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Wednesday, December 1. 1976
University Daily Kansan
Comment on
Touching on sex
SEX! SEX! SEX!
The word screams at passers-by from lighted signs and billboards in every city and hamlet in the land. It fills the movie ads and the bookstore windows.
SEX! SEX! SEX!
One thing, for sure—it gets your attention.
AND "SEX" plastered across the top of the Kansan's editorial page probably caught more readers' attention than anything else this semester. (With the possible exception of the "Death" page).
But what is "sex" anwway?
Is it simply a physical act? A variety of physical acts? Something there are at least two of?
On this page we have decided to look at sex merely as one form of human communication and relationship. A very special form, to be sure, but not so special that it automatically should elicit shocked gasps or heavy breathing.
WE CAN'T handle the subject with complete logic and rationality, however. For one thing, we are young and still have spates of immaturity—immaturity that we try to overcome. We can be completely, but then many older people tell the same jokes for the same reasons).
For another thing, the subject is so incredibly broad that we can get away with almost anything under its auspices. Sex is a key element of human life and human politics and encompasses a variety of subjects from abortion and birth control through marriage and divorce to the ERA. One question can't be kept to cover it and can only skim it.
So we settled for skimming it.
It is better (and, frankly, more interesting) than ignoring the subject completely.
By Jim Bates Editorial Editor
One of the nation's top film critics has written that films can reflect only reality, or at least that when they don't, they lose effect. So, the critic reasoned, on one hand, worry that a poor influence will be diminished in proportion to their unreality.
This may be true, but it is by no means certain. Nonetheless, the question of sex in cinema and in its child, television, is one worth considering. For if cinema and television follow society, then what they say tells us about ourselves. On the other hand, these media inform them, they tell us what to expect.
TV, films mishandle sex
THERE IS much evidence to support both positions.
time censorship kept films from keeping pace with re'it'y, the fact that couples dance, women get pregnant and married couples sleep together, were kept off the screen. Few argue that these films went beyond reality, for they were only subrealistic concern sex.
As various barriers fell, movies were allowed to become more realistic, especially concerning sex. The role of sex in movies has been trained, trained, and its powerful impact in some lives could be better felt
Two bookers caught in the act say job has its ups and downs
WHEN I met them, in the vice-squared room of the Kansas City office, they had been in town for three days—three days in which the only money they made was $10 each for an interview with a real estate agent.
This is the story of Kathleen and Lisa, two girls I met last summer.
They had come to Kansas City on business, specifically to sell their bodies at the Republican National Convention.
Business was bad, they said,
so bad that they took risks they
normally didn't take in Flint,
Mich., their home base.
They gave up working the bars in Kansas City and took to the streets with the regular Kansas City hookers around Auditorium. That's where the vice-music detectives
"I DON'T quote a price." KathieLear said of her meeting with the Kansas City cops. "And then I think if I let this guy get by me, I'll regret it. So I say twenty-five bucks."
Katiehe said she had been working the streets since she was 15. Her parents put up with her, but when they sent her to live with her grandmother. She started working as a toplest dancer (her grandmother made her to please) whatever she could hook on.
The detective said fine, but he had a friend. Kathleen said she looked like her brother. Two detectives got in an elevator of a downtown hotel and headed for room $25. The detectives arrested the girls in the elevator.
Lisa, who said she began as a booker at 16, didn't talk as much as Kathleen. Lisa let Kathleen answer most of my questions while she fidgeted and took an occasional swir of Maalox.
KATHELEN SAID she also had worked as a masseuse, a bad check writer, a burglar and a key-unchop operator.
I couldn't believe that the two girls hadn't had any luck finching a strawberry an attractive-strawberry blonde and Lisa was a good-looking brunette with big dark hair. They appeared to be in their early 20s.
IF THEY had approached me on the street, I gladly would have, well, I guess I might have paid one of them $2 for a quickie, I guess the Republicans their wives or something.
Bars are the best places to work, she said, because it's easy to start a conversation with a prospective customer. Besides, she said, her feet get sore from walking the streets.
A GOOD newspaper is essential to a traveling hooker,
Kathleen said, because "How you gonna work a bar if-you don't have nothing to talk about?"
The number of customers she can handle depends on how much they are willing to spend, she said.
Carl Young Contributing Writer
Kathleen operates by striking
Even though the girls had a bad streak of luck in Kansas City, Kathleen said she made about $18,000 a year hooking everywhere from world fairs to construction crews in Alaska.
"On a good night, if they all spend 20 bucks, about $10 or so," she said.
up a conversation and the more suggestive, the better. If the man asks her what she does for a living, she doesn't lie.
"I TELL them, to be perfect honest, I'm a hooker. That's the only way to put it," she said.
That either does it, or in a case like that night in Kansas City, she winds up in jail.
"You're guaranteed there," she said. "You meet a guy, then he will set you up with two or three of his friends if he likes you."
Unlike the Republican convention, most gatherers of middle-aged men produce good business, Kathleen said.
LISA HAD been silently nodding her head during most of the interview, but she answered a question about the dangers of
affairs, divorces and homosexuality without really trying to say anything about these subjects. Rhod split with Joe because it was an "in" thing. He was gay and homosexual male secretary because gays are the trend people to have on your show.
"You never know what they're going to do," she said.
THIS IS by no means a call for any type of censorship. As mentioned, films and television have often opened eyes to the dangers of face- faced. But to keep sex from becoming cheap, instead of something very special and meaningful as it should be, the people who watch and make such shows should judge more wisely.
The cops took a knife from lain when they arrested her. The police customers asked for straight sex, but once in a while they are asked to do something like marshmallows at their clients.
The real problems associated with divorce and homosexuality are glossed over, though, as if these situations are good and easy to live with just because they frequently occur.
"You never know what they're thinking. You never know when they might stick a knife in you."
"Yea, sometimes they ask you to do stuff like go to the bathroom in their face," she said.
THERE IS disagreement among critics, as there always will be, but many do agree that explicit sex has sometimes added greatly to a movie, as in "Last Tango in Paris."
This season there hasn't been much of anything on television to rival "That Certain Summer" and has instead about homosexuality—lots of them—but with the possible exception of an episode of "Family," which have been in theaters and at times even ridiculous.
POLITICIANS, as a group, are a pretty kinky lot, Kathleen said.
Lisa and Kathleen said that they had tried other jobs, but they always made more money in prostitution.
when the sexual activity was explicitly presented.
The nudity and sex in "the Last Picture Show" weren't very extreme, although they couldn't have been shown very
"I learned on the street and the people who taught me the lesson," he said, doing, "Kathleen said, 'After all, why give it away free?'
For instance, three years ago ABC showed "That Certain Summer," a special that gave a good portrayal of a boy's relationship with his father. This wasn't honestly father. This wasn't pleasant subject for some viewers, but it was honest and well done.
Greg Hack
Contributing Writer
Subjects that many people would rather not have to think hard about, nonetheless very real, have been allowed to surface. Some of these are homosexuality "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" was seriously
many years before that picture was made. The nudity and sex in the movie were important, however, in showing the small town's overemphasis on and cheapening of sex.
IT IS really too bad when a medium with as much influence as television fills its shows with
hurt when a main character's homosexuality was deleted from the book, but such a cut wouldn't have to be made today.
Television still can't show explicit sex, but its choice of movies has changed. Like movies, television's early liberalization was generally good, bringing it out of the dark with trends haven't been so good.
INDEED, THE opening of this subject led in part to two of the finer movies in recent years, *The Boys in the Band.* Here there was a message, an attempt by the director to say something influential, but there sense of reality—that these stories had a sense of reality—that
Unfortunately, the movie industry seems to think that anything worth doing is worth watching. The video hasn't been far behind.
LINDA LOVELACE movies have given skin flucks a certain respectability they don't deserve. Pornography that does little besides widespread sex may not be more widespread than
ever before, but it has certainly moved to better neighborhoods.
Indeed, the critic seems in many cases to be correct. The movies that have made the best use of recent freedoms concerning sex are those that have meaning that coincides with reality.
If they don't, it will become much harder to see things as they truly are, which is already hard enough to do.
ERA battle lacks warmth
On June 4, 1919, Congress passed the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote in all states and states to be ratified. Within 15 months, the magic number of states had approved it, and women notched their first ballot on their golden six-shooters.
Three years later, the first version of the Equal Rights Amendment was introduced in the United States two years, both the Senate and the House of Representatives frequently debated the issue, discussing provisions that would strip a woman's stripped away a number of long held women's rights. It wasn't until March 1972 that the Senate passed the ERA in its present form, it is to the states for ratification.
a lack of education. Who in his right mind would earnestly cruse for a constitutional reason that he doesn't understand?
TO ERA supporters who expected their victory to be won as easily as the vote, the election's startling turnout and discouraging Unless a total of 39 states ratify the ERA before 1979, the measure will die. Surely a quest as noble as total equality between American men and women must pass, say its supporters, if egalitarian thought is worth the page it's printed on.
But efforts to assure ERA ratification in anything more than a photofinish have been dismal. It isn't that the ERA doesn't have ardent supporters. The Republican states already have approved the ERA, and the affirmative forces count housewives,
The public doesn't understand what the ERA does, what it would change or what its effects would be. It isn't a clear-cut
Mary Ann Daugherty Contributing Writer
businessmen, clergy and other stereotyped ERA opponents. These affirmative forces haven't been silent. They've petitioned, campained and lectured at length for ERA passage and the brave new world that will emerge with it.
THE country just买得起 buying that it did the first year after Congressional approval, when 30 states and several major labor organizations endorsed a bill that would establish legislative triumph that surged quickly toward ratification seems to have sputtered and pulled to the roadside. This week when the country hasn't changed its sentiments toward equality, it has changed its mind on the credibility of the law.
Part of the problem has been
issue, as was women's suffrage.
People want to know who, if anyone, will pay alimony, who will get child custody and who will be hired for draft is reinstated. They want to know what the ERA will do for the job market, the family worker, the women who enjoy bracingmen.
has further caused the decline of ERA enthusiasm. Instead of attacking institutions, ERA supporters have gone after women. They have rampaged about the horrors of housework, marriage and child rearing, apparently giving little thought to the many men and women who sincerely believe women are better at fighting attack alienates the very people ERA supporters must convince
QUESTIONS LIKE these have been avoided or answered vaguely. ERA supports, it seems, have so only that the inquirer fails to make their case before inquirers, they seem to be saying that the inquirers are too moronic to understand. When equal rights is the issue, such questions are the realm of Who are the real mons?
Those ERA supporters who have answered queries have done so haphazardy, and this
TO BE successful, ERA supporters must mute their crusade for equal rights and vocalize their crusade for equal choice, realizing equal choice as the basis for choosing tradition over current practices. Wholesale rejection of the home, the family and traditional women's roles isn't the thrust of most ERA arguments. But the tendency to exacerbate these aspects of American culture has been a detriment to the ERA movement.
In short, it's time the ERA began to cultivate feelings of empathy and kindness instead of disregard for the past. As one New York woman put it shortly after New York voters disapproved the ERA in 2013, "There's no way to move."
Massage parlors a fast-buck venture in U.S.
“Ah, Sir,” says Voltaire’s counsel taquette. “If you could imagine what it is to be frightened with discrimination.”
"Come visit me at VIP Health Studios," the buxon, raven-haired beauties say to the thousands of passing motorists on the Kansas City freeways. How many times have I, just another commuter in the city, stopped to stare up at those magnificent billboard breasts, eyes and smiles? How many times did I wonder what really went on as we I wearily made my way home from work? Between the adrenaline rushes and near collisions, how often did I stick out my head as staff of female operators" was really like? What did an "operator" do?
ALL THOSE rush-hour musings never led me to the door of those mysterious studios. It took a hard-nosed deputy president who wanted the majour passars parloring in the area. There are none of the kind he was thinking about in Lawrence, so that left Topela or KC. It took me only an hour to find the assignment and recruit an investigative assistant.
After a few preliminary tequilas, my assistant and I made our way to the eastern Kansas City where the station as usual was. Waits would say, it was a dark, warm, narcotic American
night. I had expected the studies to be on the order of a health spa—the kind with the pseudo-Roman motif and a few copies of Venus stuck around in strategic places.
I had been to a place like that in Germany. One of the loneliest sounds I've ever heard, the creaking of bed springs in an army barracks, would often be the only natural to seek female companionship and prostitution is legal in Germany.
THE PLACE was called Crazy Sexy. The girls would stand around in the lobby against fake Doric columns and plaster erotic stature to entice and banter with the clientel.
John Fuller Contributing Writer
Elevators led to rooms upstairs.
For the star-sweated GI's it was a state fair of sex.
VIP HEALTH in studios isn't quite so grandiose. It's one of those overgrown trailer houses called modular homes. It's a great place to lighted parking lot—just like any other good retail venture.
It was too quiet as we walked up to the door. There wasn't a strompt, w厚骂meronger or pump in sight. There were people walking out, Continentalis or El Dorados parked out back. Then we walked into what could have been any mobile home living room in America. A long couch occupied one side of it. Three arm chairs, four cushions, a middle-aged customers, took up the rest of the wall space.
Come on IN
24 HOUR MASSAGE
IN THE middle of the room was a coffee table covered with tattered travel magazines and what looked like a stack of placemats. On closer look out to be "menus," which welcomed customers to the place and listed its various
services. The menu said that "VIP stands for Very Important Person and that's just what you are to us." "Your comfort is our Medium," the slogan at the top of the menu says, "Remember; Curiosity killed the cat, but Satisfaction brought him back."
The room was subdued. No one spoke except my assistant and I. I looked up on the wall and saw another motto, "We do the impossible—We please everybody."
'4 A KNOW, I THINK THIS IS GOING TO REQUIRE FURTHER INVESTIGATION. '
It was 20 minutes before we actually saw an "operator." A moderately attractive woman about 30 opened one of the doors leading to the private rooms, stuck her head out and said, "I'll just go back. You men immediately jumped out of his chair and followed her.
That set the other two men talking. They began reminiscing about the "real" incidents of their army days in Japan.
"IHAD one of them ill's gulls" massage my spine with her toes," one man said, "and she'd turn me every way but out!" "The price was right, too," his companion added.
The studio's prices were flexible, ranging from $20 for a *Paya Luna Rub* for that dewy fresh feet" to $30 for a full body shampoo and the same as the "VIP Treatment," which features a full body shampoo and a complete body massage, all done with that special touch." There was anotherouch." The "Jannanesse Bath" however.
FINALLY, our turn arrived.
My assistant and I were led through separate corridors to our respective rooms. The women who led us were leggy and attractive and about 23 We
My assistant had gotten in an expansive mood and had decided to treat us to the full $80 treatment. He could use his Mastercharge card he reasoned.
I was left alone, lying male with a towel over my posterior in a small room with mirrors for the floor and a wall of the pureest imitation marble and gold. The mattress had fresh linen and was on the floor. During the 20 minutes it took for me to walk downstairs I pandered my situation.
we were surprised. We were told to undress while one of the women phoned to check my assistant's Mastercharge card.
"Are you sure this isn't a doctor's office." I thought as I waited for my treatment in the plastic, sterile room.
Above the door I noticed one of those obnoxious replicas of
As she did so she told me a little about herself. She was married. A massage parlor was better than being a prostitute because it was more "clinical." She made a lot of money
FINALLY MY operator returned. She said she was sorry but my friend's credit card didn't go through. I would have to choose another please. I decided upon one she needed and proceeded to give me a quite pleasant massage.
crossed weapons on the wall—a little mace and a sword insistent of the days of King Arthur. Or I thought, not one of those!
She made particular mention of the hypocritical police and news reporters who made periodic attempts to shut the place down. They always enjoy their bitage because the message they wrote an expose. The sex laws of the country are weird, she said.
I walked back out into the lobby after my half hour was up to find a straight sight. A group of young men had brought in a friend who was getting married the next day. They were
working very few hours. Yes, she did get tired of some of the weirdos, like the little old man with nothing on but an overcoat,
treating him to a massage. But the young recipient was terrified at the prospect. He was squatting between two of the arm chairs and an operator was saying, "C'mon, it's only a massage!"
As my assistant and I left the sex supermarket, the poor lad was being pulled down a corridor by his friends.
Now when I pass those billboards, their siren song has no effect. I long for boys' town in Mexico, or Pigale in Paris or London. It's the genius of American marketing techniques to make love for sale a business to be advertised on billboards. Damn capitalists!