Masters and Johnson

Women, they’re marvellous. The whole entire skin surface is an orgasmic platform.
Bill Masters

Masters and Johnson were pioneers of the sexual revolution, who made it acceptable to discuss sex openly and allowed women to have a voice. At a time when such researchers were all male, Virginia Johnson became a widely respected sex expert who had made it ok for women to study sex.

Bill Masters began his career in Obstetrics and Gynaecology but he wanted to really make a difference. He was particularly interested in female sexuality and took to studying it in laboratory conditions but he needed a female assistant to make his work seem less outrageous.

Virginia Johnson was his secretary and her job was to fill out insurance forms but she was very creative and wise. Together they conducted what would become the largest ever study of the human orgasm.

Because of the shocking nature of the experiments, volunteers wore hoods to mask their identity which made them look a bit like the Ku Klux Klan. Sensors were attached to the subject’s body to record heart rate, blood pressure and lung function. They needed women who could achieve orgasm quite quickly even when people were watching because their aim was to see what a female orgasm involved and to work out what biological purpose it might serve.

Masters’ secret weapon was a clear plastic phallus called Ulysses which had a tiny camera inside it. This was attached to a motor inside a wooden block which would make it go in and out and you could look in and see what was happening in the vagina and to film the changes that occurred during simulated penetrative sex.

At first Virginia Johnson’s job was purely to chaperone the women and put them at their ease. She was also responsible for warming the transparent phallus with hot towels.

This lab work meant that the basic physical changes inside the vagina could be observed – the lubrication, the way the inside walls ballooned out – the tenting effect – and the orgasm occurring. Between 1957 and 1965 Masters & Johnson analysed over 10,000 orgasms and they recorded that both men and women have orgasmic contractions at 0.8 second intervals.

Of course, the nature of their relationship began to change as a result of the work they were undertaking. Johnson claimed that it was Masters who suggested they have sex as part of their research but, even though he was married with young children at the time, she agreed.

The University became uncomfortable about their work when hundreds of couples arbitrarily assigned to each other and brought into the lab to have sex whilst Masters and Johnson watched through a one-way mirror and refused to fund any more research. It didn’t matter because they were getting cash from other sources, like Hugh Hefner and a perfume company who were trying to discover the role of pheromones in sexual attraction.

M&J founded their own institute and published their ‘Human Sexual Response’. Reviewers damned it as ‘sex dressed up as science’, dirty and unpleasant. But it was a smash hit and the first 15,000 run sold out in one day.

The careful scientific observation and recording of this revolutionary work meant that there was enough data to answer some questions about the female orgasm – it played no part in reproduction but was there for fun.

They became celebrities with frequent television appearances that stunned audiences with their open and frank discussion of topics which had been hidden under the carpet for so long.

Virginia Johnson then began an affair with a wealthy businessman and, fearing for the future of their work, Masters divorced his wife and persuaded Johnson to marry him in January 1971. Their image as the perfect married couple became essential to their success.

And they set about seeking to improve people’s sex lives with a book called ‘Human Sexual Inadequacy’ which suggested that up to half of all American married couples were sexually incompatible in one way or another and need sex therapy from Masters and Johnson at a cost of $3000 for a two week course, a figure which would have been the equivalent of a third of the average American’s annual income – even though they had no qualifications of experience as therapists. But a six month waiting list ensued.

He would say to the male “I want you to go home and touch your wife but her breasts and genitals are off limits. I want you to notice the redness on her breasts and her chest, the mottling effect as she begins to get more aroused. You may not be aware of this but her breasts will increase in size by as much as one third. I want you to notice that…”

Hell, I’m only writing it and I want to grab Ruf and have sex :)

Masters and Johnson’s method of helping single men who couldn’t get a date, let alone sex, was to hire a group of women as surrogate sex partners at a time when it was illegal for an unmarried couple to have sex in that state. The surrogate would spend a large part of the day with the man, helping him to become comfortable enough to take his clothes off in front of her. It was good for everyone, not like a prostitute at all.

I can’t remember which programme it was but there was a sex surrogate in a show that I used to watch regularly – was it LA Law? Or Ally McBeal? Or Boston Legal? She was shown as a gentle, caring person who was deeply involved with her client.

However, they rather lost the plot in 1979 when they claimed their technique for turning homosexuals straight had a 70% success rate. They were no longer leading the sexual revolution but dragging it backwards. After 21 years of marriage, the couple divorced.