Masterman and Johnson after Kinsey

Most people of my generation have heard of the Kinsey reports on the sexual behaviour of men 1948 and Women in 1953 and the renewed attention to his life and work fifty years later with a generation of film goers who may have taken interest aroused by the film Kinsey in 2004 read about his work and even the report, or the latest studies from the institute he founded

The focus of publicity overs the years relation to these studies has been the numbers of partners before and after marriage. Studies since had looked at the impact of the contraception pill and the impact of HIV and Aids, the growth in sexually transmitted diseases among young people. There have been other reports on the same subject since and these include one recent covered in BBC radio news but which I did not make a note at the time, and if my memory is good also involved a description of recent studiedly behaviour and noting changes from previous studies especially among females.

The original Kinsey findings, especially the research on female behaviour were hotly debated from various viewpoints. At that time and still but to significant less extent to day the official media and political approach was to condone sex before marriage by young males, but not by females and similarly there was greater tolerance of t men and significant less of women who had sexual relationships after marriage, especially in the North Atlantic white “western” style economies.

The work of anthropologist Margaret Mead revealed the realities among societies leading “primitive” lives, including the existence of behaviour regarded then and still as illegal, and the work of historians, especially in relation to the behaviour of rulers and war makers although more impressionistic than evidential also demonstrates considerable variation from what was expected to be the norm in pre and immediate post Second world war “Christian” based countries. In this respect it also fair comment to state that in some Muslim based countries show tolerance towards the behaviour of men allowing multiple wife partners and harems but are exceptionally severe against the adult married female, with stoning to death for adultery.

If on the other hand I said Masters and Johnson to most people before the recent commencement of the America television drama Masters of Sex I would have been met with ignorance. It was around the time the 1963/1964 class of child, family care and hospital based social worker in the first generic style professional training and qualification course at Birmingham University that we taken to a Family Planning clinic for a talk and demonstration that I acquired my copy of the Kenneth’ Walker’s Physiology of Sex first published in 1940 before Kinsey although subsequent editions made reference but understandable not to the studies of Masters and his research assistant which revolutionised official understanding about the nature of the sexual response with its liberating findings, particularly for women.

As is my want interest in the TV series being shown on Channel Four has been with the closeness or otherwise of the facts of the drama to quickly available knowledge of the work and lives of the researches concerned. I say quickly available as there is a biography of the two who divorced their partners, married and then divorced each other some twenty years later for reasons I would be interested to learn ( Thomas Maier's biography Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love.),

As the series was being shown on Channel Four my expectation was of a serious presentation of their work and relationships especially as the cast contained some recognisable actors with outstanding work, notably Michael Sheen as William H Masters, Beau Bridges as the Hospital Provost and Alison Janney (West Wing White House media director) as his wife, and to date I have not been disappointed having viewed the first nine programmes in three sessions.

For those who seek voyeuristic sexual arousal and excitement or remain convinced that that sex and romantic love is indivisible this is not a series for them and at one level it reminded of that visit to the Family Planning Clinic, or later interviewing those running sexually transmitted disease clinics when part of the Home Office Advisory Committee on Drug misuse sub committee examining the implications of HIV and Aids in relation to substance misuse and also first hand experience of what a woman can go through in giving birth it is enough to put one off sex altogether.

Being involved in the birth can help men to understand thee lifelong bond which most mothers have with their offspring and which also led to my understanding the recent televised judgment on the woman who was persuaded by an older man who dominated her life to participate in what was to have been fire and rescue of her children and which ended in their deaths. Having sat on an inquiry into the death of one child by fire, seen photographs and examined the crime scene as well having studied and worked in the field of normal and deviant human behaviour it seemed to me the original female judge, and the Lord Chief Justice who presided at the appeal hearing got the sentence right although the extent to which it would deter other mothers likely to become involved in such a dangerous action or provide the time and framework to “cure” and rehabilitate is open to question.

According to the information immediately available it is not clear if Virginia E Johnston worked as his hospital secretary before becoming his research assistant in his initial research project as portrayed in the film. We do learn that she had been married twice and was separated from the father of her two children, a musician, (previously marrying a local politician when she was 20 which lasted only two days( I do not know why) and then a much older man, an attorney, who she divorced).

She divorced her third marriage in 1956 after six years making three associations commenced and ended within 15 years. She had two children by her third marriage having previous dropped out of her local college at 16 and then after Attending a University music course she became a country music singer, then a business writer for the St Louis Daily Record and then going back to university for a degree in sociology which she never completed. In the series she enrols on a course in anatomy, gaining 99% marks in the first examination and has ambitions to become a medical doctor so her wok could be accepted as an equal research partner with Masters instead of being viewed by him initially as a secretary gofer as did her former colleagues and others as portrayed in he drama. I do not know if this aspect is accurate

Masters ten years her senior was married and at the time kept secret from his wife his impotency so that she took the blame. In one review the comment is made that his relationship with his mother reminded of the between Tony Soprano and his mum although this is far from the comparison I would make i rather with Kasper’s relationship with his mother in Borgen because she appears to have turned a blind eye and in fact helped facilitate her husband’s sex crimes against her son along with card playing and drinking male friends. Whether the truth in this respect is be revealed for happened with Kasper as the second season progressed and a s second we shall see as a second season of 12 episodes of Masters of Sex has been commissioned. Masters is portrayed as comfortable without children while his wife recognised that their marriage was at grave risk as she became isolated and lonely living with a man unable to show the kind of romantic passion and attention she craved. The importance of both the Masters and Borgen programme is that men can have the same lifelong damage as women if criminally sexually assaulted in childhood and significant greater than if the event occurs in adulthood.

In the first episode Wikipedia summary Dr. William Masters (Michael Sheen) proposes a controversial study of human sexuality but is rejected by his university. Undaunted, he begins the study anyway and hires Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan), a nightclub singer-turned-secretary, as his assistant. Upon learning that their sole subject, prostitute Betty DiMello (Annaleigh Ashford), is a lesbian, Johnson sets about recruiting additional female and male subjects, including Masters' colleague Dr. Austin Langham (Teddy Sears). She enters into a sexual relationship with Dr. Ethan Haas (Nicholas D'Agosto) but he becomes overly attached and eventually physically abusive. Masters induces his wife Libby (Caitlin Fitzgerald) to undergo painful and invasive infertility treatments, despite, according to Haas, Masters being the infertile one. Masters suggests that he and Johnson defuse possible "sexual transference" by having sex with each other as part of the study. In subsequent episodes

Virginia has trouble telling Masters that she cannot accept his proposal, but Masters informs her that Provost Scully has cancelled the study because he found out they were monitoring couples having sex. Masters believes it was Ethan who told Scully and fires Virginia on the spot for sleeping with him. Masters moves the study to a brothel with the help of Betty, but he and the participating prostitutes are arrested shortly after. Meanwhile, after being rejected by Virginia, Ethan tries to replicate their sexual liaison with other girls, but to no avail. Virginia coaxes some reluctant prostitutes to rejoin the study, and Masters temporarily takes her back to work with him, but refuses to commit beyond the day-to-day.

Masters and Johnson continue working at the brothel but Masters grows increasingly frustrated with the conditions. Betty recruits some men for the study but Masters is nonplussed to learn they are homosexual prostitutes. Betty blackmails Masters into reversing her tubal ligation but the procedure fails, leading Betty to commit to deceiving her fiancé. Haas takes the case of a woman carrying quadruplets but Scully reassigns it to Masters. Masters drops the homosexual men from his study on the grounds that they aren't "deviant" but "deviate", uses information gleaned from one of them, Dale, to blackmail Scully into allowing the study back into the hospital. Libby learns she is pregnant.

Libby has a medical emergency at the Scullys' 30th wedding anniversary party. Her fetus dies; Bill induces labour and delivers a stillborn girl. The loss leads Barton to begin reconciling his relationship with Bill.

Bill and Libby vacation in Miami while at home Virginia investigates whether there is really a difference between a clitoral and a vaginal orgasm. Bill returns to the study, leaving Libby in Miami, where she is tempted by an older gentleman. Virginia decides it is time she and Bill participated in the study, initiating a sexual relationship between them.

Austin and Margaret continue their affair. Virginia tries to find a new secretary for Bill. Bill tries to balance the study and his affair with his home life.

This description of the action fails in various ways. It provide no context and back story and its clinical detachment about story line fails to communicate the clinical detachment in which sexual acts are portrayed on the screen. The ability of women to experience sexual climax separate from vaginal penetration is not restricted just to the clitoral, and Virginia initiates a sexual relationship with William which it is evidently more than clinical on her part by demonstrating she is able to achieve a climax via her breasts alone and that others are also stimulated by other areas of the their body.

They have established a way of observing action using masturbatory devices which extend to using a camera device to be able to project what happens to professional colleagues.

The old debate that homosexuality was a deviation from the norm ,accurate in its technical use sense was rejected as early as the 1940’s in the Kenneth Walker book mentioned earlier despite the law remaining unchanged for several decades. These is now a body fo research examining why some take one sexual pathway while others do not. As later at the early sixties a Freudian view was being propounded on the course Attended including homosexuality as a deviation from he norm which required analytical treatment and in this series after the truth of the homosexuality of the Provost is revealed to his wife he raises the issue of treatment as a means of saving his marriage., Masters tells about aversion therapy being used elsewhere but later after their research is completed and the four stages of sexual response has been finished the research team moves into the treatment of deviation..

　

In Love and Marriage" Michael Apted Story by: Tyler Bensinger
Teleplay by: Michael Cunningham first shown November 17, 2013. Confrontations between th provost and his wife with Barton over his lack of sexual interest in her leads her to ask for a divorce. Barton purloins drugs from the hospital and asks Dale to help him with aversion therapy to change his sexuality but Dale refuses. Ethan and Vivian become engaged. Libby faints during a dance lesson and learns she has become pregnant again.

Jane agrees to further aid the study by being filmed while masturbating, but upon viewing the footage begs Virginia to destroy it. Virginia cajoles Bill to complete her employee evaluation but he reveals more of his feelings for her than he had intended. With Jane gone, Virginia agrees to allow herself to be filmed instead. Ethan tells Vivian of his Jewish heritage and initially agrees to convert to Catholicism, but instead ends their engagement. Libby tells Bill she is pregnant again. Bill, in response to his growing feelings for Virginia, attempts to distance himself by paying her for having sex for the study. Virginia decides she needs to emotionally detach herself as well.

The extent to which there is any basis of the relationship between the provost and his wife, and between other characters and the sexual issue is based in fact must be questioned. More likely they are devises to make general viewers engaged in the drama. This reminds of recent discussions on Film review BBC1 and Mayo and Kermode BBC Five Live about one of the latest Daniel Radcliffe films which deals with the Beat Generation poets and writers when they are young and raised the issue of how to make interesting the process of sitting at a desk with a typewriter or word processor and writing for hours and days on end.