In our previous post David Allyn identified extraordinary conservatism and little science in the medical profession’s approach to sex (such that ‘sexually assertive’ women were blamed for male impotence!). Today we explore this theme even further, with another extract from his 2000 book Make Love not War, The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History Little,Brown and Company, New York:
The intellectual disarray of the medical establishment regarding sex, typified by the work of George Ginsberg, paved the way for one of the most inaccurate and misleading “sex education” books of all time, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. . . But Were Afraid to Ask. It was also the hottest book of 1970 . . . . Copies of the book were so hard to come by, one branch of the New York Public Library had a 39 person waiting list for Reuben’s book. . . . The book’s author, a New York psychiatrist, named Dr David Reuben, attained instant celebrity status. . . With his nerdy glasses and sheepish can-you-believe-I’m-telling-you-this smile. . . . He was the self-styled Robespierre of the sexual revolution, supposedly charging forward with brutal honesty where others feared to tread.
But Reuben’s collection of unscientific claims and recycled myths was like Robespierre’s guillotine, far more dangerous than anyone at first imagined. It was replete with the very sort of misinformation Alfred Kinsey and Masters and Johnson had worked hard to discredit. “It won’t be long,” Reuben pronounced without citing any supporting evidence, “before almost everyone in the United States has venereal disease.” Manufacturing statistics out of whole cloth, Reuben claimed that 80 percent of Americans engaged in oral sex. In a section on birth control, he recommended douching with Coca Cola:
Long a favourite soft drink, it is, coincidentally, the best douche available. A coke contains carbonic acid which kills the sperem and sugar which explodes the sperm cells. The carbonation force it into the vagina under pressure and helps penetrate every tiny crevice of vaginal lining. It is inexpensive (ten cents per application), universally available, and comes in a dispensable applicator.
Reuben failed to mention that such a procedure could cause salpingitis, peritonitis, or fatal gas embolism.
Reuben devoted many pages to “explaining” homosexuality, presenting his opinions on the subject as statements of fact. “One penis plus one penis equals nothing,” he wrote. “There is no substitute for hetero-sex – penis and vagina.” . . .
The book was packed with factual errors. “Cancer of the penis occurs only among uncircumcised men,” Reuben wrote, a statement that is simply untrue. “Erection of the nipples always follows orgasm in the female,” he alleged. “In spite of heaving hips, lunging pelvis, passionate groans – no nipple erection, no orgasm. It is an accurate mammary lie detector – for those who insist on the truth.” Reuben, unfortunately, insisted on anything but the truth. Gore Vidal denounced Reuben in the New york Review of Books, pointing out the utterly unscientific nature of his claims. But who was going to listen to Gore Vidal, as self-identified bisexual novelist, over a well known doctor? Even Screw, the raunchy New York newspaper called Everything You Always Wanted to Know “the most insane book in the history of psychiatric theory.”
When challenged on the validity of his statements, Reuben was unshakeably smug. “In psychiatry everyone is entitled to his own opinions based on his own experience.” No matter how shoddy his science Reuben was embraced by fellow doctors as the official spokesman on sex in the seventies. At the University of Pennsylvania, for instance, Everything You Always Wanted to Know was assigned to students taking a course sponsored by none other than the school’s Sexual Counseling Service. . . .
How could Americans in 1970 – some twenty years after the first Kinsey Report – swallow Reuben’s fallacies and outright lies? Why didn’t the medical establishment tear him down and emend the honour of the profession? The is no simple answer to this last question, but when it came to sex, physicians frequently sacrificed scientific objectivity for moralism and superstition.