Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex… was, even at time of publication, full of misinformation, medically incorrect statements, and highly biased, snarky commentary. There were numerous double standards (e.g., sexual act X is great if performed by heterosexuals, but an inadequate act if performed by homosexuals).
It was published in 1969. My copy is the paperback edition of 1971.
The section on lesbians is under 3 pages. It asserts that
“the majority of prostitutes are female homosexuals in their private lives…” (269)
“Like their male counterparts, lesbians are handicapped by having only half the pieces of the anatomical jigsaw puzzle.” (269).
“Just as one penis plus one penis equals nothing, one vagina plus another vagina still equals zero.” (269)
“Lesbians with this anatomical quirk [a clitoris of 2+ inches] are in great demand.” (270)
A dildo permits “an unreasonable facimile of heterosexual intercourse” (270).
“No matter how ingenious they [homosexuals] are, their sexual practices must always be some sort of imitation of heterosexual intercourse.” (270)
Taking turns with a dildo is “too dull for the one who has already had her turn.” (270)
Describing a double-headed dildo, he says, “The unanswered question at this point then becomes why they need each other. If they snip the harigata in the middle, both girls (sic) can go home and enjoy themselves at leisure.” (270-271)
“Female homosexual relationships also seem to last a little longer than the male equivalent, but their course is no less stormy; the girls betray and deceive each other with monotonous regularity.” (271-272)
Now, some of this would make sense as an opinion (albeit, IMHO, a stupid one) if he did not assert elsewhere in the book that, for example, “As a form of heterosexual activity incidental to penis-vagina intercourse, mouth-genital stimulation is not only perfectly all right to practice, but in many situations desirable” (64) because it causes the woman to have an orgasm “rapidly and vigorously” (64), but if we were to do this all the time, “the birth rate would quickly fall to zero” (65)
Male homosexuality warrants its own chapter of 28 pages. This extended coverage isn’t a good thing. Here are some tidbits:
“they often transform themselves into part-time women. They don women’s clothes, wear makeup, adopt feminine mannerisms, and occasionally even try to rearrange their bodies along feminine lines.” (159)
“most homosexuals at one time or another in their lives act out some aspect of the female role.” (159)
Homosexual men given estrogen “developed enlarged breasts and loss of body hair–they were delighted.” (162)
“A lot of homosexuals would like to think [that they were born gay and that]… their problem [is]the equivalent of a club foot or birthmark… This explanation is a little tragic. It implies that all homosexuals are condemned without appeal to a life some of them say they enjoy so much.” (162)
As to homosexual sex, "Three to five minutes should be enough for the entire operation (163).
“No feeling, no sentiment, no nothing.” (164)
“No names, no faces, no emotions.” (164)
“Homosexuals thrive on danger.” (165)
He then has a multi-page description of “S and M” (165-167).
“Mother Nature didn’t see fit to provide him with a vagina so he gets his fun where he finds it.” (168)
He then goes into a long description of drag, understood as trying to look like a woman on the part of the receptive partner, including artificial vaginas (169-171).
Then a section on how more “masculine” homosexuals wear tight underwear to display their genitals. Then on to transvestites (173-175).
Then he asserts that homosexuals aren’t concerned about the consequences of their behavior (175), stating categorically in response to the question ‘But all homosexuals aren’t like that, are they?’, “Unfortunately, they are just like that.” (176)
“Homosexuals are trying the impossible: solving the problem with only half the pieces” (176), which is why they are so promiscuous. Again, “One penis plus one penis equals nothing” (176).
“Homosexuals who live together for years” are “mighty rare birds among the homosexual flock.” Moreover, the ‘happy’ part remains to be seen… Live together? Yes. Happily? Hardly." (176-177)
There is then a short segment about how the only thing homosexual men and women have in common is their contempt for “straight arrows” and how they dislike the other sex (177), then a description of finding partners at a gay bar, then gay slang. Then a section that’s highly psychoanalytic in nature about why so much gay slang is food oriented (181) that leads in turn into a harrowing emergency room account of what homosexuals put in themselves and what they put themselves into (182-185).
Then, still in this chapter, what passes for a trans section (185-187). The gist is that getting a “male vagina” is the “consuming wish of some homosexuals” (185). This is a “bizarre” surgery, resulting in “simply a man who has lost his external genitalia” (186), who are “actually castrated and mutilated female impersonators” (186), two of whom “ironically” died of breast cancer (186).
If you think the heterosexual sections are less opinionated or incorrect, you’d be mistaken. For example, he had the phases of the female sexual response cycle in te wrong order. And this was the liberal, swingin’, sex-positive, revolutionary book. From today’s vantage, it’s not much better than a Victorian marriage manual.
This book was how I learned about homosexuality in 1974. It was actually more positive than some of the other “scientific” books available, if you can believe it (though there was reasonable sociomedical information available that contradicted many of his assertions) There was a 2000 revision; I haven’t read it.
The Transsexual Empire, by the way, is a long rant based on the idea that by having a sex change operation, men are trying to steal the womyn-energy.
