◆ SpookStack

R 965 I EPO RT Se nema as \~ of the sex offenders whom we interviewed had arrived in prison, in the last analysis, chiefly because of a gross error of judg- ment: They had no concept of the vast gulf between their own feel- ings and the workings of the female mind. Some of the men guilty of rape were convinced that their victims must have enjoyed the experience. They were “trapped” because this fantasy led them to believe that the women would be happy to go out with them again. Some of the Peeping Toms were caught because they deliberately made a noise to announce their presence—in the mistaken belief that the women must have enjoyed being peeped at as much as they enjoyed peeping. In milder forms, this kind of misunderstanding often occurs in our society. As the previous re- ports of the Institute for Sex Re- search have shown, the average man is poised as delicately as a seismograph, ready to respond tur- bulently to the faintest kind of sexual stimulus; he is quickly aroused by a whiff of perfume, the sight of a neat ankle, a photograph of a movie starlet in a bikini, or just by his own thoughts. He fre- quently assumes that women are poised in the same way; he ex- pects them to be as constantly concerned about sex as he is. But . he is badly mistaken. Only about one woman in three shares this masculine attitude toward sex. The others—the great majority, the typical women—seldom think @AUDyMONT © 1965 by the Institute for Sex Research, Inc. about sex except at such times as” they are actually engaging in it, and for many of them this is an experience that they can pretty much take or leave alone. These psychological differences account for a great deal of trouble between the sexes. Wives cannot understand why their husbands should stare at girls on the street or in chorus lines, or why men get the notion of making love at times that, by any sensible standards, are inconvenient. Husbands are upset by what they consider their wives’ ‘‘unresponsiveness’’—in other words, their failure to be preoccupied with sex at all times. Even the most normal and cir- cumspect of people are often trou- bled by these psychological misun- derstandings. The sexual offender is often a man in whom the mis- understanding has gone past the usual limits. This is why a rapist, driven by his urge for sexual ex- perience, oblivious to what kind of women he will have it with, callous about any brutality he may have to show, is surprised that his vic- tim should find the experience dis- tasteful; and the man who makes obscene phone calls believes that his victim secretly enjoys them. In their own minds, these men are not criminals at all. It is difficult to muster sympa- thy for these prisoners, but as it happens there is another large group of men in prison as sexual offenders who are not really crim- inals, except by the definition of laws we believe to be unrealistic, often archaic and full of ironies and —_— - PART Il: THE IMMORALITY _ OF OUR SEX LAWS a A ORD COO Om 9 ~~ By DR. PAUL GEBHARD een LN ot ARG Ste RAINE Rt inconsistencies. In almost every state of the union, for example, a husband and wife, legally and hap- | pily married, solid citizens of the community, faithful churchgoers} and fine parents, can be sent to prison for engaging in forms of sex play that are approved in The Catholic Marriage Manual. On the other hand, many states recognize common-law marriages as legally valid, though from a religious point of view nothing would seem to be a more flagrant example of living in sin or more of an affront to community morality. One of the thorniest of all the problems with which the laws and law-enforcement officials must. deal is the age at which a girl or young woman becomes responsible for her own sexual behavior—in other words, the ‘age of legal consent.” Most states set it at 16 or 18. To have relations with a young woman who has not reached this age con- stitutes the crime of statutory rape, and many of the men we inter- viewed were in prison for this of- fense, even though the young women in question participated willingly. Other prisoners had been convicted for ‘‘contributing to de- linquency”’ because they had re- lations with a girl who was over | the age of consent but still consid- ered a juvenile; according to var- ious state laws, girls up to the age of 21 are juveniles, legally if not sexually. The laws are based on the as- sumption that girls should be pro- tected from men who might be tempted (continued on page 44) w= recom, ener, GA-10576 / -j|" LADIES HOME JOURNAL" ENCLOSURE June, 1965 page 42