Hite-ing Back

Men indeed have more than one thing in mind

Like many men. New York Psychiatrist Anthony Pietropinto, 39, was appalled by last year's bestselling sex survey of women. The Hite Report. Says he: "1 thought it was anti-male and pro-homosexual." Author Shere Hite is indeed open to that charge. Her book depicts men as selfishly concerned with their own sexual pleasure, attacks sexual intercourse for "institutionalizing out" women's needs, urges men to give up orgasms altogether, and suggests that women who reject lesbian love are selling out to the male oppressors. Pietropinto's response: a quickie sex survey on men, intended both to rebut Kite's book on women and preempt her sequel on men, due next spring. Like Hite, Pietropinto finds what he was looking for. Beyond the Male Myth, co-authored with his agent Jacqueline Simenauer, reports--apparently without tongue in cheek--that men are sensitive creatures, intensely concerned with female orgasms, less interested in sexual pleasure than in love and companionship. Says he: "I think this explodes the picture of men as satyrs who have no feelings and don't care about women."

Pietropinto is head of the mental health program at Brooklyn's Lutheran Medical Center. He and Simenauer. who syndicates psychiatric articles, drew up a 40-part questionnaire last January and turned it over to Crossley Surveys Inc.. an opinion research firm. Crossley's researchers around the country got answers from 4,066 men selected to represent a cross section of American males.

Among the findings:

> More than one-third of all men believed that love is the most important thing in life, and another 30% said love made sex better or was essential for good sex.

> Physical beauty in women is "irrelevant to most men." Men's first priority in women is self-confidence.

> Most men prefer active, aggressive sexual partners. Female passivity is the most common male complaint about sex.

> Four out of five men try to delay their orgasms as long as possible. Only 15% make no effort to do so.

> Half the men reported cheating on a wife or lover at least once. The younger the man, the more likely he is to stray.

> Men's preference for performing oral sex on women is growing. About 80% of men engage in the practice, and only 3% of those find it "boring or unpleasant." In answer to "What would you like to do more often?" the top two male choices were different sexual positions, and oral sex. which the authors call "the most rapidly growing turn-on in America."

Of married men, 48% say their wives always or nearly always reach orgasm, a figure only slightly higher than the 45% reported by Kinsey in 1948. The lack of a significant rise in the female orgasmic rate puzzles Pietropinto and Simenauer, who note that the majority of Kinsey's men reached orgasm within two minutes, while most males now purposely prolong intercourse. "The improvement in female orgasmic response," they conclude, "has not kept pace with the increased duration of the sex act and men's increasing interest in bringing partners to orgasm."

One-third of men still want to marry a virgin. Most men approve of premarital intercourse for women--but not too much. Say the authors: "There exists in their minds a vague point where the woman crosses the line from respectability into whoredom." According to Pietropinto, men think women should engage in sex only when there is some degree of commitment or affection. "They don't approve of recreational sex for women," he says. "Never have, never will."

One surprising finding was the strong male preference for marriage. Eighty-five percent of unmarried men said they would eventually marry, and 70% of all men said marriage was the ideal form of sex life (50% picked marriage with fidelity, 20% chose marriage with outside sexual activity). Only 10% picked unmarried cohabitation as ideal, indicating, say the authors, that living together is little more than a halfway house for men who will eventually marry.

The authors note, with some degree of wonder, that a striking pattern emerged during the interviews: "We ask a question about sex and get answers that discuss the need to change, to develop, to build and grow, from men who do not want to confront this life task alone."

In the course of the book, they manage to attack Shere Hite some 20 times, most vehemently for her conclusion that men have an "almost hysterical fixation on intercourse and orgasm." Not so, say the authors. "The overwhelming majority of men do care very much about a woman's sexual satisfaction," they write. "The notion that men want only to penetrate, thrust, and ejaculate is outdated, if, indeed , it was ever true." qed

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