Varieties of Sex:
FITCH, ROBERT E.
Varieties of Sex Love In Action. By Fernando Henriques. Button. 432 pp. $5.95. Reviewed by Robert E. Fitch Author, "The Decline and Fall of Sex"; Dean, Pacific School of Religion Now at last...
...Indeed a very large number of them pays respect to that breast fetishism which is said to be peculiar to our society...
...There are only two questions which will trouble the layman...
...He declares that the Jewish Feast of Purim in 17th-century Europe degenerated into a Bacchannalian orgy...
...He deplores "a subjective good or bad," rejects "vague judgments of a moral kind," will have nothing to do with "what are called moral standards...
...If we can approach this business "with a mind less full of righteousness," we can appreciate the infinite number of possibilities that lies before us...
...In little more than 400 pages the author is able to present an amazing variety of sexual customs...
...Yet one who was neither a Catholic nor a priest—the Voltaire of the Essai sur les moeurs—expressed the same revulsion aBout similar practices...
...Dean, Pacific School of Religion Now at last you can read all about it, and pretty well see all about it, with Fernando Henriques' Love In Action...
...Almost as bad as the clergy and the moralists are the classical anthropologists...
...Here we are reminded that the principal business before us is to have children, and to satisfy our sexual needs...
...Consequently there are some interferences with his method which he cannot tolerate...
...As a devout relativist Henriques never asks the big question: Why do so many of the patterns of his preferred "simple societies" vanish before the impact of a sophisticated society...
...While this framework was an artificial one, it did have the merit of raising the realistic question of survival...
...At any rate he shows a marked preference for what he calls "simple societies" over more sophisticated cultures...
...This derives from the enjoyment which comes from the preestablished harmony of the male and female genitals...
...Henriques, of course, means to be quite objective in the presentation of his findings...
...The 12 chapters begin with "Preparation for Sexual Life," and come to a proper climax with "ExtraMarital Sexual Intercourse...
...How can I make a choice...
...Why do we observe Roman law today more widely than Roman orgies...
...In brief, what we have here is an existentialist sociology of sex, in which cultural relativism comes to reinforce the notion that the one thing of irreducible importance is that each of us should make his own free choice...
...Is it a study in anatomy?—Not exactly...
...All this, no doubt, is very instructive...
...In spite of the frame of reference in which all this comes to us, it must be said again that this book is most extensively and variously informing...
...There may be times when the modern reader will feel that these "simple societies" are much too simple to have anything to say to him...
...The 24 photographic plates plus the 27 additional illustrations help one to visualize whatever may be obscure in the text...
...Whether it be called normal or abnormal, whether it be the expression of an idealizing spirituality or the twist of dirt, ignorance, lechery, sadism and superstition—it is here...
...These men had an evolutionary framework which moved from primitive Communism and promiscuity to modern individualism, monogamy and capitalism...
...But in the Epistle to the Corinthians Paul explicitly names homosexuals, along with thieves, idolaters and drunkards, as among those who cannot inherit the kingdom of God...
...Certainly if he takes in all this, he will, with reference to sex, be much more knowledgeable...
...One of the photographic plates presents four conceptions of the bust in the 19th century...
...While it may be prurience for me to enumerate such things, it cannot have been prurience to put them there in the first place...
...Indeed, all approaches are "merely different ways of solving the same problem...
...Again, after citing the Abbé Dubois' scandalized report of women who have "divine intercourse" with temple "gods" in order to cure barrenness, Henriques creates a separate paragraph of one sentence just to remind us that Dubois, as a Catholic priest, must be prejudiced...
...Is it a significant part of the history of sexual folkways?— Only peripherally...
...The Postscript of the book is a one-page sermonette on the true gospel of relativism...
...The scope of the undertaking is tremendous...
...Like other persons in his profession Henriques flavors his anthropology with a touch of atavism...
...The true universal, as we learn at the end of chapter five, is the pleasure principle...
...In justice to Henriques it should be remarked that here and there, in a discreetly permissive manner, he does hint at certain criteria to govern choice...
...We might ask what it is doing in this book...
...He looks with favor on free marriage, and on the institution of the cicisbeo...
...Henriques also has difficulty with the churches and with the clergy...
...It is a question whether, with reference to love, he will be any the wiser...
...Why should I bother to choose...
...Everything in the record from Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, the Americas, and assorted archipelagoes goes into a kaleidoscopic picture of all possible sexual relationships...
...If no one solution is more "correct" than another, why not leave you with your paganism and me with my puritanism and maintain a tolerant status quo...
...The only objective criterion is the hedonistic...
...But once again, the simplest thing in a truly simple society would be not to choose at all...
...He suggests that the practice of public nudity might be one way to curb the impulse toward immodesty...
...Is it art?—Hardly...
...With an adroit phrase—"a somewhat, as it were, Pauline attitude"—he manages to intimate that Saint Paul preferred homosexual to heterosexual consummations...
...Henriques would not understand that what unites the anti-clerical Voltaire with the Catholic Abbé Dubois is a common concern for man as a civilized human being...
...In addition there is a painting of a rape, two illustrations of sexual intercourse, three pictures of flagellation, five scenes from a bordello, assorted orgies, miscellaneous erotica, a side view of steatopygia, an engraving of the "Triumph of Priapus," and, in conclusion, a caricature of a prostitute...
...He deals with pre-marital sexual behavior, with the fetishes of modesty and of beauty, with the rituals of love-making, courtship and coitus, with love magic, with marriage rites and with divorce...
...Why is Greek philosophy of more enduring value than Greek pederasty...
...The curious reader will find everything elucidated, with illustrations, from clitoridectomy and infibulation to the soixante-neuf...
...Is it science?—No...
...The illustrations in the book do not show the same passion for variety as does the text...
...He reminds us that no such thing as general promiscuity is tolerable, and that socially approved promiscuity must be of the planned variety, as in the ghotul of the Murias...
...If there are no standards with any objective validity, then choice becomes an affair of caprice or of convenience...
...At the end of the book there is a careful index of 126 "simple societies...
...None is more "correct" than another...
...But he should be reminded that piety before the primitive is the mark of a liberated intelligence...
...What it finally comes down to is an instance of erudite voyeurism masquerading as the science of sociology...
...Or is it barely possible that some of them are ways of exacerbating the problem...
...One of these is morality...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 5
