Ask the Expert
Joann Ellison Rodgers spent five years reading,
talking,
and writing about sex. The result was more than a few jokes
from friends and family, plus the book Sex: A Natural
History (Owl Books, 2003). The periodical Science
News
praised the book as "amazingly comprehensive," and
People
magazine ungrammatically referred to the author, who by day
is director of media relations for the Johns Hopkins
Medical Institutions, as "the biology teacher you wish you
had."
Search the index of Rodgers' 544-page volume and you will
find no entry for "lust." That, she explains, is because
her book examines the current science on the origins,
biology, nature, and purpose of sexuality. Lust may be
fascinating and significant in its own right, but it isn't
a fundamentally biological concept.
Rodgers defines lust as "a moral, religious, and literary
ideal reflecting a very intense desire on which you would
act impulsively." It is the impulsive act, and how most
societies have come to judge it immoral and harmful to
social order, that sets lust apart from desire. Says
Rodgers, "Desire has roots in biology — there are
hormones and neurotransmitters and other physiological
processes that enable this natural process. In biology, all
animals are programmed to desire. If we were not, we would
not be here. We're the descendants of those who were
extremely successful at being aroused and then (mostly)
appropriately fulfilling that desire." Not so with the
deadly sin. "When you ask scientists, 'What is sex?' lust
is not a construct that comes into play. It isn't that
scientists don't recognize or acknowledge what could be
considered a deadly sin. But they don't see it as an
outgrowth of our biology. Lust is a moral paradigm."
Most people may not act on lustful impulses, but they
avidly seek vicariously lustful experiences. Pop culture
— pulp fiction and romance novels, sexy films,
swaggering rock stars — is chock full of lustful
behavior. Rodgers doesn't see this as a necessarily bad
thing. Take rock stars, for example, with all their sexual
braggadocio. Rodgers says, "You have all these girls who
just swoon over this. I look at it as a very safe outlet.
It's a way of trying out behaviors in a safe way. Not every
girl who sees a rock star jumps into bed with him or wants
to — 99.9 percent never do."
She adds that most of society accepts a certain amount of
lusty behavior, even pornography, in mass entertainment for
similar reasons: "We have decided as a society that
pornography is a tolerable commercial venture, but also an
evil thing. I agree with that. I think it's exploitative
and harmful to those who are used in [producing it]. On the
other hand, what is it about watching naked bodies in
sexual positions as entertainment? Voyeurism is almost
universal in societies. It is a way to learn about and keep
under control certain behaviors. If men and women acted out
their every sexual fantasy, we'd walk outside and see
nothing but lust in the streets. People can't function that
way. All people fantasize. It lets you rehearse. It lets
you imagine." —DK
Advice That's No-Holds-Barred
Threesomes. Sex toys. One-night stands. As the sex
columnist for The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, Jessica
Beaton
fields all sorts of questions about how, when, where, and
why co-eds hook up on and off campus.
Beaton, a 21-year-old international relations major from
New York City, also writes a relationship column for
teenage girls that appears bimonthly in CosmoGIRL!
magazine. In her Hopkins column, "Orgasmic Chemistry,"
she's been known to give straightforward, no-holds-barred
relationship advice such as: "That's the No. 1 issue facing
most couples who want a threesome . . . the ratio. Girls
generally want two guys, and guys generally want two
girls." Or, "The basic fallacy here is that guys just want
sex, while girls just want spooning. Spooning is great . .
. but sometimes a good hook-up is just that. And if it's
good once, why not repeat it?"
So we were a little surprised when we asked Beaton to
define lust at Hopkins and got this response:
"Students lust for everything from a good grade in a course
or a glowing recommendation to the perfect job, graduate
school, or internship. . . . People at Hopkins are so
incredibly driven, for better or for worse."
Oh well. Maybe she was just being shy. —MB
An Uncomfortable Legacy
It wasn't lust that prompted Japanese troops in
World War
II to have sex with "comfort women," or sex slaves, says
Hopkins
anthropologist Sonia Ryang. It was their duty to
their emperor, part of their military training.
"These men not only fought for the emperor. They had to
have sex with comfort women for the emperor," says Ryang,
who is the author of a forthcoming book, Love in Modern
Japan. "It wasn't because they were sex-crazed. It was
part
of the discipline of the imperial army."
The comfort women were transferred, along with weapons and
ammunition, to areas of military activity. Soldiers were
allotted one condom per day, which they had to use if they
had sex."It wasn't considered adultery at all," says Ryang,
"These women were the army's property, the emperor's
property. All of this was meticulously and methodically
controlled. No soldier was at liberty to abuse them."
Yet the conditions were still difficult for the women.
Ryang recalls the account of one former comfort woman who
lay down for 17 straight hours one day with a total of 300
men.
It was more than 30 years after the war ended that people
outside the Japanese military learned of this practice.
"The women, of course, were silenced," Ryang says. The
soldiers kept the secret for decades. "To me this 30-year
silence is rather significant," she says. "A rather
significant national sexual experience was historically
erased." —MB
Sex after Cancer
When a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer,
chances are
that lust is not the first thing on her list of things to
worry about. But it's up there because while treatment can
save her life, it can also seriously threaten her
sexuality. A mastectomy or lumpectomy often damages a
woman's image of her body. Add to that the hair loss,
fatigue, and low libido that accompany radiation and
chemotherapy, and you've got anything but a recipe for
romance.
Just ask Lisa Collins, a pretty 34-year-old who contracted
breast cancer in 2002. Collins says she can sum up her
post-diagnosis sex life with her husband in one word:
nonexistent. The couple never slept together again. "I
didn't feel attractive anymore," she remembers. "I had no
hair. I just looked drawn."
Collins left her husband the following Valentine's Day.
"Looking back, I think maybe he didn't know how to handle
the whole situation," she says. She'll never know for sure,
since they never talked about sex while she was undergoing
treatment.
They would have, if Collins had been under the care of
Lillie Shockney. Shockney, a breast cancer survivor,
oncology nurse, and administrative director of the
Johns Hopkins Avon Foundation Breast Center, does what
most
doctors never do: She counsels women and their partners
about their sex lives during and after treatment, largely
to address the woman's fears about how her partner now sees
her.
Shockney says that most of the time, people are not turned
off by their wives or girlfriends after breast surgery. "We
make these assumptions that if a man is silent, he's
thinking negative things," she says. "And that may not be
the case at all. He may be afraid to show emotion because
he doesn't want to cry." He may also fear that sex will
hurt her.
To create a dialogue, Shockney asks the woman, in front of
her partner, how she feels about sex. She often privately
cautions the husband about the expression on his face the
first time he sees his wife's breasts after surgery. She
gives the couple practical advice on the ups and downs of
treatment. When radiation creates fatigue, Shockney
prescribes "quickies." If vaginal dryness becomes a
problem, she recommends buying a bottle of Astroglide. And
for those rare instances when a woman's fears about the
relationship are realized, well, Shockney has an answer for
that, too: "I tell the patient, 'Thank heavens you got
breast cancer to get that stupid man out of your life.'"
For most couples, Shockney says sex after the disease
improves because of the closeness created by communication
during treatment. Many couples also learn that sex isn't
always about intercourse, that lovemaking can happen just
lying in bed and holding hands.
Even Collins found that there is sex after breast cancer.
She started to date someone right after she finished
radiation, when she was still bald. And when that
relationship didn't work out, she found someone else. So
far, things seem to be going well, including the sex. "I
think it's great with the right person," she says.
—KB
Prostitution Enthusiast
The online magazine Salon once described
Hugh
G. Loebner,
A&S '63, as "a hedonist who thinks work is an abomination
and sloth is our greatest virtue." That may be, but Loebner
attracts more attention for his views on the commission of
another sin: lust. Loebner, you see, purchases the
services of hookers, and proclaims to anyone who will
listen — proclaims in an exasperated flood of
language — that the illegality of prostitution is a
form of oppression.
"I'm oppressed as a john because the state is using its
authority to interfere with my sexual conduct with another
consenting adult," he says.
Loebner, a PhD sociologist, earns his living as president
and CEO of
Crown Industries, which manufactures bellman's
carts, stanchions, and other hardware in East Orange, New
Jersey. He funds the Loebner Prize, which promises $100,000
and a gold medal to the creators of the first artificial
intelligence software that can pass the Turing Test —
that is, mimic human intelligence so well that a human does
not know he or she is interacting with a computer. He holds
five U.S. patents. And he just doesn't understand why
prostitution is against the law.