Table 80. Relation between educational level and occupational class of subjects in present sample
Based on those males in the present sample who have finished their educational careers.
The sexual behavior of the human animal is the outcome of its morphologic and physiologic organization, of the conditioning which its experience has brought it, and of all the forces which exist in its living and nonliving environment. In terms of academic disciplines, there are biologic, psychologic, and sociologic factors involved; but all of these operate simultaneously, and the end product is a single, unified phenomenon which is not merely biologic, psychologic, or sociologic in nature. Nevertheless, the importance of each group of factors can never be ignored.
Without its physical body and its physiologic capacities, there would be no animal to act. The individual’s sexual behavior is, to a degree, predestined by its morphologic structure, its metabolic capacities, its hormones, and all of the other characters which it has inherited or which have been built into it by the physical environment in which it has developed. Two of the most important of these distinctively biologic forces, age and the age at onset of adolescence, have been examined in the earlier chapters of the present volume.
But through all of the previous chapters, constant consideration has been given to the significance of the psychologic factors which affect sexual behavior, and it should be apparent by now that the experience of the individual, the satisfactory or unsatisfactory nature of that experience, the conformance or non-conformance of that experience with the individual’s personality, attitudes, and rational thinking, and a great variety of other factors make the psychologic bases of behavior even more important than the biologic heritage and acquirements.
It is evident, however, that psychologic processes depend, to a considerable degree, upon the way in which external forces impinge upon the animal. For a creature with as highly organized a central nervous system as is found in the human animal, the most important external force is the social environment in which it lives. In the human species, the environment consists of one’s family, his close friends, his neighbors, his business associates, and his mere acquaintances. It also includes the thousands of other persons whom he has never seen but whose attitudes, habits, expressed opinions, and overt activities constitute the culture in which he moves and lives. These are the social forces which contribute to the individual’s behavior. There is, of course, no part of the individual himself which is social in nature, in quite the way that morphologic, physiologic, or psychologic capacities may be identified and localized in an organism. Occasionally social forces provide physical restraints on individuals, or facilitate their physical activities; but more often they operate only as they affect the individual psychologically.
Table 80. Relation between educational level and occupational class of subjects in present sample
Based on those males in the present sample who have finished their educational careers.
The present chapter and the three chapters which follow are concerned with the relation of the individual’s pattern of sexual behavior to patterns which are followed by other persons in the same social group—in the group in which the individual is raised, or into which he moves and establishes himself in the course of his lifetime.
The data now available show that patterns of sexual behavior may be strikingly different for the different social levels that exist in the same city or town, and sometimes in immediately adjacent sections of a single community. The data show that divergencies in the sexual patterns of such social groups may be as great as those which anthropologists have found between the sexual patterns of different racial groups in remote parts of the world. There is no American pattern of sexual behavior, but scores of patterns, each of which is confined to a particular segment of our society. Within each segment there are attitudes on sex and patterns of overt activity which are followed by a high proportion of the individuals in that group; and an understanding of the sexual mores of the American people as a whole is possible only through an understanding of the sexual patterns of all of the constituent groups.
These social levels are, admittedly, intangible divisions of the population which are difficult to define; but they are recognized by everyone as real and significant factors in the life of a community. In the present study, the social level of each subject has been measured by three criteria: 1. The educational level, in years, which the individual has reached by the time he terminates his formal education (Chapter 3). 2. The occupational class to which the individual belongs (as such classes have been defined in Chapter 3). 3. The occupational class of the individual’s parents at the time that he lived in the parental home.
There are, of course, certain correlations among these three criteria. The educational level ultimately attained determines, to some degree, the occupation which an individual follows. The nature of the correlation is shown in Table 80, where it will be observed that certain educational levels send people into several of the occupational classes, while other educational levels (e.g., the one which includes those who have done graduate work in a university) send nearly all of their members into a single occupational class. It is understandable, therefore, that analyses of sexual behavior made on the basis of ultimate educational level give results which are close to those obtained by the use of a system of occupational classes.
The ultimate educational level attained by an individual shows a limited correlation with intelligence quotients (Lorge 1942). The correlations have been shown to run about 0.66, which may mean that there is some trend for the more intelligent students to continue in school. It also indicates, however, that there are some perfectly intelligent individuals who stop school long before they have reached the limits of their capacities; and that there are some less intelligent individuals who, by dint of work or fortuitous circumstance, manage to get further along in school than their capacities would predicate. Since there may be some correlation between mental capacity and the nature of the occupation which an individual chooses, here is another reason for one’s educational level correlating with his occupational class.
Educational Level as a Criterion. The educational level attained by an individual by the time he terminates his schooling has proved to be the simplest and the best-defined means for recognizing social levels (see Chapter 3 for details of the way in which this criterion has been used). Social level is not necessarily controlled by the amount of schooling that an individual has had, but the amount of schooling does provide a measure of more basic factors which determine one’s social level.
Each level has its own attitudes toward education and, consequently, a high proportion of the persons in any level go to about the same point in school. One group allows its children to terminate their schooling at the eighth grade, or as soon thereafter as the law allows; and in that group there is a general acceptance of the idea that it is a waste of time to send children further along in school when they might be earning wages and contributing to the family income. There is no community action which formalizes these things and some individuals in the community may disagree with the general attitude; but by and large the children hear the group opinion so often expressed that they come to accept it and look forward to the time when they will be allowed to quit school. The individuals in another social level believe that their children should go part way, or perhaps fully, through high school. Going to college is the expected and more or less inevitable thing for the children of other social groups.
Persons who depart from the educational trends of their particular level do so against the community opinion and must be ready to defend themselves for their independent action. This is as true of the professor’s son who decides to go to work at the end of high school as it is of the lower level boy who strikes out for a college education. The boy or girl who departs from the custom is quickly made aware of the fact that he has done something as unusual as wearing the wrong kind of clothing to a social event, or using his table silver in a fashion which is recognized as not good manners in that group. There are no penalties attached to departures from the custom, except those of being made to feel different from the community of which one has previously considered himself a part. Such penalties, however, may control behavior as effectively as though they were physical restraints.
During the past thirty or forty years, there has been a considerable departure of younger generations from the educational levels attained by their parents (Table 106); but almost always this has been in the direction of an increase in the amount of education which the younger persons receive. The idea of a boy or girl being satisfied with less education than his parents had is so abhorrent as to be rarely accepted, and most people are startled when they find an individual case of such regression.
Educational level is a convenient criterion for statistical use because it provides a well-defined, simple figure which is discrete and does not vary in the individual’s lifetime, after he has once finished his schooling. Educational level cannot be used for studying the histories of persons who are still in school, since there is no certainty how far they will go before they finally terminate their education. Educational level is not a satisfactory basis for analysis when the individual changes his social level in the course of his life.
Occupational Class as a Criterion. It has been pointed out (Chapter 3) that a modification of the Chapin and Lloyd Warner schemes of occupational classes (Chapin 1933, Hollingshead 1939, Warner and Lunt 1941, 1942, Warner and Srole 1945) is the basis for the analyses made in the present study. In brief, the following classes are recognized:
0. Dependents
1. Underworld
2. Day labor
3. Semi-skilled labor
4. Skilled labor
5. Lower white collar group
6. Upper white collar group
7. Professional group
8. Business executive group
9. Extremely wealthy group
Occupational classes are more poorly defined than educational levels. Whether an individual belongs in one occupational group or the next not infrequently calls for a judgment in which equally skilled investigators might disagree, although experience in the present research indicates that the judgments are not often more than one occupational class apart. Whether a person is a laborer or a semi-skilled workman, whether he is a semi-skilled or a skilled workman, is not always possible to say; but in most cases it is possible to make a definite classification. Labor unions often define the occupational qualities of their members. Whether a person is a mechanic or a white collar worker is rarely in dispute; but whether the white collar worker belongs to class 5 (the lower white collar group) or class 6 (the upper white collar group), is sometimes more difficult to say. This makes occupational class less precise than educational level for measuring social status.
On the other hand, classifications by occupation probably show a closer correlation with the intangible realities of social organization, since this classification is designed to express the social prestige of the work with which the individual is occupied. The use of occupational class provides the best opportunity, and the only opportunity we have had, to take into account the migrations of an individual from one social level to another within his lifetime; and all of the data given in the next chapter on the relation of such migration to changes in patterns of sexual behavior have been derived from this source. With younger persons who are still at home, it will be recalled that their occupational class is derived from that of their parents (their “ascribed status” as some anthropologists have put it). Younger individuals who are just beginning to establish themselves away from their parents’ home are often involved in more menial occupations, and sometimes in occupations totally different from those which they will ultimately work into (the latter is “the achieved status” in the anthropological terminology); and in this case, occupational class is not a good means of measuring social level.
In this and the next chapter, references to occupational class are usually made as double entries which include the parental class in which the subject originated, and the ultimate class into which the subject independently migrated.
Realities of Social Levels. If there were invariable correlations between education, occupation, and the social organization of our society, “social levels” would be recognized as realities which could easily be delimited. That there is no invariable relation means that such levels are difficult to define; but that does not prove that they are not realities. Quite on the contrary, each child soon becomes aware of the social classification to which he belongs, and learns the boundaries of the group within which he is allowed to move. Each adult lives and moves and does his thinking, to a considerable degree, in accord with the movements and the thinking of other persons who have about the same education and who usually belong to the same occupational class. While there are no sharp boundaries to social levels, there are obstacles to the crossing of those boundaries.
Social levels are hierarchies which are not supposed to exist in a democratic society, and many people would, therefore, deny their existence. In this country we make it a point that there should be no physical barriers nor legal codes which forbid people to move with almost any social group. But while there are, admittedly, a few persons who do move between groups, most persons do not in actuality move freely with those who belong to other levels. Each group recognizes its unity, and its distinction from every other group.
In their occupations or professional activities, persons of different social levels may have a certain amount of daily contact, but their close friends and companions are more likely to come from their own groups. The white collar executive and the office force may work only a few feet away from the factory laborers and mechanics, but they do not really work with them; and in their recreations, after hours, the two groups rarely intermingle. Persons in the one group do not invite persons from the other group to their homes for dinner, or for an evening of conversation, games, or other activities. One’s companions in a card game or around a fireplace are a better test of one’s social position than are one’s business contacts, or even one’s verbalization of his social philosophy.
Within the white collar groups, for instance, there are several levels of social organization. Store clerks and office staffs do not move freely with the business executive groups, outside of their business relations. Persons in professional groups have few intimates among any but the better business and professional men. Doctors may serve persons on both sides of the tracks, but in off hours they visit and find their recreations with other doctors, with some business men, or with college professors. The professional group is not particularly at home with financially successful business men, nor with persons from the Social Register and the top social strata, unless the professional persons themselves happen to have inherited such financial or social backgrounds. These social stratifications are very real, even though they are difficult to define.
Social levels are not necessarily determined by the economic status of an individual. School teachers belong to a white collar class which is generally looked up to by working classes although the working classes may have considerably higher incomes than school teachers ever will have. The fact that the janitor in the school may earn more than the teacher in the same building does not admit him to the social activities of the teacher’s group. Conversely, the lesser salary of the teacher does not give her the entree into the group with which the janitor finds his recreation. For such reasons, neither the current income nor the general economic status of an individual has been used in the present study as a criterion for establishing social levels.
It is, moreover, difficult to know what an income may be worth in a particular instance. An income of a couple of thousand a year would provide a very comfortable living for certain families, although it might spell poverty for the next family whose esthetic and cultural ideals demand much more to satisfy them. Moreover, the dollar has a different purchasing power in different cities and towns in different parts of the country, and it may vary within a single community, depending upon the standards of dress, of entertainment, and of social front which one must maintain in the particular social level to which he belongs. There are economic rating scales which are designed to take these many items into account; but any such scale, in order to be effective, needs to be so detailed that its use in anything but an economic survey is prohibitive. The better economic rating scales take about as long to administer as the entire interview on which the present case history study has been based.
The U. S. Department of Labor has used a job classification (U. S. Dept. Labor 1939) which assigns each individual in accord with the inherent nature of the occupation or profession in which he engages. Specifically, the classification is as follows:
1. Professional and managerial occupations
2. Service occupations
3. Agricultural, forestry, fisheries, and kindred occupations
4–5. Skilled occupations
6–7. Semi-skilled occupations
8–9. Unskilled occupations
There is obviously a certain amount of agreement between this arrangement and the occupational classes used in the present study, i.e., an economic classification does coincide with one like the Chapin and Warner classification which is based on the social prestige of one’s occupation. There are, however, considerable departures between the two systems. For instance, the professional group in the job classification includes college presidents and professors, accountants, actors, newspaper reporters and copy men, all teachers, all social workers, and all trained nurses. The list includes persons who have advanced degrees for several years of university post-graduate work, persons who have had no more than twelfth grade education and, in some cases, those who have had nothing more than grade schooling. Socially the group is not a unit. The persons included do not come together in their strictly social activities. Grade school and high school teachers do not move in the same social groups as college professors. Business managers, who, in many cases, are economically much better off than college professors, are not ordinarily included in the social activities of the professional groups. Trained nurses in most instances have no more than twelve grades of regular schooling. In the same fashion, the several manufacturing groups and the agricultural groups in this classification include persons who are day laborers and persons who are foremen and managers; and these several groups do not mingle socially. Economic and job classifications are set up, of course, to serve a totally different purpose from the one with which a student of the social organization or of the mores is most often concerned. It is unfortunate that so many social studies, including army surveys and most other governmental studies, and even some of the public opinion polls have used this job classification where a social level rating of the sort employed in the present study would have served much better.
The reality of this intangible unit called a social level is further attested by the fact that each group has sexual mores which are, to a degree, distinct from those of all other levels. Most people realize that each group wears clothing of a particular quality and of a particular style, that the styles of their clothing differ especially at social events, that there are differences in food habits, in table manners, in the forms of their social courtesies, in vocabularies and in pronunciations, and in the sorts of things to which they turn for recreation. Among social scientists there has been some recognition of these differences, more particularly in European countries where the social hierarchies are older and more fixed and even legally recognized; but there has been scant recognition of the possibility that the sexual patterns of different social levels might differ in any particular way. The remarkably distinct patterns of sexual behavior which characterize these social levels are the subject of the analyses which follow in the present chapter. It is to be noted that the analyses are made for each criterion, educational level, and occupational class, separately. The close identities of the sexual records thus independently arrived at constitute some of the best evidence yet available that social categories are realities in our Anglo-American culture.
In the present chapter and the one that follows, comparisons of patterns of sexual behavior in different social levels are made for educational levels and for occupational classes of the parent and of the subject. Comparisons are made for three educational groups: grade school, high school, and college. The sample now at hand is not large enough to allow a finer classification. Preliminary analyses on a two-year educational breakdown indicate that a smoothly graded series lies between each of the three groups utilized in this chapter, but the data are insufficient for final publication. We do have a college population which is large enough to break down into finer educational levels, but it became available at too late a date to be included in the present volume.
The occupational classes utilized in the present analyses are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, as defined above. Class 0, the dependents, should not rate as a separate group in such analyses, and classes 1, 8, and 9 are not represented by large enough series in the sample to allow the six-way breakdown needed here.
Total Outlet. The frequencies of total sexual outlet vary somewhat with the educational level to which an individual belongs (Table 81, Figure 97), although they do not differ as much as the frequencies for the several sources of outlet. Among single males, at all ages, and whether the calculations are made as means or as medians, the highest total outlets are found among those boys who go into high school but never beyond. This is true while they are still in grade school, while they are in high school, and after they have left high school. While they are in grade school they may associate with boys who will stop school at every level. Nevertheless, during these school years their outlets average 10 to 20 per cent higher than the outlets of the boys who will stop by the eighth grade, and 20 to 30 per cent higher than the outlets of the boys who will ultimately go to college. It is obvious that such differences are not the product of something that the school contributes or fails to contribute, for the same school is supporting three very different patterns of sexual behavior at the same time. The differences must be dependent upon something which the boy has acquired from the community in which he was raised before he went to school, in which he lives while he is attending school, and in which he will continue to live after he quits school; or else these higher frequencies must be dependent upon some physical or physiologic capacity which these particular boys have and which is correlated with the progress of their schooling. Either social or biological factors, or both, might conceivably be operating.
A finer educational breakdown than the one which is shown in Table 81 suggests that the sexually most active group is the one that goes into high school but not beyond tenth grade. Since the laws in many states set a minimum age which must be attained before a boy or girl can stop school, it often happens that there is a considerable exodus of students who attain the age of sixteen (or whatever other age the particular state requires), somewhere about the middle of their high school careers. The boys who leave school at that time may represent a group that is not particularly studious, whatever its mental ability may be, and a group which is impatient of such confinement as the school offers and energetic in its pursuit of physical activity and social contacts. These are, however, merely hypotheses which need further investigation.
The single males who have the lowest frequencies of total sexual outlet are those who belong to the college level. The boys who never go beyond eighth grade in school stand intermediate between the high school and the college groups, as far as the calculations in Table 81 show. It is to be recalled, however, that the breakdown in Chapter 9 indicates that early-adolescent males of this lower educational level actually have higher outlets than any other group in the population, in practically every age period. The over-all averages shown for the grade school males as a group are probably pulled down by the large number of undernourished, physically poor, and, therefore, late-maturing males who are in this class. It includes most of the feeble-minded and mentally lower individuals in the population, and many of these are physically poor and sexually inactive. But the physically well-developed and mentally normal individuals among these grade school boys are more active than the boys of any other educational level.
The social level picture for total outlet among married males is quite the same as for single males. The married males who have the highest total outlet are those who went into high school but not beyond. This is true for every age group between 16 and 40 years of age, and may be true at older ages; but the data beyond 45 become too scant for significant calculation. It is impressive to find that what is true of populations in their teens usually holds true for those same populations at later ages, throughout the life span. Only a very few individuals ever depart from their original patterns.
If the record for total outlet is analyzed on the basis of occupational classes (Table 107), it will be seen that there is as sharp and as consistent a differentiation of groups as there is on the basis of educational level. The highest rates of total outlet are to be found among the males who belong to occupational class 3. This is as true of these males when they are boys living at home with their parents as it is of the same persons at older ages, when they are independent of their parents. On the other hand, males who belong to class 3 have about the same rates of total outlet, irrespective of whether their parents belonged to classes 3, 4, or 5. Since occupational class 3 is the one that includes semi-skilled workers, it contains a great many persons who do not go beyond grade school, and almost none of them go beyond high school (Table 80); and the generalizations based on occupational classes agree very well with the generalizations based upon educational levels. Since the occupational classes are not as sharply defined as educational levels, the frequency series are not quite as consistent as the frequencies shown by the educational breakdown.
Figure 97. Total outlet, by educational level and occupational class
For single males of the age group 16–20. Relative lengths of bars compare mean frequencies for the groups.
The lowest rates of total outlet are to be found in occupational class 4. This is the group which includes the skilled mechanics. The group has very diverse educational backgrounds (Table 80), and in Chapter 11 it will be pointed out that it is the most unstable of all occupational classes. Members of this group often aspire to move into higher levels, and they send a high proportion of their children to college.
In general, the white collar groups (classes 5, 6, and 7) are low in their rates; but of these class 7 shows the highest rates. This is the professional group. It usually has 17 to 20 years of schooling. The group has not been calculated separately in the educational breakdowns made in this volume, and it will be interesting to see what such a breakdown ultimately gives.
Masturbation. Ultimately, between 92 and 97 per cent of all males have masturbatory experience (Tables 82, 132, Figures 98, 136). The accumulative incidence figures are hardly different for the high school and college groups, but the lower figure (92%) belongs to the grade school group. The highest active incidence between the ages of adolescence and 15 is to be found among the boys who never go beyond high school. In later age periods the college males have the highest incidence.
The highest frequencies of masturbation among single males, in all age periods, are in the college level, whether the calculations are made for total populations or for the active portions of the populations (that portion of the population which is actually utilizing this source of outlet). Between 16 and 20, for instance, masturbation among the single males of college level occurs nearly twice as frequently as it does among the boys who never go beyond grade school, and the differential is still higher in the twenties. This is the great source of pre-marital sexual outlet for the upper educational levels. For that group, masturbation provides nearly 80 per cent of the orgasms during the earlier adolescent years, as against little more than half the outlet (52%) for the lower educational level. In the late teens it still accounts for two-thirds (66%) of the college male’s orgasms, while the lower level has relegated such activity to a low place that provides less than 30 per cent of the total outlet. In all later age periods the relative positions of these groups remain about the same.
Differences in incidences and frequencies of masturbation at different educational levels are even more striking among married males. At the grade school level, there are only 20 to 30 per cent who masturbate in their early marital years, and the accumulative incidence figure climbs only a bit during the later years of marriage. The frequencies are very low. The high school group closely matches the grade school group in this regard. On the other hand, among the married males who have been to college, 60 to 70 per cent masturbate in each of the age periods.
In the grade school group of married males, only 1 to 3 per cent of the total sexual outlet is derived from masturbation. The proportion of the total sexual outlet derived by college males from this source begins at 8.5 per cent during the early years of marriage, and rises to as much as 18 per cent in the later years. The college group stands out as perfectly distinct on this score.
Among occupational classes, the professional group masturbates most frequently (Table 108, Figure 98). This is true whether the persons in that class originate from parental class 7, or whether they come from parental classes 3, 4, or 6. Since essentially all professional persons have an educational rating of 17+ these data from an occupational class analysis are quite in line with the data based on educational levels. The distinctions between occupational classes are, however, even more extreme than the differences between educational levels, as far as masturbation is concerned. Between the ages of 16 and 20, for instance, the males of occupational class 7 have average frequencies of masturbation which run 2.12, 2.17, 2.21, and 1.60 per week, varying with the parental occupational class from which they came. The corresponding groups of occupational classes 2 and 3 have masturbatory frequencies which run very close to 1 per week—sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less in the various breakdowns. The educational breakdown for the same age period shows the college level masturbating with frequencies which are about 1.9 times the frequencies of the grade school males. Differences in the frequencies of the occupational classes are more nearly of the order of 2.2 to 2.5. Differences in attitudes on masturbation, pre-marital intercourse, and prostitution are among the most marked of all the distinctions between social levels, and this is true whether the calculations are made by educational levels or by occupational classes.
Figure 98. Masturbation, by educational level and occupational class
For single males of the age group 16–20. Relative lengths of bars compare mean frequencies for the groups. Note similarity of data based on educational levels and data based on occupational classes.
The professional males who originated in parental class 5, becoming members of class 7 as a result of their university training, have masturbatory rates which are 25 per cent lower than those of class 7 males who are derived from any other source. It is a striking situation for which we have no explanation at this time.
Nocturnal Emissions. Masturbation may appear to be volitional behavior, and one may question whether the pattern in masturbation represents the individual’s choice, rather than something that has been imposed upon him by the mores of his group. It is, therefore, particularly interesting to find that there are still greater differences between educational levels in regard to nocturnal emissions—a type of sexual outlet which one might suppose would represent involuntary behavior.
Figure 99. Nocturnal emissions, by educational level and occupational class
For single males of the age group 16–20. Relative lengths of bars compare mean frequencies for the groups. Note similarity of data based on educational levels and data based on occupational classes.
Nocturnal emissions occur most often in that segment of the population that goes to college (Table 83, Figure 99). Among males of the college level the emissions begin at earlier ages than among males of lower educational levels. About 70 per cent of the boys who will go to college have such experience by age 15, whereas only about 25 per cent of the grade school group has started by then. Between 16 and 20 years of age, 91 per cent of the single males of the college level experience nocturnal emissions, while only 56 per cent of the lower level boys have such experience in the same period. The active incidence figures are highest for the college males in every other age group. Ultimately, nearly 100 per cent of the better educated males have such experience, whereas the accumulative incidence figure is only 86 per cent for the high school group, and only 75 per cent for the grade school group.
Between adolescence and age 15, upper level males average nocturnal emissions nearly seven times as frequently as the boys of lower educational levels. Between 16 and 20 the frequencies among the upper level males are nearly three times those for the lower level, if the whole population is involved in the calculation. For the active populations the frequencies for the college group are still twice as high. About the same differences hold in the older age periods, at least up to 30 years of age.
Figure 100. Petting to climax, by educational level and occupational class
For single males of the age group 16–20. Relative lengths of bars compare mean frequencies for the groups. Note similarity of data based on educational levels and data based on occupational classes.
In marriage there are only minor differences between the educational levels in frequencies of nocturnal emissions, but the highest incidence figures at all ages are to be found among the males who have gone to college. Before marriage, college-bred males draw between 12 and 15 per cent of their outlet from nocturnal emissions, while the males of lower educational levels draw only 5 or 6 per cent of their outlet from that source. After marriage the college males draw 3 to 6 per cent of their outlet from emissions, but the lower educational levels never draw over 3 per cent from that source.
While it is clear that higher frequencies of nocturnal emissions are correlated with more extended educational histories, the explanation of this correlation is not so apparent. It is evident that nocturnal dreams are not the product of the education in itself, for two groups of boys of different social levels, working together in the same class in grade school or in high school, may have totally different histories of emissions. Is this a measure of some difference in the psychologic or physiologic capacities of the two groups which correlates in some way with factors which determine their educational careers? These are problems which the physiologist and the psychologist will want to investigate in more elaborate detail.
We do know that the frequencies of nocturnal dreams show some correlation with the level of erotic responsiveness of an individual. The boys of lower level are not so often aroused erotically, nor aroused by so many items as the boys from the upper educational levels. Nocturnal dreams may depend upon an imaginative capacity, in something of the same way that daytime eroticism is dependent upon the individual’s capacity to project himself into a situation which is not a part of his immediate experience. It may be that the paucity of overt socio-sexual experience among upper level males accounts both for their daytime eroticism and for their nocturnal dreaming.
The record on frequencies of nocturnal emissions in different occupational classes is fully as striking as the record based on an educational breakdown, and the two bodies of data lie in exactly the same direction (Table 109, Figure 99). The lowest average frequencies of nocturnal emissions, averaging not more than 2 or 3 per year, are to be found among the males of occupational class 2, which is the group that includes the day laborers, and the frequencies are only a bit higher for the semi-skilled workmen of occupational class 3. The frequencies for occupational classes 6 and 7 (the college and graduate school groups), on the contrary, run nearer once in 2 weeks at practically every age level and irrespective of the nature of the parental occupational class from which these individuals come. This means that there are 10 to 12 times as frequent nocturnal emissions among males of the upper occupational classes as there are among males of the lower classes.
Heterosexual Petting. Petting is pre-eminently an occupation of the high school and college levels. For all social levels, it may begin in high school or even before; but from 16 years of age, the males and the females who are most often involved are the ones who go into high school or ultimately into college (Table 84, Figure 100). About 92 per cent of the males of the high school and college levels engage in at least some kind of petting prior to marriage, and nearly as many (88%) of the grade school group has such experience. These figures are not very far apart, but there are greater differences in the limits to which the petting techniques go in these several groups. In general, males of the grade school and high school levels are more restricted in their petting behavior than males of the college level.
Unfortunately, the data secured in this study do not allow a statistical calculation for each degree of petting experience, but there are precise data on the frequencies of petting which extends to the point of orgasm (Table 84, Figure 100). In the pre-marital histories of college males, about 61 per cent reach orgasm by that means. It is only about 32 per cent of the high school males who ever have such experience, and only about 16 per cent of the grade school group.
Table 84. Heterosexual petting to climax, and educational level
In regard to the frequencies of petting to climax, the differences between educational levels are even more extreme. In the later teens, this source provides nearly three times as frequent orgasm for the males who go to college; and between 21 and 25, there is nearly 5 times as much orgasm from this source for the college males as there is for the males who never go beyond grade school. The lower level males derive something between 1 and 2 per cent of their total outlet from petting in their pre-marital years. The college males derive between 5 and 8 per cent of their outlet from that source.
Analyses of the record by occupational classes confirm the statement made above that petting is most characteristic of the upper social levels. The differences by occupational class (Table 110, Figure 100) are not notable in the early adolescent years, but they become greater between 16 and 20, at which age classes 6 and 7 pet to the point of climax twice as often as classes 2 or 3. In the early twenties there is a 3 to 1 difference between the two ends of the occupational scale, and the distinctions are more or less true irrespective of the occupational classes of the parents.
Pre-marital Intercourse. Pre-marital intercourse may be had either with companions or with prostitutes. In every social level coitus with girls who are not prostitutes is more frequent. In younger age groups there is a 10 to 1 or still higher difference in favor of the non-prostitutes. In older age groups, males of the lower educational level who are not yet married turn to prostitutes more often than they did when they were younger; but non-prostitutes still provide a larger part of the coitus. At the college level, contacts with companions exceed the prostitute relations by some factor which lies between 20 and 100 in every age group, including the older groups.
Pre-marital intercourse, whatever its source, is more abundant in the grade school and high school levels, and less common at the college level (Tables 85–87, Figures 101–102). Even in the period between adolescence and 15 the active incidence includes nearly half (48% and 43%) of the lower educational groups, but only 10 per cent of the boys who will ultimately go to college. In the later teens, 85 per cent of the grade school group and 75 per cent of the high school group is having pre-marital intercourse, while the figure for the college group is still only 42 per cent. In later years the differentials are not so great but, compared with the grade school group, it is still only about two-thirds as many of the college males who have such intercourse.
The accumulative incidence figures for pre-marital intercourse show much the same differences. About 98 per cent of the grade school level has experience before marriage, while only 84 per cent of the high school level and 67 per cent of the college level is involved (Table 136, Figure 145).
The frequency figures show still greater differences between educational levels. In the age period between 16 and 20, the grade school group has 7 times as much pre-marital coitus as the college group. There is not much drop in the differential even in the older age groups. The mother who is afraid to send her boy away to college for fear that he will be morally corrupted there, is evidently unaware of the histories of the boys who stay at home. Moreover, nearly half of the males who have intercourse while in college had their first experience while they were still at home, before they started to college (Table 136, Figure 145). Varying with the age period, the college group derives 4 to 21 per cent of its pre-marital outlet from intercourse; the high school group derives 26 to 54 per cent of its outlet from that source; but the grade school group depends on coitus for 40 to 70 per cent of its total pre-marital outlet.
The number of college-bred males who have some pre-marital intercourse is high enough to surprise many persons, but the frequencies with which they have it are very much lower than anywhere else in the population. Between a third and a half of the males at college level have intercourse only once or twice, or half a dozen times, or a matter of two or three times a year for a few years before they marry. It is about 15 per cent of the college males who have pre-marital intercourse with weekly regularity for any period of years before marriage. A good many college males never have pre-marital intercourse with more than the one girl whom they subsequently marry, and very few of them have pre-marital intercourse with more than half a dozen girls or so. College males are very slow in arriving at their first pre-marital intercourse (Figure 146), and a comparison of the accumulative incidence curves (Table 136, Figure 146) indicates that, on an average, they do not have their first experience until five or six years after the lower level males start.
Figure 101. Total pre-marital intercourse, by educational level and occupational class
For single males of the age group 16–20. Relative lengths of bars compare mean frequencies for the groups. Note similarity of data based on educational levels and data based on occupational classes.
The pre-marital coital pictures for the grade school and high school groups are much alike. They both differ from the college group in starting their intercourse at a much earlier age—in many cases in pre-adolescence, and in a large number of cases coincidentally with the onset of adolescence. Within two or three years after the onset of adolescence nearly all of those who will ever be involved have started heterosexual relations. Ultimately, 10 to 15 per cent more of the grade school group is involved than of the high school group.
As analyzed by occupational classes, pre-marital intercourse is much more frequently had by males of class 3, which is the group of semi-skilled workmen (Table 111, Figure 101). Between adolescence and 15 years of age there may be 15 times as much intercourse among males of class 3 as there is among the boys who will ultimately go to college and whose occupational ratings will ultimately be in class 6 or 7. If the parental occupational class is 5 (the lower white collar group), there is 122 times as much premarital intercourse among the boys who regress to class 3 as there is among those boys who will ultimately go into the professional group. Between 16 and 20, the differences between the extreme groups are somewhat less, but the boys who will end up in occupational class 3 are still having intercourse 4 to 9 times as often as the boys who will move into occupational classes 6 and 7. Even during the twenties, when intercourse becomes more common at the upper levels, there is still 4 times as much of it among the males of occupational class 3.
The males of occupational class 2 have high frequencies of pre-marital intercourse at all age levels, but they do not rate as high as the males of class 3. Just as was pointed out for the lower educational levels, this lower rate of the lowest class is certainly due to the higher incidence of feeblemindedness, to the low physical state, and to the low social prestige of many of the individuals in the group. It is quite possible that this lower occupational class includes some groups who have very much higher rates than the average for the whole class. They are probably the lower level boys who became adolescent first (Chapter 9). Since class 2 as a group is quite unrestrained sexually, any male in the group who does have any amount of sexual drive would be likely to have relatively high frequencies of pre-marital intercourse.
Intercourse with Prostitutes. Among those males who are not married by age 25, pre-marital intercourse with prostitutes has been had by 74 per cent of the grade school level, and by 54 per cent of the high school group, but by not more than about 28 per cent of those who belong in the college level (Table 87, Figure 102). These striking differences between educational levels were as true in a past generation as they are in the present day (Chapter 11). The active incidence figures in each of the five-year periods indicate that lower level males start relations with prostitutes at a much earlier age, and that three to four times as many of them are having intercourse with prostitutes in each age period.
The percentage of the total sexual outlet which is derived by unmarried males from intercourse with prostitutes steadily rises in all educational levels with advancing age. Between 16 and 40 the percentage for males in the grade school level rises from about 6 to 23 per cent. For the high school level the figures at the same ages rise from less than 3 per cent to about 11 per cent; and for the college males they start at a fraction of 1 per cent and rise no higher than 3 per cent in the later age periods. At 16 years of age, the grade school males derive seven times as much of their outlet from prostitutes as the college males do; and high school males get three or four times as much of their outlet from prostitutes as college males get from that source. Among those who are still unmarried between 31 and 35, the lower level individuals have 36 times as much contact with prostitutes as the college males do.
Figure 102. Pre-marital intercourse with prostitutes, by educational level and occupational class
For single males of the age group 16–20. Relative lengths of bars compare mean frequencies for the groups. Note similarity of data based on educational levels and data based on occupational classes.
Except for these lower level males of older ages, the actual frequencies of contacts with prostitutes are relatively low. In spite of some opinion that the college male depends primarily on paid contacts for his pre-marital socio-sexual experience, this is the least significant part of all his sexual activities (except for the incidental outlet that he derives from intercourse with animals). The mean frequency of prostitute contacts for the entire male population of all ages and of all educational and occupational groups is 0.093 per week, or approximately 5 times per year. For the lower level groups it may average as high as 0.50 per week (25 times per year) between 31 and 35 years of age. For the unmarried college males taken as a group, it never averages higher than 0.08 per week (4 times per year) in any age period.
Extra-marital intercourse with prostitutes is a still less important item, at all social levels. In any age period, it never constitutes more than 1.5 per cent of the outlet of the grade school level, 1.7 per cent of the outlet of the high school level, and 0.5 per cent of the outlet of the married males of college level.
Figure 103. Extra-marital intercourse, by educational level and occupational class
For married males of the age group 21–25. Relative lengths of bars compare mean frequencies for the groups. Note similarity of data based on educational levels and data based on occupational classes.
A breakdown of the population by occupational classes shows that most of the high frequencies of intercourse with prostitutes occur in occupational classes 2 and 3, which are the day labor and semi-skilled workmen groups. The skilled workmen of class 4 show quite as high frequencies in those few instances where we have sufficient material to make calculations. Frequencies even in the lower occupational classes are not more than once in 6 weeks in any particular age group; but the frequencies are rarely more than once or twice in a year in occupational classes 5, 6, and 7. These rates, which represent averages for total populations, are, of course, much lower than the rates for the active members of those populations; but if the analyses are made on the active populations, the differences are still 2 to 1 in most cases, and in some cases nearly 8 to 1, with the higher frequencies occurring in occupational classes 2 and 3. This breakdown by occupational classes is a strict parallel to the breakdown by educational levels.
Marital Intercourse. At all social levels, practically one hundred per cent of the married males have intercourse with their wives (Table 88, Figure 104). There are a few exceptions among the aged, among persons who are married for only brief periods of time, among spouses between whom there are insurmountable incompatibilities on questions of sex, in an occasional case where one or both partners are completely homosexual, or in a very few cases of persons who are religiously much restrained. There are exceedingly few such cases of abstinence, and the number is too small to show any trend by social levels.
There are social differences, however, in regard to the percentage of the total sexual outlet which is derived from marital intercourse. In the age period between 16 and 20, among males of the grade school level, only about 80 per cent of the total sexual outlet comes from marital intercourse, while extra-marital intercourse accounts for another 11 per cent of the total outlet (Table 86, 97, Figure 103). However, the portion of the outlet coming from marital intercourse in this grade school group rises to approximately 90 per cent in the late forties and early fifties. Among males of the high school group, marital intercourse in the early years accounts for 82 per cent, but rises to 91 per cent of the total outlet by the late forties. For the college level, marital intercourse starts out as a higher portion of the total outlet—nearly 85 per cent; but it drops steadily through the successive years until by the middle fifties it accounts for only 62 per cent of the outlet of these males (Table 97, Figure 133). In comparison with males of the college level, males of the grade school level, in their middle fifties, derive 26 per cent more of their total outlet from intercourse with their wives.
In the course of his marriage, the outlet of the married male of the college level has increasingly included masturbation and nocturnal dreams and, strikingly enough, extra-marital intercourse. On the other hand, the lower level males never have much masturbation in their marital histories, and the amount becomes less in the later years. During their teens and early twenties, lower level males find a considerable outlet in extra-marital intercourse, but with the advancing years they become increasingly faithful to their wives. In short, lower level males take 35 or 40 years to arrive at the marital ideals which the upper level begins with; or, to put it with equal accuracy, upper level males take 35 to 40 years to arrive at the sexual freedom which the lower level accepts in its teens. Some persons may interpret the data to mean that the lower level starts out by trying promiscuity and, as a result of that trial, finally decides that strict monogamy is a better policy; but it would be equally correct to say that the upper level starts out by trying monogamy and ultimately decides that variety is worth having. Of course, neither interpretation is quite correct, for the factors involve differences in sexual adjustment in marriages at the different levels, as well as the force of the mores which lie at the base of most of these class differences.
Figure 104. Marital intercourse, by educational level and occupational class
For married males of the age group 21–25. Relative lengths of bars compare mean frequencies for the groups. Note similarity of data based on educational levels and data based on occupational classes.
Unfortunately, the available data are not sufficient for any detailed analysis of the frequencies of marital intercourse by occupational classes. There are only a few instances where comparisons can be made. It is rather notable, however, that even in those instances there is a differentiation in the direction of slightly higher frequencies and higher percentages of the total outlet derived from marital intercourse among those males who belong to class 6, and slightly lower figures for class 7. If the calculations are based upon the active members of the population, the differences between these two classes are a bit more marked.
Homosexual Contacts. Among single males homosexual relations occur most often in the group that goes into high school but not beyond, and least often in the group that goes to college.
The active incidence figures for single males of the high school group begin at 32 per cent in the early adolescent years and rise to 46 per cent by age 30 (Table 90, Figure 105). The accumulative incidence figure is 54 per cent for those who are not married by age 30. Allowing for the fact that males of this high school group usually marry early, it is something less than 50 per cent which has experience in the homosexual, to the point of orgasm, between the onset of adolescence and marriage. It should be noted that a high proportion of the males in the Army, Navy, Merchant Marine, CCC camps, and other such organizations belong to this educational level. During the age periods in which these men are actually in these services, about 40 per cent have at least incidental homosexual relations. After marriage, the high school level continues to have homosexual relations in something between 9 and 13 per cent of the cases. The active incidence figures during marriage gradually drop in successive age periods.
Among single males of the high school level, frequencies in the homosexual (for the total group) average about once in three weeks between the ages of adolescence and twenty. The averages for that portion of the population which is actually having experience range from a little under once a week in the teens, to about three times in two weeks if the males are still unmarried by their thirties. In early adolescence this high school group draws nearly 9 per cent of its total outlet from the homosexual, and the percentage increases in subsequent age periods until it accounts for a quarter of the total sexual outlet of the high school males who are still unmarried at age 30. While considerable attention has been given to the amount of sexual activity which males in general, and this high school group in particular, have with prostitutes, comparisons of Tables 87 and 90 will show that the sexual outlet which is provided by homosexual relations amounts to three or four times the outlet which is provided by prostitutes.
Among the males who ultimately go to college, homosexual relations are less frequent, but they are still a material part of the total sexual picture. Between adolescence and 15 years of age, 21 per cent of the single males of the college level is actively involved, at least in incidental experience to the point of orgasm. The active incidence figure drops to 17 per cent by age 30. The number of college-bred males who ultimately have experience is 40 per cent, if they are not married by age 30.
Frequencies for the college males are much lower than for any of the other educational levels. They average only about once in ten weeks for the population as a whole, and less than once in two weeks for the active population. For those males who are not yet married by 30, the mean frequencies rise to as much as 1.3 per week for the active portion of the population. Only about 3 per cent of the outlet of the college males is derived from the homosexual between adolescence and age 25, but in the next age period they derive nearly 9 per cent of their outlet from such contacts.
After marriage only 2 or 3 per cent of the college males engage in homosexual relations, according to the histories that are now available. There is no doubt, however, that this is one of the points on which there has been considerable cover-up, and it is certain that a good many married males who are having homosexual relations have deliberately avoided contributing their histories to this study. The 3 per cent incidence figure and the low frequencies shown here are, consequently, absolute minima, and they should be increased by some unknown quantity if they are to represent the reality.
The data on the incidence, frequency, and total significance of homosexual relations among grade school males are intermediate between the data for the high school and the college males. In any single age period, about one-fourth of all the males of grade school level have some homosexual relations. This is true for all the years between adolescence and 30. Ultimately, about 45 per cent of the grade school group is involved. Frequencies of homosexual contacts are about once in four weeks for the group taken as a whole, and nearly once a week for those who are actively involved between the ages of 16 and 20. In marriage, the grade school group continues its homosexual relations in 10 per cent of the cases, but the incidence figures drop to about 3 per cent by age 45. The frequencies of homosexual contacts for homosexually active married males of the grade school level begin at about 1.4 per week and drop to a few times per year, or once in a year or two, in the older groups.
A breakdown of the homosexual data for the several occupational classes does not show marked or consistent differences between occupational classes 2, 3, and 5 (Table 114, Figure 105). On most items of sexual activity class 5 is closer to classes 6 and 7, but in regard to the incidences and frequencies of the homosexual, it is closer to the semi-skilled and skilled labor groups. The active incidence figures for homosexual contacts among the lower occupational classes may be as high as 35 or 40 per cent in different groups at particular age periods, but they never go higher than 14 per cent for the males of class 7, except during the period of earliest adolescence for that portion of class 7 which originates from parental class 5.
Figure 105. Homosexual outlet, by educational level and occupational class
For single males of the age group 16–20. Relative lengths of bars compare mean frequencies for the groups.
The frequencies of homosexual activity among the males of class 6 are a bit lower than the frequencies in the lower occupational levels. Class 7 is the most distinct. Its frequencies are very much below those of every other occupational class. In practically every age group, and irrespective of the parental occupational class from which these class 7 males may have come, the frequencies average only about one-fourth or one-fifth of those for the lower occupational classes. If the calculations are made only for those males who do become actively involved, the mean frequencies for class 7 are still only half as high as the mean frequencies for the active males of classes 3 and 5. Males of occupational class 6 are intermediate between the males of the lower levels and those of class 7.
The situation portrayed by frequencies in the homosexual is more or less paralleled by the calculations showing the percent of the total sexual outlet which is derived from this source in each of the occupational classes. An average of 10 per cent or more of the total sexual outlet may be derived from the homosexual by males of classes 2 and 5, while among males of class 7 the average of the total outlet which is so derived is never more than 2 per cent. The males of class 6 are rather intermediate in this regard, or more nearly approach the males of class 5 in deriving upward of 10 per cent (in one group slightly more than 10 per cent) of their orgasms in contacts with other males.
Animal Intercourse. Intercourse with animals other than the human is almost entirely confined to males raised in rural areas. Only an occasional contact is had by city boys, unless they visit farms in vacation periods. Consequently, averages of animal contacts for the total American population are so low that they cannot be calculated with an accuracy which means anything in terms of the actualities of human behavior. For the rural males who are actively involved in such contacts, animal intercourse is more significant (Table 91).
Table 91. Animal contacts, as related to educational level
The active population is almost wholly rural and the active frequencies are essentially those for that portion of the rural population which has animal contacts. Median frequencies for the total populations are uniformly 0.00.
The accumulative incidence figures for animal intercourse go to about 14 per cent for the farm boys who do not go beyond grade school, to about 20 per cent for the group which goes into high school but not beyond, and to 26 per cent for the males who will ultimately go to college. The boys of college level who are ever involved in animal intercourse number nearly twice as many, relatively, as the boys who never go beyond grade school.
On the other hand, the boys of lower educational levels who are actually involved are the ones who have the highest frequencies in animal contacts (Table 91). For them the frequencies average close to once in two weeks, plus or minus. The frequencies for the boys of the college level who are actually having any animal contacts average nearer once in three weeks.
In addition to differences in frequencies and sources of sexual outlet, social levels differ in their attitudes on other matters of sex. Their sources of erotic interest, attitudes toward nudity, and techniques utilized in coitus are the items on which we have sufficient data to warrant some treatment here.
Sources of Erotic Arousal. The upper level male is aroused by a considerable variety of sexual stimuli. He has a minimum of pre-marital or extra-marital intercourse (Tables 96, 97). The lower level male, on the other hand, is less often aroused by anything except physical contact in coitus; he has an abundance of pre-marital intercourse, and a considerable amount of extra-marital intercourse in the early years of his marriage. How much of this difference is simply the product of psychologic factors and how much represents a community pattern which can be properly identified as the mores, it is difficult to say. The very fact that upper level males fail to get what they want in socio-sexual relations would provide a psychologic explanation of their high degree of erotic responsiveness to stimuli which fall short of actual coitus. The fact that the lower level male comes nearer having as much coitus as he wants (Table 92) would make him less susceptible to any stimulus except actual coitus.
The higher degree of eroticism in the upper level male may also be consequent on his greater capacity to visualize situations which are not immediately at hand. In consequence, he is affected by thinking about females, and/or by seeing females or the homosexual partner, by burlesque shows, obscene stories, love stories in good literature, love stories in moving pictures, animals in coitus, and sado-masochistic literature. Upper level males are the ones who most often read erotic literature, and the ones who most often find erotic stimulation in pictures and other objects. None of these are significant sources of stimulation for most lower level males, who may look on such a thing as the use of pictures or literature to augment masturbatory fantasies as the strangest sort of perversion.
While these group differences may be primarily psychologic in origin, there is clearly an element of tradition involved. Each community more or less accepts the idea that there will be or will not be erotic arousal under particular sorts of circumstances. The college male who continuously talks about girls does so with a certain consciousness that the other persons in his group are also going to be aroused by such conversation, and that they accept such arousal as natural and desirable. The homosexual male, and the heterosexual male who does not approve of such deliberately induced eroticism, considers this public display of elation over females as a group activity which is more or less artificially encouraged. The lower level male who talks about girls quite as frequently, or even more so, is less often aroused by such talk and may be inclined to consider a listener who is so aroused as somewhat aberrant. There is an element of custom involved in these styles of erotic response.
Table 92. Attitudes on pre-marital intercourse, at three educational levels
Nudity. In many cultures, the world around, people have been much exercised by questions of propriety in the public exposure of portions or the whole of the nude body. There are few matters on which customs are more specific, and few items of sexual behavior which bring more intense reactions when the custom is transgressed. These customs vary tremendously between cultures and nations, and even between the individual communities in particular countries. The inhabitant of the Central American tropics has one custom, the Indian who comes down from his mountain home to trade in the lowland has totally different customs. There is neither rhyme nor reason to the custom—there is nothing but tradition to explain it. The mountain Indian of the warmer country of Southern Mexico is thoroughly clothed, the mountain Indian of the coldest part of Northern Mexico is more completely nude than the natives of the hottest Mexican tropics. But there are probably no groups in the world who are free of taboos of some sort on this point. The history of the origin of clothing is more often one of taboos on nudity than a story of the utility of body coverings.
The English are more or less justly reputed to be the most completely clothed people in the world, and Americans have been slow in breaking away from the English tradition. The American visitor to foreign lands is often amazed at the exposure which is allowed in some other cultures, and he criticizes it on moral grounds. The nudity of the French burlesque is ascribed to the “low morality” of Frenchmen as a group; and although an approach is made to the same sort of display in American burlesque, the institution here does not achieve the same free acceptance of complete nudity which the original French has. The German nudist movement is assumed by the average American to be immoral in intent, and its counterpart in this country survives only after considerable public discussion and continual wrangling in court over the obscenity of such activity. Although Anglo-American law has tried for six or seven centuries to define indecent exposure, there is no legal agreement on the decency or indecency of nude art, nor on the rights of art schools, photographers, magazines, and books to portray the nude human form. Public sentiment, backed by sporadic police action, has dictated the styles of bathing suits, from the gay nineties down to the present. It is only within the last decade or two that the male’s right to appear in swimming trunks without tops has been established for public swimming beaches and pools.
More definite limits may be set on nudity than on more overtly sexual activities. The kissing which is commonplace in American films is considered most immoral in some of the foreign countries to which the films are distributed. A completely nude art production may be shown in a Latin American moving picture theatre to an audience which takes the film complacently, for its artistic value, although it will hiss the next picture off the screen because it contains a Hollywood kissing scene.
The acceptance of nudity may even vary with the hour and the place of the exposure. The costume which is accepted on the swimming beach is strictly forbidden in most other places. In the middle of the day, the female may safely expose her arms in public, although she is then limited in regard to the exposure of her back. At the formal affair in the evening, she may expose the whole of her back, but she is then most proper if she covers her arms with long gloves. In a Latin American tropic town, inside a public building, there may be considerable objection when one rolls his shirt sleeves to the elbow, even on the hottest summer day; but out of doors both men and women may go stripped to the waist through the streets of the town, and all of them may come together for nude bathing in the nearby stream. It would require a considerable treatise to portray the reactions of the peoples of the world to nudity, and a larger treatise to explain the origins of those customs.
Most amazing of all, customs in regard to nudity may vary between the social levels of a single community. In our American culture, there is a greater acceptance of nudity at upper social levels, and greater restraint at lower social levels. Compared with previous generations, there is a more general acceptance of nudity in the upper social level today (Table 95). There is an increasing amount of nudity within the family circle in this upper level. There is rather free exposure in the home for both sexes, including the parents and the children of all ages, at times of dressing and at times of bathing. Still more significant, there is an increasing habit among upper level persons of sleeping in partial or complete nudity (Table 95). This is probably more common among males, though there is a considerable number of upper level females who also sleep nude. Among the males of the college level, nearly half (41%) frequently sleep nude, about one-third (34%) of the high school males do so, but only one-sixth (16%) of the males of the grade school level sleep that way.
Finally, the upper level considers nudity almost an essential concomitant of intercourse. About 90 per cent of the persons at this level regularly have coitus nude (Table 95). The upper level finds it difficult to comprehend that anyone should regularly and as a matter of preference have intercourse while clothed. This group uses clothing only under unusual circumstances, or when variety and experimentation are the desired objectives in the intercourse. On the other hand, nude coitus is regularly had by only 66 per cent of those who never go beyond high school, and by 43 per cent of those who never go beyond grade school.
This intercourse with clothing is not a product of the inconveniences of the lower level home, nor is it dependent upon the difficulties of securing privacy in a small home, as too many sociologists have gratuitously assumed. It is primarily the product of the lower level’s conviction that nudity is obscene. It is obscene in the presence of strangers, and it is even obscene in the presence of one’s spouse. Some of the older men and women in this group take pride in the fact that they have never seen their own spouses nude.
Many persons at this level strictly avoid nudity while dressing or undressing. They acquire a considerable knack of removing daytime clothing and of putting on night clothing, without ever exposing any part of the body. This is less often true of the younger generation which has been exposed to the mixture of social levels encountered in the CCC camps, the Y.M.C.A., and the Army and the Navy. Exposure of the upper half of the male body on swimming beaches started as an upper level custom, but the democracy of the public beach has fostered a much wider acceptance of nudity among lower social levels today. Compare the three generations of the educational level 0–8 in Table 95. Younger males, even of the laboring groups, are often seen at work, out of doors, in public view, while stripped to the waist; but older males of the same social level still keep their arms covered to the wrist, even on the hottest of days and while engaged in the most uncomfortable of jobs. These inroads on the traditions against nudity are reflected in the sleeping and coital customs of younger persons of these lower levels, but the older members of these groups still observe the traditions. There are some cases of lower level males who have been highly promiscuous, who have had intercourse with several hundred females, and who emphasize the fact that they have never turned down an opportunity to have intercourse except “on one occasion when the girl started to remove her clothing before coitus. She was too indecent to have intercourse with!”
Manual Manipulation. At upper social levels there may be considerable manual petting between partners, particularly on the part of the male who has been persuaded by the general talk among his companions, and by the codification of those opinions in the marriage manuals, that the female needs extended sensory stimulation if she is to be brought to simultaneous orgasm in coitus. Upper level petting involves the manual stimulation of all parts of the female body.
Manual manipulation of the female breast occurs regularly in 96 per cent of the histories of the married males of the upper level, and manual manipulation of the female genitalia is regularly found in about 90 per cent of the histories (Table 93). The upper level believes that this petting is necessary for successful coital adjustment; but preliminary calculations indicate that the frequency of orgasm is higher among lower level females than it is among upper level females, even though the lower level coitus involves a minimum of specific physical stimulation (Table 93).
The manual manipulation of the female breast occurs in only 79 per cent of the married male histories at lower levels, and the manipulation of the female genitalia occurs in only 75 per cent of the cases (Table 93). Even when there is such stimulation, it is usually restricted in its extent and in its duration. The lower level female agrees to manipulate the male genitalia in only 57 per cent of the cases. The record is, therefore, one of more extended pre-coital play at the upper levels, and of a minimum of play at the lower levels. Many persons at the lower level consider that intromission is the essential activity and the only justifiable activity in a “normal” sexual relation.
Oral Eroticism. Many persons in the upper levels consider a certain amount of oral eroticism as natural, desirable, and a fundamental part of love making. Simple lip kissing is so commonly accepted that it has a minimum of erotic significance at this level. The college male may expect to kiss his date the first time they go out together. Most college students understand there will be good night kisses as soon as their dating becomes regular. Many a college male will have kissed dozens of girls, although he has had intercourse with none of them. On the other hand, the lower level male is likely to have had intercourse with hundreds of girls, but he may have kissed few of them. What kissing he has done has involved simple lip contacts, for he is likely to have a considerable distaste for the deep kiss which is fairly common in upper level histories.
Deep kissing is utilized as a prime source of erotic arousal by many persons in the better educated and top social levels. A deep kiss may involve considerable tongue contacts, deep lip contacts, and extended explorations of the interior of the partner’s mouth. Such behavior is, as noted before, a regular concomitant of coital activity among many of the vertebrates, and particularly among the mammals (Beach 1947, and original observations which we have). In the human mammal, at the upper level, oral eroticism may still be considered a bit sophisticated, but deep kissing is in the experience of 87 per cent of the group (Table 93). Its sanitary implications seem no obstacle to its acceptance. This group accepts mouth contacts in its erotic play, although it objects to the use of a common drinking glass.
On the other hand, the lower level male considers such oral contacts to be dirty, filthy, and a source of disease, although he may drink from a common cup which hangs in the water pail, and he may utilize common utensils in eating and drinking. Obviously, the arguments, at both levels, have nothing to do with the real issues. They are rationalizations of mores which place taboos upon mouth contacts for reasons which only the student of custom can explain. Once again, it is the upper level which first reverted, through a considerable sophistication, to behavior which is biologically natural and basic.
Mouth-breast contact does occur at all social levels, but it is most elaborately developed again in the upper social level (Table 93). Almost invariably it is a matter of the male manipulating the female breast with his mouth. It is interesting that females rarely attempt to manipulate male breasts (Chapter 18).
Table 94. Oral techniques at three educational levels
Showing accumulative incidences. Data not calculated as described for accumulative incidence curves in Chapter 3, but derived from experience of each subject up to time of reporting. Lower incidences in some older age groups may be due to small size of samples and to possible cover-up, but most probably to the fact that incidences were actually a bit lower in that generation.
The upper level male considers it natural that the female breast should interest him, and that he should want to manipulate it, both by hand and by mouth. The biologic origin of this interest is, however, open to question, because many lower level males do not find the female breast similarly interesting and have little inclination to manipulate it, either by hand or by mouth. Many lower level males rate such mouth-breast contacts as perversions, and some of them dismiss the idea with considerable disgust, as something that only a baby does when nursing from the mother’s breast. Considering these opposite reactions to a single type of situation, it must be apparent that a considerable psychic element is involved in the development of individual patterns on this point. The concentration of these patterns in whole social levels indicates that the mores, the long-time customs of the groups, are the fundamental factors in the picture.
Mouth-genital contacts of some sort, with the subject as either the active or the passive member in the relationship, occur at some time in the histories of nearly 60 per cent of all males (Table 94). As noted elsewhere (Chapter 18), these are quite common in the sexual activity of many of the other mammals, particularly among the other anthropoids (Beach 1947). There have been some other human cultures which have accepted such contacts as usual behavior, and even as a part of their religious service. The suggestion that such techniques in our present-day society are a recent development among sophisticated and sexually exhausted individuals is curiously contrary to the specific record, for the figures for at least three generations do not show significant changes in this respect (Table 93).
Mouth-genital contacts (of any kind) occur much more often at high school and college levels (Table 94), less often in the grade school group. In the histories of the college group, about 72 per cent of the males have at least experimented with such contacts, and about 65 per cent of the males who have gone into high school but not beyond. Among those males who have never gone beyond eighth grade in school the accumulative incidence figure is only 40 per cent.
The percentages for males who have made mouth contacts with female genitalia prior to marriage are 9, 10, and 18 for grade school, high school, and college levels, respectively (Table 93). In marriage, such contacts are in 4, 15, and 45 per cent of the histories, for the three groups. Before marriage, the percentages of males with histories which included mouth stimulation of the male genitalia during heterosexual relations were 22, 30, and 39, for the three educational levels. In marriage, such relations have been had in 7, 15, and 43 per cent of the cases, for the three levels, respectively.
Table 95. Coital techniques and nudity at three educational levels, in three generations
The most frequently used coital position is the one in which the male is above. It is not shown in the table because its use does not significantly vary between educational levels. Ages shown represent ages of subjects at time of reporting. Consequently it may be expected that the incidence data for the youngest generation, although they are already higher than any other on most items, will go still higher before this group reaches the age of the oldest generation shown in the table.
Most of the mouth-genital contacts are had between spouses. Prostitutes provide a portion of such contacts. However, it should be noted that most prostitutes are from the lower social levels, and consequently that few of them engage freely in oral activities. Even among those who make such contacts professionally, few of them would accept the same type of relationship with their boy friends. In her private life, even the prostitute does not depart from the mores of her social level, although she may do anything for pay.
Mouth-genital contacts in homosexual relations occur most commonly among the males of the high school level, and not quite so often in the males of the college and grade school groups (Table 94). Of the entire male population (U. S. Corrections), about 30 per cent has been brought to climax at least once in such relations with other males, and 14 per cent has brought other males to climax by the same techniques. The total of those who have had any type of oral relation in the homosexual is something over 30 per cent.
Positions in Intercourse. Universally, at all social levels in our Anglo-American culture, the opinion is held that there is one coital position which is biologically natural, and that all others are man-devised variants which become perversions when regularly engaged in. However, the one position which might be defended as natural because it is usual throughout the Class Mammalia, is not the one commonly used in our culture. The usual mammalian position involves, of course, rear entrance, with the female more or less prone, face down, with her legs flexed under her body, while the male is above or to the rear. Among the anthropoids this mammalian position is still the most common, but some variety of positions also occurs (Bingham 1928, Yerkes and Elder 1936, Beach 1947, Nowlis ms.).
Most persons will be surprised to learn that positions in intercourse are as much a product of human cultures as languages and clothing, and that the common English-American position is rare in some other cultures. Among the several thousand portrayals of human coitus in the art left by ancient civilizations, there is hardly a single portrayal of the English-American position. It will be recalled that Malinowski (1929) records the nearly universal use of a totally different position among the Trobrianders in the Southwestern Pacific; and that he notes that caricatures of the English-American position are performed around the communal campfires, to the great amusement of the natives who refer to the position as the “missionary position.”
The origin of our present custom is involved in early and later Church history, and needs clarification before it can be presented with any authority; but certain it is that there was a time in the history of the Christian Church when the utilization of any other except the present-day position was made a matter for confession. What has been taken to be a question of biologic normality proves, once again, to be a matter of cultural development.
Since this is so, it is not surprising to find that within our American culture there is some variation in coital positions among the social levels. Throughout the population as a whole, a high proportion of all the intercourse is had in a position with the female supine, on her back, with the male above and facing the female. Only a part of the intercourse is had with the female above the male. This occurs in about 35 per cent of the college level histories, in 28 per cent of the high school histories, but in only 17 per cent of the grade school histories (Table 95). At the upper level 26 per cent of the males may use a position in which the partners lie on their sides, facing each other, but only 23 and 16 per cent of the high school and grade school males try such a technique. Rear entrance into the vagina is found in 11 per cent of college and high school histories, but in less than 8 per cent of the grade school histories. The lower level experiments more often than the upper level only in sitting and standing positions, but no group uses these two positions very often.
It should be emphasized that the most common variant position is the one with the female above. It is used, at least occasionally, by more than a third (34.6%) of the upper level males. The position was more nearly universal in Ancient Greece and Rome (vide the art objects and materials, as well as the literature from that period). It is shown in the oldest known depiction of human coitus, dating between 3200 and 3000 B.C., from the Ur excavations in Mesopotamia (Legrain 1936). The position with the female above is similarly the commonest in the ancient art of Peru, India, China, Japan, and other civilizations. In spite of its ancient history, many persons at lower social levels consider the position a considerable perversion. It is associated in their rationalizations with the idea that the female becomes masculine while the male becomes effeminate in assuming such a position, and that it destroys the dignity of the male and his authority in the family relationship. There may be a feeling that a male who accepts this position shows homosexual tendencies. One of the older psychiatrists goes so far as to insist that the assumption of such a dominating position by the female in coitus may lead to neurotic disturbances and, in many cases, to divorce. Even the scientifically trained person is inclined to use such rationalizations to defend his custom.
Within any single social level there are, of course, considerable differences between individuals in their choice of sexual outlets, and in the frequencies with which they engage in each type of activity. The range of individual variation in any level is not particularly different from the range of variation in each other level. Within each group, each individual pattern is more or less duplicated by the patterns of individuals in every one of the other social levels. Nevertheless, the frequencies of each type of variant are so different for different social levels that the means and the medians and the general shapes of the frequency curves for the several groups are perfectly distinct. Translated into everyday thinking, this means that a large proportion of all the individuals in any group follows patterns of sexual behavior which are typical of the group, and which are followed by only a smaller number of the individuals in other groups.
If the mean or median frequencies for each type of sexual activity, at each social level, are brought together in a single chart (Figures 106, 107), it becomes possible to see what material differences there are in these patterns of behavior. Each horizontal line, followed across the chart, epitomizes the story for one social level. It is, as it were, a silhouette, a profile representing the essence of the group’s attitudes on matters of sex, and the translation of those attitudes into overt sexual activity.
Even a child would comprehend that the creature represented in each of these silhouettes is distinct and unlike the creatures represented in the other silhouettes.
It is, of course, of prime concern to ask why patterns of sexual behavior differ as they do in different social levels. It is of scientific importance to understand how such patterns originate, how they are passed on to each individual, and how they become standards of behavior for such a high proportion of all the individuals in each group. It is of equal importance to understand the social significances of these patterns of sexual behavior. Few of us have been aware that there were such differences in patterns in the various subdivisions of our culture. An understanding of the facts may contribute something toward easing the tensions that arise because individuals and whole segments of the population fail to understand the sexual philosophies and the sexual behavior of groups in which they have not been raised.
We do not yet understand, to the full, the origins of these diverse sexual philosophies; but it will be possible to record what the thinking of each group is in regard to each type of activity.
Masturbation. At lower social levels, and particularly among the older generations of the lowest levels, masturbation may be looked down upon as abnormal, a perversion, and an infantile substitute for socio-sexual contacts. Although most lower level boys masturbate during their early adolescence, many of them never have more than a few experiences or, at the most, regular masturbation for a short period of months or years, after which they rarely again depend on such self-induced outlets. Among many of these lower level males, masturbation stops abruptly and immediately after the first experiences in heterosexual coitus. The lower level boy who continues to draw any material portion of his sexual outlet from masturbation after his middle teens may be much ashamed of it, and he may become the object of community jokes and of more serious disapproval if his history becomes known. In many instances, these attitudes are bolstered by rationalizations to the effect that masturbation does physical harm; but the objections are in reality based on the idea that masturbation is either abnormal, or else an admission that one is incapable of securing heterosexual intercourse and, therefore, socially inadequate. Among some primitive peoples (e.g., Bryk 1933), there is a somewhat similar attitude toward masturbation—an attitude which does not involve moral evaluations as much as it involves amusement at the social incapacity of the individual who has to resort to self stimulation for his sexual outlet. The better educated portion of the population which so largely depends upon masturbation for its pre-marital outlet, and which draws a not insignificant portion of its outlet from masturbation after marriage, will be surprised to learn what the less educated segments of the population think of one who masturbates instead of having intercourse.
Figure 106. Patterns of sexual behavior at three educational levels, among single males
For 3 age groups. Each horizontal line extending across the page summarizes the pattern for one of the educational levels. Relative lenghts of bars in each outlet show average mean frequencies for the group. The scales vary for different sources of outlet, but there is an approximate indication of the relative importance of each source in the total outlet.
The upper level more or less allows masturbation as not exactly desirable nor exactly commendable, but not as immoral as a socio-sexual contact. Older generations of the upper level were not so ready to accept masturbation. As many males were involved in the older generations, but the frequencies were definitely lower (Chapter 11), and there was considerable moral conflict over the rightness or wrongness of the “habit” (Chapter 14). Upper level males have accepted masturbation more freely within the last two or three decades, and today a high proportion of the teen-age boys of the college group frankly and openly admit this form of pre-marital outlet. During their years in college about 70 per cent of these males depend upon masturbation as their chief source of outlet. They derive about 66 per cent of their orgasms from this source during their college years.
The upper level’s pre-marital experience leads it to include masturbation as a source of outlet after marriage. The coital adjustments of this group in marriage are frequently poor, particularly because of the low degree of erotic responsiveness which exists among many of the college-bred females. This offers some excuse for masturbation among the married males of the group; but their early acceptance of masturbation in their pre-marital histories, and their tardy acceptance of heterosexual coitus, are prime determinants in the marital patterns. There are few things in all human sexual behavior which will surprise the poorly educated groups more than this considerable utilization of masturbation by the college-bred male as an outlet after marriage.
Petting. The social levels are furthest apart in their attitudes on petting and on pre-marital intercourse. The two items are related, for petting, among males of the college level, is more or less a substitute for actual coitus.
In the upper level code of sexual morality, there is nothing so important as the preservation of the virginity of the female and, to a somewhat lesser degree, the similar preservation of the virginity of the male until the time of marriage. The utilization of pre-marital petting at this level is fortified by the emphasis which the marriage manuals place upon the importance of pre-coital techniques in married relations; and the younger generation considers that its experience before marriage may contribute something to the development of satisfactory marital relations. Compared with coitus, petting has the advantage of being accessible under conditions where coitus would be impossible; it provides a simpler means of achieving both arousal and orgasm, it makes it possible to experience orgasm while avoiding the possibility of a pregnancy, and, above all, it preserves one’s “virginity.” Whether consciously or unconsciously, petting is chosen by the upper level because intercourse destroys virginity and is, therefore, unacceptable. It is significant to note what different values are attached, at that level, to erotic arousal and orgasm achieved through the union of genitalia, and to erotic arousal and orgasm achieved through physical contact of other portions of the body, or even through genital contact or genital manipulation which does not involve actual copulation. There are many males in the upper level who develop a fine art of achieving orgasm by petting techniques which avoid intercourse. The youth who may have experienced orgasm scores or hundreds of times in petting, and who may have utilized every type of petting technique, including mouth-genital contacts, still has the satisfaction of knowing that he is still a virgin, as his level defines virginity. There are even cases of males who effect genital union; but because they avoid orgasm while in such union they persuade themselves that they are still virgins. The illogic of the situation emphasizes the fact that the basic issue is one of conforming with a code (the avoidance of pre-marital intercourse, the preservation of one’s virginity), which is of paramount importance in the mores of this social level.
The lower educational levels see no sense in this. They have nothing like this strong taboo against pre-marital intercourse and, on the contrary, accept it as natural and inevitable and a desirable thing. Lower level taboos are more often turned against an avoidance of intercourse, and against any substitution for simple and direct coitus. Petting involves a considerable list of techniques which may be acceptable to the college group, and to some degree to the high school group, but which are quite taboo at lower levels (as discussed above). It is just because petting involves these techniques, and because it substitutes for actual intercourse, that it is considered a perversion by the lower level.
Figure 107. Patterns of sexual behavior at three educational levels, among married males
For 4 age groups. Each horizontal line extending across the page summarizes the pattern for one of the educational levels. Relative lenghts of bars in each outlet show average mean frequencies for the group. The scales vary for different sources of outlet, but there is an approximate indication of the relative importance of each source in the total outlet.
In particular cases, older persons, even at upper levels, have objected to pre-marital petting; but individual objections do not have the force of long-established mores. Pre-marital intercourse is condemned by mores which go back hundreds and thousands of years. Such taboos are very different from the criticisms which lone individuals have levied against petting within the last few decades, and for the most part the younger generation has paid little attention to such criticisms.
There is nothing in the behavior of the upper level which is more responsible than petting is for the general opinion that college students are sexually wild. The lower level has many times as much pre-marital intercourse as the college male has, and it is not the intercourse of the college student which is the source of the lower level’s criticism. It is the fact that petting may be engaged in for many hours without arriving at intercourse—it is the fact that intercourse itself is not more often accepted as a pre-marital outlet by the upper social level.
Pre-marital Intercourse. With the upper educational level, the question of pre-marital intercourse is largely one of morals. Some of the younger generation find it modern to insist that they do not avoid pre-marital intercourse because it is wrong, but because they consider intercourse too precious to have with anyone except the girl that they marry, or because they consider that marriages work out better when there has been no premarital intercourse. To this extent the younger generation is “emancipated”; but the change in the form of its rationalizations has not affected its overt behavior one whit (Chapter 11).
A large portion of the 85 per cent of the population which never goes to college accepts pre-marital intercourse as normal and natural. Most of this group would insist that there is no question of right or wrong involved. Even some lower level clergymen, of the group that has never gone beyond grade school or high school, may react as the rest of the community of which they are a part, preaching against profanity, smoking, drinking, gambling, and extra-marital intercourse, but considering that no moral issue is involved in pre-marital intercourse. So nearly universal is premarital intercourse among grade school groups that in two or three lower level communities in which we have worked we have been unable to find a solitary male who had not had sexual relations with girls by the time he was 16 or 17 years of age. In such a community, the occasional boy who has not had intercourse by that age is either physically incapacitated, mentally deficient, homosexual, or ear-marked for moving out of his community and going to college.
Lower level males may have a certain respect for virginity, and this may lead them to insist (in 41 per cent of the cases) that they would not marry a girl who had had previous intercourse (Table 92); but this may be more of a profession than a matter on which they will stand when it comes to the actual choice of a mate. Lower level males are likely to acquire weekly or more than weekly frequencies in intercourse soon after they start in early adolescence, or at least by the middle teens. They are often highly promiscuous in their choice of pre-marital partners, and there are many who have no interest in having intercourse with the same girl more than once. This strikingly parallels the promiscuity which is found among those homosexual males who are “oncers,” as the vernacular term puts it. Some lower level males may have pre-marital intercourse with several hundred or even a thousand or more different girls before marriage, and here their behavior is most different from the behavior of the college-bred males.
Extra-marital Intercourse. In lower social levels there is a somewhat bitter acceptance of the idea that the male is basically promiscuous and that he is going to have extra-marital intercourse, whether or not his wife or society objects. There is some continuation of the group attitude on pre-marital intercourse into the realm of extra-marital intercourse, at least in the early years of marriage. On the other hand, the upper level male who has been heterosexually restrained for 10 or 15 years before marriage does not freely let down and start extra-marital intercourse as soon as he has learned to have coitus with his wife. As a matter of fact, a male who has been so restrained often has difficulty in working out a sexual adjustment with his wife, and it is doubtful whether very many of the upper level males would have any facility in finding extra-marital intercourse, even if they were to set out deliberately after it. The lower level’s extra-marital intercourse does cause trouble, but we do not yet understand all the factors which account for the fact that with advancing age there is a steady decline and finally a near disappearance of extra-marital intercourse from lower level marital histories (Chapter 7).
The development of extra-marital intercourse in the histories of the older males of the upper level (Chapter 7) is done with a certain deliberation which in some cases may be acceded to and encouraged by the wife.
Homosexual Contacts. The considerable differences which exist in the incidences and frequencies of the homosexual in the three educational levels (Table 90) would seem to indicate basic differences in attitudes toward such activity; but we are not sure that we yet understand what these differences are.
The fewest objections to the homosexual are found in the very lowest of the social levels, in the best educated groups, and in top society. At the lowest social levels sex, whether it be heterosexual or homosexual, is more or less accepted as inevitable. The children here are the least restrained sexually and usually become involved in both heterosexual and homosexual activities at an early age (Chapter 5). Since this is the group in which pre-adolescent behavior most often carries over into adult behavior (Table 29), it is not surprising to find a fair number of the males at this level continuing both types of activity through the major portion of their lives. It is notable, however, that there are few individuals in this group who become exclusively homosexual. There are some who definitely condemn the homosexual, but there are many who accept it simply as one more form of sex. Rarely do they interfere with other persons who are involved, even though they themselves may not enter into such activities.
The acceptance of the homosexual in top educational and social levels is the product of a wider understanding of realities, some comprehension of the factors involved, and more concern over the mental qualities and social capacities of an individual than over anything in his sexual history.
The highest incidences of the homosexual, however, are in the group which most often verbalizes its disapproval of such activity. This is in the group that goes into high school but never beyond in its educational career. These are the males who most often condemn the homosexual, most often ridicule and express disgust for such activity, and most often punish other males for their homosexuality. And yet, this is the group which has the largest amount of overt homosexual activity. Their involvement may be due to curiosity, to the fact that one may profit financially by accepting homosexual relations, or to the fact that one may derive a sadistic satisfaction from beating up the partner after orgasm has been achieved in the homosexual activity. In a certain segment of this group the idea is more or less accepted that one may uphold the heterosexual mores while “playing the queers,” provided one punishes them after orgasm is achieved in the homosexual relation. As a group these males may strenuously deny that their sexual contacts have anything to do with homosexuality; but the full and complete record indicates that many of them have stronger psychic reactions to other males than they care to admit. When they no longer find themselves being paid for such contacts, many of them begin paying other males for the privilege of sexual relations.
If there are group attitudes in regard to the homosexual, they are not as freely discussed at most social levels. It may be that this explains why community thinking is not so well crystallized on this subject as it is in regard to other forms of sexual activity.
Each social level is convinced that its pattern is the best of all patterns; but each level rationalizes its behavior in its own way.
The upper level rationalizes on the basis of what is right or wrong. For this group, all socio-sexual behavior becomes a moral issue. Morality and sexual morality become more or less synonymous terms. Many persons at this level believe that there are few types of immorality which are more enormous than sexual immorality. Proper, straight, upright, honorable, clean, fine, wholesome, manly, and pure refer primarily to abstinence from socio-sexual relations. Their opposites refer to participation in non-marital sexual relations. Honor, fidelity, and success in marriage are understood to involve the complete absorption of the individual’s sexual urge in coitus with his wife. There is nothing of which persons at this level are more afraid than a charge of immorality, as immorality is defined by the group. There is no disgrace that is more feared than that which may result from sexual scandal. Sex is so clearly a moral issue that many persons in the group consider it a religious obligation to impose their code upon all other segments of the population.
Lower social levels, on the contrary, rationalize their patterns of sexual behavior on the basis of what is natural or unnatural. Pre-marital intercourse is natural, and it is, in consequence, acceptable. Masturbation is not natural, nor is petting as a substitute for intercourse, nor even petting as a preliminary to intercourse.
There are some individuals at lower levels who do see moral issues in sexual behavior, but by and large even they recognize that nature will triumph over morals. They may “know that intercourse is wrong,” but “they expect to have it anyway, because it is human and natural to have it.” It is not at all unusual to find middle class persons who have had intercourse with scores or even hundreds of girls, still insisting that they would never marry a girl who was not a virgin (Table 92). If the upper level male departs from his code and has intercourse, he is most likely to have it with the fiancée. His excuse is that “it is not wrong when love is involved.” The middle class or lower level male, on the contrary, may frankly state that “I didn’t think anything of her, so we had intercourse. But when I find the girl that I really love, I won’t touch her until I marry her.” To many persons in the upper level, and to some in the middle class, the moral issues are matters of divine revelation and mandate. As a fundamentalist professor of philosophy put it, “There are some things that one innately understands to be right or wrong, and about which there is no need for logical discussion.”
For both upper and lower levels, these matters do lie deeper than logic. There are, in consequence, no rational arguments, no cool discussions, no initial presentations of data, no investigations after the fact when diverse sexual patterns come into conflict. Like matters of religion, the mores are simply accepted and defended. For many persons, the mores are even more implicit than religious tenets. The arguments that are produced in their defense are the veriest sorts of rationalizations. If they cannot be defended in any other way, they are accepted as products of the experience of the past which has culminated in the wisdom of the present custom.
Most of the tragedies that develop out of sexual activities are products of this conflict between the attitudes of different social levels. Sexual activities in themselves rarely do physical damage, but disagreements over the significance of sexual behavior may result in personality conflicts, a loss of social standing, imprisonment, disgrace, and the loss of life itself.
In Clinical Practice. Wherever professionally trained persons try to direct the behavior of lower level individuals, conflicts are likely to arise because of these diverse sexual philosophies. Clinicians of all groups, including physicians, clinical psychologists, school psychologists, nurses, psychiatrists—particularly if they work in public clinics—have a portion and sometimes a major portion of their contacts with lower social levels. The sexual advice which the upper level clinician gives will mean most when it takes into account the background of the community from which the client comes. The upper level physician or nurse who expects the lower level patient to disrobe for physical examination should understand that he outrages the mores of the group in which the patient has been raised. The physician who mixes moral advice with his medical prescription should realize that the applicability of his advice will vary with the social level from which the patient comes. The woman physician in a prison may never become reconciled to the fact that every one of the inmates in the institution proves to have had coital experience before reaching the institution; but she must comprehend that her effectiveness as a physician is impaired when she proffers moral advice which has no relation to the realities of the world from which the inmate comes.
Marriage counseling, as set up today, is based upon concepts of marriage, goals, and ideals which may appear right to the educational level from which the marriage counselors come, and from which most of the counselor’s clients also come, but which mean something else in the communities from which a lower level client may come. The sexual techniques which marriage councils and marriage manuals recommend are designed to foster the sort of intellectual eroticism which the upper level esteems. It depends on prolonged pre-coital play, a considerable variety in techniques, a maximum of stimulation before coital union, some delay after effecting such union, and, finally, orgasm which is simultaneous for the male and the female. Most of this, however, would be anathema to a large portion of the population, and an outrage to their mores. Many marriage counselors would like to impose their own upper level patterns on their clients, without regard to the complications which may develop when an individual is educated into something that puts him at discord with the mores of the society in which he was raised and in which he may still be living.
In industry, some of the conflicts which arise between the better educated management and the more poorly educated labor may depend on failures to comprehend the diverse sexual patterns which are involved. Trained persons are increasingly used for personnel staffs in industrial plants. These persons, however, are not always aware of the viewpoints of lower level groups. Personnel managers, social workers, psychologists, physicians who try to comprehend and accept the patterns by which these other levels live, might aid in establishing a better rapport between labor and management.
In Social Service. Wherever people of different social levels come into contact, conflicts between sexual patterns, and failures to understand the patterns of other groups and the philosophies that lie back of them, provide considerable impediments to any cooperation between the groups. Administrators of institutions need to understand the patterns of the communities from which their inmate populations come. This is especially true in penal institutions, in homes for the feeble-minded, in children’s homes, in homes for the aged, in hospitals, and in other institutions whose populations come mostly from lower social levels. Heads of boarding schools and of colleges are not so often concerned with this problem, because their populations come largely from their own social level; but teachers in public grade schools and in public high schools are regularly confronted with the problem of understanding cultures other than their own. The unmarried college graduate who is an eighth grade teacher will find it difficult to understand how her eighth grade boy, from the laborer’s or mechanic’s home, could be so evil as to have had intercourse with one of her fourteen-year old girls. Her reaction, based upon her upper level standards, may result in the boy’s expulsion from school, and in public disgrace for both the boy and the girl. The teacher does not realize that more than a fourth (28%) of all her other eighth grade boys have similarly had intercourse (Table 136). The boy who was caught might have been handled differently if the teacher had known more about the boy’s background.
Social workers are involved with sexual problems even more often than physicians. There are cases of pre-marital pregnancies, of rape, of divorce resulting from sexual conflicts between the parents of the children in whom the social worker is interested. There may be coitus, and sometimes incestuous relations, between the children and the adults in the community. These last are things that may offend the community as well as the social worker. But everywhere the social worker runs into a record of sexual contacts among children, pre-marital intercourse, and extra-marital intercourse; and although the community accepts these things as inevitable, the social worker sees the behavior in terms of her own mores, and may be outraged and vindictive in her reactions. She may refuse welfare allowances to a family in which there is such “delinquency.” In many cases, it is the welfare worker who brings the case of sexual activity to the attention of the court. Often it is she who initiates the moves to have such “neglected” children taken away from their parents and made wards of the court, for placement in other families or in children’s homes or in juvenile disciplinary institutions. The untrained, less educated individual who enters social work, particularly in smaller communities, sometimes has a better understanding of the realities of these lower level groups. Some of the graduates of some of the better schools for social workers may also have some comprehension of these differences between levels. The least comprehending are the well intentioned, upper level women who turn to social work as a contribution to civic welfare. Some of the most poorly understood groups are in lower level Negro communities, and it takes a social worker who is capable of comprehending a great deal more than her own social level to work effectively with such a group. It is sometimes suggested that Negro communities should be handled only by Negro social workers; but educated, upper level Negroes may have as little comprehension of a lower level Negro community’s attitudes as upper level white persons would have. In fact, the upper level Negro worker may be even more intent upon “raising” the pattern of the lower level community, in a move designed to bring credit to Negroes as a race.
In the Army and Navy. Officers in the Army and Navy are faced with the problem of dealing with persons of diverse social levels who are brought together into a single, closely knit community. Since most of the population has not gone beyond the tenth grade in school, most of the men in the armed forces have lower level patterns of sexual behavior. Some of the officers come out of the ranks and comprehend these patterns. Professionally trained officers who are products of West Point or Annapolis, or of some other special school, are more likely to come from better educated levels. Some of the incongruities which exist between Army and Navy rules and the administration of those rules are products of these differences in the backgrounds of officers and enlisted men. American armies of occupation have found themselves in cultures that are different from our own in their attitudes on matters of sex. The upper level officer who establishes the law for the country he is temporarily ruling may try to impose “moral standards” which reflect the mores of only a limited portion of our American population, upon the whole of a foreign people who have none of the sexual patterns of any of our social levels.
During times of peace, the better educated segments of the population are sufficiently isolated to be unaware of the sexual patterns in the mass of the population. In times of war, when these upper level groups are suddenly thrust into close contact with these other levels, they are startled to discover the realities of human behavior. They are inclined to blame all of the sexual activity which enlisted men have upon the organization of the Army and Navy itself. The specific data which we have indicate that very few of the men in the armed forces are as active sexually as they would have been at home in times of peace, but the upper level, especially the older generation of the upper level, is unaware of this. Considerable pressure, in consequence, is brought upon military officials to establish and enforce rules, and upon Congress to enact laws which are designed to force all of the heterogeneous group which constitutes a draft army into an upper level pattern of sexual behavior. The demand is fortified by an emphasis upon the dangers of venereal disease; but it is certain that many of the persons who discuss disease are more concerned over the morals of the men for whom the government has suddenly become responsible. Such an issue could be grasped more intelligently if more people understood the origins of the sexual patterns of the men in uniform.
In Everyday Contacts. In general, the upper level feels that “lower level morality” lacks the ideals and the righteousness of the upper level philosophy. The lower level, on the other hand, feels that educated and upper level society has an artificial and insincere pattern of sexual behavior which is all the more obnoxious because the upper level tries to force its pattern upon all other levels. Legends about the immorality of the lower level are matched by legends about the perversions of the upper level. One is inclined to accept the particular legends that apply to the group to which one does not belong. Such legends reach their maximum proportions when they concern whole racial or national groups: “The French do this, the Chinese do that.” Primitive peoples and pagans are always believed to be aberrant in their sexual lives. There are exaggerated legends concerning the Negro’s sexual behavior, and Negro leaders are much disturbed over such popular beliefs (Cobb 1947). Sexual propaganda against the Jews as a race was a cornerstone of the Hitlerian attack on that group in Germany. Both Nazi and Japanese propaganda included attacks on the sexual behavior of Americans at home. There are traditions concerning the sexual behavior of the Italian, Spanish, Latin American, and other groups, even though there are no objective data to establish any generalizations. There are, of course, endless variations in sexual patterns in each of these populations, just as there are in our own American population. What data we have so far on these other groups indicate that there is at least some stratification of social levels in all of them; and this would lead one to presuppose that each group would, therefore, have a variety of sexual patterns.
In the Law. Anglo-American sex laws are a codification of the sexual mores of the better educated portion of the population. While they are rooted in the English common law, their maintenance and defense lie chiefly in the hands of state legislators and judges who, for the most part, come from better-educated levels.
Consequent on this fact, the written codes severely penalize all non-marital intercourse, whether it occurs before or after marriage; but they do not make masturbation a crime, even though there are a few courts which have tried to read such interpretations into the law (Chapter 8).
However, the enforcement of the law is placed in the hands of police officials who come largely from grade school and high school segments of the population. For that reason, the laws against non-marital intercourse are rarely and only capriciously enforced, and then most often when upper level individuals demand such police action. It is difficult for a lower level policeman or detective to feel that much of a crime is being committed when he finds a boy and a girl involved in the sort of sexual activity which was part of his own adolescent history, and which he knows was in the histories of most of the youth in the community in which he was raised. If the behavior involves persons against whom the policeman has a grudge (probably for some totally non-sexual reason), if the relation involves too public an exhibition, if it involves a contact between a much older and a younger person (which under the policeman’s code is more or less taboo), if it involves a relation between persons belonging to different racial groups (which under his code may be exceedingly taboo), then the laws against pre-marital intercourse become convenient tools for punishing these other activities. But if it is the routine sort of relationship that the officer very well knows occurs regularly in the lower level community, then he may pay little attention to the enforcement of the laws. The policeman’s behavior may appear incongruous or hypocritical to the citizen from the other side of the town, but it is based on a comprehension of realities of which the other citizen is not often aware. There are policemen who frankly state that they consider it one of their functions to keep the judge from knowing things that he simply does not understand.
On the other hand, if it is the case of a boy who is found masturbating in a back alley, the policeman is likely to push the case through court and see that the boy is sent to an institution for indecent exposure, for moral degeneracy, or for perversion. When the boy arrives in the reformatory, the small-town sheriff may send a letter urging that the administration of the institution pay especial attention to curing the boy of the perversion. However, the educated superintendent of the institution is not much impressed by the problem, and he may explain to the boy that masturbation does him no harm, even though the law penalizes him for his public exposure. The superintendent may let it be known among his officers that masturbation seems to him to be a more acceptable form of sexual outlet than the homosexual activity which involves some of the inmates of the institution, and he may even believe that he has actually provided for the sexual needs of his wards by making such a ruling. On the other hand, the guards in the institution, who are the officials most often in contact with the inmates, have lower level backgrounds and lower level attitudes toward masturbation. In consequence, they continue to punish inmates who are discovered masturbating as severely as they would punish them for homosexual activity.
On sex cases, the decisions of the judge on the bench are often affected by the mores of the group from which he originated. Judges often come from better educated groups, and their severe condemnation of sex offenders is largely a defense of the code of their own social level. Lower level individuals simply do not understand the bitter denunciations which many a judge heaps upon the lower level boy or girl who has been involved in sexual relations. They cannot see why behavior which, to them, seems perfectly natural and humanly inevitable should be punishable under the law. For them, there is no majesty in laws which are as unrealistic as the sex laws. Life is a maze. The sex laws and the upper level persons who defend them are simply hazards about which one has to learn to find his way. Like the rough spots in a sidewalk, or the traffic on a street, the sex laws are things that one learns to negotiate without getting into too much trouble; but that is no reason why one should not walk on sidewalks, or cross streets, or have sexual relations.
The influence of the mores is strikingly shown by a study of the decisions which are reached by judges with different social backgrounds. There is still a portion of the legal profession that has not gone to college and, particularly where judges are elected by popular vote, there are some instances of judges who have originated in lower social levels and acquired their legal training by office apprenticeship or night school courses. The significance of the background becomes most apparent, when two judges, one of upper level and one of lower level, sit in alternation on the same bench. The record of the upper level judge may involve convictions and maximum sentences in a high proportion of the sex cases, particularly those that involve non-marital intercourse or prostitution. The judge with the lower level background may convict in only a small fraction of the cases. The lower level community recognizes these differences between judges, and expresses the hope that when it is brought to trial it will come before the second judge, because “he understands.” The experienced attorney similarly sees to it that his case is set for trial when the understanding judge is on the bench. Parole officers and social workers who investigate cases before they are decided in court may have a good deal to do with setting a particular case before a particular judge, in order to get a verdict that accords with the philosophy of their (the parole officers’) background.
Judges who are ignorant of the way in which the other three-quarters of the population lives, naively believe that the police officials are apprehending all of those who are involved in any material infraction of the sex laws. If the community has been aroused by a sex case which has involved a forceful rape or a death following a sexual relation, the judge may lead the other public officials in demanding the arrest of all sex offenders in the community. Newspapers goad the police, and there is likely to be a wave of arrests and convictions which carry maximum sentences, until the wide scope of the problem becomes apparent to even the most unrealistic official. It will be recalled that 85 per cent of the total male population has pre-marital intercourse (Table 136), 59 per cent has some experience in mouth-genital contacts (Table 94), nearly 70 per cent has relations with prostitutes (Table 138), something between 30 and 45 per cent has extramarital intercourse (Tables 85, 111), 37 per cent has some homosexual experience (Table 139), 17 per cent of the farm boys have animal intercourse (Table 151). All of these, and still other types of sexual behavior (Chapter 8), are illicit activities, each performance of which is punishable as a crime under the law. The persons involved in these activities, taken as a whole, constitute more than 95 per cent of the total male population. Only a relatively small proportion of the males who are sent to penal institutions for sex offenses have been involved in behavior which is materially different from the behavior of most of the males in the population. But it is the total 95 per cent of the male population for which the judge, or board of public safety, or church, or civic group demands apprehension, arrest, and conviction, when they call for a clean-up of the sex offenders in a community. It is, in fine, a proposal that 5 per cent of the population should support the other 95 per cent in penal institutions. The only possible defense of the proposal is the fact that the judge, the civic leader, and most of the others who make such suggestions, come from that segment of the population which is most restrained on nearly all types of sexual behavior, and they simply do not understand how the rest of the population actually lives.
The penalties visited upon persons who are convicted of sex offense may be peculiarly severe, just because the judge does not comprehend the lower level background of the offender. The judge may give a long sentence because he believes that such a stay in prison will reform the ways of the particular individual who is being punished; but again he fails to understand the deep origins of sexual behavior. Data which we have on more than 1200 persons who have been convicted of sex offenses indicate that there are very few who modify their sexual patterns as a result of their contacts with the law, or, indeed, as a result of anything that happens to them after they have passed their middle teens. This is not because convicted sex offenders are peculiarly degenerate or different from the mass of the population. It is simply because all persons have their sexual patterns laid down for them by the custom of the communities in which they are raised.
The sex offender is a marked individual in the penal institution to which he is sent. He is lectured on the heinous nature of his crime by the prison official who receives him, even though in many cases he has not been involved in sex behavior which is fundamentally different from that of the institutional official himself. There is a mystery connected with the nature of the specific sexual activity for which a sex offender is convicted, and this brings emotional reactions from all persons concerned.
When it comes to a question of releasing sex offenders, parole boards are loath to take action. The inmate is judged by the standards of the upper level community from which most parole board members come. Women on prison boards are especially likely to come from a social level where the loss of virginity before marriage is an unforgivable moral offense. The girl whose future they are deciding comes from a community where three-fourths of the girls have intercourse before marriage. Persons who attempt to control the behavior of other persons might more properly be concerned with determining the extent of the departure of the individual from the behavior of the community of which he is a part.
Conflicts between social levels are as intense as the conflicts between nations, between cultures, between races, and between the most extreme of the religious groups. The existence of the conflict between sexual patterns is, however, not recognized by the parties immediately concerned, because neither of them understands the diversity of patterns which exist at different social levels. Each thinks that he is in a conflict with a particular individual. He is, however, more often in conflict with a whole culture.
As already explained, we do not yet have enough histories of Negroes to warrant their inclusion in the analyses that have been made in the present volume. Any fair comparison of Negroes and whites will have to be made for groups that are homogeneous in regard to age, education, social level, religious background, and still other factors. It is impossible to generalize concerning the behavior of a whole race. Analyses of any complex population, to be scientific, must be confined to particular segments of that population. Preliminary findings show that there are as many patterns of behavior among Negroes of different social levels as there are among whites. It is already clear that Negro and white patterns for comparable social levels are close if not identical. Since erroneous conclusions to the contrary have been drawn by certain persons who have seen some of our data prior to publication, it is important to emphasize here that final generalizations will be warranted only after a sufficient body of histories has been obtained at each and every social level among Negro groups.
