Mae West to Alfred Kinsey
I have never been frightened of sex. My saying that might get a laugh because, as an actress, I’m so thoroughly established as a sex personality that I am often accused of being capable of injecting double-entendre into a simple request for a cup of coffee. So again, and meaning it—I have never been frightened of sex. Instinctively, I suppose, I have always felt sex to be what your report shows it to be—a kind of standard equipment of the human species, without which man might just as well be a mollusk or an amoeba. (I checked those two, and they’re dull characters.)
The sexual behavior of human males does not surprise me. Neither will sexual behavior in the human female, as you report it.
Some years ago I tried to report a few truths about that kind of behavior myself, in a play I wrote and starred in, called, frankly enough, SEX . . .
I have been reporting on sex from time to time, ever since. Our approaches to and handling of the subject are different, but both of us are out in the open about it. Your approach is scientific, observing, investigating, classifying, statistical. Mine involves at least the first two of those methods, but, when it comes to statistics, I’m afraid the only figure I employ is my own. And that figure, which has become internationally familiar, stands for sex—just as your report of facts and figures does.
Sex is the basis of life and everybody is interested in it either consciously or unconsciously. It has been the basic theme of all my plays and pictures, and my characterizations symbolize the same. Because I portray sex with humor and good nature instead of something shameful, I think my portrayals are accepted in the spirit in which I play them. I have excited and stimulated, but I have never demoralized.
I feel as an actress and playwright I have been frank and honest in dealing with the subject—as I know you have been as a scientist. I cannot see sex as a tragedy in human life except, of course, in those cases where a psychiatrist—or actual restraining from sex violence of one sort or another—is needed. But I believe the more we are prepared to accept sex in our lives without a distorting sense of guilt and fear the less tragic will be any of its consequences.
A large portion of your book is devoted to presenting startling facts as to the amazing percentage of homosexuality in the total male population. In the same year I produced my play SEX, I also wrote and produced a play I called THE DRAG. This dealt seriously with the problem of the homosexual in modern society, and it was well received by thinking and forward-looking people. However, it carried a message a little too premature for the general public.
Elsewhere in your book I find that you give a “third possible interpretation of sex as a normal biological function acceptable in whatever form it is manifested.”
I am afraid that right here I’m going to have to object to any interpretation of sex that looks upon it as a mere “biological function.” Any man (or woman) who has anything but ice water trickling through his arteries does not want to think of sex in any terms that do not include the psychology of romance, the mystery of allurement, the excitement and adventure of discovering the unknown in the personalities of those he chooses to love.
We should know everything about ourselves, but it is wiser (for sex’s sake) not to know everything about each other. We should not be so exposed to each other, so common to each other, that sex becomes a mere commodity to be handed around like a pack of cigarettes.
How honest can we get about sex? I suppose it would be dangerous to admit that, at its best, sex is fun. But I would hasten to add that, at its worst, sex is self-destructive and criminal. There must be a happy medium—a common ground—where sex can meet with self-respect and unite to produce peace of mind for every individual.
Since one must be able to live in harmony with oneself before being able to live in harmony with others, the sooner one draws up an accounting of the sexual needs of one’s character (privately, of course), the sooner will one be able to arrive at a sane and workable balance.
I would be the last to encourage uncontrolled sexual activity, licentiousness, in anyone. Obviously, early and thorough sex education and intelligent and sympathetic religious guidance are needed to enable men and women to accept and adjust the patterns of their sex lives so they may experience their basic human needs with dignity and self-respect.
Perhaps, Dr. Kinsey, you will say that all this doesn’t sound much like Mae West talking—not the Mae West of the worldwide publicized sex personality. It happens to be Mae West thinking out loud. Your book about men, you know? I found it stimulatin’!
Sexationally yours,
Mae West