by Terry Gould
A second reason I believe the playcouple lifestyle will grow is because of the sexual, social, and economic empowerment of women. It is very difficult to describe to someone who has not been to a club or convention how “sexually liberated” women can behave in those environments. Many of them are self-confident, independent professionals who choose to emulate both the new and the old icons of movie stardom—without guilt, without fear, without heart-wrenching emotional attachment to their partners in bed, and without feeling they have sacrificed their love for their husbands and families by having a delightful sexual experience. Given everything we have been brought up to believe about “the relatively low female sex drive,” and that that drive is predicated on a lasting bond, swinging women are a new breed to behold. They obviously enjoy their lifestyle within their marriages and in the larger subculture—where the kinds of expressions once reserved for men are permitted, and are safe for them to experience. They seem to truly prefer the lifestyle to standard monogamy, as it is taken for granted their husbands do. It is not a recommended “cure” for a couple’s sexual problems, if they have any, and it probably doesn’t offer any therapeutic “benefits.” But for women it does offer social-sexual fun in marriages that can handle it and provided all the ethical and emotional rules are followed. Wives find out relatively quickly whether they can deal with spouse exchange, how their husbands react to their enjoyments, and what level of participation they are comfortable with in the lifestyle. Some remain soft swingers. Ninety percent move on to one of the other levels—right up to “hard core.” Even those who engage at this level maintain that they enjoy this too, without ill effect.
The last reason I believe we are in for a jump in swinging is because of the commercial and electronic means swingers are now taking advantage of to get in touch with one another. Type “swinger” on the Internet and you will see that the old reviews that were swinger publications of the past have evolved esthetically—well, at least a bit—and have certainly grown in distribution. You don’t even have to click on “NASCA” or “Lifestyles”: innumerable swinger-contact links are up and running around the planet, many of them affiliated with LSO, and many of them independent of the organization (so watch yourself)- Most of these links have sheaves of members’ home pages—hot pink household displays with interactive communication, steamy text, baroque cartoons, and naked centerfolds inviting an e-mail. Twelve hours later, when you click off, you will swear that three-quarters of the world is covered in water and the other quarter in swingers. And they’re all advertising themselves to the nonswinging millions.
It is in fact inevitable that more and more straight people will run across these ads—sexuality being of interest to many who peruse cyberspace—and many will feel safe enough in the virtual world to plug in and play. Thousands will certainly find their way to clubs no one suspected of being up and running within a fifteen-minute drive from home—these clubs tastefully but erotically advertised on the Net so as to encourage inquiries, with forms to fill out and appointments for screening interviews easily arranged.
And, of course, anyone on the Internet looking for swingers runs into LSO and its tours, conventions, clubs, dances, and philosophy—which have contributed to the growth of lifestylers in the nineties and will probably contribute to its growth in the future.
For this, oddly enough, McGinley finds himself criticized in the media for “commercializing” swinging, for keeping it “tightly organized,” as if the media had no inkling of Love-boat holidays for straight couples—or, for that matter, the entire romance-based travel industry, the largest industry in the world as well as the most commercialized. As McGinley says, he provides a service—one that every year books hundreds of couples at a time to clubs in the hot places. Today playcouples are given the royal treatment in transit to their destinations by conveyors like Jamaica Airlines, and they are met at the airport by smiling representatives of national bureaucracies like the Jamaican Travel Board. Swinging makes people money, and that, I suppose, is another reason it will keep growing.
All these factors, coupled with the new, slightly more respectful attention of the media, seem to point to future “substantial growth” of the lifestyle. My feeling is there will almost certainly be a backlash to this growth; the raids will probably continue; some state or provincial government will reach a boiling point and act as if to save civilization itself from this detrimental, dangerous, and just plain tacky behavior. The weathervane media will probably sway whichever way the wind seems to be blowing at the time. If there is a single murder in a single swing club, it will probably make international headlines and the experts will be trotted out to say “I told you so.” But playcouples will keep on playing, the swingers among them will keep on swinging, and lifestylers overall will keep on living in their own style.
In one form or another, people have been living that way for thousands of years.
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Acknowledgments
My effort to explain the lifestyle was made easier because of the assistance I received from five distinguished academics. All are cited in this book but I would like to specifically acknowledge their contributions. Dr. Josef Skala, currently professor emeritus on the faculty of medicine at the University of British Columbia, freely offered his time and knowledge as my medical advisor throughout this project. Dr. Jean Henry, currently developing doctoral programs at the University of Nevada, offered me her invaluable assessments of the couples she and I observed at several lifestyle gatherings. Dr. Edgar Butler, professor emeritus at the University of California, Riverside, shared with me his extensive knowledge of the lifestyle movement. The anthropologist and author Leanna Wolfe offered me her perspectives on the emergence of polyamory in the 1990s and directed me to source books which helped me immensely. Finally, Dr. Ted Mcllvenna, president of the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, gave me access to the resources of his institute and shared his research on lifestyle couples.
Without the cooperation of the lifestyle couples themselves, of course, there would have been no book. Some allowed me to use their real names; others asked that I use pseudonyms; all were open to my presence at their events and to answering my questions. I am very thankful to them for trusting that I would treat them with dignity.
An equal measure of thanks goes to Dr. Robert McGinley and the staff at the Lifestyles Organization. The access I had to LSO’s day-to-day workings obviously contributed greatly to this book.
At the end of my research I wound up with over two dozen cartons of notebooks, tapes, photo albums, documents, and textbooks. For her help in reviewing, summarizing and transcribing some of this mountain of material I would like to express my gratitude to my research assistant, Camilia Rabet.