The Playboy Forum

School Prayers

Apropos The Playboy Philosophy and your stand for freedom of and from religion, have you seen the propaganda for Senator Dirksen's prayer amendment? In the booklet, a presumably perplexed and prayer-starved juvenile is made to say: "Mommy, why don't they let us pray anymore?" The assumption is that Junior is pining to pray but that his day is devoid of devotional opportunities. Properly pious parents, it seems to me, can see to it that Junior begins and ends his day with prayer, not to mention providing numerous other opportunities to supplicate the heavenly forces—such as home meals, Sunday school, Christian Endeavor, Youth for Christ and the Y.M.C.A.

However, should the normal occasions for worship be inadequate from the standpoint of the abnormally devout child, a ready remedy lies near at hand. Let Mommy turn off the television for an hour every evening, thus giving the youngster an additional opportunity to get down on his knees.

William H. Fink, Professor of Economics, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

The Voyeur Syndrome

The March Playboy Forum contains the tormented confession of an anonymous Peeping Tom. As a professional psychologist, I would like to offer several comments on this remarkable human document.

Some readers, recognizing their affinity with the voyeur who wrote the letter, will wonder about their own normality. Such fears are groundless. There is a certain amount of voyeurism in all of us: What man will not stop and look, if he sees a woman undressing before a lighted window? But few of us would go up to the window for a better look, risking arrest and disgrace. Only those, such as your letter writer, whose voyeuristic tendencies are so strong as to overpower the natural fear of punishment can be called seriously disturbed.

The irony is that a man who looks at a woman undressing is arrested as a Peeping Tom, but if a woman looks at a man undressing, he is likely to be arrested for exhibitionism.

I suspect that the answer to voyeurism lies in parents' allowing their children to see one another undressed, as a matter of course, with no fuss about it. Obsessive curiosity would be unlikely to arise in such a matter-of-fact atmosphere.

W. Edgar Gregory, Professor of Psychology, University of the Pacific, Stockton, California

Death for Rape

A "humanitarian and nonbeliever in capital punishment," Thomas Rogers wonders if the teenaged girl who requested the death penalty for her rapists will be able to sleep nights after they are executed (The Playboy Forum, April). If she isn't, it won't be the result of remorse. It will be because of nightmares resulting from her experience.

In our present society, with sex readily available to almost anyone who has the ability to seek it, there is no justification for rape and no possibility of sympathy for rapists. Rape may not be "the most serious crime there is," but neither should it be classified with robbing the penny gum machine at the local drugstore.

William T. Gardner, Cairo, Georgia

I agree with Thomas Rogers, who claims that death is a disproportionate punishment for rape. Apparently, so does Georgia Governor Lester Maddox. He has issued a stay of execution for a condemned rapist in his state and intends to ask for a referendum on capital punishment. According to newspaper reports, Maddox was influenced in his decision by two women. One was the mother of the rapist's teenage victim, who asked for clemency. The other was the governor's wife, who also thinks the death penalty is too severe a punishment for rape.

Janet Martin, Albany, New York

Thomas Rogers objects to the death penalty on humanitarian grounds. I object to it on pragmatic grounds. I would like to live in a peaceful community, and no sociological study has ever produced a single shred of scientific evidence to show that the threat of capital punishment has a deterrent effect on criminals.

As Hans W. Mattick has written: "The society or community that maintains capital punishment and believes in its efficacy as a deterrent to homicide may best be compared to a primitive and superstitious tribe of savages who credulously engage in a rain dance to produce the rain they need and desire. Their beliefs are erroneous, their activity is irrelevant and, when the rains come, they are results of entirely different causes than those the savages thought important." To have a sane society, a safe society, a society without continuous violence, we should give up this discredited superstition of capital punishment and begin looking scientifically for methods that will actually lower the crime rate. It is time we stopped kidding ourselves that druid human sacrifices and Babylonian blood offerings are going to solve our real problems.

Samuel Schwartz, Los Angeles, California

Rape, by definition, is an act of force, and the only rational justification for the use of force is in retaliation to force, to protect individual rights. Tell me, Mr. Rogers, just what act of force did this young lady commit to justify the act of rape? None. Her reaction to the situation—"I want them to die"—is rational and logical: force in retaliation to force.

You asked about the "rights" of these three young men. What rights? These men surrendered any claim to their rights by the act of rape.

M. Cordell Furze, Pierre, South Dakota

The April Playboy Forum carried a letter from Thomas Rogers chastising a teenaged girl who reputedly requested the death penalty for her three rapists and "got her wish."

I would like to reply to Mr. Rogers' letter by saying that this girl, my sister, did not say, "They should be fully punished for what they did. I want them to die." This was a journalistic fabrication; the remark was not made by her. I was in the courtroom when she was on the witness stand for three solid hours. During cross-examination by the defense attorney, she was harassed by his repeatedly asking if it were not true that she wanted to see the boys die. Her reply was simply that they should be fully punished for what they did. At one point, when the defense attorney again asked his repetitious question, she replied, "If that is what the law is."

Neither myself nor my family nor even my sister is in favor of capital punishment. If Mr. Rogers is the humanitarian he claims to be, how can he in all honesty say, "I wonder if this girl will be able to sleep nights after these boys are buried"? She cannot sleep nights and has not been able to since they raped her. I submit that she has been punished just as much as they have been or will be, and for what? For walking clown a street? Where is justice for her? Believe me, it does not lie in the burial of these three boys.

Barbara B. Stanton, North Miami Beach, Florida

"There's a hard law," South African novelist Alan Paton has written, "that when a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive." Most people hear of this law only in a religious context, which makes it seem a "Sunday truth" that no sane man would dream of applying to daily life; nevertheless, it is profoundly accurate, psychologically. Perhaps only the modern investigators of brain chemistry could explain it. When we harbor hatred and thoughts of revenge, we unleash poison throughout our bodies and embitter all subsequent experiences, from the taste of our bread to the sight of the stars. I recall the father (told of in Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen's Pornography and the Law) who, after the rape and murder of his little girl, wrote a letter to the press asking psychiatric treatment rather than punishment for the killer. Admitting that his first thought after learning of the murder of "the most precious thing" in his life was a desire for bloody revenge, this father went on to ask the community to rise above such a reaction as he had risen above it: "Let no feelings of caveman vengeance influence us. Let us rather help him who did so human a thing."

This father rose above a terrible tragedy, instead of being conquered by it. One requires no sainthood or supernatural vision to emulate him. One need only understand that hatred makes us sick and should be cast away, while mercy heals us and should be held onto even when we suffer—or especially when we suffer. By contrast, the girl in the Florida rape case is preventing her own healing and perpetuating her wound by rubbing it with the abrasive of hatred. As a Christian, I will pray for her; but I will also pray for the three boys who were made sexually sick by our society and who are now about to be killed for their sickness.

George Bauer, New York, New York

The reason the three Fort Lauderdale rapists are going to die, as people familiar with this case know, is that they are Negroes who raped a white woman, not that the victim asked for the death penalty.

The Florida Civil Liberties Union recently analyzed the cases of 132 white men convicted of rape and 152 Negroes convicted of the same crime. The FCLU found that, of the 132 convicted whites, only six were sentenced to death and only one was actually executed—a homosexual who had raped a child. But, of the 152 convicted Negroes, 45 were sentenced to death and 29 were executed.

Gerald Ross, Miami, Florida

High Cost of Loving

I would like to comment on the letter from a New Orleans prostitute in the April Playboy Forum. First of all, it's gratifying to have confirmation from someone in "the life" that the picture of prostitution that I presented in The High Cost of Loving is an accurate one. Secondly, I would like to point out that one of the final lines of her letter summarizes in a singular way what the book is all about. "Neither imprisonment nor Government control," she writes, "is acceptable to us as individual human beings."

But it's precisely as individual human beings that prostitutes are not acceptable to the rest of society. To their customers they are a faceless commodity; to the social engineer, a "problem"—something that has to be removed from the streets before daylight, like garbage or a heavy snowfall. Prostitutes are invariably thought of in the plural. They are never consulted on their fate. As a result, they have fallen prey through the centuries to sweeping, "grandstand" solutions that raise a lot of dust but solve nothing.

Prostitutes were the first victims of urban "removal," society's favorite way of dealing with inconvenient minorities. They were driven out of the temples (Babylon), into the streets (ancient Greece), into the suburbs (Rome), into bathhouses (in the Middle Ages), into coffeehouses (during the Reformation), into special houses (in the 19th Century), back into the streets (in the early part of this century) and, finally, with the advent of the telephone, they have been tucked away into individual apartments. But none of this frenzied trafficking has depleted their ranks even slightly.

Why do we go on with the charade? Why don't we go instead to the prostitutes themselves, as we are now beginning to go to the poor, and ask them, individually, as fellow human beings, "What do you think should be done?"

Lewis J. Baker, Ph. D., New York, New York

Coeds and Callgirls

The recent Playboy Forum discussion of wives and whores is applicable to unmarried students. Our form of it could be called "coeds and callgirls." On any large campus in the nation, the pay-for-play principle is adhered to continuously. A fraternity man meets a coed whose looks he likes and he decides to get his hands on her. How does he do it? He buys her—with entertainment, meals and drinks, homework assists and other goods and services. Now, what is the coed doing during all this? She is taking all she can get.

How many men would repeatedly ask for dates if there were no hope of physical contact with the woman? How many women would repeatedly accept dates if no money were to be spent by the man? Is there any more difference between coeds and callgirls than there is between wives and whores?

G. Stanley Brown, Austin, Texas

Love from a Stranger

In the April Playboy Forum, Jeorge Mejeas claims that all married men desire women other than their wives. Some women have an equally wandering eye and should be allowed to roam just as much. This was brought home to me by the experiences of my sister. For years, I had known that she was regularly unfaithful to her husband, but last year I discovered that this had been with her husband's consent. Any extramarital sex she has, though, is always with strangers. Every two or three months she goes to a motel bar, picks up a man who attracts her and, after drinks and conversation, they end up in bed together.

When she told me of this it seemed utterly sickening, and I refused to accompany her the first time she invited me. She and my brother-in-law later persuaded me to change my mind. I went along with her on two or three of her flings and, finally, with my husband's consent, also picked up a partner for the night. In the past year I have had, with my husband's consent, four attractive strangers whom I will never see again. As a result, I feel more womanly. I have proved that I am still attractive to other men. I no longer feel tense and frustrated from being cooped up. My sexual relations with my husband, which have always been good, have improved, and my love for him and for my children has increased. I appreciate family life more because of these breaks from it. An idea that was once vulgar and repulsive to me is now acceptable, and I am totally content with my new freedom.

(Name withheld by request), Allentown, Pennsylvania

We don't think the solution to marital monotony described in this letter would work in a majority of cases, but the experience of these couples is an excellent illustration of the fact that each marriage is a unique relationship between two unique individuals.

Curing Frigidity

I sympathize with the writer of the "Frigidity and Adultery" letter in the February Playboy Forum, but also with his frigid wife. With pain during intercourse among her symptoms, I trust that she has had a complete medical and gynecological examination and that the couple has seen a marriage counselor. We know (continued on page 133)Playboy Forum(continued from page 46) so much more in this field than we did a few years ago. The frigid wife is an unfortunate woman who needs help. Her husband should see that she gets the necessary treatment, instead of merely complaining about his lot.

Myra A. Josephs, Ph.D., San Juan, Puerto Rico

I was disturbed by the letter from the man in Kansas with a frigid wife (The Playboy Forum, February). As a wife myself, and a registered nurse, I would like to tell this couple: Run, don't walk, to the nearest gynecologist. Any woman who has remained frigid after six years of marriage, and who states that the only sensation she experiences in intercourse is pain, is in desperate need of medical attention. A good gynecologist could quickly determine whether the wife needs a small operation, hormone treatments or any of several successful medical therapies for this condition.

The important point is that medical attention is the first approach to curing frigidity. Americans have been so hypnotized by the popularity of parlor psychoanalysis that they tend to believe that frigidity is always a psychological problem, which requires years of expensive "depth analysis" and which may never be cured. In fact, this condition often yields to quick and inexpensive medical treatment.

(Name withheld by request), Grand Rapids, Michigan

Dr. Sophia Kleegman, of the New York University Medical Center's Department of Gynecology, has reported that 85 percent of women who feel pain during intercourse suffer from "adverse anatomic local conditions." We agree, as would any competent psychiatrist, that a thorough medical examination should precede psychiatric treatment, to establish whether a disorder has a physical cause.

But Dr. Kleegman's estimate of 85 percent applies only when there is pain during intercourse. Frigidity unaccompanied by pain does not "often" yield to medical treatment, as you assert. In "The Power of Sexual Surrender," Dr. Marie N. Robinson addresses the frigid woman as follows: "Frigidity is, in the vast majority of cases, essentially a psychological problem. The only way it can be approached with any hope of resolving it is through the mind, by understanding it. Anybody who tells you differently is, to put it plainly and simply, wrong."

High School Girls and the Pill

The noted and very opinionated Dr. Margaret Mead recently participated in a three-day public forum in San Francisco and had some outspoken views on teenagers and the pill.

"We've got to be prepared to give contraceptives to high school girls," she declared. She believes this to be necessary even if the use leads to sexual promiscuity, because "it is far more desirable than pregnancy ... and it is better than illegitimacy, abortions and, as important, unhappy marriages."

Does Playboy agree with Dr. Mead?

H. Kligerman, San Francisco, California

Yes.

Morning-After Pill

There has been a lot of talk about the Sexual Revolution. According to anthropologist Melvin Perlman, who spoke at Berkeley a short while ago, the present revolution is nothing compared with the one that will follow the latest development in contraceptives—the morning-after pill. This, he explained, will mean that girls can safely say yes, without having to feel that their assent was premeditated. This will eliminate the guilt many now feel about taking the pill before they are sure it will be needed.

What a relief it will be when there's a medication that does not offend the female's sensibility but safeguards her security.

Stan Goldberg, San Francisco, California

Catholics and Contraception

Regarding the letters on the rhythm method of birth control (The Playboy Forum, April): The real tragedy of this method is that, after such enormous sacrifices and sufferings, a couple still cannot be reasonably sure of success. You pointed out that the Planned Parenthood Federation says that the rhythm method is only 65 percent to 80 percent effective, but, actually, if a woman's cycle is less than a perfect average, effectiveness can be much lower than that.

Paula Levine, Brooklyn, New York

Yes. And we also pointed out that a recent sociological survey established that "Catholic wives complying with the Church's ban on contraceptives had declined from 70 percent in 1955 to 62 percent in 1960 and 47 percent last year." Since this report was published, a survey by Newsweek indicates additional disaffection among Catholics regarding the rhythm method:

Nothing about their Church troubles American Catholics more than its opposition to artificial methods of birth control. Catholics, and young married couples in particular, regard the ban as by far the most difficult of the Church's teachings to live up to—and many have given up trying. Large numbers are impatiently waiting for the Church to relax its injunction against birth-control pills and devices.

Fully 73 percent of those interviewed in the Newsweek survey want a change in the birth-control regulations. But even more dramatic is the overwhelming sentiment for reform among college graduates (84 percent for change) and among those who are under 35 and consequently bearing most of the children (89 percent want change) ...

At present, the Vatican sanctions only two forms of birth control—total abstinence from sexual intercourse and restricting intercourse to times when the woman cannot conceive—the rhythm method. Not surprisingly, most Catholics reject total abstinence as a solution ...

Not many Catholics find the rhythm method satisfactory either. Only 18 percent of those interviewed thought rhythm was effective as much as 75 percent of the time, while more than half said it had failed for them personally.

Catholics and Abortion

Recently, the Stanford chapter of the California Committee to Legalize Abortion conducted a poll of students to find out attitudes on abortion. The overwhelming majority were liberal: 72 percent of those polled were in favor of allowing women to have abortions during the first three months of pregnancy. The Catholic students were almost as liberal: 50 percent were in favor of such abortions. The official Church policy is clearly way out of line with the thinking of its younger members.

Kathleen Phillips, Stanford, California

Praise from Purdue

I have just finished reading all four booklet reprints of The Playboy Philosophy and found it refreshing and stimulating. I have often quoted Hefner in my marriage course and have used many of his insights in my counseling with students.

H. Richard Rasmusson, Director, All-Student Church, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana

Theological Forum

I am encouraged to see that your influential publication is printing discussions of theology. Theology has too long been a stuffy and abstract study pursued in ivory towers. To bring it into the secular world is to put it where it belongs. A religious orientation is of great importance to secular man.

Peter M. Holdorf, Assistant Chaplain, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York

The Need for Dialog

In the April Playboy Forum, a reader quoted a misleading newspaper article that referred to me as the "Playboy Priest." I regret the appellation, which smacks of journalistic cleverness. More important, the article, if misread or misinterpreted, could imply that I have wholeheartedly set my seal of approval on The Playboy Philosophy. The article gives my reasons for being concerned with Playboy, but it does not give my many reservations.

In the lecture from which the quotations were taken, I drew a sharp contrast between Hefner and psychologist Erich Fromm. The reporter omitted this from his story. I believe that both Hefner and Fromm bring up vital issues in modern American society. Fromm's solutions to the problems of love and sex, however, seem more realistic to me than do Hefner's—if I understand the latter correctly.

I do thank Hefner for his stark frankness, his ability to raise relevant questions and his concern for the "real" as it exists. Although I cannot agree with many of his ideas, I recognize him as a man who speaks to an estimated 14,000,000 people a month. This is a significant fact.

May both of us keep in mind the penetrating words of the late Albert Camus: "The world needs real dialog ... falsehood is just as much the opposite of dialog as silence ... the only possible dialog is the kind between people who remain what they are and speak their minds."

Father Augustine Wilhelmy, Passionist Fathers, Warrenton, Missouri

Judaic Reconstructionism

Harvey Cox' stimulating article Revolt in the Church (Playboy, January) is written in the fearless style we have come to expect of him. It may interest your readers to know that the rethinking and innovation going on in the Christian church has its counterpart in Judaism in a movement called Reconstructionism. By the death-of-God movement—and by the way the mass media have taken this movement up—modern man has shown that he has learned a great deal in recent years. What a man does today—not what he believes or claims to believe—is the acid test of authentic religion. This is one of the most wonderful things that have happened in church and synagogue for centuries. God calls man to a new and hitherto undreamed-of religious maturity.

Rabbi Alan W. Miller, New York, New York

An article dealing with "Judaism and the Death of God," by Rabbi Richard L. Rubenstein, chaplain to Jewish students at the University of Pittsburgh, appears elsewhere in this issue.

Playmates in Black and White

Ayn Rand, in her letter in the April Playboy Forum, says the artistic "interpretations" of the Playmate that you published in January "symbolize the exact opposite" of what the Playmate is supposed to stand for; i.e., the idea "that sex should be regarded as a proper, innocent, inspiring part of [man's] life." Apparently, when she looked at the works of art you published, they didn't say, to her, what she thought they should say. So she decided they must be saying "the exact opposite." Miss Rand delights in using terms such as "contradiction" and "exact opposite," because they fit in with her either/or approach to the universe. She sees everything in black and white. What she doesn't understand is that a good interpretation, which is an explanation or expression of something, brings out shades and colors. An interpretation can be a complex, subtle, original statement not reducible to simple terms. A work of art that limited itself to saying "sex is good" or "sex is bad" would probably be rather oversimple and unsatisfying—like one of Miss Rand's novels.

Lee Rubini, New York, New York

Hefner Day

Dr. Ira Reiss, author of Premarital Sexual Standards in America, recently pointed out on television a major virtue of the revolution in sexual attitudes that Playboy exemplifies. As a result, he explained, of the increasingly open discussion of sex and sexual problems, the psychological cost of violating sexual abstinence has decreased. The sales of Playboy, he said, prove the extent to which people today accept Hefner's ideas. He forecasts even greater strides forward and predicted that in the next 10 or 20 years, America would hold the same sexual attitudes as Sweden does today.

When that time comes, I suggest that a national annual holiday be declared in honor of Hefner and his leadership in this movement toward enlightenment.

Don Bradley, Scranton, Pennsylvania

Looking for Answers

I was deeply impressed with sociologist William Liu's letter ("The Mystery of Sex," The Playboy Forum, May). Professor Liu's confession of ignorance is a profound statement of the attitude of the true scientist and reminds me of a revealing anecdote about the late Alfred Kinsey, as told by Wardell Pomeroy in An Analysis of Human Sexual Response. A psychologist, who had applied for a position as interviewer, was turned down by Dr. Kinsey with the words, "You don't really want to do sex research."

"But I do," the psychologist insisted.

"Well, look at your attitudes," said Kinsey. "You say masturbation is immature, premarital intercourse and extramarital intercourse harmful to marriage, homosexuality abnormal and animal contacts ludicrous. You already know all the answers, so why waste time on research?"

It is this kind of willingness to look for answers, instead of claiming that the answers have already been found, that makes The Playboy Philosophy so valuable. Keep up the good work.

Mark Sanders, New York, New York

Are Homosexuals Psychopathic?

In August 1965, I entered the United States as an immigrant. I am a homosexual and was a little perturbed at the rumors I had heard of the absurd American prejudice against homosexuality, but I knew that in Illinois (my destination), homosexual acts in private between consenting adults were not illegal. I assumed, therefore, that the state was, as far as Western civilizations go, quite far advanced. I signed the usual immigration forms, stating that I had never been arrested, did not intend to overthrow the Government or break the law, etc., all truthfully. A month after my arrival, however, the statutes governing immigration were changed to bar sexual deviates from being admitted.

Now I notice that the Immigration Service is attempting to deport a Canadian homosexual, who entered the country before September 1965. on the grounds that a 1952 law excludes anyone with a "psychopathic personality." Apparently, the Service argues that a homosexual is automatically psychopathic. I have never so considered myself, nor to my knowledge have any of the people with whom I have ever been in contact. Living in Illinois, I am breaking no laws, and the work I am doing here is both good and useful. Yet, under this ruling, I could be deported as "undesirable."

Congress undoubtedly has the right to exclude whomever it pleases from the United States, but by labeling homosexuals psychopathic, it reflects also on the millions of American homosexuals born and bred in this "land of the free" and on many celebrated American personalities. One wonders how long it will be before all nonconformists are labeled "psychopathic" by definition.

(Name withheld by request), Chicago, Illinois

In the case of the Canadian immigrant, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the Immigration Service's ruling, and the case now awaits a Supreme Court decision. Hopefully, the high court will pay heed to Judge Leonard Moore's enlightened dissent from the appeals court's opinion:

I cannot impute to Congress an intention that the term "psychopathic personality" in the 1952 amendments of the Immigration and Nationality Act be construed to cover anyone who had ever had a homosexual experience. Professor Kinsey estimated that "at least 37 percent" of the American male population has at least one homosexual experience, defined in terms of physical contact to the point of orgasm, between the beginning of adolescence and old age. Earlier estimates had ranged from one percent to 100 percent. The sponsors of Britain's current reform bill on homosexuality have indicated that one male in 25 is a homosexual in Britain. To label a group so large "excludable aliens" would be tantamount to saying that Sappho, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, André Gide and, perhaps, even Shakespeare, were they to come to life again, would be deemed unfit to visit our shores. Indeed, so broad a definition might well comprise more than a few members of legislative bodies.

"The Playboy Forum" offers the opportunity for an extended dialog between readers and editors of this publication on subjects and issues raised in Hugh M. Hefner's continuing editorial series, "The Playboy Philosophy." Four booklet reprints of "The Playboy Philosophy," including installments 1–7, 8–12, 13–18 and 19–22, are available at 50¢ per booklet. Address all correspondence on both "Philosophy" and "Forum" to: The Playboy Forum, Playboy Building, 919 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Illinois 60611.