Sexual Adventure Research Articles

"Sex in Bed or Sex in the Head?" - A Transatlantic Love Affair

In early 1947, the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir traveled across the United States. During her four-month voyage she met and fell in love with the then quite famous American novelist Nelson Algren of Chicago. At the time both were in their late thirties. When she had returned to France, she wrote Algren that she had put aside the project she had begun prior to her departure for America ( The Other Sex , 1949) and undertaken to write a book about the New World, for something [had] happened [...] and it was the beginning of love. The journey, she continued, for this reason had to be preserved. Apparently, the passion she had experienced with Algren (it is said that with him she enjoyed sex for the first time in her life), above all had an impact on her primary occupation in life: her writing. In my paper, I look at how de Beauvoir reflected on her affair with Algren in three different works, i.e. her America Day by Day (1947), her novel Les mandarins (1954), and the third volume of her memoirs (1963). All three books were written at different stages of the relationship, and therefore offer quite diverse perspectives that taken together add up to a more comprehensive picture of the affair. When writing America Day by Day , de Beauvoir was deeply in love, and Algren returned this feeling. Yet, Algren does not appear as a predominant figure in the book he inspired; he is hardly mentioned. For, de Beauvoir thought that once she wrote about someone or something, it was lost to her. She consequently had to find a way to write about him-he preoccupied her mind-without actually writing about him. She succeeded in doing so by writing about his America, i.e. the places he showed her. Whatever she sees fascinates her. In fact, this fascination reflects her admiration of Algren rather than of America. By 1954, the romantic phase of the affair was over; a first rupture had occurred. In the novel, de Beauvoir's alter ego Anne from the beginning sees that the affair is doomed to fail. There is a life before and after the trip to America. Both lovers' inability to give up their previous life for a mutual future is a hovering threat from the moment they first lay eyes on one another. During her trip to America Anne looks at Lewis the person directly rather than to convey an emotional but indirect portrait of him by means of describing his surroundings. By the time de Beauvoir published the third volume of her memoirs in 1963, she claimed that all feelings for Algren had died. The few paragraphs dealing with him are written from great distance. In facts, she concentrates on the long and dangerous passages to and from America rather than to write about him. Her infatuation with the American writer is likened to a nervous condition possibly to be remedied with medication. As a prior reason for the relationship to start, she indicates her (masculine) desire for a short sexual adventure in America. Little surprisingly, Algren broke with her for good after he had read the hateful book. Nonetheless, his memory of her was alive until his last interview shortly before his death some twenty years later. De Beauvoir in turn, though she was buried next to Sartre, had wished to be buried wearing the ring Algren had given her once upon a time, and so it was done. As one critic observed, in the end, she was more comfortable with sex in the head than with sex in bed.

An Exploration of Perceptions of Masculinity among Gay Men Living with HIV

An ethnographic investigation was undertaken to explore the social construct of masculinity. Fifteen HIV seropositive gay men in New York City were interviewed via electronic medium in order to characterize behaviors and associated meanings attached to the conception of masculinity as physicality. Structured interviews were utilized to ascertain these data in order to illustrate how some men define masculinity in terms of their physical appearance and sexual adventurism. The data indicate that men who possess this ideological stance regarding masculinity seek to remain healthy, appear physically strong, and attract sexual partners. This hegemonic standard of masculinity is a result of both the men's HIV infection as well as their perceptions of gay community norms. Emphasis on physical strength and sexual prowess as means of defining masculinity has become a standard in the last two decades for some seropositive gay men.

Cultures of sexual adventurism as markers of HIV seroconversion: A case control study in a cohort of Sydney gay men

A case control analysis within an ongoing cohort study was used to examine differences between seroconverters and men who remained HIV-negative. The cases were interviewed within one to 13 months prior to their seroconversion. Their responses to a structured questionnaire were compared with those of HIV-negative controls drawn from the same time period and from the same longitudinal study, Sydney Men and Sexual Health. Data collected from both cases and controls included: demographic and contextual variables, knowledge of HIV transmission, sexual practices, drug and alcohol use and attitudinal factors. The aim was to compare the sexual behaviours, and the social and cultural contexts of such behaviours, of men prior to their HIV seroconversion with men who did not seroconvert. Twenty-three men had seroconverted within the cohort. Cases were identified by a positive HIV antibody test or self-report of positive HIV status following a previous negative HIV test. Three-hundred-and-sixty-nine controls were selected on the basis of being HIV negative at interview in 1994, and having at least one subsequent medically-confirmed negative HIV antibody test. Univariate predictors of seroconversion were: being in a regular relationship with a known HIV-positive partner, drug use, and engaging in a range of anal and esoteric sexual practices. Practices commonly used to enhance sexual pleasure, such as group sex, watching and being watched having sex, the use of sex toys and dressing up/fantasy, were engaged in more frequently by seroconverters. Engaging in these esoteric sexual practices was highly correlated with drug use, involvement in the gay community and engagement in a wide range of anal practices. In the multivariate analysis independent predictors of seroconversion were: younger age; being in a regular relationship with a known HIV-positive partner; believing withdrawal to be safe with regard to HIV transmission; and range of esoteric practices. These results indicate the importance of the social and cultural contexts of particular sexual practices and consequent HIV transmission. Sexually adventurous men may be at increased risk for HIV because they seek sex within particular sexual sub-cultures.

HIV/AIDS Risk to Women Travelers in Thailand: Comparison of Japanese and Western Populations

Japanese and Western women travelers to Thailand were interviewed to determine factors associated with travel and risk of sexually transmitted HIV infection. Self-administered questionnaires ( n = 179) were collected at beach resort areas during July and August of 1995. Four travel attitude profiles were determined by a Principle Components Analysis. Japanese travelers reported attitudes consistent with “Relaxation/Romance,” and Western travelers attitudes consistent with “Sexual Adventure.” Both groups indicated that they would develop a sexual relationship with another traveler, as opposed to a local Thai. Japanese respondents were less likely to report carrying condoms, report the intention to use condoms, or report knowledge about AIDS in Thailand. They also reported less comfort with the open distribution of condoms and AIDS prevention information. Differing HIV risk beliefs and behaviors indicate that cultural factors should be taken into account when designing intervention messages and materials for any group.

Sexual Adventurism, Substance Use, and High-Risk Sexual Behavior: A Structural Modeling Analysis of the Chicago MACS/Coping and Change Cohort

The purpose of this study was to model the relationships between dispositional tendencies towards sexual risk seeking (sexual adventurism) and engaging in risky behaviors (e.g., unprotected anal intercourse and recreational drug use). We analyzed data collected at semiannual assessments, between 1984 and 1993, from gay/bisexual participants in both the Chicago Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) and the Coping and Change Study (CCS). Factor analysis on 34 items from the CCS questionnaires guided the construction of an index of “sexual adventurism/risk-seeking” which was then used in univariate and multivariate analyses to determine its relationship, across time, with the outcome behaviors of drug use and risky sex. Path analysis models then assessed the relative importance of sexual adventurism and drug use covariates for predicting risky sex in subsequent assessments. Sexual adventurism was significantly associated with both substance use and risky sex at all time periods. Multivariate analyses revealed this relationship to be independent of drug use; however, this was not true for the association between risky sex and drugs. Path analysis confirmed the causal links (either direct or mediated by drug use) between sexual adventurism and risky sex. Substance use had little, if any, direct association with high-risk sexual behavior when sexual adventurism was included in the models. These findings support the existence of a common underlying dispositional factor, sexual adventurism/risk seeking, that would be a major determinant of the association between risky sex and drug use among gay men. Similar findings from other studies indicate the wider potential applicability of sexual adventurism/risk-seeking measures and suggest the need for focused intervention efforts in targeting this subgroup of high-risk individuals.

Sexual adventurism, high-risk behavior, and human immunodeficiency virus-1 seroconversion among the Chicago MACS-CCS cohort, 1984 to 1992. A case-control study.

To predict incident human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1 seroconversions among a cohort of gay and bisexual men based on recalled sexual behavior, drug use, partnership status, and an index of sexual adventurism/risk-seeking attitudes. A nested case-control design was used in a retrospective study spanning a 9-year period. Sexual adventurism was an important predictor of HIV-1 infection. The partial risk ratio for our 100-point adventurism scale indicated a marginal rate of increase in seroconversion risk of 4% (odds ratio = 1.04; 95% confidence interval = 1.02 to 1.06), with almost 79% of seroconverters scoring above the median on the index. As expected, partner status, drug use, and unprotected receptive anal (RA) intercourse were associated with seroconversion. However, multivariate results indicated that men using condoms consistently in RA sex were also at higher risk for infection (odds ratio = 2.68; 95% confidence interval = 1.04 to 6.95) than men who abstained from RA intercourse. Results are discussed with respect to their implications for HIV prevention intervention and research. Recommendations include the development of new approaches and the adaptation of existing intervention techniques that recognize and treat persons with strong risk-taking predispositions.

A victory for safe sex

“Discover your erogenous zone” is a declaration that is difficult to ignore, and on a full size billboard poster it is impossible. This was the slogan that Club 18-30 used to sell young adults their Mediterranean holidays, promising sexual adventure and alcoholic excess. The campaign, perhaps inspired by the Benetton school of copywriting, succeeded in inflaming the local press, which ran headlines such as “outraged by sexy selling.” The Advertising Standards Authority received 314 complaints from all parts of the United Kingdom accusing the posters of being obscene, irresponsible, and offensive. This included one from us. As the agency responsible for the public health of Birmingham residents, we wrote to the authority complaining that the posters had undermined sexual health promotion efforts and may have promoted the idea that anticipated sexual activity will be risk free. The Advertising …

Toward the development and validation of a measure of sexual boredom

We describe across three studies (N = 628) the development and initial validation of the Sexual Boredom Scale (SBS), a self‐report measure of the tendency to experience boredom with the sexual aspects of one's life. The 18‐item scale demonstrates high internal consistency (rs = .92 to .95) and one‐month test‐retest (r = .81) reliability. Validity evidence for the SBS is supported by positive correlations with the following measures: the Sexual‐Depression and Sexual‐Preoccupation subscales of the Sexuality Scale (Snell & Papini, 1989); the Index of Sexual Satisfaction, a measure of dyadic sexual discord (Hudson, Harrison, & Crosscup, 1981); the Boredom Proneness Scale (Farmer & Sundberg, 1986); and the Boredom Susceptibility, Experience Seeking, and Disinhibition subscales of the Sensation Seeking Scale (Zuckerman, 1979). The SBS was nonsignificantly correlated with sexual esteem, thrill and adventure seeking, and social desirability, and negatively associated with global life satisfaction. Overall, men possessed significantly greater sexual boredom scores than did women. Age differences, clinical applications, and directions for future study are discussed.

The Living Theatre: art, exile, and outrage

A complete history of the most controversial company in American history, the Living Theatre. The company was a kind of theatrical tribe, creating and staging plays collectively, living communally, and cultivating an atmosphere of sexual openness and adventure with an incredible cast of characters including Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Jackson Pollock and many more.

Psychoanalysis, Queer Theory, and David Leavitt's "The Lost Language of Cranes"

In the photograph that accompanies New York Times profile written shortly after the publication of The Lost Language of Cranes, David Leavitt stands outside his East Hampton home, his arms resting on white picket fence in front of him. This image of domestic tranquility-we are told in the profile that Leavitt shares the house with his lover-is likely to have particular resonance for readers of contemporary gay literature. Here seemingly is the heart's desire of Malone and the scores of lesser lights in Andrew Holleran's eloquent evocation in The Dancer from the Dance of the New York gay subculture of the 1970s. Holleran's doomed souls have fled to the big city from the small towns and suburbs of their youth, leaving behind their families and homes with white picket fences in order to live in world of their own. Now they are caught in irresolvable ambivalence, addicted to the casual sex that drew them to New York in the first place and yet wearied by its impersonality. They yearn nostalgically for the supposed harmony of conventional marriages and careers, yet know that this paradise would also undercut the foundations of their identity.' Perhaps Leavitt had the generation of notable gay writers such as Holleran or Edmund White in mind when he claimed in the Times profile that his contemporaries, heterosexual and homosexual, grew up in the era when marriages shattered behind the white picket fences. Young people in the 1980s now want a stability you have to make for yourself, at an early age, which shocks people 10 years older.'2 In other words, Leavitt's peers have given up sexual promiscuity in favor of long-term relationships, improvising paradise lost long before they had any need to leave it. Philip Benjamin exemplifies this new breed of scarred youth, for unlike Malone the craving for sexual adventure does not dominate his life.

Seventh IUVDT Regional Conference on Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Kuala Lumpur, 5-7 September 1991.

In September 1991, the 7th IUVDT Regional Conference on Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) convened in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to exchange information on the importance of controlling STDs and HIV-AIDS in Asia. Speakers from Thailand, Malaysia, and Japan provided the latest HIV-AIDS epidemiological data. In Thailand, heterosexual transmission of HIV is catching up with iv drug use. Most infected women are 15-24 years old. In Malaysia, drug use iv drug use trails heterosexual transmission of HIV. In Japan, hemophiliacs comprise 85% of HIV-positive people. Current problems do not compare to the sizable task Asian countries face in affecting the progression of the HIV-AIDS epidemic. All countries need to implement control measures quickly and at the same time. They should not pretend traditional values and beliefs would shield their people from the epidemic. Asian countries should especially stop promoting themselves as places of sexual adventure. Control programs should also target STDs. Australian presenters discussed the results of the Sydney Sexual Lifestyle Study and a study on the effect of zidovudine therapy on the prognosis of AIDS. Another presentation focused on the possibility of a vaccine for chlamydia infection. Several papers centered on the treatment of chancroid and gonococcal and nongonococcal urethritis and evaluation of a detection test for chlamydia infection. 1 participant reviewed the role of human papilloma virus in cervical carcinogenesis. Another participant demonstrated a link between bacterial vaginosis and adnexal tenderness and pelvic infection. The conference concluded with a presenter challenging everyone to meet the HIV-AIDS challenge. Reasons why current control measures do not work include inadequate facilities to manage STDs, tendency not to consider HIV another STD, failure to promote and lack of condoms, and not educating school children about HIV-AIDS.

Teenagers Talk About Sex, Pregnancy and Contraception

To investigate the reasons behind the high levels of nonuse or inconsistent use of contraceptives among sexually active adolescents in the US the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) undertook a 1983 study using 10 focus group discussions with teenagers from 5 US cities. Focus groups are small groups of 6 to 12 participants and 1 trained moderator; the informal setting is believed to encourage more detailed behavioral responses and provides a qualitative understanding of the topics addressed. The groups were segregated according to sex and age with the ages from 16 to 17 and 18 to 19. The groups were composed of single sexually active teenagers overwhelmingly from middle or lower middle class white families. After taping and analyzing the sessions the researchers found some common reasons given for nonuse. Included were the belief they were not at risk at the time of their intercourse lack of preparation for a sexual encounter partners objections lack of information about birth control methods or where to access them and the belief that contraceptives were complicated or unpleasant to use. The authors suggest that conflicting societal messages may be in part responsible. For example 1st sexual encounters are often unprepared for and may signify the bad label offered by society for sex at a young age or before marriage. Yet this is coupled with advertisements promoting the excitement of sexual adventure. Embarrassment and confusion result from such ambivalence creating a need for contraceptive service providers to recognize and become sensitive to the needs of these young consumers. The authors offer several suggestions to help diminish this ambivalence: elevating the content and quality of sex education in secondary schools; informing young men of their legal responsibilities to the mothers of their offspring; selecting and training groups of students to serve as peer sources of family planning information; and instituting programs that encourage parent and child communication on sexual matters. Their hope is to reduce the negative feelings and to incease effective contraceptive practice among adolescents.

Primitive Sense inLamia

A poet may strip layers of culture from his own and his reader's consciousness, almost without premediation, laying bare some long buried matrix of primal feeling. So it is with Shelley when, translating Bion, he has Venus bewail the death of Adonis, 'Oh, let thy breath flow from thy dying soul/ Even to my mouth and heart, that I may suck.' With like intuition, the English Adonais, John Keats, flashes toward unfamiliar sensations. In the last of his letters he recalls 'all that information (primitive sense) necessary for a poem'. It is that primitive sense of the elemental, of time-encrusted insights, in Lamia that I should like to consider in terms of folklore. Tabu is important in Keats's poetry. The Knight at arms of 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' (first version), having broken a tabu by eating fairy food, roots, honey, and manna dew,' enters the thralldom of a being who is a fairy femme fatale and a Circe who looks 'as she did love' (while yet a serpent, Lamia has a 'Circean head'). Warned in a dream, instead of joining her other captives, he has a painful release 'on the cold hill's side', there to wither like the sedge. Compression, ambivalent sexual adventure, and abandonment after a broken tabu which usually alienates the wanderer from fellow mortals, not from a temptress, suggest without elaborating or clarifying the old motifs. To savages rather than to medieval knights sexual intercourse during war was apparently tabu because of a fear that 'close contact with women should infect them with feminine weakness and cowardice'.2 The interest of 'the camelion Poet' in the story of Cupid and Psyche made him familiar with the tabu against seeing a mate or against seeing him naked. Because the oracle of Apollo had revealed to Psyche's father that she would marry a dragon (old style serpent), her sisters made her dread lying with something monstrous. Thus Psyche lit a lamp at night and heedlessly woke Cupid when oil dripped on his body.3

Sexual Pleasures in Marriage.

Sexual Adventure in Marriage. By Jerome and Julia Rainer. Price, $5.95. Pp 320. Julian Messner, Inc., 8 W 40th St, New York 10018, 1965. It is an arresting fact that physicians are considered the final experts in some fields where their medical training, massive as it is, does not encompass what they are supposed to know. An example experienced personally by many of us was that physicians were presumed to be authorities in human behavior even though training in behavior had been conspicuously lacking in schools of medicine. In the early 20th century it seemed to be expected that some knowledge of medicine, particularly neurology and its basic sciences, might somehow accomplish this. Indeed it was sometimes tacitly assumed that expertness in the neurological field made one by reason thereof a psychiatrist. There is still some dedication to this curious attitude. It occurs to me to wonder if this orientation

THE NOVELS OF PAUL GADENNE

PAUL GADENNE'S work has suffered, it seems, a total eclipse, quite undeserved. Since his death on May 1st, 1956, apart from items like a brief notice necrolagique in the FigarO' litteraire, a sparing paragraph or two by 'M. A.' (Marcel Arland), in the N.N.R.F. (juin 1956, p. 1118). followed by a short inedit, only Albert Beguin (in Esprit, juin 1956, no. 239 and nov. 1956, no. 244) and Bernard Dort (in ;Cahiers du Sud, 1956, no. 336) can be said to have paid adequate tribute, and offered something more than formal regret, to this man. Yet no less a judge than Henri Peyre (in The Contem1parary French Navel) had described him as 'one of the least superficial' of modern novelists, 'one of the most successful in evoking inner life', and commended his works as 'the few truly deep novels of our age' (p. 316). Beguin, indeed, in a slashing attack on the 'commercialisation de la litterature', on 'la tres petite histoire de la tres petite Minou Drouet' and on 'les petits camarades des lettres' who 's'exhortent au cynisme et s'epaulent sans pudeur' (loc. cit.), championed with passionate sincerity a man whom he viewed personally as 'un romancier comme on en compte un ou deux dans une generation'. But Beguin's own death not so long afterwards, and the withdrawal of Madame Gadenne to the peace of the cloister, have left a growing reputation unhonoured. Other reputations, over the span of his literary activity (1941-56), have waxed and waned. To one who views such things from far outside Europe, in the Antipodes, there is even a melancholy instability in the record of the novel in France since 1939. From the time when Sartre, Camus and Simone de Beauvoir emerged in their strength (not always a disciplined strength) from the Occupation years, the annual prastitution publicitaire and a truly Athenian public (in the Pauline sense) have secured temporary (but enormous) triumphs for very varied creations. These have included works of repartage, of violent physical adventure a l'americaine or sexual adventure (whether homo-, heteroor merely pseudo-), a la Fran90ise Sagan or Christiane Rochefort, works of quite spurious unreality or superficial 'realism', works that reject implicitly or explicitly the architecture of novel-building, or laboriously ape Faulkner, Kafka, Joyce. The list of laureats and their works in connection with any of the prix litteraires, even the four best, makes odd reading a decade or less after the awards, and no amount of journalism can make it otherwise.