Sex/Back to Nature

...divorced President, a conservative...

...On the whole, though, most of what has happened to sex in the last fifteen years strikes me as dreadful...

...People still " d o " it, but the details are subject to the sanctioned lies of those who do it too much or too little, and of the rest of mankind, too...

...and when we asked that we were not, like Freud, e x p r e s s i n g despair at our inability to understand women...

...In 1967, the movement's appeal was compelling to all men of good will...

...Much of t e l e v i s i o n ' s impact was inherent in the medium: Seeing the grim r e a l i t y of war every night in o n e ' s living room was bound to corrode the national spirit...

...English has become u n s e x e d . The l a n g u a g e ' s mysterious genius in assigning gender has become s u s p e c t as s e x i s t , though many of the finest t h i n g s - - including truth and most virtues-were always thought to be feminine...

...Saying that, I do not mean to deny that the movement was already growing, or even thriving, in 1967, but it was surely not the same as it is now...

...It also explains why the women's movement may begin by promoting sexual equality, but forever bends in the direction of assaulting sexuality as such...

...I t used to be the case, when the U.S...

...The c a n a r d of government deception persists nevertheless...

...Notwithstanding the ERA setback, the women's movement can j u s t l y take credit for breathtaking accomplishments in the last fifteen years...

...nature a b i d e s . What we r e a d in the Bible ( P r o v e r b s 30:19) of " t h e way of a man with a maid" remains perfectly intelligible to us, after all...

...The " f o r c e t h a t through the g r e e n fuse drives the f l o w e r " may be a c o n s t a n t , but nobody has ever denied t h a t the blossoms can vary tremendously in b e a u t y , in size, and in much e l s e . Nature not only means constancy but infinite v a r i e t y . Change, too, is natural...

...I t ' s hard to find ar~ answer because when one b e g i n s to study f e m i n i s t thought one is forever at the edge of incoherence...

...Fewer men want to be bold with women--all vestiges of courage are now conside r e d to be a form of d e s p i c a b l e machismo...

...it has become ever easier to charge people of good will with bad faith...

...It explains the movement's grim mood, the absence in it of humor, and of g r a t i t u d e for the world we inhabit...

...The extraordinary timidity about the use of our power, pounded deep into the American psyche by the Vietnam failure, Peter W. Rodman served on the National Security Council staff in the Nixon and Ford Administrations...

...It is as forthrightly sexual b e i n g s t h a t we are most n a t u r a l . When eros p o s s e s s e s us we do not care for d i f f e r e n c e s of race, of nationality, of social station...

...One segment of the s e r i e s was e n t i t l e d , "How We Can Win...

...The resentment of nature is the key to the women's movement...

...We all knew suburban housewives stuck with inferior husbands who no longer loved them...

...I abs t r a c t from c e r t a i n l o n g - r a n g e changes--the fact that females are menstruating at a younger age, for example--to c o n c e n t r a t e on what has happened since 1967...

...Surveying the lives of all my married friends, I discover that good m a r r i a g e s are more r a r e now than they were in 1967...

...And when one hears all the idiocies about sexual harassment one knows t h a t - - b u t that is a story for another time...

...By and large we have also become more humane when thinking about homosexuality, less thoughtlessly shocked by what seems strange to most of us...

...The charge of deceit soon spread from the war to foreign policy in general...

...I was not one of the admirers of that book, but I was surely among those who laughed at Portnoy's escapades in the bathroom and on the bus...

...The self-confident role of world l e a d e r s h i p t h a t America played as recently as the 1960s had suffered a body blow by the 1970S...

...In 1982, I hear women talk about v i b r a t o r s across the dinner table...

...The victories encourage arrogance, and anybody who doubts that there have been victories should look at changes in the English language between 1967 and 1982...

...In 1982 miniskirts were so ancient they were ready for a comeback...

...It is difficult to know the answer feminists would give...

...Nor were we n e c e s s a r i l y wrong, for the recent defeat of ERA is probably the temporary outcome of political ineptitude--including the d i s i n g e n u o u s n e s s , combined with s h e e r r u d e n e s s , of politicians like Bella Abzug...

...It is too useful: It conveniently allows many who supported the war in its early phase to disavow responsibility...

...we all knew underpaid women who worked for overpaid men...

...Rarely has a society undergone such a psychological transformation in such a brief time, short of wholesale political revolution, massive physical destruction, or overwhelming d e f e a t by a foreign enemy...

...One wondered about Rockef e l l e r ' s chances as a p r e s i d e n t i a l candidate...

...Being constantly attacked as a hidebound reactionary, I am happy to be able to approve of some of the c h a n g e s . In some r e s p e c t s our views of divorce have become more reasonable, or at least less tinged by repulsive moralism...

...The most o u t s t a n d i n g paradox of the l a s t f i f t e e n y e a r s is t h a t a movement professing to be interested in liberation has everywhere produced a new sexual c o n s t r a i n t . Fewer women now want to argue with men --bristling is the mode...

...America's world role and position went through something else: a domestic, i n t e l l e c t u a l uph e a v a l . The media played a major part in it: reflecting it, affected by it, and, undeniably, contributing to it...

...Are women "merely" equal to men or are they superior...

...This of course is the Vietnam trauma, which is very much still with us...

...I find that motherhood, which was once understood as a fulfillment for most women (never for all), is today understood as a chore by most...

...I ask again, for the question obviously encourages evasion and I would like to be able to answer that nothing has happened to it...

...All our speculations fail to transcend speculation, for when it comes to sex each of us speaks from a small corner of experience and a vast domain of brooding...

...The e r o t i c has always been connected (surprise) with procreation...

...Ronald Reagan cannot possibly share such an abjectly timid view of the American role in the world...

...It explains its alliance with the Left, which cannot be due to the way women are t r e a t e d in c o u n t r i e s calling themselves Marxist...

...We read, at about that time, chapters of Roth's forthcoming Portnoy "s Complaint...

...Conventions change...

...Today, a p p a r e n t l y , it is different...

...they did, however, contribute to how Americans t h o u g h t about Vietnam--and about their country...

...The Left said it should not m a t t e r and the Right muttered t h a t it should too m a t t e r . In 1982 we have our f i r s t Werner J. Dannhauser is a Fellow at the National Humanities Center...

...Today, the question more often than not has THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1982 29 become, "What does the women's movement want...

...a t no moment, as the commitment was made, were the American p r e s s or the American people in the dark about what was being done...

...That is why it puts all its eggs into the rickety basket called "socialization," and does its best to deny that one can socialize with the grain or against it...

...The erotic is everywhere in trouble...

...What then has changed...

...The Pentagon compiler of the Pentagon Papers, Leslie Gelb, points out in his own book about the war that the decision was not made until early 1965...

...That is probably because feminists never seem to know whether to argue t h a t women are exactly like men, so that all attempts to point out differences are sexist, or t h a t women are so completely diff e r e n t t h a t all a t t e m p t s to think of common humanity have to be opposed as a s e x i s t plot...

...Alas, a p p e a l s to n a t u r e and God are also evasions...

...In 1967, divorce was still a political issue...

...How far we have come since then...

...Witness "The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam D e c e p t i o n , " CBS's January 1982 hatchet job on General William Westmoreland for 30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1982...

...Distinguished foreign correspondent Robert Elegant gave i m p o r t a n t evidence in Encounter (August 1981) of the s u b t l e and n o t - s o - s u b t l e b i a s e s of many of his former colleagues in the Saigon press corps...

...the way of a hip in the midst of the sea...

...But one can blame a hostile environment only so long...

...took the form, in some quarters, of a belief in the immorality of the use of our power...

...and the way of a man with a maid...

...the way of a serpent upon a rock...

...Can t h i s o n s l a u g h t on n a t u r e succeed...

...Everywhere I look I see them weary and wary of their sexuality and its results...

...They still laugh, but not very nervously...

...Within a few years, CBS had become a consistent and powerful opponent of the war...

...presumably he was making an accurate judgment of the congressional and public mood...

...During that period, to be sure, it also lost the good will of many men and women of good will, but that was just fine with the movement's vanguard...

...Nevertheless it can no longer be doubted that, for many of the major national media, faithful reportage soon turned into advocacy...

...We accepted them as wondrously strange and tried to please them, to win their approval...

...It was still strange, then, that a famous s t a r should "show a l l " ; today it is commonplace...

...The New York Times, in its June 1971 expos~ of the "Pentagon P a p e r s , " f o s t e r e d the notion that massive deception was involved in the way we got into Vietnam...

...I have, so I will stop c a t a l o g u i n g changes and try to evaluate them...

...The question used to be, "What does woman want...

...It simply doesn't seem to be as much fun to be a man now as it used to be, though some men delude themselves into thinking that women's liberation has brought about their own liberation as well...

...Women's liberat i o n - t h a t , of course, is the main part of the answer...

...we just want to do what comes naturally...

...I do not know, but signs abound to the effect that nature has been wounded, that in 1982 sex isn't what it was in 1967...

...Today, as the horrors of Communist rule in Indochina have prompted a healthy revisionist literature shedding new light on the moral case for the American effort there, the theme of government deception seems ironically to be taking on special importance as the last refuge of those s t r u g g l i n g to salvage the antiwar position...

...Marines landed somewhere, that the other guys were supposed to be scared...

...Henry Fairlie wrote a corrective piece in the Washington Monthly in May 1973, showing t h a t it was all nonsense: Every step taken into Vietnam was public knowledge...

...one has to be on guard...

...That sounds stupid but it may nevertheless be so...

...To talk of sex is to talk of the erotic and to talk of the erotic is to talk of the n a t u r a l and n a t u r e i s what remains everywhere and always the same...

...In 1967, talk of masturbation was still risquE...

...I t is hard to believe, but true, that in the l a t e summer of 1965 CBS television ran a four-part series on the Vietnam war, s u p p o r t i n g the Johnson Administration...

...When the President first dispatched the Marines to Beirut in August 1982, he was obliged to give the Congress and the public effusive reassurances that the Marines would come running home to mommy instantly if so much as a firecracker went off in Beirut...

...Privacy still shrouds the s u b j e c t , Heaven be praised, so sex remains to some extent inaccessible to our lust for data...

...One of the f i r s t to document this was Peter Braestrup in his Big Story, an exhaustive analysis of How the American p r e s s and television helped to turn the Tet offensive of 1968 from a Viet Cong military s e t b a c k into a crushing American political defeat...

...When, t h e r e f o r e , the Senate began h e a r i n g s on ERA in 1970, many of us thought that the amendment was p a r t of the wave of the future, regardless of our reservations about it...

...sooner or later one begins to rail against the way things a r e - - n e v e r mind t h a t n a t u r e may have graced women in very special ways...

...It was a nervous laughter, prompted in part by Roth's public talk about what was thought to be private...

...he was divorced...

...In 1967, people still remembered Hedy Lamarr's nudity in Ecstasy...

...One of its h e a d l i n e s charged that the Johnson Administration had already decided to launch the bombing campaign over North Vietnam at a time when LBJ was telling American voters before the 1964 election that he would not send American boys to fight in Asian wars...

...A kind of moral grandeur still informed much of the talk about improving woman's lot...

...I do hope she prevails, defended by both men and women who find it natural to assist n a t u r e . I hope the day will r e t u r n when we can once more c e l e b r a t e sexuality as gloriously as did the writer of the Proverb from which I have already quoted: There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: the way of an eagle in the air...

...But one cannot a r g u e t h a t disagreements about the " b i g " questions attest to the vitality of feminist thought, for in one momentous r e s p e c t all f e m i n i s t s a g r e e . The whole movement distrusts nature...

...What has happened to sex in the last fifteen years...

...In 1967, miniskirts were starting to appear and my friends and I leered in happy disbelief...

...Had enough...

...Compounding my own ignorance is the fact that I have aged about ten y e a r s during the past f i f t e e n , a f a t e t h a t may skew my views...

...It became a key weapon in the counterculture assault on the legitimacy of all American institutions, in keeping with I . F . S t o n e ' s dictum: "Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed...

...Pregnancy is once more fashionable, to be sure, but one is careful to involve males in the chores, the burdens, the agonies.-As far as I can see, the males do not protest much...

...I hope t h a t nature proves as resilient as she is supposed to be...

...What has happened to sex in the last fifteen years...

...Martin F. Herz did the same with his study of The Prestige Press and the Christmas Bombing, 1972, showing how the media's bitter hostility distorted coverage of the nature and impact of the December 1972 bombing around Hanoi and Haiphong...

...The changes in language both r e f l e c t changes in r e a l i t i e s and produce t h e m . Thus today one can hardly talk of being "manly" with a s t r a i g h t face, and more and more men are a f r a i d to be t h a t . One watches one's step all the time...

...The media did not invent the war or our d i f f i c u l t i e s in it...

...The only good thing one can say for the spread of Herpes II is t h a t it may be n a t u r e ' s way of fighting a g a i n s t the a t t e m p t to divorce sex from risk...