ONTOGENESIS OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOR 



1425 



consensus of earlier workers pointing to 

 evidence of pre- and postmenstrual enhance- 

 ment of sexual responsiveness. 



These findings have been puzzling in that 

 they seemed contrary to biologic ends and to 

 the observed increase in coital frequency 

 just before ovulation in lower primates. Sev- 

 eral explanations for the differences between 

 these findings in humans and those in lower 

 mammals have been suggested, important 

 among which are the social attitudes bearing 

 on sexual activity. In the majority of hu- 

 man societies sexual intercourse during ac- 

 tive menstrual bleeding is contravened by 

 prohibitions ranging from esthetic distaste 

 to rigidly ritualized taboo. Moreover, the 

 human female is probably alone among 

 menstruating creatures in being able to an- 

 ticipate and plan in terms of menstruation. 

 The significance of the intermenstrual period 

 and its association with ovulation and preg- 

 nancy is, in more sophisticated societies, so 

 widely known as to constitute yet another 

 variable that must be taken into account. 

 In this sense it is even possible that the ob- 

 served "peaks" of heightened eroticism are 

 artifacts dependent on many factors other 

 than variations in the supply of female sex 

 hormones. It is in any case apparent that 

 the increasing importance of nonhormonal 

 control of sexual functioning through agen- 

 cies of social learning and cognitional func- 

 tioning to be observed even in monkeys and 

 apes has reached its highest development in 

 the human species. 



VI. Disorders of Psychologic Sex: 

 Psychopathology 



A. GENDER ROLE DISTORTIONS 



Of all the disorders of psychologic sex, 

 homosexuality and transvestism have 

 seemed to be the most baffling and difficult 

 to explain. As is common when ignorance 

 prevails, causal theories have grown up, 

 some outrageous, some fanciful, some pro- 

 vocative, but none that has received the 

 universal endorsement of medical science. 

 Terms such as intersexuality, psychologic 

 hermaphroditism, and others have found 

 their way into the literature, often being 

 used as if the words themselves constituted 

 a scientific explanation. 



One of the common eiTors made in con- 



sidering the problem of psychologic sex 

 disorders, particularly homosexuality, has 

 been to conceive of men and women as di- 

 vided each into two camps: those who are 

 heterosexual, and therefore spoken of as 

 normal, and those who are homosexual. Such 

 a notion is both conceptually and statisti- 

 cally incorrect and unw^arranted. The com- 

 prehensive studies on sex behavior in Amer- 

 ical men and women (Kinsey, Pomeroy and 

 Martin, 1948; Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin 

 and Gebhard, 1953) have produced some of 

 the best evidence relative to the incidence 

 of homosexual behavior. According to those 

 authors, 37 per cent of the white male popu- 

 lation and 13 per cent of the white female 

 population have had at least some overt ho- 

 mosexual experience to the point of orgasm 

 between adolescence and old age. On the 

 other hand, only 4 per cent of the white 

 males and 1 to 3 per cent of the white fe- 

 males were found to be exclusively homo- 

 sexual in their erotic activities throughout 

 their lives. Between these extremes these au- 

 thors found a wide range of sexual behavior 

 involving varying proportions of heterosex- 

 ual and homosexual orientation and activity 

 which could, with good justification, be 

 arranged on, and described by, a 7-point 

 (0 to 6) rating scale. Such findings make it 

 clear that one is never justified in speaking 

 of homosexuality as if it w^ere a single de- 

 scriptive or clinical entity as some authors 

 have done. The point is well taken (Kinsey, 

 Pomeroy and Martin, 1948, p. 617) that: 

 "It would encourage clearer thinking on 

 these matters if persons were not charac- 

 terized as heterosexual or homosexual, but 

 as individuals who have had certain amounts 

 of heterosexual experience and certain 

 amounts of homosexual experience. Instead 

 of using these terms as substantives wdiich 

 stand for persons, or even as adjectives to 

 describe persons, they may better be used 

 to describe the nature of the overt sexual re- 

 lations, oi\ of the stimuli to which an indi- 

 vidual erotically responds^^ (italics ours). 

 For the purposes of the study, Kinsey, 

 Pomeroy, Martin and Gebhard deliberately 

 restricted themselves to an investigation of 

 those sexual activities which culminate in 

 orgasm. They doubtless would have allowed 

 that, although overt homosexual stimula- 

 tion to the Doint of orgasm, is one index of 



