Masters and Johnson Playboy Interview 1979

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Masters and Johnson Playboy Interview Nov. 1979

Sticking with the theme of Masters and Johnson interviews that give us some further insight into their research, I am now moving on to their Playboy interview from 1979. That's 13 years after they published their foundational book on the physiology of male and female arousal and orgasm, Human Sexual Response; 11 years after their first interview in Playboy; 9 years after releasing Human Sexual Inadequacy, which was an exciting and well received book about their sex therapy work at the time but has since had a lot of significant holes poked in its 'recovery rates' and extensive biases (intercourse obsessed much? - HERE'S a summary of a book that goes through all the criticisms of that M&J research and therapy)...but 1 year before they started really getting hit hard with those criticisms; and mere months after the release of their most controversial book, Homosexuality in Perspective. That book is controversial because they claimed to affect change in all but 35% of their homosexual patients who expressed a desire to function as heterosexuals. So basically it was conversion therapy, but it is worth noting that M&J only applied conversion therapy to those who asked for it. They also worked with homosexual patients that wanted sexual therapy but within their homosexual relationships. Their conversion therapy success numbers may be a bit like their previous hetero-sex therapy success numbers proved to be - secretive and not at all what they were made out to be. 

Anyway, this interview revolves a lot around that book - what it says and the reception of it. The conversion therapy is just a part of it. M&J also discuss how the homosexuals in their studies have sex and compare that with how the heterosexuals in their study have sex. They describe homosexual sex very often as a thoughtful, educated, communicative process that, well, is pretty great - and in no small part (although they don't say this directly) because necessarily those non-hetero couples are not hyperfocused on penile vaginal intercourse...which is, as much as we'd like to think otherwise, a lesson about sexual interaction we still haven't learned yet as a society. I think Masters and Johnsons actually have some #real-talk insights that are worth hearing.

This interview is also is interesting to me because Masters and Johnson (M&J) seem a bit wilder in this. They both to some extent seem less worried about giving opinions unbacked by their research or speaking about things they haven't published on -even though, as always, they continue to specifically say they are worried about those things and emphasize how very fastidious they are- and the Playboy interviewer takes pains to reiterate those qualities about them both (but Masters specifically). There are some comments M&J make about things like people faking orgasms in their studies and different ways females can orgasm that sometimes contradict things they have already said and also give me some real insight into aspects of their methodology that has up till then been a bit more unclear. (Did they not always verify the female orgasm in their studies with observation of involuntary pelvic muscle contractions? Did Johnson really just talk about back of the neck orgasms??/)  Anyway, they just really do seem more out there in this interview, or maybe more tired or arrogant or something, but either way, I do take pains to note their contradictions.  

I will only highlight/summarize parts of this article that are relevant to the lady-gasm type of subjects on which I focus, but I'll include anything that's just straight up interesting as well. It'll still be a long-ass read, though (you know me). 

If not straight up quoting, I'll always be summarizing their words with the best of my ability unless you see a section specifically letting you know it's my thoughts or you see the [ME:] brackets where I will  give my opinions. Enjoy.

insight into the participant study process

• Masters says they haven't actually observed any subjects since 1970.
• They described their process of getting people comfortable doing sexual things in the lab. First they would leave them in a room alone to do it. Participants would just leave when they were done. Second, M&J would sit in an adjacent room working with the door open assuring participants they wouldn't enter or observe. Third, they would do the same, but tell participants they would enter in from time to time but to just continue what they are doing. Then if the participants were comfortable, the next time M&J would do their full observations. 
• There were always at least 2 of them in the room for these. Johnson describes it further: "As the couple became more comfortable, we would introduce the physiologists who monitored the EKG or the polygraph or who ran the cameras for the department of illustration. You must understand that we weren’t there to watch sexual activity as a psychologist, or even a casual observer, might. We were trying to define what occurred in certain parts of the body. If we were measuring, say, lubrication at certain intervals, we might not even stay in the room the whole time. On other occasions, we would sit and stare for an hour at a four-inch-square patch of skin, trying to determine significant color changes."

gay and straight sexual activity - a sort of comparison (but it's not about comparing, of course)

• Masters says that one of the most striking findings from Homosexuality in Perspective is that homosexuals and heterosexuals demonstrate so little difference in ability to respond to non-coital  sexual stimulation. [Me: coital is a fancy way of saying penile vaginal intercourse].
• The interviewer notes that the the Time Magazine cover story they pulled from the book was that gays are better in bed. Masters clarifies that it's not about comparing. He says "We have little concern with technique. We are most concerned with attitude, with the ability to communicate. In presenting our findings on homosexuality, we want to show the wealth of variation that is possible, so that it doesn’t become threatening." 
• Johnson chimes in about the interviewer's further pressing that it seems gay people know better about their partner's needs. She says, "Well, they work at it a little more. They invest more of themselves in sex; therefore, they probably get a little more back. They don’t have more orgasms, mind you. They just seem more involved. But I want to stress that this is not strictly homosexual. The same thing could be learned from heterosexual couples who communicate well." [Me: later studies would in fact indicate that lesbians have more orgasms during partner sex than hetero women (although these were surveys not observation and physical verification of orgasm so take it as you will). However, M&J's studies were specifically filled with people who did have a history of orgasms with their partner, so that probably skewed it.]
• About "heavy petting" [ME: this feels like a very 1950's phrase to me, and I am not completely sure what all it encompasses - manual genital stimulation for sure, but I also think any other body-hand stuff during sex?] Gay couples, M&J said, tended to take their time and it was a more free-flowing process whereas straight couples created the impression that they were just in it to "get the job done."
• After discussing that lesbian women tended to kiss or caress before jumping to the genitals (only 1 out of 76 went directly to her partner's genitals at the onset). Masters tells the interviewer that it was truly fascinating to see that when couples do not have good communications, they tended to approach each other like they were masturbating themselves, and that often was not the way the partner preferred.
• Johnson brings some perspective: "Men, having heard that the clitoris is the first line of stimulation, would often move directly to clitoral fingering. It is rare in our experience, in the lab or in the subjective histories that women have given, that they can tolerate direct, intense stimulation of the clitoral glans. One reason is its acute sensitivity. Manipulation can very rapidly become irritating. The best way I’ve ever heard it described was “too much sensation too soon.” It is the rare woman, in stimulating herself, or given the opportunity to direct the stimulation as she wishes, who will want the clitoral glans directly stimulated. Those we have found in the laboratory who do stimulate the clitoral glans use a lubricant that tends to diminish sensitivity."
• The the interviewer is all like, 'how could a man know that if he's not told?' and Johnson keeps on, "Let’s return to what Bill said. They do unto others as they have done unto themselves, and that’s not always what a woman can respond to. Quite often the male uses his fingers as he would a penis. If the lesbians used penetration with their fingers, they seldom went beyond the outer third of the vagina, which, in terms of nerve endings, is the most sensitive area. Husbands frequently used their fingers as a substitute penis, even though their wives merely tolerated this approach, especially when approached this way before they were really aroused. One third of the wives we questioned said that they felt deep manual penetration was more exciting to their husbands than to them. Lesbian women, on the other hand, exhibited a general willingness to find out what their partners like and appreciate."
• Masters notes that the communication was not always verbal. It was often touch or body language [ME: like, ya know, they paid some fucking attention to their partner]. Playboy keeps asking about breast play, and M&J say that lesbians tended to do it a lot longer, give equal time to each breast, and play with more of the breast. They said lesbian women seemed to be focusing on the pleasure of the breasts, whereas Masters noted, "In contrast, men involved in stimulating a woman’s breasts seemed wrapped up in what they were doing and were relatively unaware of their partner’s pleasure, or lack of it." 
• They also note that most of the gay male couples engaged in breast play, but few hetero couples engaged in breast play on the males. When asked why most women don't do this for men, Johnson says, "For the same reasons a man is reluctant to find out about women from women. I think it’s the cultural message that begins during adolescence: The woman is the object of sex, man is the subject and the predicate. No one, including the man himself, calls attention to man’s breasts or any other part of his anatomy as an erogenous zone. The very idea may embarrass both of them."
• Masters, after talking a bit about how gay men approach sex (not too different from lesbians), mentions that there was often a teasing to bring arousal levels almost to orgasm and then back down again, this included varied growth and softening of the penile erection. Masters said that hetero men tend to view the penis as a "single-shot, single-caliber entity," assuming that it should get hard and stay hard until the orgasm.
• When asked about differences in gay and straight approaches to oral sex, Masters said this: "The only real differences stemmed from the way lesbians and heterosexual men performed cunnilingus. The women were more inventive. They started with the breasts, moved to the lower abdomen and thighs and then skirted the vagina before focusing on the clitoris. The more variation they came up with, the higher the level of excitement for the recipient. But again, the most interesting thing was the degree of the stimulator’s own involvement — some of the women performing cunnilingus on their lesbian partners also experienced orgasm during the act. The heterosexual men rarely had devoted significant time to learning or improving their cunnilingual technique. They saw cunnilingus as a means to an end. Men proved themselves sexually in intercourse. In contrast, their wives often expressed the feeling that fellatio was a challenge, a technique that they should become expert in if they were to conduct themselves as sexually effective women." [ME: I mean, shit hasn't changed much, am I right?]

men and women - generalized differences in observed behavior

• Masturbation? M&J said the differences in masturbation were not between gay and straight but more between genders. Masters says of female masturbation: "Approximately four out of five of the women masturbated while lying on their backs. They were generally less direct in their approach to the clitoris than were men in approaching the penis. Some women touched their breasts, others stroked the lower abdomen or the thighs. Most women tended to touch the glans directly only at the onset of the clitoral stimulation, if at all. But as sexual tensions elevated, they moved from the glans to the stimulation of the clitoral shaft. When they got tired or lost the thread of their response, they slowed the pace. Far more often than men, women deliberately varied the rate and pressure of genital stroking, at times even stopping and starting clitoral manipulation — as though teasing themselves." Johnson added, "Or re-establishing contact with their level of excitement."
• Master says: "Men moved immediately to the penis. Approximately three out of five masturbated while lying on their backs; the rest did so standing, sitting or lying face down. The force and rapidity of the stroking increased as excitement increased. For the most part, men concentrated on the shaft. At orgasm, most men slowed, or even stopped stroking. In contrast, the women usually kept stroking or massaging through orgasm."
• And when asked about accounting for the difference, Johnson says: "They not only were accommodating their anatomy, they also were doing what made it individually work for them We are dealing with two different groups — in this case, men and women. Each has grown up with a different level of permission, not only to masturbate but to express themselves sexually. Through subliminal messages or deliberate teachings, most men in our culture are given permission to be sexual, to explore and experiment with their sexuality. This makes possible less guilt-ridden masturbation, or at least a more practical, more pragmatic approach to sexual activity and to masturbation per se."
• [ME: Johnson often talks about the cultural baggage women have of feeling guilt or worry about their need for sex and about how that can negatively affects their ability to orgasm (as compared to men) at any particular time- indicating that the mind can block arousal even though the body is getting otherwise appropriate sexual stimulation. She goes on to touch on that a bit more in the next questions. I agree, but the thing M&J always seem to ignore is that it's not just the difference in sexual permission and guilt that creates a bit of an "extra hurdle" for women seeking arousal and orgasm. It is also the lack of quality, arousing, orgasmic, sexual experiences offered women over time; for instance having intercourse but with no orgasm (i.e. a sexual encounter does not equal orgasm or pleasure in the same way it does for most men) or seeing mostly female bodies as sexualized instead of male bodies (so hetero women not having the same history of arousal related to the male body as hetero men have with female bodies). Anyway, I think a big criticism of M&J's therapy work is that their understanding of society's sexual gender inequality seems to be mostly limited to 'men are allowed sexual permission and women are not so much.' They, in my opinion, almost never acknowledge the role that gender inequality plays in creating a vast set of sexual situations experienced by women that are either unarousing, unorgasmic, frustrating, physically painful, abusive, or unwanted - in a way they would rarely be for men. These sets of experiences give women a more complicated relationship to arousal, orgasm, and sexual situations. I imagine M&J don't speak much about it because a cultural obsession with intercourse as the end all be all of sex is a huge part of this gender inequality problem and they are super complicit in that...and may not be able to see past it.]
• Playboy asks about some non committed partners they threw together in the lab (all the homosexual couples in the study were committed partners to match the committed partners in the heterosexual studies), and female orgasm was mentioned. Masters noted that there was double the orgasm failure rate for these newbie couples, and was talking about why. He says, "Intercourse was just mutual-masturbation exercise for the assigned couples. The males were experienced and had good ejaculatory control, so the females usually had time to respond orgasmically —but not always. With each partner concentrating on his or her own needs, there was not much communication or cooperation between strangers. They were not all that involved." 
• [ME: I want to point out here that M&J are uber-focused on women having orgasms during intercourse, but they never claim that a woman could have orgasms from the penis stimulating the inside of the vagina - in fact, quite the opposite. They are clear in Human Sexual Response that either direct or indirect stimulation to the external clitoral glans area is the reason for female orgasms during intercourse. They go so far as to claim that its possible for the penis, during thrusting, to pull on the labia, which pulls on the clitoral hood, which rubs against the clitoral glans with each thrust - their kinda infamous Rube-Goldberg Explanation. My point is that they always say "during" intercourse, which I believe is a slick way of acknowledging that female orgasm does not arise from intercourse (the penis stimulating the vagina), but also not clearly stating that intercourse itself is shit way to get a woman off. They need to be slick about that, I assume, because giving the impression their studies show intercourse to be lacking as a means for lady-gasms (which is actually the accurate impression one should get from their studies)  is not what people want to hear and probably not what their donors want to hear. Intercourse as a foundation of heterosexual activity is something that society as well as M&J, quite perplexingly, strongly and sometimes irrationally hold to. So, with that said, it also seems like M&J are not blind to the outcomes of their own studies, and that's why, I believe, they are careful to always talk about female orgasm during intercourse not from it. Thus, I do think that "during" opens the door to a lot of possibilities. Lady-gasms could arise from a number of things as long as there's a dick in the vagina while it's happening - vibrator on the clit area during, manual simulation from either partner during, grinding the clit area against the man's pelvis during. The mention of the men's ejaculatory control in the quote above, I don't believe indicates that their dicks made the women come because they could pump it into their vaginas for a long time. From my understanding of M&J's methods, I believe it more likely means that these men could continue the intercourse long enough so that their female partner could create an orgasm for herself while he was still inside her - thus assuring it was a "during" intercourse orgasm even though the woman maybe could have done it much more easily if his dick wasn't inside her.]

'Great American Formula for Sex' - "A kiss on the lips, a hand on the breasts and a dive for the pelvis." - Masters

Masters: "Some 80 percent of the men made love in the missionary position. They mounted the female as soon as they had an erection and as soon as they thought the partner was ready. Usually, they decided that she was ready when she was obviously lubricated.

Playboy: "Is that incorrect?" 

[ME: Yes, mothafucker, it is incorrect. As soon as a lady shows physical arousal, ya do intercourse on her? The most shittiest sex act for ladygasms there is? The man gets a nice warm encompassing hole to fully stimulate his organ of orgasm, but her organ of orgasm (the clit) just hangs out in the wind while a dude pumps an orgasm out in her vagina? Yeah, that is incorrect because it sucks, ya ass.] 

Johnson: "Well, in theory, you might say it is true. Vaginal lubrication for the woman is essentially a counterpart of erection in the male. Ah, but it doesn’t stop there. I’m really going to tread in water I

normally try to avoid, because we generally represent only on a same-sex basis — but I’m going to suggest the very real possibility that a man with an erection is not always a man who is ready for intercourse. Is that reasonable?"

Playboy: "Certainly."

Johnson: "OK, so that’s the point being made here. The woman may demonstrate physiological or

anatomical readiness. But it’s a mistake to assume that because she is physically prepared, she has also arrived at the point of emotional or even spiritual receptivity." 

[ME: or that she even wants to get banged instead of doing something focused on her clit. I mean, she might wants to, like the man she's with, have a sweet orgasm without having the extra hurdle of working around a penis pumping into her - but I digress] 

"So often the man makes this assumption, penetrates and immediately sets the pattern of thrusting. She is even further distracted by the task of accommodating to the depth, frequency and the force of the man’s thrusting action before she ever establishes awareness of her own responsiveness. Although she ultimately may be orgasmic, her level of subjective involvement may remain low and her sense of satisfaction minimal. There is a high risk of hostility toward the partner developing in such a situation." 

[ME: Johnson is being very measured here, but in my mind, I'm hearing her say, 'when women are having sex all the time where they just get mounted as soon as they get wet, then she probably won't orgasm most if not any of the time, and sex is gonna start feeling really sucky, and she's gonna wanna tell you to go straight to hell next time you bring it up, but she might do it out of guilt and she will eventually resent the fuck out of you.' Johnson, methinks, is describing many a marriage out there -even to this day 40 some years later.]

Masters: "The man sets the thrusting pattern in almost every act of intercourse we observed where the

woman was supine." [ME: aka  - on her back]

Johnson: "There’s a drumbeat out there that continues to beat a single message: The male is the sex expert. As a woman, you must always follow his lead or you will destroy him. Add, 'Intercourse is the be-all and end-all of sexual expression' and you have the number-one basis for sexual boredom and disappointment in a relationship." 

[ME: Again, this is the weird part about M&J, and particularly J - I feel like they so clearly know that intercourse is not the ideal way to set a woman up for orgasm during sexual activity. Yet, they spend so much of their research, and therapy work in particular, talking about how to make sure women can orgasm during it. In one way, I think maybe they are just old fashioned and biased and can't get away from the overarching feeling that intercourse is important and women were meant to orgasm during it. On the other hand, I wonder if they know that sex for women is better when intercourse is merely a side dish at best (see below), but feel that because the society is so deeply stuck on it, and so often people want help in getting women orgasms during it, that focusing on how women can orgasm while there is a penis inside her is more valuable than trying to flip all of sexual culture on its head. I also do feel that they are careful about not seeming too radical given that their research work is edgy and largely funded by grants.]

Playboy: "One of the sacred tenets of marriage manuals is that if you engage in enough foreplay, everything will be all right in the end. Did you find that to be so?"

Masters: "I don’t even like the term foreplay. It sounds like something less than important or meaningful. Dividing sexual response into stages is a necessity for the scientific observer, but sex partners who do the same thing make the human experience a goal-oriented performance. In so doing, a woman’s capacity for spontaneous responsivity especially is victimized."

Playboy: "How?"

Masters: "We found that when we requested a woman and a man in the lab to engage in, let’s say, genital touching or cunnilingus, the woman tended to lubricate freely, in direct proportion to the amount of stimulation she was receiving. However, when on another occasion we asked the same couple to engage in intercourse and, as part of the total process, the man engaged in the same activities — genital touching or cunnilingus — the woman frequently did not lubricate as freely, in direct proportion to the amount of stimulation she was receiving." 

[ME: Again, this shit is what I'm talking about. 1. Despite their otherwise intercourse-obsessiveness, I do think M&J see the problems with intercourse and female orgasm. 2. for real though - that observation is super interesting and to me feels completely sensible and predictable because that type of reaction relates back to a woman's previous experiences. When she knows intercourse is happening, she also (likely) knows from experience that the pleasure and/or orgasm will be spotty at best, and her body reacts accordingly to that mediocre future laying ahead of her. If she knows intercourse is off the table, her past experiences of non intercourse sex are quite possibly way more filled with pleasure and/or orgasm and her body, again, responds accordingly to the much more exciting future laying in front of her]

Johnson: "Because she or they interpreted the request as specifically oriented to the goal of

orgasmic attainment and the other pleasurable activities became merely 'foreplay.'” 

Playboy: "You seem to be saying that if you want to see a woman live up to her natural potential, don’t have intercourse. Do everything but."

Johnson: "No, just don’t have intercourse to the exclusion of undemanding, enjoyable intimacy." 

[Me: I'd like to think that what Johnson really wanted to say there was, 'Yes.']

From there they all vaguely discuss how to structure a sex life with a woman where intercourse isn't the main topic; an evening where it's off the table, many evenings of exploration, or just always explore and improvise without a determined goal. Then Playboy asks...

Playboy: "Is it possible that the homosexual couples you observed — because they were not under any

pressure to have intercourse — were better able to enjoy themselves?"

Masters: "Certainly. They give more of themselves to these activities — masturbation, fellatio, cunnilingus— because it is the only thing they have. Even when we told heterosexual women that cunnilingus was the point of the evening, they were so unused to it as a pleasurable end in itself that they initially did not get particularly involved."

Playboy: "Do you have any explanation as to why heterosexuals seemed so unimaginative? For example, 'the kiss on the lips, hand on the breast, dive for the pelvis' may be boring — but we have

it on good authority that 'a kiss on the lips, a hand on the breast, a dive for the pelvis, plus a piece of ice' can be astonishing." 

[ME: Listen this dude that's interviewing is a real piece of work. What is he even sayin here? A piece of ice? Is he a Cosmo sex advice column come to life?]

Masters: "I think heterosexual couples have too many social protocols that they feel they should follow. I’m sure there are many homosexual protocols as well, but they certainly aren’t depicted by the general media as heterosexual guidelines are. So, as I see it, if you don’t have a scenario, you tend to improvise more." 

[ME: And...I think 'social protocols' mostly means thinking sex isn't sex unless there is intercourse, and everything else is a lead up to it. That shit is deep in us and needs to GO.]

Then the interviewer is all like, but aren't gays following a script because one is the man and the other is the woman? And M&J, are like, "No. Not at all."

controversy about conversion therapy in Homosexuality in Perspective

• At this point M&J are asked about the controversy from this book in the gay community (conversion therapy and the belief that homosexuality is largely environmental). M&J defend themselves by saying they never treated it as a disease and only helped people who wanted it. [Me: As of now, I've never actually read Homosexuality in Perspective, so I don't have much to go on. If you're interested, though, there's probably great criticisms of the therapy in this book out there.]
• Masters reveals that they had originally thought they would release a report about the physiology of homosexual arousal and orgasm along with a report on heterosexual physiology of arousal and orgasm, but they discovered that there simply was not a physiological difference between hetero and homosexual bodily response, and so it could all be contained in Human Sexual Response without breaking it into 2 reports.
• The questions turn to the selection of participants, and Masters notes that "All of the subjects had to be able to respond to self-stimulation, mutual stimulation and either fellatio or cunnilingus. In addition, the heterosexual subjects had to be able to respond effectively during intercourse."
• When asked if ability to respond was measured by capacity for orgasm, Masters say, "Yes, although we certainly acknowledge that sexual proficiency is not synonymous with orgasmic responsiveness. Sexual gratification, sexual maturity and sexual interest are phenomena that must be considered somewhat apart from orgasmic attainment — or orgasmic failure — alone. But our ability to document orgasm as a precise, definable physiological event made it a useful form of measurement."

more on intercourse

Playboy: "How did your subjects perform during intercourse?"

Masters: "Couples failed to achieve orgasm only three percent of the time. And that small failure rate was still four times greater than the failure rate for masturbation, fellatio/cunnilingus or partner manipulation." 

Playboy: "But isn’t that an astonishingly successful rate? It has been suggested that your study is biased in favor of sexual superstars, as if you were writing a book on running after interviewing the top five finishers in the Boston Marathon."

Masters: "I think that’s very fair criticism, but if you want to know what happens, you generally will have to work with those it happens to. We have been studying people who were selected for functional ability in a laboratory setting. We haven’t the vaguest idea of what happens at night, in the dark, under the covers, in the privacy of people’s homes."

Johnson: "There is another reason for studying functional people. To ask an individual who has any

history of sexual problems to perform in a lab would be unthinkable. The pressure and potential for

trauma could be enormous."

Playboy: "Even the superstars, however, did not do as well during intercourse as they did when

experiencing the other forms of stimulation — masturbation, manipulation or oral sex. Does that suggest that intercourse is vastly overrated as a form of pleasure?"

Masters: "If you think about it, the three types of stimulation you just mentioned occur in a my-turn/your-turn situation, whether practiced by homosexuals or by heterosexuals. In masturbation, one is setting one’s own pace, and one is obviously acutely aware of one’s own needs and levels of response. Preferred techniques of stimulation are used as desired. When one is being manipulated by a partner, it’s still a my-turn/your-turn situation, which, with good communication, can work very well. The same thing is true for fellatio/cunnilingus. One partner can focus his or her entire attention on the other and get some sense of what works — through good communication, same-sex empathy or because of familiarity with your response pattern. But in intercourse, we have two people trying to function simultaneously. Inevitably, that is more difficult. There is more opportunity for failure when two people are involved in routine sexual interaction than when responding on a my-turn/your-turn basis. The catch is that the culture says that intercourse is the be-all and end-all of sexual expression." 

[ME: What he's also forgetting to mention is that the act of intercourse, in and of itself, is enough to give the kind of stimulation that could easily get a penis off. The penis is encompassed by definition during intercourse and that is the type of stimulation males give themselves while masturbating. It is not, however, in and of itself an act that gives females the type of stimulation they need to orgasm - the type of simulation they need during masturbation. The penis gets stimulation. The vaginal canal gets stimulation, but the vaginal canal is not the organ of orgasm for females. The clitoral glans area is, and that is not a necessary part of intercourse. It might happen, and probably only if it is intentionally added...and only in a way that also continues to allow they penis to stay in the vagina, so it's limited and that's important to remember, and frankly it's crazy that M&J do not say that outright all the time...because it's undoubtedly true and clearly M&J  have some understanding of that idea.]

Playboy: "Aren’t those forms of stimulation subject to the charge of “servicing” one’s partner rather than finding sex mutually pleasurable?" 

[ME: mothafucker please, if allowing your innards to be rammed into with little to no opportunity for your own pleasure organ to be stimulated isn't a 'service' - I don't know what is. The (unfortunately deeply common but incredibly incorrect) idea that intercourse is the utmost of mutually pleasurable sex acts - that it is anywhere near as orgasmic for the female as it is for the male - is at the root of so many cultural and individual sexual problems.]

Masters: "Well, the answer to that is yes. But intercourse can be mere service, too. It is still true in this

country, let alone in the rest of the world. Intercourse is a service. There are infinitely more times that the female is used for service than the female and male are together as full partners in intercourse. That is true wherever you have a double-standard society. And that’s most of the world."

anal sex

Playboy: "Perhaps the one notion that most heterosexuals have about gays centers on anal sex. It is generally assumed that it is the gay equivalent to intercourse. Did you observe that behavior in the lab?"

Masters: "For the homosexual men we were working with, it wasn’t the primary means of sexual release, although anal sex was frequently experienced."

Playboy: "But you studied it, didn’t you?"

Masters: 'With a few subjects: five homosexual and seven heterosexual couples."

Playboy: "What did you find?"

Masters: "We asked each of the homosexual and heterosexual couples to engage in anal intercourse on two occasions. We noticed an interesting physiological response. Upon initial penetration, there was

discomfort, for some partners approximately half the time, but then the sphincter would relax. After full

penetration was obtained, there was no further evidence of discomfort. Once thrusting began, the sphincter would reverse its relaxation pattern and constrict tightly around the shaft of the penis."

Playboy: "Did the partners find anal intercourse pleasurable?"

Masters: "The female recipients reached orgasmic levels of sexual excitation on 11 of 14 occasions; there were three instances of multiorgasmic experience. The male recipients did not respond in a similar fashion. In ten episodes, there were only two instances of male orgasm, and in both of those instances, the men were masturbating while they were mounted rectally." 

[ME: Maybe this is my bias, but I'm skeptical as hell, or at least I would like to know more. Since he said the men were masturbating, he's insinuating the women definitely were not. How were they recording/observing the orgasms? This finding of anal sex lady-gasms wasn't in Human Sexual Response, their foundational work on the physiology of arousal and orgasm, and the mechanism of a penis stimulating the inside of the anus is not a mechanism that seems likely to engage the external clitoral glans on its own - which is something M&J say needs to happen for female orgasm. It also seems to indicate that there is a specific difference in male and female sexual response - since none of the men and almost all of the women did orgasm from anal stimulation alone - and a major foundation of M&J's research in Human Sexual Response was that males and females were more the same than different when it came to sexual response. This seems like a HUGE revelation about female orgasm, and they seem so casual about it. That makes me wonder. Is it possible M&J were just taking the women's word for it? Or did they actually record and measure the involuntary rhythmic contractions of orgasm in these women during anal sex? I'd like to think they did, but I also think if they did discover something so new and interesting, they would be careful to talk about how they made this revelation. Like I said, I'd like to know more. I'm skeptical.]

Playboy: "That finding runs against the common myth — it reverses the stereotype that anal sex is the sole right of gays. Women enjoy it, too?"

Johnson: "Some women enjoy it." 

[ME: I feel like I can imagine her saying this, and she's kinda skeptical as well and emphasizing the word 'some']

lady-gasms (mostly Johnson's bonkers discussion of lady-gasms)

Playboy: "Let’s take this opportunity to review the basics. You stated that during intercourse, the clitoris receives indirect stimulation. There are many women who say that may be true for others but not for them. What do you say?"

Johnson: "The clitoris does not require direct stimulation or contact. The total body is a potentially erotic 'organ.' It is very possible to choose a completely asexual part of the anatomy and develop it as the source of sexual stimulation to orgasm. There can be back-of-the-neck orgasms, bottom-of-the-foot

orgasms and palm-of-the-hand orgasms."

Playboy: "Our readers may be acquainted with that last kind." 

[ME: hilarious masturbation joke, dude.]

Johnson: "I grew up in the country, where little kids learn that it’s very sexy to play with the palm of a

hand. It has to do with nerve endings, in terms of the sensuous susceptibility of certain parts of the

anatomy over others. Similarly, the clitoris is a unique organ, insofar as we know it has no other purpose than receiving or transmitting sexual pleasure. It is certainly very responsive to stimulation, and it is possible for a woman to develop that response to a level of dependency, because she knows it works and she doesn’t know that anything else works. Those women who have not responded in intercourse after having developed real orgasmic effectiveness by stimulation of the clitoris, either by self or by partner —but who expected direct transposition of this successful response pattern to intercourse — can be very disappointed or disillusioned about their presumed 'inadequacy.'” 

[ME: Sorry? Is doing sexy things to your palm some kind of country child thing that I've never heard of or is she spouting of some bonkers assertions?]

Playboy: "Let’s get this straight. First, there was the debate about clitoral versus vaginal orgasms. Your notion is that all orgasms are clitoral orgasms, or rather, all orgasms are total-body orgasms. All this can get a little confusing." 

[ME: Okay - I'm actually with this dude on this one. I feel like M&J had a clear message that all orgasms were clitoral when they were talking about their actual observations and research in the early years. They were quite clear and specific about it (and M&J were not talking about the 'inner clitoral legs' as causing orgasms through vaginal penetration which is unsubstantiated but so popular to talk about now. M&J understood the immense size of the inner clitoris, but are speaking of the externally accessible clit. I got a whole post on the current misunderstandings about the 'inner clit if you want to read more). Now here Johnson is spouting confusing things without also backing those statements up (like whatever she just said about total body, back of the neck and palm of the hand orgasms). I have never seen their research indicating they observed 'back of the neck' orgasms.  Why would they just throw that out there. It seems truly bonkers]

Johnson: "Freud postulated that if a woman could not be stimulated to orgasm by intercourse, she was sexually immature. He carried it rather far. This is not to indict Freudian concepts in general. His

incredible genius was getting answers one women at a time when it was highly inappropriate for women to express themselves sexually. Freud also was a man whose interpretations must have had a lot to do with his personal life. To make matters more difficult, his perceptions and his theories have often been taken out of context by those who treasure a single concept and defend it as the only way —the Word." 

[ME: so she didn't respond to his confusion at all and just talked about Freud.]

Playboy: "We just read an abstract from the Third International Congress of Medical Sexology in which a sexologist claims there are clitoral, vaginal and uterine orgasms."

Johnson: "Oh, Saint Christopher! The amount of garbage in this field, and the number of people without credibility! Of course, the uterus responds with orgasm — if the woman responding has a uterus. Every other part of her system responds in some fashion as well. The variables are in degree of involvement and intensity and in subjective perception. There aren’t a dozen people in this field who know what they are talking about in terms of the nature of human sexual response. No. Make that 24." 

[ME: Okay, but she still didn't address his confusion. She spouted off about all these different types of orgasms - palm, neck, etc.. Then the interviewer was like, I'm confused, I thought you all said there were just clitoral. Then she was like, Freud didn't get it right. Then he was like, some people say there are vaginal, clitoral and uterine orgasms, and she goes off like that's a crazy statement...but her back of the neck orgasms weren't??]

Masters: "You’re stretching it." 

[ME: I love it. I bet they talk such shit about other sex researchers and writers. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall in their office.]

Johnson: "There are many people out there in the world who have made their own sexual self-discoveries who have infinitely better sexual insights than so many people who presumably are researching the subject."

Playboy: "We’ve heard of doctors who claim that they can cure an inorgasmic woman by surgically

realigning the clitoris. Is there any basis to that claim?"

Johnson: "Don’t ask me!"

Playboy: "We’re asking you."

Johnson: "I have such a violent response to that that I don’t even want to publicize it. For God’s sake, this is where I become a radical feminist in every sense of the word. By the way, I’m aware of the strategy of ignoring something inconsequential until it dies a natural death, but I find it difficult to invoke with this issue. That a man determines what is wrong with female anatomical design and a few silly women say “It’s so wonderful” sets us back 50 years. My husband will not criticize other doctors, but as a woman, I cannot sit still and give you a benign smile when you ask me that question. If someone, as an individual, wants surgical modification of anatomy that is neither malformed nor diseased, fine. But for someone to promote a male-oriented, male-originated concept of what women can or cannot do without this surgical intervention — it’s taking gross advantage of the layperson’s vulnerability." 

[ME: Get at it, Virginia! I mean, she's right. Clits work. They cause orgasm when the right stimulation is applied. They just don't work at causing orgasms very often during intercourse, which is where the surgical realignment of the clit comes from - moving it closer to the vaginal hole so she can orgasm during intercourse (it doesn't work btw). It's like surgically messing with your tongue because you can't taste things when you rub them on your chin. It's not malfunctioning, you're just not using it right.]

Playboy: "In Human Sexual Response, you suggest that women are potentially multi orgasmic. Yet

according to The Hite Report, as many as 70 percent of the women in America are unable to reach

orgasm during intercourse. How do you respond to such findings?"

Johnson: "Such reports are very mixed blessings. There are a lot of simple truths that can be distorted by poor interpretation of such reports. They do not reveal the capacity or potential for woman’s sexual

response. They only reveal the prevailing condition of generations of women taught to deny their sexual

feelings and needs or to pretend they didn’t exist. That is the disservice of such reports. On a more

positive side, they do let a woman know she is not alone in her inability to reach orgasm with intercourse. Unfortunately, they strike a note of discouragement at the same time by failing to indicate

the realistic expectations she can have for reconditioning a pattern of inorgasmia with intercourse. I’m especially concerned for the woman who might ultimately have discovered this for herself had she not accepted the discouraging interpretations as fact." 

[ME: See, I'm almost with her on this. Yes, there is often a distortion between what women do and what the potential is (clits work - you just have to use them well), and yes lots of women don't orgasm with intercourse - and it's good to know you're not alone. However, then she starts talking about how women could basically figure out how to orgasm during intercourse. I mean yes it's possible for women to orgasm during intercourse (rub the clit against something while you're getting fucked), but why do women need to learn to orgasm during a situation that is by nature really hard to orgasm in??? Why can't we just not obsess about intercourse so much. M&J's sex therapy practice is so pathetically focused on making sure women in couples can orgasm while the dude is inside her instead of simply focusing on how each person orgasms and then helping them mold their sexual activity to each partner's needs. M&J can't seem to stop forcing women's orgasms into the societal box of intercourse even though, I swear, they know better.]

Playboy: "There are some women who experience something that they aren’t certain is an orgasm. How do you treat that situation in therapy?"

Johnson: "It’s possible that a woman is orgasmic and doesn’t know it, but I don’t think you can make this judgment for or against such an occurrence unless you have a good definitive history from her about what she thinks orgasm is. One way to further evaluate what she thinks it is is to find out how she came to think about it. Did she read about orgasm? Did somebody tell her? From where did she draw her conclusions? I usually move away from direct questioning at that point and suggest that we talk about her sexual feelings and how they began. We start with the early memory of genital feelings, physical feelings. Then we move in general terms to the circumstances under which they occurred, and then I try to establish her sense of intensity of feelings. Then I try to place these things in an update of her present relationship or present opportunities to respond to some kind of sexual stimulation. Then I want to find out in that whole course of history-taking the kinds of things that she considers stimulating and exciting, romanticized or technical or mechanical or whatever. I want to know where she’s at, what her own base lines are to the extent that she can be disarmed into discovering them for herself. Then with that matrix of knowing how she thinks of herself — sensually in other settings at other times —we go into the circumstance she’s describing: “I don’t know whether I’m orgasmic or not.” Finally, we can kind of measure one against the other.

Playboy: "You sound like you’re describing the ideal fantasy evening." 

[ME: Am I the only one that thinks this dude is giving a creeper vibe?]

Johnson: "In the past 20 years, we’ve observed several women who were able to reach orgasm through

fantasy alone — utilizing none of the other components." 

[ME: Yet they don't describe these fantasy-only orgasms in either Human Sexual Response (they specifically say they haven't observed this in this book) or Human Sexual Inadequacy. Why? Wouldn't that be a cool revelation to report?...Also, I don't really think the dude was asking her about fantasy orgasms. I think he was just saying that getting a woman's sexual history was a fantasy evening of his, right? or am I reading that wrong?]

Playboy: "OK, given these ingredients, how would you suggest that a couple deal personally with the

problem of the nonorgasmic female?"

Masters: "Seek professional help if trying together has reached an apparent stalemate. Your best friend or your partner may be your worst therapist. In the past few years, we’ve been getting a lot of

cases of sexual aversion. This is a reaction to sexual activity, or more often to the anticipation of sexual

activity of phobic proportion. It may manifest itself as an incredible level of anxiety, dread or revulsion — even as vomiting, diarrhea, palpitation or even momentary loss of consciousness.

Playboy: "What are the causes of such violent aversion?" 

[ME: probably a lifetime of terrible orgasmsless sex and a dude that's obsessed with making you like it or more specifically making you come using his dick which isn't ever going to work- or you know, something like that.]

Johnson: "Many things. With some frequency, we are encountering women who develop sexual aversion when their partner decides to teach them how to have an orgasm during intercourse. Mind you, I am talking of a woman who has had no background of sexual disinterest or dysfunction but who enters a relationship where she and her partner become interested in her orgasmic response. She has not been consistently orgasmic or with the desired frequency, and her partner feels that she could — or should — be doing better. They start working on this and sooner or later their efforts become just that— work. Not infrequently, the male partner considers her response to be the measure of his own sexual effectiveness. The removal of the pleasure aspect eventually leaves her simply afraid, to the point at which she has become nauseated or otherwise aversive at the mere thought of sex."

faking

Masters: "Sexual fakery is an escape hatch, a pattern of behavior that offers the illusion of

self-protection. The heterosexual woman who fakes an orgasm would be an instance of sexual fakery. Another example is the homosexual man who is impotent, and therefore always plays the role of the stimulator and insists that he has no interest in receiving pleasure. Usually, this sexual fakery is identified. In the long range, it is rarely anything but deleterious to the individual who practices it."

Playboy: "How does a homosexual woman practice sexual fakery?"

Masters: "In the same way the heterosexual woman does, pretending orgasm. We gave an example in the text of a woman who had engaged in homosexual behavior for ten or twelve years without achieving orgasmic release. Her partners began to complain that it took such a long time for her to respond, so finally she started faking an orgasm."

Playboy: "Does that make it more difficult for her to reach a genuine climax?"

Masters: "It can. A woman who pretends an orgasm generally tends to do so to remove herself as quickly as possible from the sexual interaction because she presumes there’s nothing in it for her. From then on, her chances of ultimately achieving orgasm are significantly diminished, for lack of opportunity and perhaps because she ceases to become involved sensually."

Playboy: "Have you read the foreword to Kurt Vbnnegut Jr.’s Mother Night, in which he warns:

'We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be'?"

Masters: "That’s a good understanding of the problem. People who are sexual fakers begin to identify

with the image they project. It makes it quite difficult to get to the root of the problem. Once they admit the fakery not only to the therapist but to their committed partner, if one exists, the therapist is well along the road toward helping them. But not until then."

Playboy: "Did any of your subjects try to fake an orgasm in the lab?"

Masters: "On occasion, but it was very easy to tell. The polygraph needle always gave them away." 

[ME: This is a super interesting question and response because one of the most egregious problems in female orgasm research is that most often the researchers don't verify the orgasms that the subjects claim to have had through detection of the involuntary pelvic muscle contractions that occur during orgasm. The truth is M&J are too secretive sometimes about their exact methodology, but they do make it clear that they identify orgasm in females by filming the vaginal opening muscles close up or sometimes using a specialty camera inside a clear dildo they call Cyclops to see the muscular contraction inside the vagina. Now scientists that do verify orgasms use new technology like anal probes that measure the muscular contractions. However, here Masters says there were those that tried to fake, but they could always tell by the 'polygraph needle.' Curious because that indicates in these cases they weren't checking for orgasm through what their previous research describes as the indicator of orgasm - the involuntary pelvic muscle contractions. Instead he said 'polygraph needle,' which could mean 1 of 2 things and neither of them seem valid as orgasm verifications to me. 1. Polygraph as in lie detector - as in they asked the person about it during a lie detector test. Lie detectors are notoriously incorrect, and you can't really be lying if you really believed you orgamsed...and I truly believe a lot of women that 'fake' during intercourse don't feel like fakers. They believe that what is going on is an orgasm even if it is just intense arousal or a mentally intense sensation. 2. Polygraph to Masters could simply mean detection of heartrate, breathing, blood pressure or skin conductivity, or all of the above. Those are things M&J also recorded in their research, and they are good indicators of physiological arousal, but not of orgasm. M&J in their research (and in no other research I'm aware of since) cannot identify through those measurements the difference between high arousal and orgasm. One needs to identify the muscle contractions to identify when high arousal moves into orgasm. I don't think Masters is a guy that is imprecise with his words, and I also know from M&J's own words that not all the tests were done for every sex act in the lab. Some were focused on skin changes, other blood pressure, others the muscular contractions or ejaculation. So this really makes me think that M&J may have done some experimentation that did not observe the pelvic muscle reactions to verify orgasm correctly, yet they took the women's word for whether they had an orgasm or not...probably if they felt like the breathing, BP, HR, etc. i.e. the 'polygraph needle' indicated they got to high arousal. That would mean they only called BS on the women that didn't get very aroused and claimed orgasm. That is a huge problem in my mind because females faking orgasm is a real thing that happens and there's no reason to think a women that gets highly aroused couldn't still fake (or really believe) an orgasm. That kind of scientific oversight can greatly skew results.]

trying not to seem too radical

Playboy: "Earlier, you mentioned that a critic had said that love was never mentioned in Human Sexual Response. Neither, perhaps more surprisingly, was oral sex. Why?"

Masters: "We didn’t study oral sex in the original research project because we didn’t have the courage.

We were running scared in terms of opportunity to finish the work. We had gambled our professional careers undertaking the investigation of human sexual physiology. Had we been stopped by the university authorities before we had something significant to talk about — where would we have gone from there?" 

[ME: I like to think this is the same reason they focus so strongly on the need for women to be able to orgasm during intercourse...because they don't want to be seen as too radical]

Playboy: "Reduced to a life of private practice?"

Masters: "At best; I might well have been thrown off the listing of a specialist society, even taken off the A.M.A. rolls or brought up for censure before the licensing board for moral misconduct. Those things could have happened."