Don't Hate Yourself in the Morning

More bachelors than you would suppose have a tender conscience about the seduction of females. Often they will put on the brakes if a woman looks at them wistfully and whispers, "Oh, please don't . . . please!" They also feel like heels if, after a roll in the hay, the woman weeps inconsolably or tragically views herself as damaged beyond repair.

The unvarnished truth in most such cases is that the lady is willing, but wants to go on record as protesting and regretting. She needs to assuage whatever shreds of conscience may still be irritating her. She also has more to gain by making the man feel a moral obligation, which he would not if he judges from her surrender that she is a roundheels.

Dr. Carney Landis, Columbia University psychologist, noted this phenomenon in his study of the sex lives of 295 women: "The subject (sometimes) offered as explanation the fact that she had been drinking, or that the boy was so insistent and she did not know how to prevent the incident. Such a report is suggestive of a tendency to shift responsibility to some other person, and consequently to avoid feeling guilty for her own part in the relationship."

Today's bachelor can enjoy much more peace of mind if he realizes that the girl he thinks he has persuaded to sleep with him has made up her mind to do same long before he throws her a pitch. This is particularly true of the bachelor girl who is out of her teens, and who is career-minded.

A 25-year-old advertising space salesman found himself in a lather over a 22-year-old blonde who was out to kill 'em via a start in TV commercials. A guy who liked to lay it on the line, he told her off the bat that he was probably falling in love with her, but not to let that put any bees in her bonnet because he wasn't the matrimonial type.

"You didn't have to say that," she reproached him. "I have no designs on your freedom, friend. Let's just keep it fun, shall we?" Her attitude puzzled him, because he sensed that she meant it. The more he thought about her, the more he decided he'd been a jerk. She was beautiful, intelligent and haunting. What more could a guy ask for in a wife? The very next night he proposed.

"I wouldn't play you a dirty trick like marrying you, Johnny," she replied gently. "You're too nice a guy. But I'll tell you what I will do. I'll sleep with you until you get me out of your system."

That rocked him. No fool, he gladly accepted her generous offer. It became quickly obvious that she was a girl who had packed a lot of living into her 22 years. It gradually became clear to him also that she intended to pack in lots more in the next 22 years. He breathed silent thanks for his narrow escape from cuckoldry.

Dr. Lotte A. Fink, discussing 100 average cases of girls who came to her for counseling, found that the smarter the girl the less respect she seems to have for moral taboos:

"Girls trained through their studies–especially university students–choose sexual freedom as well as freedom to think out their own choice of profession or life style. The same applies to girls who work as teachers, journalists, singers, dancers, painters or actresses. Up to 22 or 23, they may abstain from any sexual life, but after that they generally have sex."

Dr. Kinsey pointed out that about half the women in America are non-virgin by the time they marry. It should be made clear at this point that this article is principally concerned with the 50 per cent who do or will, not with the 50 per cent who want to but won't. It would (continued on page 32)Don't Hate Yourself(continued from page 21) save a lot of time and energy if there were a geiger counter available to indicate when you've got a hot sample. But since the electronic age hasn't gotten around to that yet, you'll have to work each claim the old-fashioned way to see whether you strike pay dirt.

There are fellows (we're not among them) who can't bring themselves to believe that women relish under-sheet sport by choice. They were brought up to think of the American girl on a pedestal. They're convinced that girls who do go in for sex are just a low-grade minority. Deep down, they're shocked by the notion that most of the fair sex gets the same pleasure from amatory acrobatics that they do.

But there is evidence on every hand that large numbers of women anticipate seduction with unabashed pleasure. Havelock Ellis, for example, reports, "Many estimable women look through the keyholes of men's bedrooms, though they would not like to acknowledge this." Dr. T. Bauer, a sex authority, declares, "Women are always on the lookout for a man who will gratify their sexual desires."

We find history filled with examples of such inquisitive and desirous women, from the highest to the lowest stations of life. There were such lecherous queens, for example, as the first Elizabeth and Catherine the Great. At the opposite end of the scale there were the women of Tahiti who knocked down and stripped the incredulous cook of the bark Bouganville.

In less inhibited parts of the world today, women are the sexual aggressors. In New Guinea, for example, there are tribes where the women slip into men's beds and demand service, threatening to shout rape if they are refused. In New Ireland women woo and seduce one man after the other. Among the Goajiro of Colombia, women trip men at a ceremonial dance, obligating those men to sleep with them.

In their book, Patterns of Sexual Behavior, sociologists Clellan S. Ford and Frank A. Beach write, "In most of the societies with which this book deals, girls and women do actively seek sexual liaison with men, even though they may not be supposed to do so." Assuming this is a world-wide trait, we shouldn't be too startled that underneath the American veneer of pretense, our own females are also predatory.

One sociologist, Dr. Herbert D. Lamson of Boston University, made a study to determine the nature and extent of she-wolves in our nation. He made these revealing observations:

"In the past men have underestimated the sex desires of women . . . It is obvious by now that girls want to be loved as well as men. They want intimacy and all the feelings that go with it . . . There seem to be plenty of business girls who have their own apartments and who are willing to pay for an evening out with sex at the end. These girls probably have a large number of men who occasionally come to the city and call them up . . . Sometimes these girls will propose intimacy when the man does not feel like it."

Dr. Lamson cited typical cases of shewolves reported by his male students. One girl chased her man around a trans-Atlantic liner until he yielded.

Another girl insisted upon parking with her dates and using the old I'm-Not-(concluded on page 48)Don't Hate Yourself(continued from page 32) Comfortable-Are-You? routine to get them in a prone position.

A third girl had a convertible in which she gave lifts to male hitch-hikers, for which she demanded that they reward her by taking her into any woods they passed. Another girl, a successful model, provided drinks, food and hotel rooms in exchange for some high-tension loving. An engaged girl, waiting for the day of her marriage, lived it up behind her future husband's back by taking on as many men as she could seduce.

Summing up his study, Dr. Lamson drew these deductions: "Some girls seem to be in a constant state of erotic excitement . . . Many will go to extreme lengths to achieve their goal . . . Some of these girls seem wild for sex. They will not take no for an answer."

Outright nymphomaniacs are far fewer, of course, than women who just have a normal yen for high voltage embraces at reasonable intervals, and under circumstances where their "resistance" can be agreeably melted or overcome. Many women are beginning to adopt the sexual attitude of bachelors, in that they want physical pleasure–or relief, if you prefer–without having to pay for it by signing up for a lifetime.

"Today more and more women are finding out that they can have sexual satisfaction without being in love with their partner," declares Dr. Lena Levine, noted counselor. "A woman who recognized that as a young adult she had sex urges came to see me. She was freed from the taboos and superstitions that formerly repressed such desires and had many sex experiences with many men. These experiences were enjoyed, but she didn't want to marry any of these men."

Despite such evidence that a huge number of women are actually sex aggressors, even when they pretend to be bowled over, many bachelors feel twinges of guilt at having "taken advantage" of such females. It would probably amaze them to realize that in most cases their "victims" are happy about their "downfall." and look back upon it with considerable pleasure.

When Dr. Kinsey questioned the women in his study about how they felt regarding the sex episodes in their past, fully 69 per cent insisted they did not regret them in the least. Another 13 per cent had only some minor regret. In other words, over four out of five had no real qualms about having the kind of experience which once was considered to have "ruined" a girl.

If that isn't enough to put four drops of healthy cynicism into your jigger of phoney ideals, consider Kinsey's further revelations that in all probability you had plenty of company in lowering the moral standards of at least half the women you've slept with. Some 34 per cent of the girls who told Kinsey the torrid truth admitted that they had slept with between two and five men, while 13 per cent more had climbed under the sheets with from six to twenty men or more. For many females, sex comes wholesale!

Some bachelors have no qualms about turning out the lights with women they're sure have been in the dark, horizontally, before, but draw the line at virgins. Or if they can't control their hormones with a virgin, they make unpleasant faces at themselves while shaving the next morning. Bachelors are frequently sentimental about virginity, because they consider this the trademark of the "nice girl." They don't want to feel responsible for setting her bare little feet on the primrose path.

But according to Dr. Fritz Wittels, psychoanalyst with the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, this is pure hogwash. He declares: "Women who are impure after their first intercourse were probably impure before, and those who have purity of soul . . . cannot be deprived of it by the ever more vanishing symbolic and tabooistic meaning of an institution."

To spell that out more succinctly, Dr. Wittels adds: "Whether a girl is still a virgin or not is a matter of unimportance to a feminine adult. Many a girl may have thrown herself away, may have made mistakes of many kinds of which she may not be proud, but the fate of her hymen does not rank among those mistakes."

All of which adds up to the fact that if a lady you've given pleasure to tries to make you feel obligated on that account to repeat your performance with her every night for the rest of your life, you ought to have no qualms about reaching for your hat. It's been fun for her, too, no matter how she tries to make you think that you were the one who had all the strawberries.

Even if a bachelor's hide is tough enough to deflect such female slings and arrows hurled at his conscience, he's often vulnerable to her most dread weapon–the news that he will soon be a father. Many men turn and bolt, but an amazingly big percentage do the "honorable thing," even though it means a marriage which they know will be intolerable.

What most men don't realize is that psychiatrists have found that unwed pregnancy is no accident. It is a deliberate act of choice on the part of most girls who become unmarried mothers. Dr. Kinsey discloses that of all the single women in his study who had become pregnant, 83 per cent had little or no regrets about the sex sessions which were responsible. Not only that, but 15 per cent got themselves pregnant more than once!

There are many complex reasons why a girl enjoys the notion of having a baby without benefit of clergy. In many cases it is an act of defiance toward one or both of her parents, either for being too strict or indifferent or failing to love her enough. It is also a way of forcing herself on their attention. Again, if she feels unworthy or sinful, it is her way of punishing herself and thereby feeling she's paid her moral debt.

Professor Leontine Young, Ohio State University sociologist, made a searching study of unwed mothers. She found that they rarely even know or care about the last names of the babies' fathers. They are secretly pleased by their pregnancy, as shown by the refusal of most to even consider abortion, unlike a great many married women who are "caught." That they enjoy their pregnancy is indicated by the fact that most don't even have "morning sickness," which afflicts many pregnant wives.

And, of course, we always have with us those girls who regard pregnancy as a convenient lasso with which to dragmen to the altar. In this connection, let us hear from another authority, Mrs. Sara B. Edlin, Director of the Lakeview Home for Girls in Staten Island, N. Y. She says: "It has been our observation that in the cases where the unintentional father has married the girl out of a sense of guilt or obligation, the result has been completely unsuccessful."

The man with a marshmallow conscience about seducing young females should also find balm for his scruples in Dr. Kinsey's finding that the girl who is "ruined" a little bit before marriage makes a better adjustment when she marries than the girl who goes to the altar without any breaking-in. So, in effect, he may be said to render a service to society.

Finally, no man should ever hesitate to proposition a lady for fear of offending her. If he knows anything at all about women, he should realize that his failure to make a pitch will be construed by her as an indication that she is about as desirable as a garbage truck. It you don't want to humiliate your female companion, be sure that she realizes she has a standing–or rather, lying–invitation, whenever she feels in a mood to run barefoot through the hair on your chest.

For removing the knocks of conscience in your engine, then, here are eight helpful lubricants to apply:

1. Remember that women get a bang out of sex, too.

2. In most cases when you think that you're seducing her, she's probably seducing you.

3. You usually aren't her first, and you almost certainly won't be her last.

4. She doesn't regret it in the least–so what are you hitting yourself over the head with a hammer for?

5. You may have made a non-virgin out of a virgin, but that alone can't make a bum out of an intrinsically nice girl.

6. She owes you thanks for getting things in working order, so that she'll perform a lot better when she marries.

7. If she becomes pregnant, she secretly wanted to in the first place.

8. It's poor grammar to end a sentence with a preposition, but it's poor manners not to end a date with a proposition.

If you still hate yourself in the morning, after all this reassurance, then you're just not cut out for the life.

And that, friend, is what turns bachelors into husbands.