SEXIS WRONG

ates that seemed to be unending, required three full weeks to
complete. Then it took another month to correlate and evaluate
those studies and come up with The Lost Chord…the ultimate
answer to the ultimate question…What turns me on
and keeps me going the best and why?
The test subjects were divided into groups of twenty by age,
with males and females included in the same group, and each
group repeated the same tests at different times. As I remember—and
I was only an onlooker, not a participant (forty years
ago)—the tests themselves were divided into three categories:
written pornography, hardcore photographs, and live-action
sex films. The test subjects in each group were all given
copies of the same books and sent home to read them in private.
In the classroom, as a group, the subjects were given hardcore
photographs to examine and pass on to the next person. And,
in the classroom again, using borrowed projection equipment,
the subjects watched a number of hardcore sex films.
After each of these three tests, the subjects wrote their reactions
on a special form listing the things that most turned
them on about that test and the things that most turned them
off. In many cases, the latter was much more informative
than the former.
Finally, back in the classroom as a group, the subjects analyzed
each other’s written test reactions and discussed them
considerably. That was a phenomenal time because the subjects
didn’t hold back a thing; they were all vocally expressing
in public their most secret, personal, sexual reactions to the
various test materials. While that was going on, the staff, on
their individual score cards, was making a lot of those little
code marks dance around.
best friend for over a decade. For years after that we managed
to hang on to each other before we evaporated from
each other’s existence.
Wish he was here, setting all of us straight about everything.
Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography is due
to the indecent feelings concerning sex which
moralists inculcate in the young; the other tenth is
physiological, and will occur in one way or another
whatever the state of the law may be.
—Bertrand Russell, “The Taboo on Sex Knowledge,”
Marriage and Morals, 1929
Only the center 90% of the study conducted by Dr. Gilmore
counted. The other 10%, containing all the extremes, the
nut cases, the deliberate differents, was routinely discarded.
What we had left, in terms of demographics, was our baseline
market area. A full 90% of the test group, equally divided
among males and females, among age and background characteristics,
all responded in exactly the same manner to exactly
the same degree.
There is a difference in the way males and females perceive
certain aspects of pornography, but the response to the same
stimuli is still almost identical. Females are noticeably more
sensual than males and tend to want to dwell on that and the
more sentimental aspects of intimate relationships. Males
don’t require anywhere near the same amount of attention as
do the females, however good it feels while it’s going on.
I recall one test subject, a slightly repressed middle-aged
housewife, who kept insisting that the aggressive female
types should be allowed to be a bit more aggressive and
dominant in the books and magazines. I’m on top! Now it’s
my turn. I’m going to show you how to use that—oh, nice—
cock, Studbuns....
Greenleaf Classics was an equal-opportunity
masturbatory aid provider. A female reader of
our books or magazines was as entitled to her vibrating dildo
and heavy-duty batteries as a male reader was to his conveniently
placed bottle of hand lotion and box of soft, absorbent
facial tissue.
In almost every respect, the results of those tests and interviews
conducted by Dr. Gilmore proved to be as he had predicted
they would be before the studies began. Damn him!
He was always doing that, being right and much too right
most of the time. Otherwise, he could never have been my
With 90% of the population backing up the data, exactly what
is it that Mr. (and let’s not forget Miss, Mrs., and even Ms.)
Averageman needs to have included in his pornography to
best serve his individual requirements, however pressing and
however often and thoroughly served?
“Built like a brick shithouse” served
well enough.
The reconciled data from the test groups concluded that Mr.
Averageman wanted to read about himself when he read
a book. Then, when he looked at a magazine or watched a
porno film, he wanted to see himself in action. Only, he had
a very highly idealized image of how he looked…much better
than in reality. Not a one of the test subjects saw themselves
or thought of themselves as being overweight, out of shape,
sedentary, or just sitting there with the book open to the right
passage and whomping down the homestretch.
BEAT OFF 101 235