the media seems focused on celebrity—think of the popularity of the E! Entertainment channel, the fascination with the love and sex lives of the stars, the increase in “reality TV” programming where average Joes compete for a shot at stardom (and sometimes, as with ABC’s The Bachelor, live out a harem fantasy)—it makes sense that individuals with the means to do so would find ways to “play” at fame, capture the excitement of the lives of television and movie stars, and experience themselves as deserving of red-carpet attention.
Swingers and other openly nonmonogamous individuals have even started becoming celebrities themselves, for no other reason than their alternative lifestyles. Forget jumping into crocodile-infested swamps to win the attention of one available guy—how about a reality show where you live out fantasies about partner swapping and group sex, with no imposed scarcity? On Swing, served up on Playboy TV, there’s no need for misattribution or sublimation. Group sex is expected in each episode, and producers get what they want. Every week, a new couple is invited to the “swing house” (a mansion that also housed American Idol finalists) to play with veteran swingers and discuss their experiences afterward with a sexologist. There are tears, breakups, drama, and orgies in the red-themed playroom. Being a committed couple isn’t necessary: also on Playboy TV you can find Foursome, for example. In each episode, whether in Los Angeles or New York City, two single guys and two single girls reveal their fantasies, desires, and multiple tattoos and then uncork the champagne and get down to business. There are girl-on-girl scenes, BDSM “lite,” and group sex—it’s like an after-party that you can order up at home (and that doesn’t start at 6:00 a.m.). In 2012, Showtime rolled out Polyamory: Married & Dating, which similarly intersperses group sex scenes with realistic, dramatic but unscripted moments of jealousy and negotiation. These shows aren’t porn, although they are considered “adult” and appear on subscription channels, and the “stars” aren’t just New Age hippies or refugees from the countercultural fringe—or at least they aren’t as readily typed that way as in previous depictions. Group sex has appeared in mainstream films in the past, and swinging has certainly been a staple in amateur pornography, but the turn to reality-style, docudrama programming indicates an intriguing shift in the reception of nonmonogamy. Instead of lasciviousness, sexy parties are increasingly spelling luxury. Sir Ivan has filmed a sizzle reel with Lionsgate for his own reality show, although it remains to be seen whether the focus will be on his erotic soirees or the other aspects of his eccentric lifestyle.
Gary Rosenson, senior vice president and general manager of domestic television for Playboy, suggested in an interview about the success of Swing, “[Swinging] exists everywhere. People are interested in it. There are people that you probably know who may not have told you that they are swingers, but it’s out there. . . . It just is a fact of America.”[54] They might not consider themselves swingers or even “in the lifestyle.” Sex partying is young, hip, and trendy as long as you don’t try to label anyone.
Playboys. Playmates. Playcouples. Partiers.
In August 2012, Prince Harry was secretly photographed while partying at the Wynn in Las Vegas. The blurry pictures of him that appeared online, naked and cupping his genitals with his hands, caused “acute embarrassment” for palace officials. Although allegations of cocaine use—which, reporters remind us, is still illegal, even in Las Vegas—hookers, and a possible sex tape associated with the party remain unconfirmed, Harry found public support in London and the United States: “He’s a lad, for God’s sake.” Sure, he was chastised by an ABC News public relations consultant for being careless—“Everybody knows better than to party naked in a room full of strangers without confiscating the cellphones. That’s just Hollywood 101”—but few commentators expressed surprise that he’d hosted a nude billiards game in the first place. Such a lapse in judgment certainly made for a good story—just ask TMZ, People Magazine, or the girls who stripped down with the prince and his entourage in the VIP suite that fateful evening. One of the girls claimed it “was not like an orgy going on, it was just sexy naked.”[55]
In the aftermath of the incident, Steve Wynn comped Prince Harry’s tab, estimated at £30,000, but has thus far resisted naming the suite in honor of the infamous royal romp. Vivid Entertainment reportedly offered the prince $10 million to shoot a porn film, competing with bids from Playgirl and Chippendales for photos or onstage peeks at the royal family jewels. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors’ Authority responded to the scandal with an advertising campaign criticizing the photo leak as infringing on the ethos of “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”: “We are asking for a shun on these exploiters of Prince Harry. We shall boycott partying of any kind with them. No bottle service. No bikini clad girls. No Bucatini from Butali. In other words, we will not play with them anymore.”[56] Another advertisement read: “Keep calm Harry, and carry on; #knowthecode.” The publicity generated from Harry’s escapades has been valued at $23 million in revenue for the city.[57]
Perhaps Prince Harry should visit Sir Ivan in the Hamptons on his next transatlantic jaunt, where the colorful sarongs allow merrymakers to keep their hands free and the cell phone ban is rigorously enforced. What happens at the castle really does stay at the castle.
Ma Yaohai, a fifty-three-year-old college professor from Nanjing, China, was an accidental orgiast. After two divorces, he decided to try meeting women online. He began dating a twenty-three-year-old woman who used the screen name Passionate Fiery Phoenix and identified as a swinger. They went to their first swinging party together on New Year’s Day in 2004. Although Ma suffered from performance anxiety that time, he soon became accustomed enough to group sex—his largest party was four couples—to begin offering advice to others online.[58] For the next two years, he also recruited participants online for sex parties, using the screen name “bighornyfire” (or, depending on the translation, “Roaring Virile Fire”). He organized eighteen orgies, some of which were supposedly held in the apartment he shares with his Alzheimer’s disease–stricken mother.[59]
Ma’s adventures took a sour turn in 2010 when he was charged with “group licentiousness” under China’s Criminal Law 301. Twenty-one other participants at his parties were also charged.[60] “Group licentiousness” was originally a subclause under “hooliganism,” which included all extramarital sexual behavior and treated offenders harshly, potentially with the death penalty. In 1997, the hooliganism statute was repealed in China, meaning that extramarital sex was no longer illegal; “three or more people having sex,” however, remains a criminal offense, as does being a “ringleader.”
In early 2010, Ma Yaohai was sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
Debate over Ma’s conviction was heated. One commentator, Ming Haoyue, insisted that group sex is “decadent behavior” that challenges social morality and adversely affects “the normal social order, thus hindering the pursuit of the majority of people for good behaviors.” Haoyue further observed, “Chaotic, indulgent sexual activities may fuel other evils.”[61] A blogger charged Ma with inciting “social chaos”: “You led a 22-person orgy. You have destroyed ethics and morality.”[62] Chinese sexologist and activist Li Yinhe protested the verdict in the media, however, arguing that criminal laws against “group licentiousness, prostitution, and obscene products (pornography),” all victimless sexual crimes, were draconian remnants of the Cultural Revolution.[63] Experts estimate that fewer than one hundred thousand Chinese participate in group sex, although a chat forum dedicated to swinging on the website “Happy Village” has more than 380,000 registered members.[64] Citizens increasingly seek out porn, buy sex toys, and visit brothels. Consensual sexual behavior between adults, Li Yinhe maintained, is a “private matter.” Ma Yaohai agreed, although some believe his sentence might have been lighter if he’d shown remorse instead of defending his actions in the press: “Marriage is like water: you have to drink it. Swinging is like a glass of fine wine: you can choose to drink it or not,” he stated. “What we did, we did for our own happiness. People chose to do it of their own free will and they knew they could stop at any time. We disturbed no one.”[65]
In August 2012, another sex scandal rocked China when “orgy” photos supposedly featuring several high-ranking government officials were posted online. Couples have been arrested, tortured, and imprisoned in Egypt and Iran for organizing sex parties. Gay men have been arrested and sentenced to death for group sex across the Middle East; at times, the accusation of orgy hosting is used as a justification for police raids on homes and businesses.[66] Even attempting to educate about or conduct research on sexual behavior can put an individual at risk. Since Mahdavi’s ethnography was published in 2009, she has received e-mail every week from around the world thanking her for writing honestly about contemporary Iran. She has paid a high price for her work, however. In addition to praise, she receives hate mail, faces hostile audiences, and has been accused of everything from sexual impropriety to falsifying her data by Iranian critics. More significantly, even though she took extreme measures to conceal the identity of her informants and protect them from government retaliation, she was unable to shield herself from political scrutiny. Mahdavi is no longer allowed to visit Iran for either personal or professional reasons. Still, she considers herself “one of the lucky ones”; another scholar she knew was incarcerated and spent time in solitary confinement for her research and political views.
Western swingers don’t risk hard labor in prison, death by hanging, or exile. Perhaps this is part of the reason swingers have a reputation for being fairly politically conservative. Outside of radical utopian communities, early social science literature on swinging in the United States found participants to hold “general white suburban attitudes.”[67] Modern American lifestylers are believed to be more interested in staying under the radar and maintaining the status quo than contesting it. One writer suggests, “The point of swinging is not to challenge gender roles, nor to question heterosexuality. People in the lifestyle enjoy being married or partnered and simply want to supplement their sex life by including intimacies with other couples like themselves.”[68] In 1999 and 2000, Bergstrand and Sinski revisited the issue with a survey of approximately 1,100 self-identified swingers. By including questions taken from the General Social Survey, or GSS, they could compare swingers with the general population. As in previous studies, the majority of their respondents were in their thirties and forties, primarily white and college educated. They placed a high importance on marriage and marital satisfaction, valuing companionship more highly than personal freedom, the same as the general population. But swingers were also “more likely to favor gay marriage, less likely to condemn premarital or teen sex (fourteen- to sixteen-year-olds), more likely to reject traditional sex roles in their relationships,” and “were less racist, less sexist, and less heterosexist than the general population.”[69]
While Western lifestylers may not currently be rallying around an identity or political issue, there may be a time when they do, despite their relatively privileged social positions. Bergstrand and Sinski note that there have been fourteen legal cases challenging the closing of swingers’ clubs in the United States, not counting clubs that closed because the owners didn’t have the finances or ability to fight. Courts have consistently not found such establishments to be protected under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, which secure “constitutional rights to privacy, free speech or association.” Free speech doesn’t protect “purely physical conduct that lacks any corresponding expressive element,” and swingers’ clubs have been considered public places. These decisions, Bergstrand and Sinski maintain, are “part of an elaborate moral architecture of monogamy that has been constructed by the Supreme Court over the past century and a half.” The stage has been set for this particular vision of sexual, emotional, and practical monogamy to affect legal decisions pertaining to sexuality, obscenity, and “a wide range of behaviors having to do with how we view community, public and private spheres of activity, and the construction of personal meaning in our lives.”[70]
Highly publicized busts of swing clubs have occurred in the United States and Canada, and photos of “outed” couples have appeared in newspapers. Four of seven people featured in the documentary Sex with Strangers lost their jobs when employers learned of their practices.[71] In 2010, a couple was fired from their jobs at a theater in Spokane after being outed as swingers when an anonymous source sent copies of e-mails they’d exchanged with couples on Craigslist.[72] The couples from Swing have been more insulated—if you’re going to openly deviate from mainstream norms, it helps to run your own business (even more if it’s a lifestyle website). Perhaps writing political slogans on your body before visiting a swingers’ club would be a good idea, or maybe it’s easier to just follow the trend toward private or temporary venues. Will there even be a need for identity politics or a “community” if “sexy naked” parties are just part of a regular weekend for many groups of young adults?
Sexual practices have been linked to ideals of personal and social transformation in societies throughout history. Sex, as play, can become a way of learning about oneself and others. It can become a way of reimagining oneself. In certain contexts, sexual practice can also become a way of reimagining the world, sparking revolutionary hopes. As group sex involves relations of witnessing and being witnessed, it is uniquely and powerfully positioned to serve such purposes. Group sex is ripe as transgression and often promises transcendence—although it does not always deliver either. Is congregating for an orgy in a dry swimming pool, in a country where wearing open-toed shoes might land one in jail (and a miniskirt might earn lashes with a whip) more revolutionary than entering a “sexy buns” contest at a lifestyle event in Las Vegas? Perhaps it depends on whether you work at a conservative banking firm and your superiors are now asking for your resignation after seeing pictures on Facebook—perhaps you’d take the whipping if you could keep your salary? Participants in these events are obviously positioned differently in global networks of privilege—social class, ethnicity, religion, gender, labor, and so on. In terms of subjective feelings of jeopardy, however, there may be something commensurable about their experiences, at least some of the time. Just consider: If a twenty-two-person orgy can “destroy” the ethics and morality of a country with a population of more than a billion, it’s a powerful weapon of social change. Or, at least, it feels like one to some people.
In a political address on Iranian state television from 2005, the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned of the conceivable success of a “velvet” revolution:
More than Iran’s enemies need artillery, guns, and so forth, they need to spread cultural values that lead to moral corruption . . . a senior official in an important American political center said: ‘Instead of bombs, send them miniskirts.’ He is right. If they arouse sexual desires in any given country, if they spread unrestrained mixing of men and women, and if they lead youth to behavior to which they are naturally inclined by instincts, there will no longer be any need for artillery and guns against that nation.[73]
Conservative fears that desires for greater sexual freedom among a populace will beget desires for other social changes are not completely unfounded. Mahdavi, for example, traces the emergence of Iran’s Green Revolution of 2009 to the social and sexual changes she witnessed during her fieldwork. Youth who had begun rebelling by sneaking out of their homes wearing makeup, listening to illegal music, and throwing sex parties eventually became more explicitly critical of repression. They began organizing and actively challenging their leaders. The Green Revolution erupted after the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with protestors literally taking to the streets. Sexual experimentation alone, Mahdavi cautions, does not automatically transform society. But the disenchantment that had been building in Iran, along with the fact that people had begun stealing moments of freedom and pleasure, created changes in their thoughts and actions—not just around sex, but toward everyday life more generally—that did spread to the political realm.
The Arab Spring—a wave of political demonstrations spreading over the Arab world— officially began on December 18, 2010, the day that a twenty-six-year-old Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in front of the governor’s office in Sidi Bouzid to protest mistreatment and corruption. Bouazizi’s action sparked other protests throughout the country; news of the situation spread rapidly around the world through reports on Facebook and other websites. Although police attempted to squash the demonstrations, unrest grew. Within weeks, the Tunisian president fled the country after twenty-three years in office.[74] Protests and uprisings have since followed in other nations, including Egypt, Libya, Syria, Morocco, and Yemen. Each of these political movements is unique, with its own history and complexities, and the outcomes have varied. Scholars see common threads across the uprisings, though, such as slow escalations of discontent, marginalized youth, and the multifaceted use of social media sites and the Internet. Beyond kindling new visions and desires, the Internet allows for rapid information flows and international connections never before possible. A 2011 study found that nine out of ten Egyptians and Tunisians reported using Facebook to organize protests or disseminate information during recent political struggles.[75] Whether increasing openness about sexuality is best seen a precursor to the Arab Spring or a consequence of the ensuing regime changes is debated, but sexuality is linked to visions of change put forth on both sides of the struggles.
In November 2011, a twenty-year-old Egyptian woman, Aliaa al-Mahdy (or Elmahdy), posted a nude photo of herself on Facebook. After Facebook removed the image, she allowed a friend to repost it on Twitter, using the hashtag #nudephotorevolutionary.
Al-Mahdy took the photo at her parents’ home, using a self-timer on her camera. The image is black and white, although her flat shoes and the flower in her hair are red. Except for black thigh-high stockings and the flats, she is naked. There is no arched back, centerfold makeup, or pursed lips; she looks straight into the camera without smiling. Whether her gaze is interpreted as innocent or defiant depends on one’s perspective; she does not, however, appear ashamed.
The photo, she claims, was taken and posted online to protest sexual discrimination, harassment, and inequality.
Since then, the young activist and blogger has been called deviant, mentally ill, and destructive; even liberal groups have distanced themselves from al-Mahdy and her boyfriend, another controversial blogger, out of fear that she damaged their cause by going too far. Despite receiving death threats and being accused of prostitution, al-Mahdy has vowed to remain in Egypt. In an interview with CNN, she stated, “I am a believer of every word I say and I am willing to live in danger under the many threats I receive in order to obtain the real freedom all Egyptians are fighting and dying for daily.”[76]
For International Women’s Day in 2012, feminist activists posed nude for a calendar in honor of Elmahdy, titled Nude Photo Revolutionaries. “Free thought in a free body,” one of the captions reads. “Our naked body is our challenge to patriarchy, dictatorship, and violence. Smart people we inspire, dictators are horrified. Women all over the world—come, undress, win,” reads another. Critics see the calendar and al-Mahdy’s approach as subjecting women to even more objectification. Supporters claim the issue is about freedom of expression and that “nudity is the antithesis of veiling”—“when a tool of oppression can be turned into an assertion of power, it is a beautiful thing.”
Because it involves the use of the body, nudity has been compared to self-immolation and hunger strikes. The revolutionary impact of nudity, sex, and transgression can be quite a slippery matter, however.
Instead of finishing her final year at Moscow State University studying philosophy, twenty-three-year-old Nadezhda Tolokonnikova will potentially spend the next two years in prison. In February 2012, the punk-rock activist group Pussy Riot staged a performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Donning colorful dresses, mismatched tights, and balaclavas—woven facemasks that are practical in Russia because of the cold but that also work well for guerrilla activists—a group of women stormed the stage near the altar. First they bowed as if in prayer and then began singing and dancing, “air karate” style. Their performance was brief, as security guards escorted them outside shortly after they appealed to the Virgin Mary to take up feminism and oust Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. No one was actually arrested until after a video of the performance appeared on YouTube, titled “Punk Prayer—Mother of God, Chase Putin Away.”
Were the women’s actions art? Crime? Political speech?
Tolokonnikova and two other known members of Pussy Riot, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alyokhina, were charged with hooliganism—“deliberate behavior that violates public order and expresses explicit disrespect toward society.” The other members fled into hiding. The trial began in July 2012. Pussy Riot defended their performance as dissident art and political action, while Putin compared it to a “witches Sabbath.”[77] Witnesses called by the prosecution accused the women of “sacrilege and ‘devilish dances’” in the church. In August 2012, the women were found guilty of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” believed to stem from their feminist beliefs, and sentenced to two years in prison.
Although there was no sex or nudity in “Punk Prayer”—blasphemy was enough—Tolokonnikova already had an activist history. In February 2008, as part of another radical group called Voina, Tolokonnikova participated in an orgy at the Timiriazev State Biology Museum in Moscow that was photographed and filmed. The orgy, held to protest the “farcical and pornographic” election of Dmitry Medvedev, was called “Fuck for the Heir Puppy Bear!” The root of Medvedev means “bear” in Russian. Blogger and Voina member Alexei Plutser-Sarno claimed that the orgy denoted how “in Russia everyone fucks each other and the little president looks at it with delight.” In the video, available online, participants quickly undress near a taxidermic bear. Four couples, including Tolokonnikova, visibly pregnant and on her knees with her underwear pulled down, begin having sex doggie style. A fifth couple has oral sex. Several of the men appear to have performance issues—not surprising, as group sex is intimidating enough without visions of Siberian labor camp flashing before one’s eyes. In the background, a bearded Plutser-Sarno in a tuxedo and top hat holds a banner reading “fuck for the heir-bear.” Tolokonnikova gave birth just a few days after the orgy, a detail rarely left out of Western media reports.
In a 2010 Voina performance, “Dick Captured by KGB,” the artists painted a sixty-five-meter long, twenty-seven-meter wide outline of a penis on a drawbridge in St. Petersburg. When the bridge was raised, the penis appeared erect. The bridge, incidentally, led to the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB and the agency that sent twenty-five to thirty “men in suits with guns” to arrest Tolokonnikova and her husband after Pussy Riot’s “Punk Prayer” hit the Internet.[78]
The Pussy Riot trial attracted international attention as a case about government infringement on freedom of expression and the suppression of political speech. Protests were held in numerous countries, and musicians such as Madonna, Sting, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Paul McCartney offered public support. British and American officials claimed the sentences were “disproportionate” and urged the Russian government to reconsider.[79] Within Russia, though, polls suggested far less support for the band members, whose actions were seen as hateful, disgusting, shocking, and without political merit. Ironically, Medvedev—the namesake of the 2008 museum orgy—called for the women’s release in mid-September, possibly in response to international pressure.[80] In October 2012, Yekaterina Samutsevich’s sentence was suspended because she had been prevented from actually dancing on the altar by a security guard, but Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were sent to labor camps. On November 1, 2012, Medvedev again suggested the women should be freed.
Some bloggers claimed that the focus in the Western media on defending the women’s right to “freedom of expression” was a self-serving contortion of Pussy Riot’s message, which is more radical than most Americans or British would swallow if they truly understood it: the need to overthrow “patriarchal” society, “including capitalism, religion, moral norms, inequality of all forms, and the corporate state system.” The women in Pussy Riot, one writer argues, have “more in common with insurrectionary anarchists than with the bland pop-culture ‘icons’ who so vocally support them.”[81] On the cartoon show South Park, Jesus appears to a community wearing a “Free Pussy Riot” T-shirt under his robe; the episode critiques American tendencies to jump on a popular bandwagon without excavating the entire issue.
In terms of accumulating American supporters, Tolokonnikova is probably lucky that she landed in jail for challenging the intermingling of church and state with Pussy Riot rather than for her Voina museum capers. Although “Punk Prayer” and “Fuck for the Heir Puppy Bear” might indeed be protected speech in the United States, performers could still have initially faced arrest and charges for trespassing or lewd conduct. When Al Gore lost the presidency to George W. Bush despite winning the popular vote, his supporters protested, but a staged and videotaped orgy in the United States Botanic Gardens in Washington, DC probably wouldn’t have gone over so well. Freemuse.org tracks the torture and imprisonment of artists in countries around the world. Few gain an international spotlight like Pussy Riot did, and doing so has as much to do with the political moment and the message being delivered as with people’s commitment to abstract concepts such as “freedom.” Certainly, it helped that these women were pretty, had young children, and had chosen a band name like “Pussy Riot.” Who doesn’t want to talk about “Pussy Riot” while waiting in line at Starbucks? Suddenly, people who’d never even said the word “pussy” could toss it out brazenly in public. But more importantly, it is far easier to defend transgression when it isn’t your cherished beliefs being transgressed. The performance in the cathedral wasn’t emotionally upsetting to Americans or Brits who already believe in—or at least give lip service to—the separation of church and state. The message of “Punk Prayer” made sense, even if the singing was dreadful. And if evidence was sought that Russia hasn’t really become a free, democratic nation after all, the government’s defensive response to “Punk Prayer” served as a timely example.
But while the American public might stand behind photographer Spencer Tunick, who has been arrested numerous times for staging nude public photo shoots, it is fickle about transgressive sexual expression. A US adult film directed by Thomas Zupko titled The Attic makes a point similar to that of Voina with their orgy. In one scene, four male performers in masks—Bush, Reagan, another Bush, and a demon—“fuck” a woman painted like the Statue of Liberty. By the end of the scene, she has been thoroughly defiled; not only is she not recognizable as Libertas, but she is hard to look at onscreen. Throughout the film, other figures of state authority from cops to men dressed like Hitler also sexually brutalize immigrants, Native Americans, and a woman dressed as a Japanese geisha. The sex is very aggressive and coercive. In a last-minute, likely brilliant, decision during production, Zupko praised the First Amendment in the film: “This video was made as a tribute to America, not as an attack against it. It is meant as a grand celebration of the First Amendment and the freedom of artistic expression. That we can do this proves once again that America is not only the greatest country in the world today but also the greatest country in the history of civilization. God Bless America!” Zupko’s political speech cannot be simplistically compared with Voina’s, given contextual and historical differences. Still, the use of transgressive sex in art, politics, and porn raises complex issues—the most pressing is how to decide which is which.
Although Zupko was not prosecuted for obscenity under the Bush administration, many others in the adult entertainment industry were indeed indicted and sent to jail. Both Rob Black (Robert Zicari) and Lizzie Borden (Janet Romano), the husband husband-and-wife team behind Extreme Associates, were incarcerated for a year; another controversial pornographer, Max Hardcore (Paul Little), also did time. The films that made their way to the courts in these cases portrayed not just orgies but “rough sex,” incest, extreme misogyny, rape, murder, and fantasized sex with underage girls. Cocktails 2, a series discussed in chapter 4, involved mixing and ingesting body fluids; Ass Clowns 3 includes scenes of a woman raped by a gang led by Osama bin Laden and of Jesus having sex with an angel.
Let’s just say that Madonna wasn’t calling for leniency or wearing an Extreme Associates T-shirt onstage.
Zicari sold the films he was being prosecuted for as a package called The Federal Five to help with his legal fees. Pornographers generally do not protest capitalism, probably part of the reason why their products are stigmatized rather than celebrated. Americans have strong beliefs that art and sex should remain “free” in a market economy—although that is a topic for another book. But even if Madonna and Bjork had sold his films as they sell Pussy Riot merchandise to raise money for the women behind bars, Zicari might not have found public favor.
To many Americans, Zicari’s films are hateful, disgusting, shocking, and without artistic or political merit, much like the way conservative Russians view Tolokonnikova’s performances. What constitutes transgression, sexual or otherwise, varies. One person’s art becomes another person’s crime, porn, or politics—and back again. Transgression can shake things up, whether it’s meant to be explicitly political or not—at least for a while. Just try painting a giant penis on public property. But transgression as politics will always have a limited range of efficacy. One has to hit the right moment, the right medium, the right locale, and the right intensity for an audience to receive the message. If a taboo is too deeply entrenched, the transgressor is simply deemed insane or criminal (though perhaps his ideas can be resurrected a century after the beheading). If, on the other hand, the taboo is already ready to crumble, transgression comes off as more silly than daring—at least by those who consider themselves cutting edge.
In a special episode of Skins that originally aired in 2007 on MySpace,[82] the teenagers sit on a hillside, high on drugs. One of the characters, Chris, is suddenly struck with an idea for a party based on the antics of a historical group he calls the “Diggers,” who supposedly lived on that very hill they are tripping on. His friends do not need much arm twisting to help him prepare for the event. Posters of a cartoon clown are hung around the city; guests will follow the clown signs to the secret party location.
During the preparations, Chris hallucinates an old man who appears alternately in clothes and nude. The old man, who calls himself “the lord of the manor,” claims to have thrown parties that “made history” at the same location—including “Diggers parties,” “foam parties,” and “naked orgies.” His orgies, he boasts, featured a “four-poster bed” in the center of the room where “Napoleon sucked Brigitte Bardot’s toes.”
Chris looks impressed.
“What kind of party would you like to throw?” the lord asks.
The answer appears in the next montage of scenes: girls undressing; punch being spiked with drugs; girls kissing girls; boys kissing girls. Chris swigs from a champagne bottle, reacting as if it isn’t just champagne. A girl sticks out her tongue, revealing an Ecstasy tab, and then pushes a skinny boy down on a bed in the center of the room. Chris sucks a woman’s toes while wearing a Napoleon costume. The quickly flashing images become more disorienting, set to a repetitive indie rock song: A guest throws up. A young man applies lipstick and looks down at the corset he is wearing in confusion. The lord of the manor toasts a guest. A girl kisses one boy, then another on the bed. Teens dance in clown masks. A boy in a cropped red military jacket climbs on top of Jal, one of the regular female characters, who is wearing a frilly pink dress. He pulls down a coffin lid, shutting the two of them inside.
The final scene cuts to the aftermath of the party. It is daylight. Chris, still drinking from the champagne bottle, wanders away from the party, passing guests sleeping in the yard while Simon and Garfunkel’s “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” plays in the background. (In the 1970s song, a “mama” is so upset by seeing what two boys have done that she spits on the ground and reports them to the police. In an interview for Rolling Stone, Paul Simon was asked, “What is it that the mama saw? The whole world wants to know.” Simon replied, “I have no idea. . . . Something sexual is what I imagine.”[83] Guesses range from buying drugs to having sex with each other to hanging out with a drag queen—“Rosie, Queen of Corona.” Simon later swore he would never tell—a smart move, given that specifics would have cast his lyrics into irrelevance.)
History collapses in the ten-minute episode. The music—from “The Clapping Song” (1965) to “Me and Julio” (1972) to “Hummer” (2007)—and the references—from the nineteenth-century French leader Napoleon to 1960s actress Brigitte Bardot to the “Diggers”—cut across centuries and continents. Reality blurs with fantasy. Many of the guests at the Diggers party were not actors but Skins fans that won a competition to attend a real “secret Skins party” and were then filmed. Chris “invents” the “Diggers” during his hallucination to justify his party, but “Diggers” was actually the name of both a British communist group from the seventeenth century and an anarchist group in San Francisco during the late 1960s. Both groups were associated with sexual licentiousness and revolutionary politics. The Diggers of 1649 believed that land ownership was immoral on biblical grounds. The San Francisco Diggers challenged capitalism, providing free food in their stores, along with free art, music, and even housing; sex and drugs were intertwined with a belief in the creation of a more peaceful and egalitarian society. Peter Coyote, an actor who was involved with the San Francisco Diggers, claimed he was “interested in two things: overthrowing the government and fucking. They went together seamlessly.”[84]
As for the Skins teens of 2007 and the young partiers inspired by the show, the idealized sex of the 1960s is still present. So are the drugs. It is less clear where social critique comes into play, however, if at all—though the fact that Chris is inspired by the “lord of the manor” is perhaps best interpreted sardonically. In historical documents about the English Diggers, the first lord of the manor was a man named Francis Drake, who organized numerous attacks on the group, including beatings and arson. Some of the surviving Diggers moved to Little Heath in Surrey, where they encountered another lord of the manor, Parson Platt. Platt also systematically harassed the Diggers, burned their communal homes, and finally drove them from Little Heath. He is credited with destroying the movement.[85]
Sex has a degree of radical potential, as so many individuals and social movements throughout history have proclaimed. Participation in group sex can stimulate critiques of negative cultural attitudes that lead to shame, guilt, secrecy, hypocrisy, or inequality. Group erotics or sex can feel liberating to participants from very different backgrounds and contexts because it requires transgressing both psychological and social boundaries and norms. It can inspire feelings of belonging. Sometimes, these feelings of liberation and belonging lead to a reimagining of the everyday that bursts into reality. “Sexual adventurousness,” Tim Dean writes, “gives birth to other forms of adventurousness—political, cultural, intellectual.”[86] In certain times and places, witnessing and being witnessed in socially and psychologically transgressive activity becomes explicitly political.
But how far can this adventurousness reach? And although change is inevitable, is freedom the end result? Or do we simply submit to the new forms of social control that predictably arise?
Pussy Riot’s colorful balaclavas are meant to render performers anonymous—the emphasis, the group insists, should be on the idea rather than the individuals expressing it. (Of course, anonymity also helps when the FSB comes knocking.) But when photographs of the women in everyday attire began appearing after their arrests, their aim of vanquishing capitalist patriarchy was less news- and blog-worthy than that Tolokonnikova had a “bangin’ body” and “Angelina Jolie’s lips.” It is as easy to find the “Puppy Bear” performance by googling “sexy pregnant orgy photos” as “Voina political protest.” “Free Pussy Riot” T-shirts are available on Café Press and Amazon.com.
Balaclavas are flying off the shelves.
Well, maybe we can’t go that far. But there is already talk of a Hollywood film, and a battle over the Pussy Riot trademark has begun.
Classic sociologist Max Weber warned of the “iron cage” of capitalism, a process of increasing rationality and bureaucratic control that promises freedom but imprisons us instead. Like Khamenei, later theorists, contemplating how working classes around the world often welcomed capitalist expansion rather than revolting, suggested that perhaps the cage is “velvet” rather than iron. A velvet cage is comfy, comforting. It probably has a nice view. Even if we realize we are confined, we prefer that to trying something different.
“Revolutionaries don’t take weekends,” a colleague of mine is fond of saying.
Weekends, though, are when the best parties happen.
An online advertisement for the Renault Grand Scenic—a car offering “vast interior space” and seating for up to seven passengers—shows the vehicle parked on a moonlit beach, rocking. Crickets chirp. The rocking stops, and after a moment, there is a flash inside the car as a cigarette is lit. Six more cigarettes light up the darkness. Someone giggles.
Rebels become consumers. Rebellion becomes fashion.
The orgy is over; the sales are starting.
1. Pardis Mahdavi, Passionate Uprisings: Iran’s Sexual Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 94.
2. Curtis Bergstrand and Jennifer Blevins Sinski, Swinging in America: Love, Sex, and Marriage in the 21st Century (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010), 57.
3. Mahdavi, Passionate Uprisings, 3.
4. Ibid., 97.
5. Ibid., 1.
6. Ibid., 146.
7. Ibid., 180.
8. Ibid., 91.
9. Ibid., 84.
10. Ibid., 66.
11. Ibid., 103.
12. Ibid., 22.
13. Ibid., 198.
14. Ibid., 101.
15. Ibid., 94.
16. Ibid., 307.
17. Brian Whitaker, Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).
18. Dennis Campbell,“Porn: The New Sex Education,” Joe Public Blog (blog), Guardian, March 30, 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic+education/sexeducation.
19. Jean Baudrillard,“Paroxysm: The End of the Millennium or the Countdown,” Economy and Society 26, no. 4 (November 1997): 22.
20. Ibid., 447–55.
21. This is a pseudonym.
22. Amira Polack,“Eric Stotz: Hollywood Fundraiser,” Business Today, Fall 2009, http://www.businesstoday.org/magazine/its-always-christmas-washington/eric-stotz-hollywood-fundraiser.
23. “Kandy Masquerade Party” event announcement, Yahoo! Upcoming Events and Things to Do, http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1447379/GA/Holmby-Hills/Kandy-Masquerade-Party-at-the-Playboy-Mansion-Tickets-Available-HERE.
24. Steven Watts, Mr Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008), 6.
25. Ibid., 209.
26. Barbara Isenberg, “Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner Tells How He Created an Identity in Order to Fulfill His Dreams,” Time Magazine, October 2, 2005, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1112823,00.html#ixzz1yosR8m16.
27. Watts, Mr Playboy, 4, 104.
28. John Heidenry, What Wild Ecstasy: The Rise and Fall of the Sexual Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 59.
29. Watts, Mr Playboy, 272.
30. Ibid., 281.
31. Heidenry, What Wild Ecstasy, 151.
32. Watts, Mr Playboy, 197.
33. Ibid., 282.
34. Izabella St. James, Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2006), 60.
35. Ibid., 151.
36. Ibid., 154.
37. “Hugh Hefner Has Sex Twice a Week, Playmates Describe Orgies,” Huffington Post, July 12, 2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/12/hugh-hefner-i-have-sex-tw_n_643303.html.
38. Mike Larkin, “I’ve Still Got My Mojo! Hugh Hefner Bounces Back from Humiliating Bedroom Revelations with a Party at the Playboy Mansion,” Daily Mail, August 9, 2011, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2023796/Hugh-Hefner-puts-Crystal-Harris-bedroom-revelations-Playboy-party.html.
39. St. James, Bunny Tales, 176.
40. Grace Dent, “Has Hugh Hefner Finally Seen the Ghost of Playboy Future?” Guardian, March 1, 2012.
41. Lloyd Grove, “Getting a Rise out of Hef,” Daily Beast, January 3, 2011, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/01/04/hugh-hefner-newly-engaged-responds-to-complaints-from-ex-playboy-bunny.html.
42. Watts, Mr Playboy, 454.
43. Ibid.
44. Gerrie Lim, Singapore Rebel: Searching for Annabel Chong (Singapore: Monsoon Books, 2011).
45. Field notes, Las Vegas, 2004.
46. Mark Seal, “The Prince Who Blew through Billions,” Vanity Fair, July 2011, http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/07/prince-jefri-201107.
47. Henry Samuel, “Dominique Strauss-Kahn Did Not Know He Was Sleeping with Prostitutes ‘Because They Were All Naked,’” Telegraph, September 6, 2012.
48. Lydia Martin, “Lydia Has Lunch with Thomas Kramer,” Miami Herald, November 13, 2011.
49. Hal K. Rothman, Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), xiii.
50. Terry Gould, The Lifestyle: A Look at the Erotic Rites of Swingers (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1999).
51. Ibid., 33.
52. Gilbert Bartell, Group Sex: A Scientist’s Eyewitness Report on the American Way of Swinging (New York: Peter H. Wyden, 1971), 125.
53. Ibid., 127.
54. Valerie Milano, “Playboy TV—‘Sex Curious,’” Hollywood Today, February 8, 2011, http://www.hollywoodtoday.net/2011/02/08/playboy-tv-%E2%80%9Csex-curious%E2%80%9D/.
55. Stephen M. Silverman, “Prince Harry Party Girl Tells of the Naked Night: Report,” People, September 1, 2012, http://www.people.com/people/package/article/0,,20395222_20626402,00.html.
56. “Prince Harry Nude Photos Boosting Las Vegas Tourism,” Huffington Post, August 23, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/23/prince-harry-nude-photos-boosting-las-vegas-tourism_n_1824848.html.
57. Rebecca Macatee, “Prince Harry’s Naked Bonanza! Scandal Worth $23 Million Tourism Boost to Las Vegas,” E! Online, October 10, 2012, http://www.eonline.com/news/353055/prince-harry-s-naked-bonanza-scandal-worth-23-million-tourism-boost-to-las-vegas; Rory Carroll, “Las Vegas Hails Prince Harry as a True Son of Sin City,” Guardian, August 25, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/aug/25/prince-harry-las-vegas-party.
58. Edward Wong, “18 Orgies Later, Chinese Swinger Gets Prison Bed,” New York Times, May 20, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/world/asia/21china.html?_r=2&th&emc=th.
59. Malcolm Moore, “Chinese Professor Jailed for Three-and-a-Half Years for Swinging,” Telegraph, May 20, 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7743547/Chinese-professor-jailed-for-three-and-a-half-years-for-swinging.html.
60. Excerpts from “Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China,” All China Women’s Federation, http://www.womenofchina.cn/html/node/75472-1.htm.
61. Ming Haoyue, “Is the ‘Crime of Group Sex’ Really Outdated?” China Daily, April 1, 2010, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2010-04/01/content_9672304.htm.
62. Austin Ramzy, “A Swinger’s Case: China’s Attitude toward Sex,” Time, May 22, 2010, http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1991029,00.html.
63. Julian Smisek, “Group Sex and the Cultural Revolution—A Translation,” Danwei, May 23, 2010, http://www.danwei.org/sexuality/group_sex_and_the_cultural_rev.php.
64. Samantha Smithstein, “Marriage Like Water, ‘Partner Swapping’ Like Wine,” What the Wild Things Are (blog), Psychology Today, May 20, 2010, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-the-wild-things-are/201005/marriage-water-partner-swapping-wine.
65. Ramzy, “A Swinger’s Case.”
66. Whitaker, Unspeakable Love.
67. Bartell, Group Sex, 45.
68. Annalee Newitz, “Swinging in the Suburbs,” Metro (Silicon Valley’s Weekly Newspaper), 2000, 8.
69. Curtis Bergstrand, Nancy Schrepf, and Jennifer Williams-Sinski. “Civilization and Sexual Discontent: Monogamy and the Problem of Surplus Repression” (unpublished manuscript, Bellarmine University, 2003), 5.
70. Bergstrand and Blevins Sinski, Swinging in America, 97.
71. Julian Guthrie, “Partner Swapping Comes out of Closet . . .,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 9, 2002, 2.
72. “Comments” section in Michael Bowen, “Swapping Stories,” Pacific Northwest Inlander, November 17, 2010, http://www.inlander.com/spokane/article-15892-swapping-stories.html#dComments.
73. Mehdi Khalaji, “The Clerics vs. Modernity: Failure of the Islamic Republic’s Soft Power,” Majalla, June 2012, available at http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-clerics-vs.-modernity-failure-of-the-islamic-republics-soft-power.
74. Kareem Fahim, “Slap to a Man’s Pride Set Off Tumult in Tunisia,” New York Times, January 21, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/world/africa/22sidi.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&src=twrhp.
75. Carol Huang, “Facebook and Twitter Key to Arab Spring Uprisings: Report,” The National (United Arab Emirates), June 6, 2011, http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/facebook-and-twitter-key-to-arab-spring-uprisings-report.
76. Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, “Egyptian Blogger Aliaa Elmahdy: Why I Posed Naked,” CNN, November 19, 2011, http://articles.cnn.com/2011-11-19/middleeast/world_meast_nude-blogger-aliaa-magda-elmahdy_1_egyptian-blogger-nude-photo-kareem-amer?_s=PM:MIDDLEEAST.
77. Alexander Bratersky, “Putin Jokes about Orgy, But Slams Pussy Riot,” Moscow Times, September 7, 2012.
78. Carole Cadwalladr, “Pussy Riot: Will Vladimir Putin Regret Taking On Russia’s Cool Women Punks?” Observer, July 28, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/29/pussy-riot-protest-vladimir-putin-russia.
79. Miriam Elder, “Pussy Riot Member Freed as Two Bandmates Face Exile to Prison Camp,” Guardian, October 10, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/10/pussy-riot-member-free.
80. Lynn Berry, “Pussy Riot Band Members Should Be Freed, Says Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev,” Huffington Post, September 12, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/12/pussy-riot-dmitry-medvedev-should-be-freed_n_1877513.html.
81. “Dear General Public: Please Stop Sucking the Punk out of Pussy Riot, It’s Crude and Disgusting,” Superchief, September 1, 2012, http://superchief.tv/dear-general-public-please-stop-sucking-the-punk-out-of-pussy-riot-its-crude-and-disgusting/.
82. “Skins Secret Party,” video uploaded by djbungle to YouTube, August 20, 2007, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEvNY4IBKwQ.
83. Jon Landau, “The Rolling Stone Interviews: Paul Simon,” Paul Simon.info, 1972, http://www.paul-simon.info/PHP/showarticle.php?id=13&kategorie=1.
84. Sheila Weller, “Suddenly That Summer,” Vanity Fair, July 2012, http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/07/lsd-drugs-summer-of-love-sixties.
85. Donald R. Sutherland, “The Religion of Gerrard Winstanley and Digger Communism,” The Digger Archives, last updated January 31, 2013, http://www.diggers.org/diggers/religion_winstanley.htm.
86. Tim Dean, Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 5.
The Edge . . . there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
—Hunter S. Thompson
Stan Collymore, a former English footballer recognized as much for his personal foibles as his athletic ability, knows a bit about scandal. When he struck his girlfriend, Ulrika Jonsson, in a Paris bar during the 1998 World Cup, an already tempestuous relationship splashed across the tabloids. In 2000, he was kicked out of a hotel at La Manga, a Spanish resort where he was staying with his teammates, for setting off a fire extinguisher in a “drunken fracas.” After a series of additional public setbacks with his career, Collymore sank into depression. In March 2001, just a few weeks after signing with the Spanish football club Real Oviedo, he announced his retirement at the age of thirty. “Flattened” by personal and professional turmoil, he returned home and “slept for the next three years.”
Well, not quite.
He also went “dogging.”
Just before Christmas in 2001, Collymore received the news that Oviedo was suing him for breach of contract to the tune of £7 million. Since his retirement, financial troubles had plagued him. His relationship with his wife, Estelle, was strained. Their daughter, Mia, had been born in July, but he could barely get through each day, much less help care for a colicky infant. Without the “buzz” of playing football to occupy his mind and deflect his growing anxiety, he felt himself spiraling. The quest for a new adrenaline rush—a mix of “danger and excitement and a bizarre feeling of adventure”—sent him driving to a Midlands parking lot one evening, on the road to his next big scandal.
Collymore had heard about “dogging”—supposedly England’s newest sex craze—from a friend. Some commentators suggest that the term is derived from the way single men “dogged,” or spied on, couples having sex on lovers’ lanes. Other lore points to dogging as derived from the euphemism “walking the dog,” an excuse supposedly given by straying spouses to explain their evening absences.[1] Either way, dogging now refers to public, often anonymous, multiperson sexual activity in parks or other outdoor locations. Doggers frequent known cruising spots, which may also be used by gay men, looking for sexual activity. Doggers also rely on modern communication technology—such as e-mail lists and news groups, websites and forums dedicated to dogging, and text messaging on cell phones—to make connections and arrange sexual encounters.
After surfing the Web for information, Collymore decided to check out Barr Beacon, a reputed dogging hotspot. He maneuvered his Range Rover up the hills to a parking lot known as the “Airport,” a spot that offered panoramic views of the countryside during the day. In the dark of the night, the former aerodrome presented another unique perspective: dozens of car headlights winding slowly up the hill, each on a similar quest for sexual adventure.
He was intrigued.
He parked next to a car with two men in the front seat and two women in the back. “Suddenly,” he writes in his memoirs, “a man came out of the shadows and the inside light went on in the car next to me.” Later, he would learn that turning on the interior light was a way for couples in their cars to signal interest in someone who approached. That first night, however, he knew none of the etiquette; this was a “strange new world” he had never known existed. With his “heart in his mouth,” Collymore peered through his car window as the single man advanced toward the other vehicle. The car door opened. When Collymore realized “the bloke” was “getting sucked off” by one of the women, his curiosity was piqued. He approached the car, too, and was invited in. While the husbands watched from the front seat, he “had a bit of a fiddle” with the other woman.
Dogging proved seductive for the former athlete. On nights when he felt anxious and overwhelmed by his troubles, he found himself drawn to the “midnight world” of Barr Beacon. He developed a routine. He would stop at McDonald’s, picking up food and a large Diet Coke. He would drive up the hill to the lot. As he had a television in his car, he would eat French fries and watch live football. He would smoke cigarettes. And he would wait.
The sex, when it happened, was often “unfulfilling.” But for Collymore, “the addictive nature of dogging was nothing to do with the promise of sex.” Sex, after all, was easy for a footballer to find—even a former one. If he wanted sex, he could simply pick up a girl at a nightclub instead of driving to a remote location, waiting around for hours, and then maybe “shagging a bloke’s wife.” The thrill of dogging was in the cocktail of emotions he experienced over the course of an evening. There was anticipation: “Just imagining on the way up there what I might find gave me a buzz. I imagined I might find an orgy going on in a car. If I got there and there were no other cars there, I would tease myself with the thought that one would pitch up any minute.” There was a sense of mystery, subterfuge, in being with strangers pursuing the same thrills: “Some of those car parks are like an underworld. . . a scene from a film noir. There are sometimes a couple of hundred cars. . . . There might be 40 or 50 couples looking for something to happen.” There was anxiety about whether the other cars held doggers or police: “You are watching in your rear-view mirror and suddenly headlights will come on or a car will do a quick U-turn and other cars will be darting off all over the place.” There was a sense of danger: “a combination of the fear of people recognizing me, and the fear of doing something that I shouldn’t be doing.” And then, finally, there was a payoff, an escape from his everyday worries: “A couple comes along and starts shagging and it takes your mind away from everything. You’re buzzing and you’re no longer in that weird, tortured zone where you are tormenting yourself with strange imaginings of the horrors that may lie ahead.”
When dogging, he was also once again part of a team. Some of the excitement was “seeing couples and other blokes taking chances in this alien environment.” Doggers weren’t social outcasts, he found. They were professionals, driving Mercedes or Range Rovers. Most of the couples he met “appeared to be perfectly normal, unremarkable, down-to-earth people.” He enjoyed the camaraderie among them, despite the anonymity of many exchanges. These were “businessmen by day,” “heading for the hills in the evening because they don’t feel they have another outlet for their urges that they can be open about.”
Perhaps it was because of such feelings of amity that Collymore endeavored to initiate a nervous-looking couple into the culture of dogging one fateful evening. He shared with them what he knew: where the best locations were; how to signal interest using the car’s interior lights or headlights; the options and procedures for joining in when people were having sex; the safety reasons that couples didn’t usually exchange addresses or full names with strangers; and the basic principles of respect and consent. “You don’t do anything you don’t want to do,” he assured the couple.
Or perhaps he was so forthcoming because the woman, who used the name Lucy, was young and attractive, and her “husband” indicated that he wanted to see her with another man. Either way, by the time Collymore discovered they weren’t neophyte doggers but undercover reporters from The Sun newspaper who were audiotaping and photographing their interactions with him, it didn’t really matter why he’d been so candid. He was caught.
As the story broke, Collymore checked into the Priory Clinic, where he had spent time in the past, to be treated for depression. The BBC promptly dropped him from his position as a sports commentator on the radio show Five Live. Estelle left him, taking Mia with her. The tabloids kicked off a relentless assault: “Collymore Dogged by Sex Shame”; “Soccer Star’s Sex Shame.”
In the aftermath of the scandal, he used the language of addiction to make sense of his shattered life. He sent a text to his friends and family: “I have thought long and hard about it. I am a sex and love addict. I always have been and I always will be. I am going to face it. I am going to go through a 12-step programme to enable myself not to use again. As my friend, I’m pointing you towards Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, which can be found on the Internet, so you can understand what it is, how it affects me and my friends and my family. It doesn’t mean I’m bad, a freak, or morally corrupt, just an addict, plain and simple.”[2]
Plain and simple.
Yet, in Tackling My Demons (2004), his autobiographical account of the emotional rollercoaster of his twenties and early thirties, Collymore is more ambivalent about dogging than in his apologetic text blast. He admits to using sexual encounters with women as a way to deal with stress, a habit that actually increased his anxiety after providing momentary release. He also admits that “hanging out in car parks at night wasn’t really what I wanted to be doing, and it certainly wasn’t going to help me raise my children or protect them from ignominy and comment.” Still, he emphasizes, he did not deserve “the disgust” aimed at him by the media.[3] Nor did the doggers, who were also being denigrated in the press: while he had been cheating, he points out, the dogging couples he had met “at least knew what the other was doing.” He writes:
Was having sex in a car park with other consenting adults such a terrible sin? Forgive me, but I thought that people had been having sex in cars in car parks and country lanes ever since cars started driving down country lanes. I hadn’t done anything illegal and, apart from the huge distress I had caused my own wife, I hadn’t hurt any of the strangers I had become involved with. But we are still in deep denial about sex and deceit in England.[4]
Other celebrities who engaged in infidelities might make the news, he pointed out, but not many were treated with such contempt. His dogging scandal led to an “ecstasy of sanctimony,” a phrase borrowed from Philip Roth that he found ideal to “describe the scared, trembling little minds who rush to judgment when they catch somebody doing something they, the self-appointed moral arbiters of our society, have decided is a threat to the lie that there is some norm of behavior out there that the silent majority adhere to.”[5]
Undoubtedly, dogging can present a nuisance for communities. Puttenham, a small town about an hour south of London, features a rest stop that has long been known as a dogging destination. Residents complain about the litter (used condoms, pages ripped from porn magazines) and the disruption caused by “half-dressed men who materialize from the shrubbery and theatrically pretend to be foraging for nuts and berries.” One can imagine that parents dropping their kids at the nearby nursery school dislike seeing gay men “sunbathing” in “tight little white underpants” or explaining why “two blokes” are nonchalantly watching a couple writhing in the grass. But while dogging might make some people uncomfortable, it is relatively victimless. Some residents of Puttenham are even supportive of the doggers: “I think we should just let them get on with it,” one woman told reporters. The police have been reluctant to close the rest stop completely, which would jeopardize business for the owner of the Hog’s Back café on site; they instead erected a sign warning against engaging in “activities of an unacceptable nature.”[6]
Stan Collymore, sneaking French fries in his Range Rover while hoping to score with a horny English housewife, was certainly doing things that made him feel guilty. After all, he had a wife at home who knew nothing of his whereabouts. And who doesn’t feel guilty about eating food from McDonald’s? Public sex, anonymous partners, infidelity, ingesting fast food full of “pink slime” and empty calories—all of these things can also dredge up strong emotional reactions. But is Collymore a “sex addict”? Were his dogging adventures—perhaps fifteen excursions in two years, he estimates—excessive? Was his foray into dogging related to his diagnosis with borderline personality disorder or his struggles with depression? Is his mind really a “mess of tangled wires,” as he claims in his memoirs, such that seeking sex became a “fucked up coping mechanism” for dealing with stress of any sort?[7] Or was he yet another sacrifice of the “trembling little minds” he invokes in the same book, those who publicly condemn any deviation from sexual norms (but might themselves harbor secret desires or practices)?
Collymore doesn’t seem sure.
As we have already seen, sex readily becomes a form of play, and even adventure, for some people. This chapter delves into how people raise the stakes of their play with group sex—finding additional ways to heighten arousal, intensify sensation, delay satisfaction, and fulfill aims beyond reproduction or physical pleasure. Group sex, being already psychologically and socially transgressive, is uniquely positioned for such experiments. The practices discussed in this chapter—the pursuit of anonymous sex on Craigslist, “barebacking” and “bugchasing,” and BDSM—are examples of how intensity can be generated by increasing physical, emotional, or social jeopardy. Exploring such “edgy” sexual behavior, wherever it occurs, necessarily raises questions of pathology. Is there a difference between indulging alternative sexual desires, toying with the erotics of transgression to increase arousal or pleasure, and displaying symptoms of a psychological disorder? Is the desire to heighten one’s arousal, perhaps because a certain activity or scenario makes one feel alive or perhaps after becoming desensitized to sexual scenarios that were once exciting, the same as an unhealthy compulsion to escalate one’s behaviors? Is it possible to play with transgressive sexuality, perhaps even straying into “dangerous” territory, and then to find one’s way back?
What are the dangers, anyway?
And where, exactly, is the edge?
Despite posing the above questions, my aim here is not to establish whether sexual addiction really exists, as plenty of qualified psychologists and psychiatrists are already battling over the issue. Instead, my interest is in the interactions between individual psychologies, cultural norms and beliefs, and sexual practices. Are some people more likely to explore the edges of acceptable social behavior, occasionally in ways that cause distress for themselves and others? Or are “sex addicts” created through restrictive social mores, existing power structures, and the cultural and psychological processes by which people manage fear, anxiety, and uncertainty around sex?
For my purposes here, the answer to both questions is yes.
Some amount of risk is unavoidable. Sometimes, risks are taken as a matter of convenience. People compensate for increased safety by taking more risks, for example: driving faster when using seatbelts, having equal numbers of accidents with antilock braking systems, incurring more neck and spine injuries in football when helmets are used to decrease head injuries, and so on.[8] Personal histories, relationships, physical capabilities, social positions, and current situations influence which activities are deemed risky and which risks are believed to be “worth” taking. Risk calculations fluctuate as people assess what they think they have to lose and what they care about losing at each moment. An American college student who always wears a seat belt at home may find herself bouncing over mountain roads on a Guatemalan “chicken bus,” repeatedly pitching forward onto an irritated goat swaying in the aisle. Whether she is cursing her decision to visit the countryside or counting her lucky stars that she caught the only ride out of town that day might depend on why she is on the bus in the first place. Her assessment of the immediate risk of plunging over a cliff depends on whether she knows that another bus, on this same road, plunged over a cliff last week. And while her parents may initially be horrified to hear the story, their perception may change if they learn that she was en route to an urban hospital after a grueling week of fever, chills, and nausea and that a doctor diagnosed her with leptospirosis—a bacterial infection possibly caught while posing for pictures with another irritated goat in a small town now three bumpy hours away.
Notions of risk are also cultural and historical. If your grandparents lived in Romania, chances are they will chastise you for opening a window on a hot summer day. That cooling breeze isn’t viewed as a gift from the gods but as a hazardous stream of curent (pronounced “coo-rent”) blamed for numerous ailments from toothaches to death. It is tempting to dismiss fears of curent as rooted in antiquated folk beliefs. After all, we now know that toothaches are caused by decay or infection rather than air current, right? But if you’re an American homeowner recently diagnosed with a “fungal sinus infection,” which started with a toothache and was caused by toxic black mold, you might be highly aware of the risks of airborne pathogens. The situation grows more complicated as you learn that “fresh air” and air circulation techniques can direct the mold spores outside your home or disseminate them throughout every room. Most likely, you’ll spend the next several months alternately venting and sealing up rooms, waging war on invisible assailants. Your grandmother can insist curent was to blame; you can trot out the statistics about black mold. You can argue over the “facts,” but decisions about risk taking often involve weighing options in the context of conflicting or incomplete information. If you live in Beijing, China, or Atlanta, Georgia, for example, you might be accustomed to periodic warnings to stay indoors due to toxic levels of air pollutants outside—see, curent can kill you. What if you also have a black mold problem?
Oh my.
The examples above, quite purposely, are not about sex. Many readers probably grew up in or currently live in societies where sex is so shrouded in discourses of risk that it is difficult to think of it otherwise. Which brings me to my third point about the social construction of risk: our notions of risk are often deeply entangled with emotions. Emotions, in fact, sometimes trump other considerations in our responses to risk.
After a series of sensationalist news stories about “pink slime,” for example, people who’d been cheerfully eating hamburgers made with “lean, finely textured beef” (LFTB) for over a decade were suddenly hysterically calling for boycotts, worried about health risks. In 2011, due to public pressure, McDonald’s discontinued use of the product. By then, Collymore had probably already ingested a great deal of LFTB in his Big Macs, as back in 2001 it was still considered a boon for the processed food industry. LFTB was made up of scraps of lean meat salvaged through complicated mechanical and chemical processes. Not only could the additive increase the ratio of lean beef to fat, but the sterilization process protected consumers from deadly bacteria. The ammonium hydroxide used to make the beef scraps in LFTB safe for human consumption was FDA approved and is found in other processed foods from Wonder Bread to Chef Boyardee Mini Ravioli.
So why was there a cultural panic attack?
Certainly, meat products could be labeled more accurately. But the truth, sadly, is that banning or avoiding pink slime won’t do a thing about the fact that processed meat needs to be treated with chemicals such as ammonia for a real public health reason—it’s dirty. Eldon Roth, the inventor of LFTB, has actually dedicated his career to making industrially produced meat safer for consumers.[9] Because factory farms and slaughterhouses are cesspools of bacteria, he fights an uphill battle. Despite technological advances, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one in six Americans, or forty-eight million people, get sick from foodborne illnesses each year, and around three thousand die.[10] Consumer advocates admit that LFTB sounds “disgusting,” especially when referred to as “pink slime,” but it has not been tied to outbreaks of illness and may in fact be preventing them. LFTB may also just be the “tip of the iceberg” as far as the nasty chemicals, bacteria, and antibiotics found in processed meat, not to mention other random substances from insect parts to rodent hair.[11] But pink slime scares Americans because it hits a cultural nerve. Many of us are completely dependent on others for our food and ignorant of how it is produced. We must trust thousands of strangers to protect our health, a scary prospect. There is also a real danger underlying the panic, as evidence is growing that many autoimmune disorders, cancers, and other illnesses can be caused by modern diets. We may need to completely rethink what we eat, how we produce our food, and even how we live in modern societies.
That’s a big problem.
And pink slime is an easy target.
Like some forms of alternative sexuality discussed in this book, pink slime also has what some therapists and writers call the “squick” factor—it causes a knee-jerk experience of revulsion that makes it difficult to evaluate the facts. With forty-eight million people sick from foodborne illnesses each year, should you worry more about ingesting ammonia or bacteria in your burgers? With around nineteen million cases of new STDs each year when gonorrhea, syphilis, and chlamydia are combined[12] and around fifty thousand new cases of HIV each year,[13] should you be worried about your food supply, lesbians fisting at the local sex club, or dogging in the United Kingdom? I’ll admit to not having the math skills or enough confidence in the data to answer this question. But that is precisely my point—when we do not have the expertise or information to assess the risks of situations we find ourselves in, our emotional responses tend to fill in those gaps.
So, enough about microscopic threats to your health and journalists, family members, and government officials with strong opinions about what’s going to kill you and what you should do about it.
On to risks and sex.
Sometimes people take risks because they want to, for the sheer thrill of doing so. As discussed in earlier chapters, some people seek more novelty or higher levels of sensation than others. Almost all of us, though—sensation seekers or not—court some amount of risk in everyday life, as risk taking is essential for survival, fun, and “rewarded intrinsically, as well as by society.”[14] Australian social scientists John Tulloch and Deborah Lupton found that people associated everyday feelings of risk with uncertainty, insecurity, fear, and loss of control over the future, but also with adventure, excitement, enjoyment, and “the opportunity to engage in self-actualization and self-improvement.” Risk taking, they argue, generates “a heightened degree of emotional intensity that is pleasurable in its ability to take us out of the here-and-now, the mundane, everyday nature of life.”[15] These pleasurable states of arousal provide “a powerful incentive for searching out situations that can give us this feeling again.”[16]
There are, of course, ultimate human limits—insanity and death—beyond which neither escalation nor play is possible. At these ultimate limits, individual and social edges merge. Yet somewhere before that point, the line between life-enhancing and self-destructive risk-taking behaviors grows fuzzy. Who decides where that line is drawn? The very things that make one individual feel intensely alive—whether skydiving, having affairs, or traveling in war-torn countries—can make others shake their heads in disbelief. When it comes to sexual choices, head shaking can quickly turn to outright condemnation. Sexual adventurers often see their activities as life enhancing; others, however, may deem them self-destructive symptoms of psychological illnesses. But if sexuality already draws energy from emotional ambivalence (such as fear or anxiety), preexisting wounds, prohibitions, and power differentials, do any of us really know when our explorations drift into dangerous territory?
I used to have this fuck buddy. He was great. He was twenty-five. He was in a really good headspace and thought sex was for fun: let’s play with it and have a good time. I still wanted group sex more than any other kind of sex. But luckily, he wanted group sex, too. We lived in a small town and there was nowhere to go, so I had to do it in my house. We really liked to get these random guys from Craigslist to walk in on us while we were sixty-nining. Usually we would set up threesomes because arranging more than that is so complicated. My bedroom is on the second floor. When the guy arrived, I wanted to be already going at it up in the bedroom. This is going to sound so weird, but the sound of the front door opening—it was such an erotic charge for me I just about lost my mind. First, the sound of the door opening. Then hearing this stranger walk up the stairs, hearing the floorboards creaking. That was such an erotic charge. I always orchestrated it so that I was on the bottom in the sixty-nine, that’s the position I like best, and so that my fuck buddy’s head and my feet were toward the door. So I couldn’t see the new guy even when he came in. I would hear him walk in . . . I know he’s in the bedroom at that point and then he starts to undress and I can hear him undressing. There was something about that too. I mean, eventually, after a minute or two of him being there, I’d look. But that initial period of not seeing him, but hearing him and knowing he was in the bedroom with us . . . it was exciting. There was none of this bullshit talk before we had sex. This was a way of orchestrating it so that you walk in, you strip, you jump in. I’m fine with getting to know someone afterwards, but I’m not here to talk about your dreams and aspirations. Afterwards, maybe, but now I’m not here to talk, I’m here to have sex.
Another level of it was knowing how excited these guys were, thinking about what an experience it must be for them, too, with their hearts beating in their chests, scared, not knowing where they were going in this strange house, looking for the bedroom. And then they walk in and see us sixty-nining on the bed. It must have been crazy, the sexual excitement mixed with the nervousness. So they’d strip their clothes off right away and then jump right in, and if you’re the new guy, you’re jumping in with two people who are already there. Incredible. Incredible erotic charge for me. And we did that as much as we possibly could. It wasn’t a lot. But we’d laugh and say we did pretty well for ourselves in such a small town.
Craigslist, the great purveyor of random sexual encounters, began in 1995 when Craig Newmark set up an e-mail distribution list to inform friends about events in the San Francisco Bay area. Soon, however, the list grew beyond friends. People began posting employment and housing opportunities. Newmark designed a Web interface, turning his “list” into a free, self-service, online classified advertising website. Craigslist has since spread to over five hundred metropolitan areas in fifty countries, from Acapulco to Zamboanga, although the bulk of its coverage is within the United States. The site works like a constantly updating electronic bulletin board, allowing users to sublet apartments, sell furniture, offer piano lessons, and organize carpools.
Or find sex partners.
Volumes could be written on Craigslist as a contemporary cultural phenomenon, as it has served as an example of the best and the worst potentials of the Internet, from the benefits of open access and democratization to the perils of deception and violence. Craigslist was denounced in the media after a few high-profile murders drew attention to the risks of meeting strangers online. Craigslist has also been linked with “sex addiction” in the popular imagination, as some experts argue that the ease and anonymity of seeking sex online creates opportunities for already troubled individuals to lose control: “In the ’80s, you had gateways. You could go to Plato’s Retreat in New York and meet other people who did ‘swinging.’ Now the Internet isn’t a gateway, it’s a floodgate.”[17]
Although there are dating sections on Craigslist, the Casual Encounters section is far more infamous. Casual Encounters is where people of any sexual orientation seek one-night stands, “friends with benefits,” “no strings attached” (NSA) sex, or similar types of arrangements. Unlike websites that require users to create profiles, such as Adult Friend Finder (AFF), Swinger’s Date Club, or Man Hunt, the bar to entry is lower on Craigslist. You don’t have to come up with a brilliant and original user name, like LOOKN4SEX69. There is no need to explain that you’re “just as comfortable at an orgy” as “having sex at home.” You can post an ad using a dummy e-mail address, giving out only your phone number for verification. No credit card necessary, no real name. Later, you can delete the post with a click of a mouse.
Casual Encounters, Newmark explains, offers an “inside look at how people like to connect these days.” Users, he believes, appreciate the opportunity “to be both candid and, initially, anonymous” about the sex they are seeking.[18] Individuals who would not, or could not, risk being seen publicly at a sex club or lifestyle party sometimes feel safer if they are personally able to prescreen potential partners through e-mails—at least in countries where e-mail is not monitored by authorities. Some people find the thrill of the unknown erotically appealing; even when photos are exchanged, meeting sex partners online involves an element of mystery. For individuals who feel the need to constantly escalate the frequency or intensity of their sexual behaviors, or who wish to “up the ante” in terms of arousal through the pursuit of anonymous or random encounters, Casual Encounters offers intoxicating novelty and easy access.
Some people posting ads on Casual Encounters are truly looking to meet others for sexual activity. Some intend to meet but “flake.” Some are spammers or escorts. In keeping with what one writer calls the “male sex deficit,”[19] there are far more men on Casual Encounters than women. Single women are a gold standard of sorts (given that an ad that appears written by a woman might be authored by a single man hoping to get a foot in the door of your cheap hotel or turn out to be a clever scam directing you to a webcam site costing $19.99 a minute). But it isn’t just the “beautiful 18 year old w4mmm” who might not be real, if real means desiring more than online interaction. Some people enjoy fantasizing about finding partners online, and posting ads provides enough excitement without ever having to leave their computer. Some individuals create fake ads for kicks, “research,” or with malicious intent. Henry Russell, a Los Angeles lawyer, posted outlandish ads and published a book about the responses he received. Although he admits he is “probably going to hell” for “having fun at the expense of so many people,” he protected the identities of the people who wrote to him (almost all were men).[20] Jason Fortuny, on the other hand, pretended to be a female submissive looking for a dominant man, collected 178 replies in twenty-four hours, and then posted the responses online without any such courtesy. Many of the respondents, surprisingly, had provided him with real names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and even pictures of their genitals (with their faces included).[21]
In a 2010 incident, men responded to a post reading: “Married West Hartford soccer mom . . . looking for group sex . . . I want to please as many as I can before going to work!” The ad, which included a nude photo and an address, was actually posted by Philip James Conran of West Hartford, Connecticut, as revenge after a dispute with his neighbor. Around a dozen aspiring orgiasts knocked on the door or drove by the house before the “soccer mom” alerted police. One of the hopefuls, Richard Zeh, even assaulted an eighteen-year-old neighbor of the soccer mom—he is dyslexic and went to the wrong address, he later explained to police. Although the young woman who answered the door seemed “nervous,” Zeh assumed it was “sexual tension” and forced his way into the house. Apparently, he simultaneously had a serious wardrobe malfunction. According to the Smoking Gun website: “He acknowledged that the button on his shorts had ‘fallen off’ and that his ‘pubic hair and his erect penis could have been sticking out of his pants’ when he walked into the teenager’s residence.”[22]
But let’s not rant about the vengeful evils of technology. This sort of “revenge” is at least as old as the telephone—how many people dialed “867-5309” in the 1980s? The number was relayed in a song by Tommy Tutone, 867-5309/Jenny: “I know you think I’m like the others before, Who saw your name and number on the wall . . . For a good time, call . . .” Mrs. Lorene Burns, an Alabama resident who was unlucky enough to have “Jenny’s” phone number, disconnected her phone after receiving more than two dozen calls a day, starting after school let out and continuing until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. Her husband, who was hard of hearing, often thought the calls were for their son, “Jimmy.” As for Tommy Tutone, Mrs. Burns said, “I’d like to get a hold of his neck and choke him.”[23]
One can only imagine how some of those ancient hieroglyphs were intended.
Casual Encounters offers a variety of search combinations for those interested in group sex, such as mw4mw (man and woman for man and woman), m4mw, w4mw, and more. Ten minutes on the Los Angeles Casual Encounters screen turns up an assortment of posts from those seeking group sex: a sixty-two-year-old couple wanting to full swap with another couple; some supposed “newbie” couples looking for group gropes or “girl-girl” play; couples seeking transsexuals; couples offering photos, videos, and a pharmacy full of drugs; a man with a “small cock” looking to submit to a married couple with a “cruel” wife; black couples seeking white partners; white couples seeking black partners (“girlfriend wants to go BLACK while I watch”); and a “pansexual” couple looking for bisexuals interested in “games, kink, porn, soft swap, anal, strap on play, same sex swap, or even just socializing.” A couple advertise “kinks & fetishes” and invite someone to “bring a canine.” (Such a request is rare even in the fantasy world of Craigslist, but if you’re going to see something like this on Casual Encounters, you’re probably going to be in LA). There are ads for swingers’ parties. Exhibitionists seek voyeurs. Dominants seek submissives. Some men just offer sexual pleasure as a reward for responding to their posts; others offer “ro$e$.” One man presents two photographic lures: his erect penis and a quart-sized Ziploc bag stuffed full of weed.
Casual Encounters has a local flavor. One might still turn to Craigslist if seeking group sex in Washington, DC, for example, although one couldn’t always expect such a robust showing. Despite one posting from “wild fuckbirds,” my first ten-minute surf turned up more subdued taglines than in Los Angeles: “hot white couple, real” or “Normal prof. couple seeking Same.”[24] Follow up browses revealed more colorful language and variety in requests, but “educated,” “clean,” and “military” seem to have more cache on the Washington, DC, list than offers of illicit substances (though those still appear). One polite poster even proposes his hotel room for an “orgy, party, etc.”:
Hello everyone. I have a hotel room available near Arlington VA for tonight. It has two beds and pretty nice room and location. If any couples want to use it, feel free or if there are swingers who want to have a party there, more the merrier. I will be there, but you can stay till around 1am if you like.
One can imagine him climbing into bed in his pajamas at 1:15 a.m. after graciously bidding his party guests good night.
Another man on the Washington, DC, list employs an intriguing bait and switch, possibly hoping a couple will be so thrilled with the qualities he claims to embody—or, perhaps, so bored—that they will fail to read through to the end of his “screed” (which I edited for length):
We are a happily married couple who are seeking a sharing of our sexualities with a like married couple. We are healthy, D/D free, non smokers who are affable, sociable, easy to get to know, virile, attractive couple, in shape and wanting some extra curricular excitement. Hubby has been an enlisted man in the Navy and Marine Corps, attended Annapolis and retired from the military and subsequently retired from his Professional career. Hubby speaks French and a smattering of German. We have traveled extensively in E and W Europe and the Far East (Japan, Taiwan, SVN, etc.) and enjoyed meeting the people of these various cultures. . . . Discretion is paramount. It would be nice if you have had the fortune of having climbed to the upper rungs of the socio-economic ladder but this is not all important—what is is desire, character and values similar to ours. . . . We would like for us to develop a friendship in and out of the bedroom where we have a relationship into the future and especially satiate each other orally and otherwise for your sexual joy is ours. ADDENDUM: Due to last minute circumstances after the publication of the above I was informed that my Lady does not desire to re-enter the Life Style (rather than re-writing the screed above I use this addendum) thus, I am only able to bring to the party myself hoping to find a couple as described above who desire to bring into their happy marriage a second male for their satiation as desired.
Online sex seekers, not surprisingly, are more likely to appear in Western countries and larger metropolitan areas. Casual Encounters on the Sydney, Australia, website fell somewhere between Los Angeles and Washington, DC, in terms of numbers of posts, as did Copenhagen. In Morocco, however, there were only four Casual Encounters posts in the previous two months, and none at all in Tunisia.
Sergio, the interviewee quoted earlier, used Casual Encounters to add a pinch of danger to his threesomes, a dash of anticipation and anxiety. He did not experience his sexual desires as unwelcome compulsions or shameful secrets; still, because he and his regular partner lived in a small community, they were careful to be discreet. Could he have been killed during one of his adventures? Possibly, though it is statistically unlikely. Knowing that there was danger involved, however, was part of the thrill.
Eric, another interviewee, pushed the limits further. He once made a spreadsheet of his sexual conquests, listing over one hundred women, what they looked like, where he met them, whether there were drugs involved when they hooked up, and details of the sex they had. About sixty of the women on the spreadsheet were from Craigslist. Like Collymore, Eric realized he could pursue sex in more efficient ways. He was young, attractive, well educated, and had a professional, high-paying job. He had a beautiful girlfriend and a roster of women he could sleep with if he so desired; his regular girl on the side even occasionally went to swingers’ parties with him. If he was just looking to get laid, why spend four to five hours at the computer, posting and e-mailing with strangers, when the outcome was uncertain?
Because Craigslist held him in thrall.
Some of the “hottest” sexual experiences of his life had been with people he’d met on Casual Encounters. Those memories lured him back time and again even though most nights failed to compare to the peaks.
He loved the mystery. The randomness. The unknowns. Who would respond to his posts? Would the person he met, if it got that far, look like the pictures he’d seen? What kind of sex would they have?
The juxtapositions between his professional day job and his nighttime excursions were exciting. He enjoyed the incongruity of pulling up at a crack den in his BMW to have sex with a girl he wouldn’t normally even take to dinner.
He also appreciated the simplicity of sexual pursuit. In everyday life, one had to be polite, considerate, and engage in endless social rituals—especially if one hoped to have sex. Even at swingers’ parties, Eric found the codes of conduct stifling. The couples were often a tight-knit group, so he had to be careful not to offend anyone. If a more alluring situation presented itself, he couldn’t just leave a gathering without explanation. If he wanted to flirt with a woman, he also had to interact with her husband or boyfriend. Then there was the possibility that his own date would get jealous and even cause a scene. On Craigslist, there were fewer expectations. He could play solo. Sure, people sometimes misrepresented themselves, stood each other up, or didn’t follow through on plans. But how else was it possible to arrange a sexual encounter without ever speaking a word to anyone face to face and with no expectations afterward? He could e-mail or text right up to the final moment, even walk into a room where people were already having sex, and “bolt” when the mood struck. No one owed each other anything.
The lying required to pull off a casual encounter—to his girlfriends, friends, and family—added another layer of complexity and excitement. He invented overnight work trips and business meetings. He pretended to visit family members out of state. Making up excuses for being late or breaking plans became second nature. He recalled the sheer craziness of one such incident: while his girlfriend was waiting for him at their favorite restaurant, he decided instead that he would pick up a woman he’d been talking to on Craigslist and take her to a party. He faked a car accident as an excuse to his girlfriend for his absence and called her from the road, pretending to be distracted by filling out a police report while actually texting with the other woman.
On Casual Encounters, Eric knew the ropes. He could tell which ads were fronts for webcam girls or posted by professional escorts. He understood how people used slang—referring to “skiing” (cocaine), meeting at 4:20 (marijuana), or bringing along “friends”—“Tina”(meth), “Molly” (MDMA), or “Emily” (Ecstasy). Some posters used slang to evade law enforcement, though Eric doubted the LAPD believed that the dozens of men “seeking ski bunnies” in July were interested in hitting the slopes. But the codes were useful in another way, as Eric realized that some people were looking for drugs as much as sex. He preferred cocaine, but it was good to have other options on hand in case he found a late-night “party girl” who was looking for something specific. It wasn’t exactly a trade. It was more like bait, something he could toss out to distinguish himself from the pack.
Unfortunately, Eric began “chasing the high” to extremes, sometimes staying awake for days to do so. He snorted lines of cocaine alone, forgetting to eat or drink, while he sifted through responses at his computer. The anticipation would build as he traded photos, e-mails, and eventually phone numbers with someone online, rising even more as he plugged an unfamiliar address into his car’s navigation system and set off into the night.
Most of my craigslist adventures started out with the same post. I just placed the same ad over and over. I would sit at my computer, doing lines of coke and emailing people. The ritual always started out the same, but then it was what it turned into, whatever else came up, that made it exciting. As the night progressed and drugs got heavier in my system, my willingness to explore things progressed too. I always started out as a guy looking for a girl, or maybe a couple, to see where that would go. But then I would end up at random sex parties, crack dens with strangers, or even with guys. It was like, it’s 3 in the morning, at least this is better than jerking off. A lot of my experiences were just going with the flow . . . I was in the pursuit of maximizing the moment. And at the right moment, with the right amount of drugs and the right sexy vibes, someone could have brought in a fucking donkey. Well, maybe not a donkey. [laughs] But there’s not much I would have said no to after a certain point.
But strangely, shortly after he arrived somewhere, a private home or dim hotel room, to claim his payoff, even before or during the sex, his arousal began dissipating. He would start plotting the next, bigger adventure—posting ads, sending e-mails, trading pictures, and searching for additional partners. Eric’s quest was not for sexual pleasure or physical release. He craved the chase itself—an experience producing its own physiological and emotional “high.”
But a peak becomes a cliff if you haven’t prepared for the descent.
After a particularly crazy weekend binge that cost him his job, Eric ended up in rehab for his cocaine addiction. By the end of his stay, he had compiled the spreadsheet of Craigslist conquests, shared it with his therapists, faced the wrath of his girlfriend and the girl he was cheating on her with, and acquired another diagnosis.
Sex addict.
According to popular news reports, the United States is facing an “epidemic” of sex addiction (although around the same percentages of individuals are afflicted with ADHD, social phobias, or Alzheimer’s disease). The Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health defines sex addiction as “engaging in persistent and escalating patterns of sexual behavior acted out despite increasing negative consequences to self and others.” Patrick Carnes, the author of numerous books on the topic, estimates that 3–6 percent of Americans are sex addicts. Like those suffering from chemical addictions to substances such as alcohol or cocaine, sex addicts are said to exhibit obsession, denial, loss of control, compulsive behavior, continuation of behavior despite adverse consequences, and escalation of behaviors over time. Sexual addiction thus follows what some see as a destructive cycle similar to other addictions: A person uses a sexual behavior to fulfill emotional needs, but the degree to which that behavior satisfies those needs declines with repetition. The addict must then escalate the intensity or frequency of the sexual pursuits and in this process “engage in behavior that is increasingly risky to their well being.”[25]
Whether or not behavioral addictions are comparable to chemical addictions is subject to professional controversy. Lab research on animals indicates that pleasure centers in the brain may be related, as scientists have managed to “swap out” chemical and sexual addictions. Researchers have also been able to create sexually voracious leeches, rats, and other creatures through conditioning and by altering regions of the brain. In The Myth of Sex Addiction, psychologist David Ley counters that even though sexual behavior can become problematic, sex is not comparable to drugs or alcohol because people do not build a tolerance for it or experience withdrawal. Debate also arises around whether sex addiction should be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or whether it is best to treat problematic sexual behaviors as manifestations of other disorders, such as depression or OCD. But even as sexual addiction remains an unofficial diagnosis, many psychologists, therapists, researchers, and self-proclaimed sex addicts use the term and believe that sexual thoughts and behaviors can be excessive, inappropriate, destructive, and in need of treatment.
Curious about how the lines between pathological and normal sexual behavior might be drawn, I self-administered the Sexual Addiction Screening Test (SAST), available online through the International Institute of Trauma and Addiction Professionals, an organization founded by Carnes. The SAST is an initial screening instrument, designed to help individuals determine whether they should seek professional help for their sexual behaviors.[26]
Although I started out confidently on the test, checking “female” on the first page of questions, I almost immediately began struggling with my answers. The questions, meant to be answered “yes” or “no,” were far from straightforward. Should I should check “yes” to the question “I feel my sexual behavior is not normal,” I wondered, because I’ve seen and done things that many people haven’t, often while writing this book? Or should I check “no” because through these investigations, I learned that I prefer one-on-one encounters and now feel painfully vanilla at times? Was the question asking me to consider whether my current sexual behavior is “normal” in relation to my own life history or in relation to the sexual behavior of others around me? And who decides what “normal” is, anyway?
After some deliberation, I invoked the “Trident method”—four out of five people surveyed, most likely, would feel that my sexual behavior is not normal. I checked “yes.”
“Are any of your sexual activities against the law?” I hesitated again. Oral sex is illegal in many states, and in Washington, DC, where I was at the time, the only legal sexual position is missionary style. Guessing that they weren’t interested in my knowledge of such archaic (and usually unenforced) sodomy laws, I checked “no.” “Do you hide some of your sexual behaviors from others?” Yes, of course. What happens in Vegas . . . “Have you ever been at risk of arrest for lewd conduct?” After a Google search on the definition of lewd conduct, I learned that even wearing a bikini could be considered lewd in some places if it exposed the portion of the buttocks legally considered “genitalia”—
[the] one third of the buttocks centered over the cleavage of the buttocks for the length of the cleavage . . . more particularly described as that portion of the buttocks which lies between the top and bottom of the buttocks, and between two imaginary straight lines, one on each side of the anus and each line being located one third of the distance from the anus to the outside perpendicular line defining the buttocks, and each line being perpendicular to the ground and to the horizontal lines defining the buttocks—[27]
Hmm. I checked “yes.” Although the mental imagery required was tricky, I concluded that a thong could potentially violate the law.
Several questions focused on what others thought of my sexual behavior, making me grateful to socialize with other sex researchers and anthropologists. Having different kinks from those of a spouse seemed like asking for trouble on the SAST. Based on my undergraduate college days, I answered yes to questions about ever feeling degraded or depressed after sex. I also checked “yes” to “Is sex almost all you think about?” Writing a book on group sex could either be motivated by omnipresent thoughts of sex or be the cause of them—either way, I had to admit that I thought about sex as much as a bonobo lately, even if those thoughts were more analytic than erotic. On the other hand, I answered “no” to questions about whether I felt out of control or had tried to curb certain behaviors and failed. A few questions were pleasantly clear cut, such as those about whether I was monogamous, visited strip clubs or sex clubs, or ever used the Internet to look at pornography or meet sexual partners.
I scored a 10. The accompanying report suggested that one might be concerned about sex addiction with a score of 6. Wondering how others might score who weren’t presenting for treatment or conveying concern about their sexual behavior, I posted the test on my Facebook page. Thirty friends agreed to take the test and report their scores to me. Almost all scored in the “sex addict” range, between 6 and 15 (with only three falling in the nonaddict range, one of whom had worked in the porn industry). These folks were by no means a random sample, but their test results betrayed the serious side to this unscientific Facebook fun: it’s not that difficult to earn an unofficial label of sex addict, even if you don’t necessarily experience your behavior as problematic or uncontrollable. If you do feel that your sexual activity is shameful, wrong, or deviant—or if your spouse, friends, or family do—then it is even easier.
Now, of course, not every psychologist who believes in and treats sex addiction would use a measure like the SAST, and those who do would likely use it only in combination with a clinical evaluation. Carnes points out that it is a mistake to think that sex addiction is about the sex; it is “really about pain . . . or escaping or anxiety reduction.” Sex addicts use sex as a “solution” to other problems or as a way to deal with painful emotions.[28] Yet while a conscientious therapist wouldn’t diagnose a swinger as a sex addict on the basis of nonmonogamy alone, neighbors, colleagues, or spouses might. Adulterers are readily diagnosed in the press as sex addicts, with very little supporting information. Potential employers may not yet require the SAST before deciding on a hire, as some do the Myers Briggs personality test, but it is easy to see how such labeling could potentially get political and personal in workplaces, courts, and troubled marriages.
Some critics deem the concept of sex addiction a moralistic social construction: “nymphomania” becomes “hypersexuality”; “hypersexuality” becomes “sex addiction.” When sexuality is believed to be a dangerous and unruly force, the “invention of new sexual diseases and identities” becomes a way to regulate it.[29] The sexual activities and desires considered excessive, pathological, or destructive change with the times—as do the psychological diagnoses and treatments associated with them. Women are no longer diagnosed with “hysteria,” for example, although a quarter of the women in the United States were thought to suffer from it in 1859. And any contemporary psychiatrist who treats patients with genital massage, as was then customary, will see his name in a lawsuit before seeing it in an edition of America’s Top Doctors. Perhaps there is a silver lining to some of the ways that medicine changes over time—after all, we wouldn’t have the modern vibrator if we hadn’t first had doctors attempting to cure “hysteria” with orgasms. But we don’t need to mine the medical lore of the 1800s to find examples of “truths” being overturned, and unfortunately, we are sometimes left with the painful legacy of the frontal lobotomy rather than the Hitachi Magic Wand.
Sex addiction, from this perspective, describes sexual behavior that brings someone too close to the edge of social acceptability—not just those who plunge over their own precipices. During the 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Janice Irvine argues, the term “addict” became widely used in the United States to designate people doing anything excessively in the eyes of others, whether shopping, eating, or loving. The popularity of the concept of sex addiction is related to demographic shifts occurring during those years, such as changes in patterns of marriage and child rearing, and to attitudinal and behavioral changes affecting the dominant system of sexual meanings.[30] These social transformations produced anxieties and counterreactions, including calls for a return to traditional sexual morality. The sex addiction model draws on a “rhetoric of danger and chaos” and “was fashioned during this larger cultural moment of competing sexual ideologies.”[31] It is also shaped by dominant ideas about male and female sexuality, such as beliefs that male sexuality is uncontrollable and victimizes women. Through the language of addiction, Irvine argues, sexuality could be judged healthy or pathological; “dangerous sexuality,” such as “masturbation, nonmonogamy, pornography, sadomasochism, and, for some in the more restrictive groups, lesbian and gay sexuality,” was denounced as unhealthy.[32]
One of the supposed benefits of addiction models, according to Irvine, was the presumed neutrality of medicine. An addict is viewed as dealing with a sickness, in need of understanding and treatment rather than condemnation as “bad” or sinful.[33] The readiness with which celebrities and athletes—Rob Lowe, David Duchovny, Tiger Woods, Stan Collymore—declare themselves sex addicts and enter costly treatment centers is in part because the path to salvation is so clearly marked. Even noncelebrities sometimes need a quick trip down redemption road: for someone trying to rescue a marriage or career, embracing the addiction model can be like grasping a life preserver regardless of whether the person ever felt out of control sexually.
Some individuals, of course, need redemption more than others. It wasn’t exactly a scandal, after all, when Mötley Crüe members published their joint autobiography and admitted to—gasp—having a lot of group sex. Maybe fans didn’t actually know that Tommy Lee once inserted a telephone inside a groupie’s vagina and then ordered room service with Nikki Sixx and Vince Neil, but the revelation shocked the public far less than when President Bill Clinton inserted a cigar into his young intern’s vagina. Rock stars are expected to have scandalous sex lives. (In fact, it was more outrageous that the band members wrote so little about their sexcapades and instead about broken hearts, money troubles, and weight gain.) Except when under pressure to gain favor with “good girls” like Heather Locklear, the naked women peeing into cat boxes during their backstage breaks and servicing them en masse after concerts were simply job perks.
Excessive sexual behavior, after all, is contingent on what is considered “normal” sexual behavior at any given time, in any given place, and for any given person. Whether a man’s pursuits of extramarital affairs, prostitutes, or “underage” women are accepted as natural male desires or viewed as symptoms of sex addiction depend not only on whether he is a rock star but on whether he lives in Cartagena, Colombia, or Carthegena, Ohio. A young woman who attends sex parties with “shaking bones” might be seen as a political rebel or feminist crusader if she lives in Iran but as suffering from low self-esteem if she hails from Indiana. The contemporary “epidemic” of sex addiction, then, might be seen as a reflection of ongoing cultural struggles over the meaning and regulation of sex, often coupled with a fear of technological change. Sure, “seeking sex partners online” seems pathological to someone who asked out his high-school sweetheart in person, but what about to those who grew up dating on Match.com? A friend’s teenage son sent ten thousand text messages in one month, primarily conversing with girls, and his generation will likely use an iPhone app to accept or reject prom dates. Will it be any weirder—or more risky—for them to seek sex partners online than it was for their parents to “hook up” after getting drunk at a local bar?
The etiology of sex addiction, from this angle, is rooted in our social worlds as much as in the chemistry of our brains. Yes, rats can be created that copulate to death, forgoing food or sleep. Addiction—as it is operationalized in lab research—precedes death but denotes that a creature is approaching its physical limits. But lab research and real life part ways, for both ethical and practical reasons. There are many people who do not pursue chemical dependencies to the point of suicide but whom are still judged as going too far (sometimes because the substance they prefer is illegal). When it comes to sex, the addict label is usually applied long before such physical or ultimate limits are in sight.
This doesn’t mean that the concept of sex addiction is useless. There are indeed individuals who feel out of control in the face of their sexual desires or activities and who cause themselves and their families a great deal of suffering. Some individuals compulsively engage in illegal sexual behaviors, a clearly self-destructive pattern. Someone who masturbates fifteen times a day or spends five hours a night looking at porn online may not be breaking the law but might still be unable to succeed at work or in relationships. Compulsive sexual behavior, such as continually seeking anonymous partners, may be physically or emotionally risky for some individuals. In addition to causing feelings of shame or self-hatred, an inability to control one’s sexual urges can be financially devastating. A therapist told me of a client who spent tens of thousands of dollars on Internet porn in a single weekend while his wife was out of town. During the years when his behavior was most compulsive, Eric racked up debts in the hundreds of thousands, ruined relationships with friends and lovers, and sabotaged his career. The destruction he left in his wake is “daunting” for him to reflect on. Taking on the identity of “sex addict” can be a relief for individuals, offering an explanation for their distress (addiction), procedures to follow (confession; therapy; twelve-step programs), and the possibility of recovery. Sexual “sobriety,” occasionally pursued to the point of attempting to eliminate sexual fantasies, can be a welcome promise after a person has experienced intense sexual preoccupations. A diagnosis of sex addiction can also help friends and family understand and forgive transgressions.
But a contextual view raises important questions. When does sexual behavior become so risky to someone’s well-being that it should be treated as pathological? What risks are involved? Not having a monogamous marriage? Not being a productive member of society? Debt? Physical danger? Hurting others or breaking the law? We are no longer talking about shots of lithium chloride, and these very different negative consequences are often lumped together as if one begets the next. Further, the labels used to discern between acceptable and unacceptable behaviors and healthy or unhealthy individuals can quickly proliferate. Is Eric a sensation seeker? A sexual adventurer? A sex addict? Someone who, apparently unlike Sergio, lacked the psychological resources to shield himself from the negative consequences of his sexual explorations? Did his behavior become problematic the first time he posted on Casual Encounters, the hundredth time, when his girlfriend decided it was a problem, or when he could no longer hold down a job? What if he’d stuck with Diet Coke instead of cocaine, like Collymore?
Regardless of which constructs researchers measure or the labels used, some people do appear more prone to needing a “buzz,” thrills, or adventure than others; some people are also more likely to seek those thrills through sex. But the picture is far more complicated, and our exploration cannot stop at the individual level. The edges of social acceptability, after all, beckon to rebels, revolutionaries, troublemakers, explorers, and all sorts of transgressors.
Hugh Hefner may have been in the trenches of the sexual revolution, but there were times he seemed indifferent to both sex and revolution. Even during the heyday of the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, some insiders reported that he seemed “more interested in backgammon than sex, sometimes playing for up to twenty four hours at a time.”[34] Hard rocker Nikki Sixx admits he didn’t know what to do with himself after realizing his ambitions with Shout at the Devil and reaping the benefits of fame: “It was the orgy of success, girls and drugs I had always wanted. But, now, I was confronted with a new problem: What do you do after the orgy? The only thing I could think to do after the orgy was to have another one, a bigger one, so that I didn’t have to deal with the consequences of the last one.”[35]
Eric spoke similarly:
I’ve been in therapy for several years now, and I don’t use Craigslist anymore. I have better relationships. I don’t have a coke problem. But I have less desire for sex.
Even if I see an ideal girl, pursuing her doesn’t excite me. It’s like I’m a former alcoholic who’s working in a brewery. I would drink my ass off before if I had the opportunity but now I have the keys to the plant. I almost don’t have any interest. Sometimes it bothers me. It’s good because I have control of my life, but then I wonder where it all went, all that crazy desire. I’m just not interested.
Regular sex is boring. I have sex with somebody twice and I’m bored. A friend of mine has watched this carousel of girls go through my life and he’s shocked that I’m leaving them all behind. But it’s boredom; it’s lack of desire. Indifference. I’ve already played the scenario out in my head and there’s nothing interesting there. I guess it’s the shamefulness that makes it interesting for me, that’s the fuel. And the chase—the elation you feel from the chase becomes a drug itself, and then wondering how far can you go, how can you take it to the limit or the next level. I miss the intensity. Even though that period of my life was painful, there are days when I think, “Wow, that was a lot of fun.”
Sometimes I wonder if I came upon a group of girls now who were beautiful, getting it on, and I could jump in, would I? I don’t know. It wouldn’t be as fun for me. The desire isn’t there, that pure, animalistic pursuit, the addictive piece of it. I’d have fun and cum and I’d be done. Before, I could fuck hard and shoot my load across the room; as soon as I’d finish, I’d be energized and want more sex.
Now I would just want to go to bed.
Well, that sounds boring.
The reality is that even transgressive sex can lose its allure. The edge is rarely the edge forever. And what do you do then?[36]
“Riding bareback” means riding a horse without a saddle. Since the 1990s, however, the term has also been used as slang, primarily in publications for gay and HIV-positive men, for the intentional decision to have sex without a condom. The term is also used in heterosexual swinging as well as referring to a popular genre of gay pornography[37] and a specialized, often more expensive, service offered by some escorts or prostitutes.
Public health researchers, when initially faced with evidence that people were not always practicing safe sex with casual partners, often assumed that this was due to a lack of education. Not using a condom, given the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS or other STDs, they reasoned, must be a mistake. The answer would therefore be more education, more outreach programs, more materials to distribute focused on the dangers of unprotected sex.
But is barebacking a mistake or a decision? Could these very strategies backfire?
As with any human sexual behavior, the complexity of motivations belies a singular answer. Most barebackers, whether gay or straight, do not want to contract HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases but decide that the increased physical pleasure or intimate connection with partners is worth the risk involved. Some barebackers attempt to reduce their risks—for example, by avoiding partners considered “high risk” or engaging in regular STD testing, sharing the results, and having unprotected sex only with others who test similarly. Among gay male barebackers, “serosorting” is relatively common, which limits unprotected sex to partners of the same HIV status.[38] Barebackers may also reframe the debate by arguing that actual risks of unprotected sex are exaggerated or unknown. Among lifestylers, I have heard arguments that individuals who have had over a certain number of sexual partners have most likely already been exposed to herpes or HPV and that other common STDs are easily treatable. HIV is often dismissed as highly unlikely among the middle-class, primarily white, heterosexuals who make up the bulk of lifestyle participants—even by those who do not bareback.[39] Barebackers sometimes also express concern that important information about HIV has been withheld because of homophobia or sex negativity. Some even argue that HIV is not the true cause of AIDS and that this myth is propagated through either conspiracy or ignorance.
Another approach to justifying barebacking is to compare its risks with other outcomes or activities. HIV infection is sometimes likened to living with a manageable disease such as diabetes, given the availability of retroviral drug therapies. Or, as in this post from a lifestyle discussion forum: “Some of you are freaked out about getting AIDS, but think nothing of lighting up, driving after a few drinks, not wearing a motorcycle helmet, or jumping out of a perfectly good airplane! We are all going to die sometime, we just don’t know when, where, or from what. Some activities are riskier than others. What you do is your choice . . .”[40]
Despite attempts to manage or downplay the dangers of barebacking, the discourse of risk adds to its erotics, whether consciously or not. Before HIV/AIDS and the push for “safe sex” in the United States and Western Europe, there was no “barebacking.” Sure, people had sex without condoms—but the meaning of doing so was different. Condoms provided birth control, and, in fact, wearing them was transgressive for some heterosexuals, given that the Catholic Church prohibited contraception. Tim Dean, who writes on barebacking among gay men, argues that “before gay men in San Francisco or New York started fetishizing the virus, U.S. scientists and public health experts did so—whether as the ultimate object of high-prestige research or as the phobic object of sex-education campaigns.”[41] In the mid- to late 1990s, Dean maintains, there was a rise in barebacking websites catering to gay men in San Francisco. Self-identified barebackers developed a subculture, in the sense of forming their own vocabulary, rituals, etiquette, institutions, and iconography.[42] Although barebacking subculture has spread to cities like Berlin or London, it would make little sense to discuss barebacking in other cultural contexts, such as in the “African AIDS” crisis, even if some men in Africa consciously shun condoms. It is the discourse of safety versus danger that makes barebacking far more than “condomless sex.”
Barebacking, once labeled, becomes a source of controversy; reactions contribute to its dangerous aura. Larry Kramer, an American writer and LGBT activist known for being outspoken about gay men’s sexual practices, argued that not using condoms “is tantamount to murder.”[43] Metaphors of death abound in discussions of barebacking in forums for gay men, as it is compared to being “like smoking . . . you know it is going to kill you,” “putting a bullet to someone’s head,” or “playing Russian Roulette.”[44] Similar proclamations arise in lifestyle forums: “Of course, bareback is better. Duh. But I want to live, thank you very much.” Perceptions of danger, of course, generate not only desires for protection but also desires to “skate close to the edge.” As one researcher writes, “Danger can be erotic, even the threat of contracting a deadly disease.”[45] Discourses of risk thus interact with other beliefs, fantasies, and needs as well as contextual factors in complicated ways.
The “Three or More Study” (TOMS) of Australian men who had group sex with other men found that most participants planned on using condoms for anal intercourse at sex parties but did not always follow through (HIV-positive men were more likely than others to engage in unprotected anal intercourse). The men expressed a “tension between desires and norms,” claiming to be committed to safe sex and knowledgeable about HIV transmission but having desires to forgo condoms as well. A TOMS interviewee found barebacking appealing because of the “naughtiness.” “That illicit thing, something that you really shouldn’t be doing. That makes it a bit more special, to be honest. The forbidden element.”[46] He enjoyed watching others have unsafe sex, in porn or at sex parties, because it was “raunchy.” Another TOMS interviewee discussed his desire push the limits:
Lately, I’ve been feeling compelled? I’ve been feeling the urge. Or need. Or something, to start off any fucking by . . . even if . . . we have sex with a condom, which is my rule, I find that I want to put it in just for a minute or two, at first, without a condom. . . . Look, I know I shouldn’t. But I do. I usually, at least for a few strokes, just stick my cock in. Or let him, whoever I’m having sex with, I let him do it. Just for a bit. I feel almost compelled, at first. Especially the first time I have sex with someone. . . . And I don’t know why. . . . We all think condoms are a hassle, and a necessary evil . . . we all wear them, all of us. But I often do . . . [pauses] what I told you before. Just for a minute. Especially in the heat of the first time I’m having sex with someone.
In some contexts, being willing to take such a risk, with or for someone specific, can become a route to increased intimacy or a way to prove commitment. For heterosexuals, the possibility of pregnancy can add another layer of meaning onto the choice not to wear a condom, both as perilous—“the real risk isn’t STIs, but 18 years or more of bills and being responsible forever for a life”—or as intimate. Even in situations where one’s partners are casual or even anonymous, barebacking can foster a sense of shared trust or connection, something mentioned by TOMS interviewees. One man explained, “I think there’s a wholesome, spiritual connection that happens when you have sex, especially without condoms. And that’s magnified in the group environment.”[47] Barebackers may thus also be motivated “by a desire for certain emotional sensations, particularly the symbolic significance attached to experiences of vulnerability and risk.”[48] Unsafe sex, one commentator suggests, can “disrupt time” and rationality, bringing one fully “into the moment.”[49] Humans quest after intensity and aliveness in a variety of ways; sex, especially edgy sex, is a route to such experiences that becomes more or less salient in different contexts and time periods.
Despite the fact that barebacking has some shared meanings across groups, it has not been taken up as an identity among American lifestylers as it has among gay men. Both the straight press and some gay writers and activists tend to interpret gay men’s sexual practices and desires as the pathological result of low self-esteem, shame, or internalized homophobia. Yet, as one writer argues about barebacking, it is useful to “locate in gay men’s social world, rather than in our psyches, the springs for what might appear to be incomprehensible or self-destructive behavior.”[50] To fully understand barebacking in either enclave—gay men and lifestylers—requires a detailed analysis of social, cultural, political, economic, legal, and historical factors. Here, I want to briefly focus just on the significance of witnesses to barebacking and identity in each group sex setting.
Among lifestylers, unprotected sex with one’s own spouse or primary partner is not considered barebacking and is de rigueur at clubs, events, and parties. Swingers’ clubs often post rules requiring condom use for intercourse, although condoms are not expected for oral sex or between committed partners. Barebacking with extradyadic partners is highly stigmatized; although it happens, barebacking conflicts strongly enough with ethical and behavioral norms that relatively few lifestylers openly admit to it. When outsiders report observing barebacking in swing clubs, it could stem from a misunderstanding about what “playing without a condom” means for committed partners. An outsider may not be able to tell whether he is witnessing “barebacking” or condomless sex unless he is aware of the relationship between the individuals involved or understands the difference. In visits to swingers’ clubs on several continents, I never observed barebacking; extremely rarely, I have noticed it at private parties. Some parties specifically cater to barebackers, who are usually closeted to “mainstream” lifestyle acquaintances. Barebacking also occurs in separate-room play. Separate-room play is sometimes considered edgier than group play, which provides an interesting twist on normative expectations of sexual privacy and points to another layer of significance to witnesses. Recreational sex, some lifestyle couples believe, is safe as long as emotional monogamy is maintained. Separate rooms, one-on-one dates, late-night phone calls, or other behaviors that could lead to emotional connections with outside partners potentially challenge the primary bond. Condomless sex, because it is expected among primary partners, demonstrates the uniqueness of a couple’s bond to everyone present. Regardless of the meanings barebacking carries for an individual or a couple, then, it can be interpreted by other lifestylers as reflecting a lack of commitment to one’s primary partner. As there is an emphasis in the lifestyle on presenting as a strong couple, even couples that allow unprotected sex with outside partners often still prefer to manage the possibility of witnesses.
There are certainly gay men who are “fluid bonded” or for whom condomless sex similarly signifies dyadic commitment, or transgression, if it occurs with an outside partner. For some, barebacking remains a relatively private activity. But public sexuality has long been important for some groups of gay men as a form of political resistance and sign of solidarity; sex witnessed by others challenges the public/private divide that many view as essential to heteronormative power relations. Barebacking continues this tradition of engaging in public or group sexual activity as a challenge to mainstream morality, especially if one believes that the meaning of sex and safety has been hijacked by homophobic and sex-negative discourses. San Francisco, the city Dean pinpoints as the ground zero of bareback subculture, has a long history of attracting sexual outlaws; many of them eventually stake claims to alternative identities. Thus, even though many gay men refuse to bareback or criticize those who do, a visible barebacking “subculture” does not necessarily conflict with more widely shared ideals.
Dean argues that some men who participate in bareback culture claim an amplified masculinity, representing themselves “as uber-men—as sexual professionals, experts in eros, and as outlaws, pioneers of the avant-garde.”[51] Bareback group sex parties sometimes advertise using the military phrase “don’t ask, don’t tell,” which means that discussion of one’s serostatus and condom use is prohibited.[52] In bareback subculture, according to Dean, “witnessing is central.” The gang bang becomes the “paradigmatic sexual form” because it “guarantees the presence of witnesses.”[53] A pig, in bareback subculture, is “a man who wants as much sex as he can get with as many different men as possible, often in the form of group sex that includes barebacking, water sports, fisting, and SM (‘pig pile’ is a long-established term for a gay orgy or gang bang).” “Being a pig entails committing oneself to sexual excess, to pushing beyond boundaries of propriety and corporeal integrity.” Some men use tattoos, T-shirts, or other means of advertising their pig status.[54]
What could be more excessive than a bareback pig pile?
Bug chasing.
“Bug chasing” is the purposeful pursuit of HIV infection, a practice occurring only among a small subset of Western gay male barebackers. Gregory Freeman’s 2003 Rolling Stone article is often given the honors of having sparked the panic about bug chasing; like the episode of Oprah that stirred hysteria about “rainbow parties” among teens, much of the “evidence” provided in the original piece was later retracted. Bug chasing, however, was here to stay. Freeman’s primary informant, a man using the pseudonym Carlos, endorses bug chasing in the article as “the ultimate taboo, the most extreme sex act left on the planet.” Bug chasers seek “freedom”: “What else can happen to us after this? You can fuck whoever you want, fuck as much as you want, and nothing worse can happen to you. Nothing bad can happen after you get HIV.” Carlos also claims that the moment he contracts HIV will be “the most erotic thing I can imagine.”[55]
Clearly, if bug chasing didn’t exist before Freeman’s article, someone would have had to invent it.
Men can become “bug brothers” one on one or “at special marathon group sex parties” held “for the purpose of seroconverting as many HIV-negative participants as possible.”[56] In a twist on the view of unprotected sex as murder, HIV-positive men who participate are called “gift givers.” If barebacking is controversial both within and outside the gay community, bug chasing is usually seen as fully pathological. Still, Dean argues, bug chasers have complex motivations, such as desires for deeper intimacy with positive partners, desires to conquer fears of becoming infected, and loneliness. Some men see becoming bug brothers as an act of unity; others view it as a political statement against homophobia or dominant cultural values.[57] Risk is both eroticized and dramatized at group sex events for bug chasers, such as in the following ad for a “roulette party”:
B[irth]day fuck fest at my hotel in SOMA just off Harrison [Street]. I have a few neg bottoms lined up to take some Neg and Poz loads. Here is the party format. Everyone will arrive around 9:00 pm at my hotel room. When you arrive you will write down your hiv status on a card. You will be the only one to see this card. It will have a fake name on it but one that you will be known as. Once we are all done fucking and the tops leave[,] the bottoms will reveal the cards and see who took what. The tops can remain for round two if they like or you can bail if this freaks you out. No one will discuss status until every one is done with the breeding. If this sounds hot to you email me with a current chest and cock shot, face if you like, and I will get back in touch with you close to the date of the party. This will be my 37 b[irth]day and I want a gift to keep on giving.[58]
Dean likens viral exchange to the development of kinship networks; the erotics of “breeding” is a metaphorical impregnation with HIV.[59] This argument brings us back to a view of dyadic, unprotected sex as reproductive and to the use of condoms as a comment on both the status of the partner and the purpose of the relationship, especially when witnessed.
At the individual level, barebacking and bug chasing may be associated with other risk-taking behaviors and personality traits. Researchers found gay male barebackers to be more likely than nonbarebackers to use alcohol in sexual contexts, use the Internet to meet sex partners, engage in any unsafe sex, and report higher degrees of sexual sensation seeking.[60] And when compared with barebackers, bug chasers ranked higher on behavioral and psychological measures of sex addiction.[61]
Comparisons like this should be taken with a grain of salt, however. Or perhaps a whole shaker.
With only a handful of academic studies presenting data on bug chasing, along with a few clearly sensationalist articles by journalists, the paucity of evidence has led some to declare bug chasing an urban legend. Methods used to study bug chasers (and often barebackers) are questionable. Recruiting subjects from online communities—or worse, simply analyzing ads posted on barebacking websites—is problematic. Some of the desire to become “poz” explored by researchers in Web-based projects may in fact be fantasy play, as some individuals never intend to pursue physical encounters. On the other hand, when a practice comes to represent the extreme edge, it automatically appeals to some individuals. When even barebackers distinguish themselves from bug chasers, it pretty much guarantees that at least a few people are going to side with the outlaws—or decide to be the outlaws.
The demonization of bug chasers in the media might be considered alongside other practices where individuals take risks for political, aesthetic, or community ideals; because sex is involved, the level of panic may be out of proportion to the real public health danger. Bug chasing might also be considered alongside other phenomena that took on new life after being “discovered” and given a catchy name by the media—a powerful combination. (Just ask the people who are trying to get “pink slime” called “lean finely textured beef” again.) After all, before journalists and social scientists identified bug chasers as an at-risk group to study, these men were arguably just “lonely, troubled outliers.”[62] Yet once named, the minority of individuals engaged in such activities can be invoked to scare mainstream constituencies, potentially becoming lucrative symbols in a competitive funding environment. Are there also heterosexuals who wish to become infected with HIV? Probably. But at this point in time, heterosexuals who pursue sex with HIV-positive partners are still considered isolated weirdoes, not nearly as scary as bug chasers. There have always been individuals who fetishize a certain medical condition or type of death—just as there have always been teens who have oral sex with multiple partners, want to get pregnant, or experiment tragically with autoasphyxiation. But when does hysteria break out? It breaks out when teenagers start attending “rainbow parties,” making “pregnancy pacts,” or playing the “choking game”—and when these activities resonate with the cultural fears of the moment. The process of naming is powerful and motivated; while things that are named may indeed exist, they must do more than exist to be worth naming at a given moment in history.
Barebacking and bug chasing are controversial because of how they relate to contemporary cultural understandings of sexual risk, regardless of whether the risk taking involved is experienced as life enhancing or self-destructive for any given individual. They are also examples of how the edge looks different depending on one’s perspective: some people insist all barebackers are crazy; some barebackers swear that bug chasers are the truly nutty ones.
Let’s turn to the case of contemporary BDSM. Participants have historically been considered sick, troubled, and even insane. Today, however, one might attend a BDSM convention at a Ramada Inn, purchase a flogger at a sex toy party, or take part in a discussion of “cock and ball torture” at a coffee shop. While some outsiders still respond to BDSM with fear and pathologize an interest in “kink,” ongoing attempts by the BDSM community to foster an acceptance of sexual variation have had some effect on public perceptions. BDSM provides an interesting example of how sexual “outlaws” can become civilized—kicking and screaming all the way—and raises another question about the very nature of the edge.
Are we looking at a cliff? Or a series of rolling hills?
“I do some knife play, but I don’t really slice anybody up. I’ll cut a couple layers of epidermis and then blood will pool up on the cut.”[63]
An important role of BDSM organizations has been to provide outreach education about BDSM to the general public as well as to community members. The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF), for example, is a US organization working toward protecting rights for consenting adults involved in a variety of alternative sexual practices—BDSM/leather/fetish, swinging, and polyamory. Mediating the relationship between BDSM practitioners and the general public has been crucial because of the history of pathologization in the United States and Europe. “Sexual sadism” and “sexual masochism”—both defined as paraphilias—were long considered disorders, even within consenting relationships. Such a history, as social theorists point out, can stimulate the creation of resistant identities. The label “homosexual,” for example, both was used to pathologize people with same sex-desires and became an identity from which to resist the definitions of the medical and psychiatric establishments. In 1973, homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, in part due to pressure from emerging gay and lesbian rights groups. BDSM has undergone similar processes. In 1994, the DSM was changed so that engaging in a paraphilia was no longer inherently seen as symptomatic of mental illness. Suggested revisions for the DSM-V, to be published in 2013, specify the difference between “benign paraphilias” and a paraphilic disorder, which exists only when a paraphilia “is currently causing distress or impairment to the individual” or its “satisfaction has entailed personal harm, or risk of harm, to others in the past.”[64] While this solution does not please everyone, some activists see it as a positive step. Similar moves to free BDSM from its association with mental illness have been made in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland.
In contrast to Craigslist sex seekers and to a greater extent than barebackers, BDSM practitioners have developed a sense of identity and community around their sexual practices. Although fighting a history of pathologization is part of the reason, other contextual, structural and interpersonal factors also contribute. One social theorist suggests that a large SM subculture “will develop in a society that has an unequal power distribution, that has enough affluence for the development of leisure and recreational activities, and that values imagination and creativity.”[65] BDSM mixes well with capitalism. While it would be tough to figure out what to sell to the folks on Craigslist Casual Encounters to enhance their experience—and, let’s face it, the ability to buy stuff makes a group as real as naming does—the possibilities for commercialization are vast with BDSM. Players can purchase fetish clothing, sex toys, dungeon equipment, and “how-to” manuals; they attend workshops on technique. There is also the issue of scale. BDSM clubs create environments conducive to the experiences sought—often dark and gothic, with themed play areas such as prison cells or stables, and out of hearing range of the neighbors. Many clubs also provide specialized equipment. The St Andrew’s cross, for example, is an X-shaped cross allowing for various positions and types of restraint—probably an excellent conversation starter in the living room, but highly impractical. Because the atmosphere provided by a club is not reproducible in most homes and on most budgets, community venues meet the needs of a critical mass of players.
On an interpersonal level, additional factors contribute to the development of community: for example, the tendency to take on identities within scenes that are relatively enduring, such as top/bottom/switch or dominant/submissive, and the need to manage risk through competence while also creating authentic experiences of power exchange. Although players negotiate scenes beforehand, setting “safe words” and discussing limits, the aim is to create “as total and as authentic a sense of power imbalance as possible within the confines of consent.”[66] Anonymity is not prized under such conditions. The presence of witnesses is crucial to demonstrating skill, developing a reputation, and displaying status. Tops gain status for being demanding, skillful, and trustworthy, bottoms by being expressive during scenes (through screaming, moaning, writhing, etc.) or “edgy” in their activities or in how much they can endure.[67] Highly skilled tops, according to sociologist Staci Newmahr, will have the most opportunities to play. This means being proficient with the equipment—whips, crops, ropes, bondage, and so on—but also in terms of interaction, pushing the limits of the bottom physically and emotionally without going too far.
The transmission of skills and knowledge spawns hierarchies based on experience and dedication; these hierarchies are dependent on community recognition. BDSM practitioners have developed an art form out of heightening arousal, intensifying sensation, and delaying satisfaction. Floggers, canes, and paddles, for example, each create distinct sensations and arguably should be chosen based on the area of the body selected (back, buttocks, or legs) and the desired effect (sharp stings or heavy thuds). Blindfolds, hoods, and restraints distort time and block some sensory input while increasing awareness of other stimuli. Experts regularly offer classes on technique, negotiation, communication, and “aftercare,” or how to treat partners after scenes. Knives or electricity, used negligently, can cause irreversible physical damage. Even incorrectly tying a person’s limbs could result in adverse consequences. Practitioners thus spend money on equipment; they also spend time acquiring the skills and knowledge necessary to use their gear (and bodies) safely and effectively. Some types of play, like spanking, may not leave lasting marks but involve potential psychological risks. “The physical, emotional, and psychological intensity of SM,” Newmahr writes, “combined with its marginalized status,” generates intense emotional responses.[68] If a person reworks past trauma in a scene, skilled players can create an environment conducive to healing rather than reopening old wounds.
But players want more than therapy, or they would be reclining on a couch instead of strapped to a St. Andrew’s cross.
Sociologist Stephen Lyng developed the concept of “edgework,” borrowing the phrase from gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, to describe the “voluntary pursuit of activities that involve a high potential for death, serious physical injury, or psychic harm.”[69] The edgework model has been applied to extreme sports such as mountaineering and rock climbing, crime, stock market trading, and dangerous occupations such as wilderness rescue or firefighting. Edgework goes beyond voluntary risk taking as a self-conscious refinement of how boundaries—such as order and disorder, life or death, or other significant human limits—are approached: “Edgeworkers of all stripes ultimately seek to get as close to this critical line as possible without actually crossing it.”[70] Doing so requires managing risks and developing skills in conditions of uncertainty; part of the allure of edgework, then, is the need for creative responses. “Participants are seduced,” Lyng writes, “by the transcendent and intensely authentic nature of the experience.”[71] Mountaineers, for example, claim that their activities lead to “a heightened psychological and physical experience” where participants gain “permanent knowledge of what it is to feel so totally ‘wired’ or ‘alive.’”[72]
Like some extreme sports, BDSM involves a variety of risks, from the physical to the psychological, and requires commitment and specialization to manage them. Many organizations and practitioners uphold the standard of “safe, sane, and consensual” (SSC), a phrase now associated with the organized BDSM scene. Still, participants want to push and be pushed against the limits that have been imposed. BDSM is thus a form of “collaborative edgework,” according to Newmahr—it is not just the bottom who is engaged in edgework because of the bodily or emotional risk; rather, participants need each other.[73] And although not every activity is equally physically dangerous, she argues that all SM is “emotional edgework,” exploring the “line between emotional chaos and emotional order, between emotional form and formlessness, between the self and the obliteration of the self.”[74]
Acceptable and desirable types of play are defined, debated, developed, and displayed through interactions with others. In a sizable community, knowledge can no longer be passed simply from master to disciple; community organizations, rules, and standards can take on some of the responsibility. Authority structures and hierarchies create forms of policing. In San Francisco, for example, the Dungeon Monitors Association, or DMA, trains “dungeon monitors” in safety, first aid, CPR, and acceptable play. Many of the practitioners that anthropologist Margot Weiss interviewed during her fieldwork expressed ambivalence about the DMA and other attempts at policing scenes. As the community became “almost obsessed with rules and order, safety and security,” some players believed it was losing its “allure of the clandestine, outlaw, or dangerous.”[75] Similarly, as with any boundaries, the SSC guideline breeds both controversy and desires for transgression. Some dissenters dislike the value judgments implied in SSC—who, after all, decides what counts as “sane”? Some practitioners prefer RACK, or “risk-aware consensual kink,” as a guiding principle; others stress individual responsibility and ethics. As one practitioner explains in a critique of SSC: “For me the whole beauty of SM play is that it doesn’t always make sense, that it does take us outside our ‘safety-zone,’ that it is frightening; it taps into the purest essence of sex which is ultimately chaotic, chthonic, exhilarating, exuberant, a dizzying abyss, an electrifying scream.”[76]
As I learned the hard way by letting a friend zap me on the arm with her “violet wand,” individual differences in pain tolerance contribute to interpretations of bodily sensation as gratifying or insufferable. While I didn’t produce an “electrifying” scream, I did let out a pathetic shriek; she merely giggled when I turned it back on her. But BDSM, ideally, involves far more than the triggering of nerve endings. Players make sense of their relationship to “pain” in a variety of ways. Newmahr discovered that instead of using the word “hurt,” for example, both tops and bottoms preferred the phrases “giving pain” or “receiving pain” to highlight their voluntary participation. Players point out that heightened levels of arousal can also literally transform physical sensations into pleasure or alter their sensitivity levels, as anyone who has been surprised to discover painful bruises after a steamy sex session can attest. Some players approach pain as a sacrifice, something endured as a gift of devotion to the top. Still others, like athletes, view pain as “an investment toward a greater reward”—pushing through pain eventually leads to intensely desirable levels of experience. Only a minority of players, Newmahr found, claimed to want pain for its own sake and its own ends. A few bottoms, for example, claimed that pain was pleasurable to them; it “hurts,” but “they like it anyway.”[77]
As mentioned in chapter 5, BDSM is sometimes compared with traditional practices where altered states of consciousness are created through tests of physical endurance. Some players maintain that processing pain allows for an intense mental focus that generates self-knowledge, personal growth, and experiences of transcendence. An interviewee in Weiss’s ethnography explains that pain “becomes meditative for me just as a test to see how much I can handle, how much I can take, what hurts, what doesn’t, how much it takes to mark, and so it becomes for me an exploration of my body: its tolerances, its abilities to not be injured.” Another participant describes her experience during a flogging:
She put me in a chair and started to flog me and flogged the skin off my back. . . . We channel energy on purpose . . . there was actually a feedback, consciously flying between us. I need that so I can process that level of pain. . . . I’ll be in certain positions with my palms flat to the ground, and I’m running energy through my body [and] breathing and [finding] the rhythmic way to flow with it.[78]
Giving community or spiritual meaning to a desire for intense bodily sensation can temper the interpretations of outsiders. The “anorexia” of saints is received differently from that of college coeds; the wounded flesh of a sun dancer is treated distinctly from the skin of someone who “cuts” to release anxiety. Descriptions of transcendent experience cannot be reduced to bids for legitimacy, however.
Some BDSM players seek erotic humiliation through being displayed in submissive poses or “forced” into degrading situations, such as being trained as a pony, sold as a slave, or serving as a human toilet. While not necessarily involving pain, these scenes can still facilitate shifts in consciousness associated with submission. Subspace can also be created by activating emotional memories. I learned this the hard way as well, after volunteering to go onstage as a submissive during a demonstration. My exchange with the male top involved little more than my refusing to submit to the first things he asked and then his pinning me against the wall, one hand on my throat, while whispering something inaudible in my ear. I felt a brief second of fear (only later did I consciously recognize the memory triggered by the sensation of his finger pressing on my necklace). When I struggled, he dropped his hand immediately. That was it. Still, it was like being drunk. I tripped leaving the stage and then gave him my phone number—my primary regret of the evening, given that he left a long, explicit message on my answering machine the next day that my more experienced roommates highly enjoyed.
Ah, life before cell phones.
“Edgeplay” is a term used to describe scenes that push community boundaries of acceptability. Newmahr found that edgeplay was associated with challenges to ethical boundaries, such as inflicting extreme pain, hitting a woman in the face, or invoking illegal fantasies in scenes, such as bestiality. It was also associated with severe risk, as in bondage leading to unconsciousness, permanent body modification, intense catharsis scenes (which risk dredging up or leaving psychological issues), potentially deadly types of play such as “breath control, blades, guns, blood, and fire,” and—the most serious form—scenes that blur the boundary between consent and nonconsent.[79] Some practitioners argue that the “edge” is relative. One of Weiss’s interviewees argues, for example, “If you have a phobia of needles, that’s edge play. If you’re freaked out because you’re a woman and I don’t want you to wear pink lingerie, that’s edge play. Whatever makes you nervous and you don’t want to go there, I want to go there ’cause that’s where the exchange of power comes from.”[80] Still, most practitioners express ambivalence about certain practices and seem to want to distinguish between pushing boundaries and going too far. They just aren’t always sure how to do so.
Newmahr and Weiss didn’t pass out the sensation-seeking scale to their interviewees. But labels are not necessary to ascertain that while the “borderlands” of sexuality appeal to many, the distant frontiers appeal to others. (Still others, of course, are perfectly content following established trade routes.) But these differences are not necessarily related to underlying patterns of pathology. Recent studies have found few, if any, differences between BDSM players and control groups in terms of a history of sexual abuse or a place along common psychometric measures.[81] An Australian study found that although BDSM players were not more likely to be anxious or depressed than the general population—in fact, men involved in BDSM scored significantly lower on a scale of psychological distress—BDSM players had engaged in more sexual practices.[82] Interestingly, these practices were associated with “sexual adventurism,” especially the “esoteric sex practices”—oral or anal sex, sex with multiple partners, group sex, use of online porn or sex toys, and so on. People involved in BDSM, then, like to do some of the same things as each other and as individuals in other alternative sexual enclaves. But believing that doing those things automatically says something about a person’s psychological health is partly a result of how Westerners think about sex as essentially and inherently connected to who we are. We might find the same to be true of Craigslist sex seekers and barebackers if we conducted similar studies—that is, both psychologically “normal” and psychologically “abnormal” people could find those practices appealing.
At the same time, people clearly desire different levels of intensity, in their sex lives and more generally, and exhibit varying tendencies toward escalation. Edgeplay—not the pink-lingerie-wearing kind but the kind that just might send you to the emergency room—could be what some people need to get there, to that headspace where they are “buzzing,” “in the moment,” “feeling alive,” or experiencing the “dizzying abyss.” If you achieve personal growth through flogging and I prefer to read Chicken Soup for the Soul, who’s to judge the means to the end?
Edgeplayers, because they threaten the image of BDSM that activists have worked hard to shape, are controversial.[83] Yet edgeplayers also represent valued outlaw qualities—qualities that some practitioners fear are being lost with the commercialization and mainstreaming of BDSM. Weiss argues that mainstream media representations of BDSM have “increased dramatically in the last 20 years” in films, television, advertising, and fashion, and that this increased visibility engenders issues of authenticity for both mainstream viewers and players.[84] BDSM, she suggests, stands for sex that is dangerous or taboo, but the images produced and consumed in pop culture are often distinguished from “the really sick and twisted side” that supposedly hasn’t found its way into suburban living rooms.[85] But what exactly counts as really sick and twisted? One need only consider the recent success of Fifty Shades of Grey—an e-book that became a New York Times best seller for erotic fiction—to realize that SM isn’t just for perverts anymore. Experts are quoted in the media claiming that “BDSM is part of a normative sexual experience that feels healthy and enjoyable to many people,” and that hopefully Fifty Shades of Grey “will give some people a language to talk about sex, ask questions, explore different fantasies and know that those fantasies are okay.”[86] Some days, even in small-town America, everyone seems to be dabbling in BDSM.
Hearing that one’s fantasies are not dark and disturbing but actually “okay” might bring relief to some people. All the talk about BDSM as “healthy,” “normal,” and “enjoyable” sexuality might even get the paraphilias removed from the DSM-V more quickly. It might also send some practitioners running for the hills.
Or the next set of cliffs.
1. Sarah Lyall. “Here’s the Pub, Church and Field for Public Sex,” New York Times, October 8, 2010.
2. Stan Collymore, Tackling My Demons (London: CollinsWillow, 2004), 307.
3. Ibid., 306.
4. Ibid., 289.
5. Ibid., 282.
6. Lyall, “Here’s the Pub.”
7. Collymore, Tackling My Demons, 315.
8. Rudiger M. Trimpop, The Psychology of Risk Taking Behavior (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1994), 296.
9. Annys Shin, “Engineering a Safer Burger: Technology Is Entrepreneur’s Main Ingredient for Bacteria-Free Beef,” Washington Post, June 12, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/11/AR2008061103656_pf.html.
10. “2011 Estimates of Foodborne Illness: CDC 2011 Estimates: Findings,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, available at http://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/2011-foodborne-estimates.html (last updated Ocrober 10, 2012).
11. Tom Laskaway, “‘Pink Slime’ Is the Tip of the Iceberg: Look What Else Is in Industrial Meat,” Grist: A Beacon in the Smog, March 19, 2012, http://grist.org/factory-farms/pink-slime-is-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-look-what-else-is-in-industrial-meat/.
12. “Sexually Transmitted Diseases in the United States, 2008,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, available at http://www.cdc.gov/std/stats08/trends.htm (last updated November 16, 2009).
13. In 2010, the most recent year with available data. “HIV/AIDS Statistics and Surveillance: Basic Statistics,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, available at http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/basic.htm (last modified February 28, 2013).
14. Trimpop, Risk Taking Behavior, 271.
15. John Tulloch and Deborah Lupton, Risk and Everyday Life (London: Sage), 2003.
16. Trimpop, Risk Taking Behavior, 294.
17. Lee, Emma. (2012). “Girls Gone Wild: Female Sex Addiction on the Web,” www.thefix.com/content/women-sex-addicts-and-internet8535?page=all.
18. Douglas Quenqua, “Recklessly Seeking Sex on Craigslist,” New York Times, April 17, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/fashion/19craigslist.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all.
19. Catherine Hakim, Erotic Capital: The Power of Attraction in the Boardroom and the Bedroom (New York: Basic Books, 2011).
20. Henry Russell, Craigslist Casual Encounters (Los Angeles: Haha Publishing, 2010), 4.
21. Neva Chonin, “Sex and the City,” San Francisco Chronicle SF Gate, September 17, 2006, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/17/PKG6BKQQA41.DTL.
22. “New Craigslist ‘Group Sex’ Bust,” April 22, 2010, The Smoking Gun, http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/new-craigslist-group-sex-bust.
23. “867-5309 Is Not Jenny,” Lakeland Ledger, May 16, 1982, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=PaVOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PvsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6320,11943.
24. Craigslist, Washington, DC, casual encounters, March 1, 2012.
25. David A. Moskowitz and Michael E. Roloff, “The Ultimate High: Sexual Addiction and the Bug Chasing Phenomenon,” Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity 14, no. 1 (2007): 26.
26. International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals website, www.sexhelp.com.
27. Yakima, WA Chapter 6.55 Sex Offenses, http://www.codepublishing.com/WA/Yakima/Yakima06/Yakima0655.html#6.55.020.
28. Keith Morrison, “Battling Sexual Addiction,” Dateline NBC, February 24, 2004. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4302347/ns/dateline_nbc/t/battling-sexual-addiction/#.T7RZ6464JlJ.
29. Janice M. Irvine, “Reinventing Perversion: Sex Addiction and Cultural Anxieties,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 5, no. 3 (1995): 429–50.
30. Ibid., 442.
31. Ibid., 443.
32. Ibid., 446.
33. Ibid., 433.
34. John Heidenry, What Wild Ecstasy: The Rise and Fall of the Sexual Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 151.
35. Lee et al., Mötley Crüe, 134.
36. A good psychologist would question someone who claimed sex was “boring,” as such a statement begs to be unpacked as much as the statement that “sex is just fun.” What each of these statements implies is that sex is—or is not—meeting the needs and fulfilling the desires that those particular individuals believe it should.
37. Straight pornography is usually still filmed without condoms. The industry instead relies on a system of STD testing where performers make their results public.
38. Serosorting is not considered safe by many physicians because of the risk of being “cross-infected” by different strains of HIV. Mark Honigsbaum, “West Side Story: A Tale of Unprotected Sex Which Could Be Link to New HIV Superbug,” Guardian, March 25, 2005, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/mar/26/aids.usa.
39. The lifestyle, as discussed elsewhere, here refers to those individuals who identify as being in “the lifestyle” or make use of the websites, networks, events, conferences, etc. aimed at lifestylers. Swinging as a practice may occur more broadly, and nonmonogamy is, of course, an even broader category.
40. Comment in Busy Swingers Forum at Swing Life Style, http://www.swinglifestyle.com/forums/General_Discussions/3-Some/Female__Bareback_/threadid_47405/viewarticle.cfm/maxrow_10/startrow_31/maxrow_10/startrow_11/maxrow_10/startrow_21/maxrow_10/startrow_31/maxrow_10/startrow_91/maxrow_10/startrow_121/maxrow_10/startrow_131/maxrow_10/startrow_141/maxrow_10/startrow_81/maxrow_10/startrow_91/maxrow_10/startrow_61/maxrow_10/startrow_51/maxrow_10/startrow_101 (accessed February 2013).
41. Tim Dean, Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 45.
42. Ibid., x.
43. Ibid., 2.
44. Peter Cassels, “Taking Aim at Barebacking Videos,” Edge San Francisco, May 24, 2010, http://www.edgesanfrancisco.com/entertainment/culture///106024/taking_aim_at_barebacking_videos.
45. Marc Peyser, Elizabeth Roberts, and Frappa Stout, “A Deadly Dance,” Newsweek, September 29, 1997, 77.
46. Garrett Prestage et al., TOMS: Three or More Study (Sydney, Australia: National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research, University of New South Wales, 2008), 38. Edits in the quotation are mine.
47. David McInnes, Jack Bradley, and Garrett Prestage, “The Discourse of Gay Men’s Group Sex: The Importance of Masculinity,” Culture, Health & Sexuality: An International Journal for Research, Intervention and Care 11, no. 6 (2009): 650.
48. Dean, Unlimited Intimacy, 45.
49. Michael Warner, “Why Gay Men Are Having Risky Sex,” appendix to What Do Gay Men Want? An Essay on Sex, Risk, and Subjectivity, by David M. Halperin (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007).
50. Ibid.
51. Dean, Unlimited Intimacy, 39.
52. Ibid., 6.
53. Ibid., 128.
54. Ibid., 50.
55. Gregory A. Freeman, “Bug Chasers: The Men Who Long to Be HIV+,” Rolling Stone, February 6, 2003, https://solargeneral.com/library/bug-chasers.pdf.
56. DeAnn K. Gauthier and Craig J. Forsyth. “Bareback Sex, Bug Chasers, and the Gift of Death,” Deviant Behavior 20 (1998): 92.
57. Ibid., 85–100.
58. Dean, Unlimited Intimacy, 72; originally from www.ultimatebareback.com.
59. Ibid., 51.
60. Berg, Rigmor. (2008). “Barebacking Among MSM Internet Users,” Aids and Behavior 12(5): 822-833.
61. Moskowitz and Roloff, “The Ultimate High,” 21–40.
62. Colin Batrouney, “Gay Men and Sexual Adventurism: Where to from Here?” Social Research Briefs 15 (2009).
63. Margot D. Weiss, Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 88.
64. “Recent Updates to Proposed Revisions for DSM-5,” American Psychiatric Association, http://www.dsm5.org/Pages/RecentUpdates.aspx (accessed March 2013).
65. Thomas Weinberg, cited in Weiss, Techniques of Pleasure, 12.
66. Staci Newmahr, Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 76.
67. Ibid., 100.
68. Ibid., 95.
69. Stephen Lyng, “Edgework, Risk, and Uncertainty,” in Social Theories of Risk and Uncertainty: An Introduction, edited by Jens O. Zinn (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), 107.
70. Ibid., 111.
71. Ibid., 120.
72. Jonathan Simon, “Taking Risks: Extreme Sports and the Embrace of Risk in Advanced Liberal Societies,” in Embracing Risk: The Changing Culture of Insurance and Responsibility, edited by Tom Baker and Jonathan Simon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 193.
73. Newmahr, Playing on the Edge, 159.
74. Ibid., 163.
75. Weiss, Techniques of Pleasure, 62, 85.
76. Ibid., 85.
77. Newmahr, Playing on the Edge, 134–40.
78. Weiss, Techniques of Pleasure, 137.
79. Newmahr, Playing on the Edge, 149. Newmahr also points out that although some of the same effects are possible because of incompetence, such as losing consciousness, they are not considered edgeplay in such a context.
80. Weiss, Techniques of Pleasure, 89.
81. P. H. Connolly, “Psychological Functioning of Bondage/Domination/Sado-Masochism (BDSM) Practitioners,” Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality 81, no. 1 (2006): 79–120.
82. Richters, Juliet, Richard O. De Visser, Chris E. Rissel, Andrew E. Grulich, and Anthony M.A. Smith. “Demographic and Psychosocial Features of Participants in Bondage and Discipline, “Sadomasochism” or Dominance and Submission (Bdsm): Data from a National Survey.” The Journal of Sexual Medicine 5, no. 7 (2008): 1660-68.Juliet Richters, “Through a Hole in a Wall: Setting and Interaction in Sex-on-Premises Venues,” Sexualites 10, no. 3 (2007): 275–97.
83. Newmahr, Playing on the Edge, 147.
84. Weiss, Techniques of Pleasure.
85. Ibid., 122.
86. Kayt Sukel, “50 Shades of Grey (Matter): How Science Is Defying BDSM Stereotypes,” Huffington Post Women (blog), May 30, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kayt-sukel/bdsm_b_1554310.html.
For a long time, people said that procreation was the point of sex. Today people tend to think that the point of sex is pleasure, orgasm. But sincerely, I don’t think there’s any point to sex at all. People think there’s some secret they’ll discover in that black box of sex, which will help them to live better or make them happy. And in fact there’s nothing, nothing, nothing there at all.
—Catherine Millet[1]
In the end, we are all just fucking ourselves anyway.
—Marco Vassi
In 2007 and 2008, Danish anthropologist Christian Groes-Green studied a group of young Mozambican men known as moluwenes. The word moluwenes means “wild” or “unruly,” a description that fits many young males from eighteen to twenty-seven, although these men’s struggles were particularly intense. Moluwenes, Groes-Green explains, were “hurting” in every area of their lives. They lived in Zona Verde, an impoverished area of Maputo, with no access to electricity or sanitary water. Some had grown up homeless, cast out when their families could not afford to feed them; often these men had the highest status in the group, given their familiarity with hardship and survival. Other young men left their families behind in smaller villages and traveled to Maputo hoping to find work, ending up on the streets instead. Those few who had families to turn to during crises, such as when they were wounded or arrested, were relatively privileged. Culturally marginalized and unable to find employment, moluwenes engaged in criminal behavior, violence, and unsafe sex. Sometimes, moluwenes fantasized about becoming rich; they also conceded “the impossibility of getting access to the riches, fashionable brands and cars that the ‘ladrões’ and their middle-class peers possess and how poverty decreased their chances of ‘catching’ the city’s beautiful girls.”[2]
One thing that moluwenes had in abundance, however, was time. Faced with extreme poverty, boredom, joblessness, riots, and a devastating HIV epidemic, the men were uncertain about whether a “real future” with a home or family would ever be possible. Moluwenes thus used the slang phrase curtir a vida, meaning to celebrate and enjoy life, or to “live in the moment.” Middle-class masculine ideals referenced a belief in the future through “disciplined planning,” hard work, education, and the “reproduction of family traditions; the moluwenes’ ideal of masculinity was “primitive,” “organized around the here and now of bodily desires, erotic skills and spontaneous acts.”[3] Moluwenes had complicated relationships with the women they partied with, called curtidoras. Curtidoras were also involved in the informal economy, exchanging sexual relationships with older men (patrocinadores, or sponsors) for gifts and money, and often supporting themselves, their families, and even their boyfriends through these “sugar daddy” relationships. During his time in Mozambique, Groes-Green accompanied the moluwenes on some of their “everyday journeys ‘on the edge,’” such as “death racing” or corridas de morte—“sitting in the back seat of a car gunning through the city at a hundred miles per hour.” Groes-Green also observed “unprotected sexual orgies, violent battles and excessive drug use.” Paulado was the “high” that the men pursued through these activities, a state during which fear of death and pain disappeared.
Groes-Green describes one of the orgies he witnessed, which began around 2:00 a.m. when a group of young men he knew picked up four women. The women looked around eighteen years old; two of them had been walking along a boulevard where sex workers waited for clients. The group went to a house, where one of the men began playing loud music. A bottle of cheap whiskey was passed around. Another man laid out piles of coca while two of the women started a striptease. When the women had removed all of their clothing and two men began to have sex with them, Groes-Green moved to leave. One of his informants grabbed his wrist, saying, “Come and enjoy, nobody can get us now. We are getting paulado (high), everybody else is in their beds.” Although Groes-Green left, the next day he asked one of his informants to tell him more about the sex party. The young man said: “So ok, you think I should use camisinhas [small shirts: slang for condoms]. Well, I knew that I could have broken the gaja’s [derogative slang for girls] asshole, but I kept banging, the coca was working. Clearly it is going to bleed if you are being hard on a girl and she is tight, but it is not often. Even if you smell that she’s got the shit [period] you don’t care (laughter). It is like if you are running to catch a wild animal. You don’t stop. . . . Even though you know she can give you the disease of the century [AIDS]. I told you, it is about enjoying life.”[4]
The men often refused condoms, even though they understood the risks of catching HIV. Unprotected sex was referred to as sexo puro and was linked to ancestral beliefs that interrupting the exchange of fluids could lead to insanity or impotence. The men also used the phrases nhyama ni nhyama (flesh against flesh) and ku nyicana n’gati (to mix blood with semen) to describe the sex they preferred. The risk made having unsafe sex even more of an example of “being in the moment”: “If you just look at people you cannot see the difference between who use [condoms] and who do not, but the one who use will always feel more relaxed. But that is the thing, who wants to be at ease all the time? That is not life is it? And sex, sex is like, crazy, and I like to be in the crazy moment.”
Groes-Green struggled with understanding why moluwenes continued to have unsafe sex despite understanding the risks of HIV transmission and having the power and knowledge to protect themselves. He sometimes felt guilty for observing their dangerous behavior so closely, yet knew that he could not intervene without being rejected by the community. Eventually, though, he began to grasp what moluwenes sought in their “crazy moments.” He describes arriving at another party in an abandoned house, where he is supposed to meet a friend, a 23-year-old-man named Dolito:
When I entered the house, most people were already naked and some were dancing to reggae music from Angola. I found Dolito in a small dark room lit only by two candles. He was lying on the couch with three young women, and another guy was standing in the corner commenting on the way he performed oral sex on one of the women. The guy in the corner handed me a glass of whisky and a chair. Placed right in front of the action, watching the moving silhouettes of lustful youth, smelling the sweat from their naked bodies and listening to the moaning sounds, triggered a combination of a sense of utter displacement and an almost dissociated state of mind where my ordinary desire for control and rational thinking was obliterated, not as a deliberate choice but as a direct bodily response to the erotic sensation.
It was in that kind of moment, Groes-Green writes, that he began to appreciate the “value of erotic transgression as momentary ecstasy.”
“Excessive tendencies among marginalized young men,” Groes-Green argues, “are observed in postcolonial cities around the world,” especially in places with growing poverty, rising unemployment, and a collapse of traditional institutions.[5] Some social scientists focus on the desperation of everyday struggle in these urban environments, analyzing young men’s criminal, addictive, or dangerous behavior as the internalization of frustrations and powerlessness. “Excessive” behavior is viewed as an ineffective form of resistance, an attempt at creating a new social order that often backfires, or as a “safety valve,” releasing aggression without ultimately disturbing the status quo. Groes-Green is more interested in Bataille’s understanding of transgression, however, with its focus on subjective experience. Death racing and orgies, he suggests, produce experiences of what Bataille calls “sovereignty,” “a feeling of being in charge of the world which, far from being rooted in rational thinking and factual power, is rather an inner sacred state.” For moluwenes, facing death directly by taking extreme risks gave them a raison d’être they were deprived of in their daily lives.[6] Their excesses represent a “creative violation of rules and norms,” allowing the young men to subvert existing hierarchies, even if temporarily, and achieve “a sense of superiority based on and embedded in the transgressive experience.” Taking refuge in sexual excess and momentary pleasures may not bring about social change in itself, but it does not preclude political engagement or the development of oppositional identities either.
Paulado.
For Marco Vassi, shattering cultural prohibitions was a powerful route to transcendence. In the philosophy that emerged through his essays and novels, group sex, anonymous encounters, and forbidden sexual acts became practices leading to self-fulfillment, liberation, and spiritual communion. “I don’t really care what the other person’s name is,” he wrote. “I don’t even care what my own name is. Ecstasy has no name.”[7] Every lover, Vassi believed, was magical and unique; yet, at the same time, lovers were interchangeable. On his visit to a San Francisco bath, he almost immediately dove headfirst into a “writhing pile of bodies.” “The next fifteen minutes had no description,” he writes,
simply because there were no discrete units of activity. It was all touch, all liquid, all sound, all excitement, all images. During that time, I went through every imaginable variation on the physical homosexual act imaginable. There was neither the chance nor the inclination to take any of them to their full conclusions. Rather, it was a sort of smorgasbord, with the joy coming in the many different flavors and sensations. It provided me with the single most glorious moment of total anonymity I had ever experienced in my life, and when I finally crawled out, I felt as though I had gone through a baptism of orgasm.[8]
Like Purusha, Vassi was concerned with transcending dualities—male or female, “good” or “bad,” homosexual or heterosexual. Even bisexuality was a dead end, as he wanted to experience erotic life beyond gender and beyond identity. During a threesome with a man and a woman, he glimpsed such a possibility: “With a buzzing connection, the male and female inside me began to undulate in a series of sine waves. I lost my sexual identity and became a sexual entity.”[9] And like Catherine Millet, who at one time found freedom and meaning in “debasement,” Vassi challenged himself to overcome his own prejudices, fears, and experiences of disgust, shame, and guilt. After his sexual experiences in California, Vassi revisited the bathhouses in New York City, etched in his memory as “cesspools of lust” with “urine-caked hallways,” “paint-peeling walls,” and “dribbling old men,” with a new perspective. He had learned “how to find sapphires in the mud, how it is possible to soar into the greatest ecstasy when one is at the depths of degeneracy.”[10]
Eventually, however, Vassi became disillusioned. When he was diagnosed with HIV in the late 1980s, he continued traveling but changed his philosophy: “This time I cannot deceive myself into thinking that the trip has some destination, that there is some final act which will draw everything together into a bow of understanding. Never can I forget that everything I know, or do, or think, or feel, or create, or understand is but a brief poignant gesture into the supercilious face of the unknown.”[11] The final words in his autobiography were austere: “There is only what is, and that is mute. I have stopped searching.”
After walking around snowy New York City, barely dressed, Vassi caught pneumonia. Instead of seeking treatment, he sequestered himself in a room, ignoring phone calls from friends for weeks. He died on January 14, 1989, at the age of fifty-one.[12]
Sex partying makes a young Tehranian woman “feel alive.” An Egyptian couple escapes “marital boredom” by throwing secret orgies at their apartment. A young gay man, wanting to “be fabulous,” dives into group sex at a bathhouse. Curtir a vida. A Playboy bunny enters “a dream world” where multiple sex partners bring joy rather than shame or censure. Young Russian activists strip down for sex on a cold museum floor for politics, not pleasure.
And then there’s Kendra.
There’s Foursome, group sex as late-night reality television.
Pretty soon, we’ll be watching Ass Clowns #51, yawning.
Over time, regardless of where they are from, which type of play they engage in, and even why they do it, many participants come to find group sex mundane, even disappointing. They become desensitized to the nudity and habituated to the sex clubs or party rooms that once seemed daunting and exciting. The thrill of the chase fades as they become better at maneuvering through whichever enclave they’ve chosen, finding partners more easily. Commodification may make participation safer and easier. New sources of pleasure arise, as when an American swinger treasures his “rock star” weekends. Sex might become part of a more all-encompassing recreational experience, feeling less revolutionary and more like, well, a lifestyle. But dissatisfactions arise, too. If overcoming shame about the body or sexuality was part of the adventurousness of group sex, these scenes lose power when there is less shame to overcome. Or, patterns of shame and guilt can eventually permeate people’s experiments with sexuality, tipping the balance too far in the other direction. Power dynamics and cultural beliefs may impose limits on one’s sexual adventures that become less pleasurable to confront over time. Amanda Hughes, the young British football groupie, ultimately found herself cringing after each escapade rather than “buzzing.”
Gay activist Stuart Norman, who also uses the name Cyrwyn/Leatherfaerie Shaman, distinguishes between spirituality and religion, claiming that spirituality is “always seeking new understanding” and “always changing” while religion creates “fixed doctrine and dogma out of one individual’s profound spiritual experience at a crucial point in a culture’s development: Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, and many others. That knowledge is then applied to everyone’s lives, to mold the thinking process and form a cultural belief system.”[13] Perhaps this is part of the problem when sexuality becomes championed as a path to spiritual growth, cultural change, or transcendence—the suggested practices become fixed around one person’s experience. But maybe fisting doesn’t lead all of us to that “ultimate” place, even if it did for Purusha or thousands of other men. Maybe now it’s double penetration that leads to enlightenment, satori, or “continuous euphoric bliss.” Maybe it’s spanking, barebacking, dogging, or something we haven’t even started doing yet. Maybe it’s monogamy.
Or maybe nothing works for everyone.
And maybe nothing works forever.
The debate over whether orgies are transcendent of the social order or regenerative of it will likely continue, as it does over other practices, sexual and otherwise. The orgy usually enters this conversation as a metaphor, or symbol of the edges of sociality. In some theories, “the orgy” becomes a descent into chaos—social and individual—that serves as a temporary rebellion, an ultimately conservative form of transgression. Other times, the orgy is imbued with the power to shatter the foundations of the social order—in such a scheme, prohibitions against group sex are not necessarily the first moral domino to topple, but once they do, other taboos fall swiftly. Whether one then should expect the downfall of society or its transformation depends on who makes the prediction. Or, modern life is contrasted with the “way things used to be,” where ritual debauchery or sexual sharing was supposedly part of the social fabric—whether one then breathes a sigh of relief, thankful for the safety and decency of civilization, or mourns the loss of a possibly more “natural” sexuality, depends on the theorist’s position.
The problem with using the orgy as a metaphor, of course, or of homogenizing the experiences of the group sex participants, is that what feels to the theorist, and sometimes his readers, to be an intriguing contrast—between nature and culture, primitive and civilized, order and chaos, self and other, individuality and communion, and so on—is a fantasy. Orgies become meaningful in social theory in ways that they may or may not be for actual participants.
One of the organizing themes of this book is that group sex derives symbolic and emotional potency in part through its positioning as a practice requiring transgression and, at least occasionally, promising transcendence. Yet as transgression intrinsically depends on taboos, it eventually fails as a strategy of escape, rebellion, or liberation. Transgressors may become disenchanted as there are increasingly fewer, or less enticing, rules to break, sacred objects to defile, or people to shock. Maybe nobody is watching. Or maybe there are no more orifices to fill; there is no more skin to flog off their backs. The ultimate limits—exile, insanity, or death—may be within reach.
And what about transcendence?
There are moments in both sex and group sex, for some individuals, when “the gulf between self and other—the source of psychological alienation and spiritual loneliness which has troubled philosophers throughout the ages—momentarily disappears.”[14] For contemporary theorists writing against depth models of subjectivity—who argue that subjects are wholly produced within discourse, power, and so on—these experiences indicate the existence of particular social conditions and meanings rather than psychological capacities. But while there is variability in how sexual experience becomes meaningful, humans tread many similar pathways across space and time. Questing after transcendent experiences where the boundaries of the body, self, and other are radically altered is one of these well-trodden paths whether we draw on Bataille’s understanding of sovereignty or (dis)continuity, psychoanalytic models of self, Maslow’s concept of peak experience, or some other model to describe it. Some individuals seek these experiences more than others, of course, and some are more likely to seek through sex. At some historical junctures, sex takes on a heightened importance for entire groups. Yet it isn’t only the privileged classes or only subalterns—rebels, “gangsters,” hippies, and so on—who seek these subjective rewards. Moluwenes are perhaps as much like edgeplayers as thwarted insurgents, young men who want to feel “wired” or “alive,” even if the routes by which they attain such states are limited. When privileged individuals seek such experiences through skydiving, rock climbing, or drag racing, they are often seen as adventurous. But when anyone, privileged or not, seeks such experiences through sex, their behavior can be taken as evidence of dysfunction, immorality, or coercion.
Of course, feelings of aliveness, escape, bliss, or spiritual communion are not guaranteed, nor does everyone have the same experience even at the very best orgies. One person may indeed be soaring beyond a sense of fixed identity, lost in a world of pure experience like Vassi in the bathhouse, while another participant strains to see the clock on the nightstand over a tangle of bodies, wondering how to slip out of the room without disturbing the others—the babysitter needs to be paid, the kids have an early soccer game in the morning, and sleep beckons. Transcendence, when it happens, also depends on the inevitable return to one’s own body and life. Bliss or ecstasy is followed by the wreckage at the end of a party, the dirty sheets and comedown after a night of sex and cocaine, or heavy Goth makeup in the daylight. It is not surprising that orgies become imbued with power—for some people, group sex tracks persistently between the sacred and the profane.
And it is no wonder that libertines end up disillusioned. The edge looks different when one is actually standing on it.
Throughout this book I’ve presented firsthand accounts of group sex, scholarly research, and media representations, questioning which stories are told about group sex, by whom, and for what ends. Sex, or group sex specifically, does not have an ultimate transhistorical or transcultural meaning. Sexual practices unfold in particular contexts—men finding group sex partners on www.barebackrt.com, moluwenes seeking sexo puro, or Papua New Guinea men who sometimes have anal sex with each other during singel fail are all having group experiences without condoms, but the meanings and relationships involved are different in each instance. Group sex does not even have an ultimate or stable personal meaning, as bodily experiences become embedded in narratives and social worlds. A “stingy” young woman is waylaid by a group of men, but later takes pleasure and pride in her sexual generosity. Another woman, in a another place and time, is “taught a lesson” for rejecting a man’s advances; as his friends take turns having sex with her, she does not resist because she is naked, ashamed, and should have known better than to get caught alone. She never forgets the experience and never tells a soul. Still another woman revels in being the bukkake girl at a party, the center of attention in a room of hungry, desiring men. Years later, she recalls that someone said, “dirty slut” as he ejaculated. Why hadn’t she noticed that she was degraded? Even later perhaps, revisiting the memory again, she delights in her bravery and willingness to take risks. She is a rebel, not a victim.
Nevertheless, across time and place, sex has been and will remain important matter from which meaning can be shaped. Because sex involves the boundaries of the body and self, it becomes a significant repository for meaning, fantasy, hopes, and fears. Experiences of disgust, shame, and guilt that emerge during these boundary crossings animate our encounters and dramatize our relationships to others as well as to social norms. Group sex, even when it becomes meaningful in ways having little to do with erotics, pleasure, or sexual identity as those are understood in Western cultures, has symbolic and emotional power as potentially more rules are broken, boundaries are violated, and fears and fantasies are triggered.
But group sex participants are motivated by more than desires for transgression or transcendence, anyway. People have group sex for personal and social ends. Group sex can be a means of heightening arousal, increasing stimulation, gaining self-awareness, or experimenting with bodies, identities, or relationships. Whether consensual or violent, the practice and meaning of group sex becomes entangled with conflicting human desires for individuality and belonging, forging, dramatizing, and reinforcing relationships between individuals and between individuals and the group. Hierarchies can be shattered or reinforced; bonds can be created or destroyed. Occasionally, group sex becomes important in fostering identities, communities, or an entire cosmology. However, unlike the orgies of myth that degenerate into mass frenzy, participants come to actual group sex scenes with varying motives, perspectives, aims, and interpretations. Group sex, as it involves witnessing and being witnessed, can be a means of realizing desires for respect, status, and recognition. Witnesses can confirm one’s desirability, sexual prowess, position of power or submission, or identity (as gay, straight, masculine, loved, “wild” or “unruly,” etc.). Participants can experience feelings of affirmation; they can also face fear, shame, rejection, and coercion. For some participants, group sex generates feelings of liberation, however fleeting. For others, group sex is disappointing or silly. Occasionally, the same encounter generates multiple experiences: it depends on who you are, why you’re there, and, probably, where you’re going next.
One of the concerns raised over group sex is that unsuspecting individuals, especially children, could wander into scenes of decadence. It might be more realistic to consider how few times this actually happens: Have you ever stumbled upon an orgy? Barged in on a group of men masturbating in a restroom? Gone to a party in your neighborhood where you were unexpectedly asked to throw your keys in a bowl or strip down to a thong? Been walking your dog—really, just walking your dog—and waved over to a Renault Grand Scenic by a woman who wanted to have a “fiddle” with you while her husband watched? Most likely, if those things did happen to you, I’d wager that you were pleasantly surprised rather than horrified—most of the time, most people will read your subtle signals correctly even if you don’t realize you are giving them. Group sex might be transgressive, but it isn’t a free-for-all; group sex is ordered, from the places and times it occurs to the way that participants interact. Even violent group sex is structured, unfolding according to hierarchies, and symbolic, from the victims selected to the specific types of violence involved. And even individuals who fantasize about a revolving door of relatively anonymous partners don’t necessarily want to include just anyone who walks into the bathroom. Hapless, unwanted intruders are more than a buzz-kill—they can also be dangerous.
If a lifestyle party looks like a Roman bacchanal, that’s probably because someone planned it that way.
Group sex also sparks fears of disease. Sexually transmitted diseases and infections are indeed a serious issue, though not at all limited to people who engage in alternative sexuality (see appendix A). The other meanings of group sex, however—especially of the orgy as leading to the degeneration of civilization and individual morality—often overwhelm responses, causing panic rather than promoting judicious discussions of risk and intervention. The two brief case studies presented in this book—of the Marind-anim in Netherlands New Guinea in the early 1900s and of urban, gay male public sexual culture in the United States during the 1970s—focus on communities that were decimated when clusters of beliefs and practices led to outbreaks of disease, not just because of the diseases but because of the public response. We will never know what might have happened if either situation had provoked more imagination and less panic, but we can be absolutely certain that the future will present opportunities to confront our fears and possibly approach things differently.
If better ways to live, love, or have sex are to be found, they will be created in the future, not excavated from the past. Sex did not have some deep, authentic meaning “back then,” whenever that was, which is now lost, or stolen, or co-opted by globalization, capitalism, Christianity, or whatever else. We don’t actually live in a post-orgy world—literally or metaphorically—although some of us may indeed be searching for our underwear, pulling on our socks, and heading home to do something else. Sex, even transgressive sex, might sometimes be the answer—to boredom, or to desires for affirmation, feeling liberated, or connecting with others. But sex is not the only answer, the best answer, or a lifelong answer.
We should not put so many of our hopes in sex.
But neither should we put as many of our fears.
1. Leslie Camhi, “Sex Obsession by the Numbers,” New York Times, June 22, 2002, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/22/books/sex-obsession-by-the-numbers.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.
2. Christian Groes-Green, “Orgies of the Moment: Bataille’s Anthropology of Transgression and the Defiance of Danger in Post-Socialist Mozambique,” Anthropological Theory 10, no. 4 (2010): 394.
3. Ibid., 398.
4. Ibid., 397.
5. Ibid., 403.
6. Ibid., 400.
7. Marco Vassi, The Stoned Apocalypse (Sag Harbor, NY: Second Chance Press, 1993), 28.
8. Ibid., 139.
9. Ibid., 156.
10. Ibid., 137.
11. Ibid., 250.
12. David Steinberg, “Marco Vassi: My Aunt Nettie; Where’s Waldo?” Comes Naturally, January 8, 1993, http://www.nearbycafe.com/loveandlust/steinberg/erotic/cn/cn3.html.
13. Mark Thompson, ed., Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice (Boston: Alyson Publications, 1991), 277.
14. David Allyn, Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History (Boston: Little, Brown, 2000), 210.