Sex Histories of American College Men
Sex Histories of American College Men was written by Doctors Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen in 1960 (Ballantine Books, NY). It’s based mainly on the personal histories of around two hundred students at an all-male college where Phyllis Kronhausen taught a Marriage and Family Life Education course during the 1950s. The following excerpt is a quotation from one student in a chapter entitled ‘Sex Without Love’:
While I was”playing” around with other girls during my relationship with ____, I learned much more about sex in a practical manner. As I mentioned before, I went to dancing school after the regular high school day. There, all kinds of girls took lessons. I found many of these girls were wild. One of the other boys in the dancing class told me of his experience with a girl named _____. He related to me how easy it was for him to get anything he wanted from her. He was now finished with her, and told me that I could get her to like me quite easily. He was right, for in a few days I was making out with her up on the roof of the building …She invited me over to her house one night so that we could get to know each other better …Within ten minutes after arriving, I had removed every vestige of clothing from her body. It was the first time I had ever seen a girl’s body in the nude. I petted with her below the waist, which was also a first for me. The thing I remember most about that evening was how disgusted I was with that particular sexual play. I nearly vomited from the feeling I experienced. Suddenly, she unzipped my pants, and proceeded to masturbate me. I rather enjoyed this compared to what had transpired before this.
After this night I never went to her house again because I had definite guilt feelings about having sex with a tramp. A marked change had come over me because of the influence that she had exerted over me. I now felt that it was much better to have sexual experiences with nice girls instead of tramps. And although I still had the utmost respect for nice girls, I wouldn’t hestitate to have sex with them (p215).
And:
One further statement about my beliefs about girls and how you should act towards them. When I meet the girl I want to get married to and spend the rest of my life with, there won’t be anything I won’t do for her. In other words, that’s the time that I’m going to change my whole attitude. No longer will I say that my happiness comes first, and no one else matters, because my wife’s happiness will be my happiness (p217).
I’d love to hear some some thoughts and reactions to this little gem…
January 10th, 2010 at 8:12 pm
Well from the pool shes based her study on I would say there is rather a large flaw. Based on the limited sample size as well as the social background of those attending such a school in the 60’s.
I think that the fact this is from the 60’s its a pretty irrelevant snapshot of sexuality in todays world, outside of the religious and conservative right.
January 12th, 2010 at 5:41 pm
Good points Dov but the religious and conservative (I would say) mainstream is still a large proportion of society. I’ve encountered this attitude in various forms both from people my age and those of my father’s generation. FFB, my former fuck buddy, for example, thought something along these lines. He talked about friends of his who completely disrespected and disliked some of the girls they fucked yet their conquering of these women was something to be proud of. Yeah, it’s medieval but it exists. I stopped dating in my personal life for a while pretty much because of these sorts of attitudes. What I encountered wasn’t quite so crass and hypocritical but I continue to see a lot of judgments and behavioural shifts by men who see me as sexually free, or not. Several female friends have been talking recently about the need to ‘hold back’ when dating. That is, sleeping with someone too soon gives them the impression that you are less ‘valuable’ than if some time passes before you become sexually involved. These are educated, beautiful and relatively liberal girls but they do still buy into established social rules.