On the contrary, women and boys had formed sexual relationships ever since sex began. If I was finding more evidence of such relationships than the published literature might suggest, it seemed that this was indicative not of a change in existential behavior but of an increasing willingness to bring sexual matters into the open. What was occurring was not in and of itself unusual; what was unusual was that it was being discussed.
To be sure, no sexual idiosyncrasy is more easily concealed in our society. We seem able to blind ourselves to sexual peculiarities in women which we would never countenance in men. One can quickly appreciate the distinction by considering the lot of male and female homosexuals. Lesbians can wear male attire, embrace openly, even hold hands in public, and never arouse the slightest suspicion that they are other than heterosexual; the slightest suggestion of effeminate behavior is enough to draw attention to a male homosexual.
Similarly, a woman may be far bolder in her relations with a young lover than could a man comparably involved with a young lady. When a middle-aged man appears in public with his teenage daughter, the immediate assumption is that she is his young mistress. Conversely, when a middle-aged woman appears in public with her teenage lover, the same observers as quickly assume he is her son.
• • •
The ways in which relationships form and exist between older women and younger males are exceedingly varied, as are the motivations which render such relationships attractive for the participants. In a majority of instances, it is the motives of the female participant which are of greater importance; she is almost invariably the aggressor, and while she may not delineate the form the ultimate relationship will take, she nevertheless makes the original decision of establishing it in the first place.
Why do women desire young lovers?
“The question,” one woman snapped, “is not why some of us want young studs. It’s why we don’t all want them. What woman would prefer an old man to a young one? What girl would prefer stale bread to fresh? Anyone who asks me why I like what I like has just got it all backward?”
But I would suspect this argument is simplistic, to say the least. The deliberate selection of a young lover is certainly more than the matter of choosing fresh bread over a stale loaf. It is a violation of any number of social and moral taboos, and in a majority of instances a violation of law as well. Criminal statutes which define statutory rape do not generally distinguish between cases in which the female partner is a minor and those involving an older woman and a younger man. (From a practical standpoint, however, such a distinction may be said to exist; prosecutions of a female for statutory rape are almost nonexistent, and seem to occur only when the male participant is not merely under the age of consent but an actual child. In any event, such prosecutions are extremely rare.)
As in so often the case in matters of sexual behavior, there is no single all-inclusive answer. The problem is distinctly polyhedral in nature—woman choose young lovers for any number of reasons, engage in relations with them in any number of circumstances, and get all manner of pains and pleasures in the bargain.
For a number of women, a youthful lover represents an attempt to recapture their own youth. We are perhaps more familiar with the reverse of this phenomenon—the middle-aged man who begins forsaking his wife for girls half his age in an effort to regain his lost youth. By the same token, a woman may take young lovers with the idea in mind that some of their youth will rub off on her, that she will bathe in their reflected light.
For other women, the young lover represents a sexual outlet which does not threaten them. They can play a dominant role which they may desire but which eludes them in relations with men their own age. They may combine the roles of mother and lover, either as an expression of their own thwarted incestuous urges or out of frustration at the childlessness of their own lives. They may find themselves capable of sexual acts with young lovers, pluralistic or otherwise perverse, which they could not permit themselves to perform with men their own age out of a variety of embarrassment.
They may focus upon young lovers as a means of working out some basic conflict. They may compete with their daughters by having sexual relations with their daughters’ boyfriends, for example, or may seduce their sons’ friends as surrogates for incestuous partners. They may compensate for any number of failings in any number of similar ways.
Some of these women are married, some divorced, some lifelong spinsters. Some of them find themselves involved in what seem to them to be genuine love affairs, and may actually attempt to make their liaisons with young males into permanent marital relationships. Others actively seek out a chain of short or long-term affairs, while still others are deliberately promiscuous. Some find themselves more secure with youthful sex partners, while for others the element of risk attendant upon such situations is itself a source of sexual stimulation.
It should thus be rather easy to see that the entire question of the woman-boy syndrome admits of no easy answers, that one cannot seek one-sentence explanations for so complex a situation. My own investigation of the phenomenon, originally undertaken with the idea in mind of writing a single article to be called “The Male Lolita Syndrome,” soon showed it was leading not to an article or chapter but to a full book.
At first this development gave me pause. Who, after all, would be interested in a book on such a topic? What reader could legitimately be expected to wade through a couple of hundred pages dealing with this subject matter?
And yet as I continued with the research, it became evident that the topic was of more than cursory interest to a sizable number of persons. I began mentioning my subject matter to a variety of persons who are not themselves involved in woman-boy relationships. People are generally curious as to what any writer is up to—or at least are polite enough to feign such an interest—and I began replying as a matter of course that I was investigating this particular topic. The response was interesting. In many more cases than I would have supposed, both men and women evidenced an unusually high degree of curiosity about the theme.
“You ought to write about that,” the standard response seemed to be, “because I would suspect this is something that would really interest the average person.” You ought to write about this, the implication seemed clear enough, because this is something that would interest me.
Just recently the woman-boy syndrome has received cinematic attention in The Graduate, in which the sexual relationship of the characters played by Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman serves as the foundation of an extraordinary film. Here, unlike many earlier films which dealt to one extent or another with the same theme, the specifically and exclusively sexual relationship of the two is stressed in no uncertain terms. Its character is underscored, for example, by one delightful scene in which young Hoffman complains that he and Miss Bancroft never talk to each other. An attempt at conversation reveals that the two have absolutely nothing to talk about, at which point they sensibly return to bed. It would be foolhardy in the extreme to equate the success of The Graduate, either artistic or commercial, with its sexual theme; in its larger sense, it is about several infinitely subtler and more relevant matters than the sexual. Nevertheless, one cannot too readily dismiss this aspect which is intimately concerned with the film’s impact and popular appeal, nor can one fail to acknowledge the fact that the special candor with which a forbidden (and largely ignored) sexual sphere is detailed becomes inextricably a part of the film’s overall frankness.
It would seem, then, that the present volume is justified not only by the material which presented itself to my attention but by the interest it may hold for the reading public (one hopes!) as well. How well it does its job, and whether or not the game has been worth the candle, is for the reader to determine.
• • •
The particular methodology of this book is essentially that which I have followed in the past. It has long been the author’s feeling that excessive interpretation on his part is largely outside the scope of his experti
se and is all too often unwarranted in sexological material, whether or not the author is personally qualified to offer his own observations at such length.
Accordingly, I have preferred to let the various women and boys involved speak, insofar as possible, for themselves. Not all of the subjects of the case histories which follow could legitimately be labeled as “representative”; on the contrary, they are all very much individual subjects of individual case studies, and it is in this capacity that their value chiefly lies.
By the same token, the reader will note that the majority of the material offered is presented in the subjects’ own words, either rendered in interview form or as monologue. The reason for this is two-fold. First of all, it is unarguable that the intrusion of a narrator’s persona into a case report, or a narrator’s paraphrase of data, serves only to diffuse the material and render it at a further remove from the reader. In addition, it seems evident that case histories in the psychosexual sphere are as important for their revelations about the attitudes and perceptions of the participants as they are about the actual circumstances; i.e., the facts regarding who did “what and with which and to whom,” as the limerick has it, are no whit more relevant than how the parties concerned felt about it all. The unaltered responses of the participants are invaluable for such purposes.
As a result, certain matters are detailed in the pages to follow and certain “obscene” terms employed in a manner which the reader might conceivably find offensive. While this is regrettable, it is nevertheless preferable to shock than to censor, and I have therefore made no effort to expurgate the occasionally frank statements of my interviewees.
A word about these interview subjects might be in order. The women whose case histories make up this volume come from all parts of the country and all strata of society. Some of them are members of the overall underground of sexual swingers while others in no way fit into that sexual subculture. Some wrote to me in response to previous books of mine. Others were referred by friends who knew of their sexual proclivities and were aware of my current area of research. Through one means or another, enough willing informants came to light so that I could with ease pick and choose from them to provide the eleven cases which follow.
The reader should meticulously avoid attaching any personal significance to the names of the persons discussed in the following pages, or any personal data which might seem to identify them specifically. All such names and circumstances have been carefully chosen to render such identification quite impossible.
Let me conclude by emphasizing my gratitude to the women who supplied this present work’s material; without their kind assistance there would rather obviously be no book at all, and but for the candor of their replies and the thoughtfulness of their cooperation whatever merit this book possesses would be severely proscribed.
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Love at a Tender Age (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior) Page 16