Herbal Health

These youthful, aggressive, and impulsive men tend to react strongly to psychological stimuli because of these very traits. Factors such as satiation and unimaginativeness which usually raise the threshold of response seem to be overridden in their case. The aggressors vs. minors are the third most responsive to the sight or thought of females, and nearly two fifths (the fourth largest proportion) reported strong sexual arousal. On the other hand, aside from the homosexual offenders, they were more stimulated than any other group by the sight or thought of their own sex. In keeping with their offense, they had the largest proportion (21 per cent) of men who were sexually aroused by sadomasochistic pictures and stories, and by far the largest proportion (13 per cent) who were strongly aroused. In comparison, only 8 per cent of the control and prison groups responded to sadomasochistic material and only 3 to 4 per cent responded strongly. The aggressors vs. minors also rank first in the number (74 per cent) who were sexually aroused by pornography, and first again in the number (44 per cent) who were strongly aroused. In this connection it is interesting to note that third rank is occupied by another youthful amoral group, the prison group.

While there is nothing striking about their use of alcohol or their gambling habits, their drug use is quite unusual. These men had the third largest number (about 4 per cent) of opiate addicts, by far the largest number of habitual marijuana smokers (15 per cent), and were again by far the largest users of other drugs—chiefly the amphetamines and barbiturates. All in all, they rank second (37 per cent) in the use of any type of drug.

All this suggests a search for novelty and stimulus, a quest for “kicks,” that is quite typical of young impulsive delinquents. The relatively high percentages of opiate addicts and habitual marijuana users are by-products of too often repeated experimentation.

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The average (median) offender vs. minors was nearly twenty-five at the time of his offense, almost twice the age of the female involved. This proportional discrepancy in age is a matter of social concern only when the younger person is a minor. Society is not distressed to know that a fifty-year-old man has a sexual relationship with a twenty-five-year-old woman, and even a 40-20 situation is readily understood, if not approved.

The majority of offenders were not married at the time of the offense: 44 per cent had never married and 28 per cent were separated, divorced, or widowed. We have, therefore, almost three quarters of these offenders as maritally unfettered males on the lookout (as are most unmarried males) for sex.

For roughly four fifths of them this was their first sex offense: a ratio in keeping with the concept of these offenders as “ordinary men” who were careless in the matter of age. This same idea is reinforced by the data concerning psychosis and neurosis: 2 per cent had a history of mental or emotional illness.

When the word “careless” was used in the foregoing paragraph, we did not mean to imply that the offense behavior was opportunistic. Actually 88 per cent of the offenses involved clearly premeditated behavior, and drunkenness was a quite minor element. Premeditation, however, does not necessarily indicate preference for immature females. The distribution of the ages of the females involved (grading from 15 per cent aged twelve to 40 per cent aged fifteen) shows the desire for more physically mature partners. One will recall that a relatively large number (17 per cent, the third largest percentage in this regard) of these offenders vs. minors stated that they preferred as sexual partners females aged sixteen or seventeen, while fewer desired females twelve to fifteen years old.

About three fifths of the girls were friends of the offenders, another fifth were strangers, and the remainder were acquaintances and relatives. The offenders can scarcely be accused of “victimizing” underage “pickups.” On the other hand, neither can the average offender claim ignorance of the girl’s age. The familiarity of the girl with the offender is reflected in her behavior: in the 110 cases where we have both the official version and the offender’s version of the offense, both agree that in 99 instances the girl did not discourage the sexual activity. This understatement conceals the fact that an undetermined number of girls actively encouraged it.

The locale of the offense was a residence in half the cases and an automobile in almost one quarter. This latter figure is high and probably is the result of the inconvenient youthfulness of the girl—she is too young to have a room or apartment of her own, and too conspicuously young for the man to feel comfortable about escorting her past the eyes of desk clerks, landladies, and neighbors. The auto is a solution to this problem, as most teenagers know.

Approximately two thirds of the cases involved coitus, and the remaining third involved either “heavy” petting or “necking,” the distinction between the two being whether or not there was genital stimulation. Obviously some of these would have progressed to coitus had the relationship been uninterrupted. The high percentage of coital activity is not so unexpected when one notes that while the girls ranged in age from twelve to fifteen inclusive, the average (median) girl was 14.6 years old.

In 15 per cent of the cases there was more than one male involved; this is a high percentage exceeded only by the aggressors vs. minors. At first one wonders why females aged twelve to fifteen should be particularly subject to such polyandrous attention, but a simple explanation exists: when society learns that a young girl has had some sort of sexual relationship with an adult male, not only that male, but any other adult male who was within a radius of one hundred feet is apt to be convicted. If there were copartners in the offense, there was usually one, less often two, and only rarely more. The traditional “line-up” or “gang bang” is essentially absent in the offenders vs. minors, but there does seem to have been a considerable amount of double-dating and of pairs of males hunting for girls.

As one would expect in a voluntary relationship, the risk assumed by the male centers chiefly on the ability of the girl to keep the relationship secret. We estimate that in 82 per cent of the cases there was no other form of risk. In only 4 per cent of the cases were there other factors that made getting caught a probability rather than a possibility. In brief, the offenders vs. minors took definitely less risk than did the offenders vs. children.

Who reported the sexual behavior to the authorities? The girl herself rarely did so directly. Usually the situation was discovered by friends or relatives who thereupon reported it. The suspicious mother and the garrulous girl friend are common sources of the offender’s downfall. An additional number of the cases came to light as a by-product of police investigation of other matters.

Slightly over three quarters admitted the sexual relationship to us without equivocation; 9 per cent made a qualified admission; and 13 per cent denied the behavior. These figures are close to those obtained by the authorities whose denial percentage was slightly higher. Since the ages of the females involved were closer to the age at which society considers a female a permissible sexual object, these offenders vs. minors could admit their behavior, not only to others but to themselves, far more easily than could the offenders vs. children.

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The great majority of the sex offenders and virtually all the prison group were interviewed while they were in an institution. We drew almost wholly from three major sources:

1. Indiana State Farm, a state jail principally for misdemeanants with sentences ranging from 30 days to one year. The inmates were chiefly from the Midwest, including Kentucky and Tennessee, and strongly rural.

California prisons. These were the California State Prison, San Quentin; California State Prison at Folsom; California State Prison at Soledad; California Institution for Men, Chino; and the California Medical Facility, which at the time of our interviewing was at Terminal Island, but now is at Vacaville. With a few exceptions, all the inmates in these institutions were serving sentences for felonies; misdemeanants were excluded. Nearly two fifths of the prison group and almost one third of the sex offenders were in one or another of the California prisons. Since our society is highly mobile and since California has received an influx of persons from other regions, the inmates had been born and reared in many different states. In brief, the sample does not contain an undue number of California natives. In any case our studies have led us to believe that geographic location has relatively little to do with sexual attitudes and behavior; more important are considerations such as socioeconomic level and religious devout-ness. Consequently, we feel that our sample derived from California institutions would not prove markedly different from a sample drawn from institutions randomly selected. Indeed, many of the California inmates had served sentences in other states.

California Department of Mental Hygiene institutions. Sex offenders who have been adjudged sexual psychopaths, or who are under observation for judgment, are ordinarily confined not in prisons but in special institutions under the Department of Mental Hygiene. We interviewed men in the Metropolitan State Hospital, Norwalk (which no longer houses sexual psychopaths), and Atascadero State Hospital. Like the California prison inmates, many of these men were born and reared in states other than California.

Describing the sources from which the members of the control group were drawn is a difficult task, for in large part they are the result of ex post facto selection rather than of expeditions aimed at obtaining control-group case histories. For expository purposes one can consider them as coming from three types of sources:

1. The first was comprised of groups, organizations, and definable aggregates of persons—for example, church members, unions, parents and teachers associated with a nursery school, students of a particular high school, Salvation Army members and beneficiaries, etc. In some of the organizations a large number of the members had the requisites for inclusion in the control group; in others merely a few were eligible. All in all, 250 of the control-group males came from these sources. The number is smaller than one might have anticipated, since we excluded all individuals who came from sources known to be biased in favor of some particular sexual behavior. Thus, for instance, since we know that the incidence of homosexuality is unusually high in the world of the arts, we ruled out of our sample whole casts of plays and members of other organized art groups. This selectivity, it should be noted, is aimed at sources of histories, not at professions or individuals; an actor or painter who came to us as a member of a church or PTA would be incorporated in our control group. Similarly, we excluded what one might call “therapy groups”—persons with psychological problems which led them to clinics, psychiatrists, psychologists, and sometimes to us. Lastly, we excluded unusual groups, groups which we had sampled because of their atypical sexual traits; an example would be a group of transvestites.

2. The next type of source might be termed our “hospital sample,” and it was gathered expressly to enlarge and improve the control group. For this purpose we needed people with less than college education, preferably with less than tenth-grade education, many of whom should be unskilled or semiskilled workers. Such persons are the most difficult to obtain. Our usual mode of operation, addressing the assembled members of some group and then asking them for cooperation, was impractical here since the majority belonged to no organized groups, except for unions and churches whose meetings they did not necessarily attend with any regularity. Moreover, it is not easy to make use of either churches or unions—the very fact that we are allowed time at a scheduled meeting is in the eyes of many tantamount to official sponsorship of our efforts. This engenders various objections and resentments among some of the members who feel that they are being placed under unfair compulsion or at least being subjected to unwanted solicitation. Similar objections arise if one attempts to sample a factory or store via the employer, but tin’s difficulty is rarely encountered since few employers can afford to let us intrude “on company time.” On the other hand, to seek out individually the persons we wanted, explain our research to each, and gain their cooperation, is prohibitively costly in terms of money and time. To solve the problem, at least partially, we devised our “hospital sample.” With the cooperation of a number of hospitals in Baltimore, New York, and Buffalo, we examined the records of male patients in public hospitals and were able to sort out those whose education and occupations made them eligible for our control group. We then examined their medical histories and ruled out any chronic invalids or anyone whose physical condition could have had a long-term adverse influence on his sexual behavior. In brief, what we wanted was the man who had had reasonable health until the last year or two (which we would omit in our calculations), or, better yet, healthy men who entered the hospital because of some industrial or traffic accident. In all, we obtained 120 men from these hospitals. We found that such hospital sampling is unfortunately no final answer to our problem of obtaining case histories from the unskilled and semiskilled workers. The wide availability of medical insurance and various company and union insurance plans has resulted in the great majority of hospital patients having private physicians whose consent must be obtained before the patient can be solicited. Tracking down these busy doctors and trying to explain our research and its needs over the telephone has proven not feasible, nor is lying in wait to seize the doctor when he visits his patient or patients at the hospital. Consequently, we had available only those patients who had no private physicians and who were wholly under the jurisdiction of the hospital. These men are relatively few nowadays and tend to be both aged and indigent. There are, however, some specialized hospitals where the staff has essentially complete authority regarding treatment regardless of whether the patient entered via a physician or not. Such hospitals can be of great value to us, and through the cooperation of one we obtained 78 of our total of 120 hospital-derived cases.

3. The last type of source must be labeled simply as stray individuals whose histories were obtained fortuitously. Some of them came to us as by-products of our group sampling—for instance, a relative of a person whom we had interviewed as a group member. Others came in contact with us in a variety of ways: a visitor to the Institute, a janitor in a building where we were temporarily stationed, a hitchhiker, a seat mate on a train or airplane, a friend of a friend, etc. The case histories of these people were also carefully examined for selective bias, and a considerable number were rejected. For example, anyone who came to us avowedly or covertly because of some sexual problem or unusual behavior was not included in the control group. There are 107 stray individuals who passed this screening in our control group.

These three sorts of sources were compared on a number of items of demography and sexual behavior. Since the “hospital sample” was designed to obtain certain varieties of individuals whom we did not have in sufficient numbers in the pre-existing control group, it is obvious that the comparison showed some anticipated differences: the men in the “hospital sample” were much older, fewer had never married, and their occupational status was lower. In terms of sexual behavior there proved to be only one important difference: the “hospital sample” had a markedly lower incidence of homosexual activity than can be accounted for by differences in age or marital status. The discrepancy is especially noticeable in youth, but at present we cannot explain it.

*14\161\2*

For any man whose business life involves eating out constantly in restaurants it is vital to learn how to survive so that you can comfortably eat your way across a menu. This way you do not upset your host — or guest — and you do not compromise your diet by eating the wrong things. It also saves having to talk about dieting and so appearing a diet-bore.

To start: choose a dish that is light and simple, one without a sauce. A thin soup or consomme, perhaps, or crudites, mixed salad, grapefruit, soused herrings or rollmop. Italian dishes like prosciutto melone or mozzarella and tomato are fine too if you are not strictly counting calories.

Avoid pasta, rice dishes, thick soups, prawn or shrimp cocktail (because of the sauce), any fried fish like whitebait, pate and egg mayonnaise. Skip any dish with cheese or thick sauce.

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Make an appointment with a doctor for a total check-up.

At around forty this is a sign of wisdom and careful body-management not hypochondria, the sign of a man determined to survive life in the best possible healthy way.

At about this age serious ailments are inclined to strike men, the problem ills brought on primarily by the pressures of modern life, like stress, and those that have developed with our society as we have grown more affluent, like heart disease. Heart disease today is to men what breast cancer is to women. One man in every ten now aged thirty-five will die from coronary heart disease before he reaches sixty.

If more men had regular check-ups this figure could be lessened considerably. Problems could be identified sooner and medication or treatment could begin before they became grave or possibly fatal. It is a comforting fact despite this pessimistic outlook however that although many men do rush to their doctor in panic fearing the worst and thinking they have the symptoms of a chronic heart condition, an estimated fifty per cent of them will have not a heart problem but chest pains brought on by those two now over-familiar reactions to today’s life: stress and anxiety.

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Obviously discovering homosexual love can take life to a dramatic point for a married man especially if, as is not uncommon, he then finds sex with a woman abhorrent and he can no longer make love to his wife. And should she discover the reason for his change, the moment of discovery can be hurtful. Only very few wives find themselves in a position to talk rationally to their husbands about the problem and only in a sophisticated circle can a wife discuss such matters with friends or family. As with heterosexual lapses in a good marriage she may conclude there is a lot to be lost and forgive him his lapse and it will take the man time to re-establish the marriage on a warm footing. With luck and no more (known) adventures the marriage enters a more mature stage.

And while some heterosexual men develop a taste for gay life it is not unknown at this juncture for gay men to take stock of their transient world and want to establish a heterosexual pattern. However unlike the heterosexual discovering latent emotions within himself, a gay man usually finds within himself a new maturity and a yearning to have a lifestyle most people would accept as normal and to have a secure family environment, preferably with his own children.

This does not mean these men necessarily foresake their gay lives although many can, and do. Most make marriages with wives who know of their gay pasts and assume that if the gay predilection is not over, at least it will not interfere with the calm of their lives, ever. Both husband and wife are seeking companionship and security with a mature marriage.

*88/153/1*

‘It really does not seem possible . . . my husband is trying to live our son’s life; to have his fun at weekends, his parties, his sport and even his kind of clothes. He either struggles to join him or to compete. For heaven’s sakes! Our son is only sixteen!’

Wife, London.

It is not unusual for some men to look at their son’s youth and lifestyle and envy it for its apparently care-free freedom. Just as opportunities are shrinking in their own world so the son’s are growing.

They do not begrudge the son his pleasures and take pride in being able to provide for all the family but, like the man who feels he is missing out on life, many have emotions tinged with envy as they see limitless opportunity ahead of the son.

Perhaps seeing the son enjoying himself signals the passing of youth because for some M-M men this becomes a time of reckoning. They take stock of themselves and re-appraise their appearance. They diet, take care about the way they dress and consider a new barber and contact lenses instead of spectacles. By being constructive life improves. The family approve and appreciate the change.

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Supplements of oestrogen prescribed by a doctor can counteract most of these side effects and restore normality but they will not make a woman fertile again. After her menopause a woman loses the capacity to reproduce.

As men do not have a menstrual cycle nor a sudden cessation of hormone production the term male-menopause is used figuratively to allude only to a comparable decline in a man’s life. But it is a psychological descent. Aging does not inevitably harm male potency and only after the mid-fifties is the production of testosterone in some men declining to any noticeable degree. However, it never reaches zero level.

Any serious loss of testosterone production found in men around forty is directly attributable to physical disfunction brought on by other causes, not the male-menopause. For them a short course of hormone therapy adjusts the imbalance.

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