Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Group Sex, for Science
filed under: Do It for Science, Retrosexual by Melissa Gira
Via Jezebel, the New York Times bookblog has unearthed a precious volume, Group Sex: A Scientist’s Eyewitness Report on the American Way of Swinging, bearing insight into the bygone days group sex in the last century.
Offers its author, Dr. Gilbert D. Bartell, Ph.D.:
Although my wife is not an anthropologist, obviously my investigations would have been far more difficult without her assistance.
No slouch, Time magazine covered Dr. Bartell’s study when it was first published, in 1971, with this caution:
The trouble is that swingers often find themselves too busy; the rule is to swing only once with the same couple (so that no intimate, marriage-destroying relationships develop). Thus the search for “beautiful” or “great” (contrasted with “moldy”) partners is never ending. Eventually hours of the swingers’ waking day are spent on the phone or writing letters to make new contacts—or driving hundreds of miles to meet them. Sheer exhaustion causes many to drop out of swinging after two years or so of frantic activity. More important is disillusionment. Finally able to act out adolescent fantasies, many swingers find that the fantasies were better than reality.
You could paw around the basement at the Times for your own, but a quick search shows that a copy can still be had still today.
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[…] Group Sex, for Science : Sexerati: Smart Sex. “The New York Times bookblog has unearthed a precious volume, Group Sex: A Scientist’s Eyewitness Report on the American Way of Swinging, bearing insight into the bygone days group sex in the last century.” (tags: swinging sex sexuality) […]