Introduction
"... the immortal child in us is frustrated, even in the sexual act, by the tyranny of genital organization ... genital organization ... is a tyranny at war with the natural tendency of the human body, which is anarchistic and polymorphously perverse."
-Norman Brown, Life Against Death
We live in an age of expanding love, love which all too often has been defined in exclusively sexual terms. Sex may be an aspect of love and love may be an aspect of sex, but the words are not synonymous. Beyond the problem of symphysis. ("Prove to me you love me, baby; go to bed with me"), the resulting social confusion has played a major role in the development of a highly destructive and dangerously wide-spread atmosphere of intensely personal alienation.
The confusion limits not only the love experience, but the sexual one as well. The problem is at least as old as the British settlement of New England. The Puritan ethic in this country has resulted in an emotional milieu of jealousy, possessiveness and insecurity-all psychologically dangerous elements. The ethic, however, is a concrete one, easily understood by a wide segment of the population. The very fact of its apparent simplicity has led to a wide-spread acceptance of the ethic.
The old ways die hard. One can hardly pick up a newspaper without finding some reference to the fact that America is in the throes of a sexual revolution. The ethical aims of the revolution are anything but concrete; indeed, at times they appear to be so abstract as to be amorphic. The only discernible area of general agreement in the propaganda being issued by the diverse leadership of the movement is that a more "humane" sexual ethic is needed. Fine! But just what does "more humane" mean?"
The process of actualizing such an abstract change, especially when much of the propaganda continues to confuse love and sex, has proven to be a monumental task. Until quite recently, the complicated process of relating sexually to another person-especially for females-has been rigidly defined by our culture and, historically, punishment for transgression of the definition has been swift and frequently has resulted in an emotional-crippling of the transgressor. Words like whore and harlot and stud, even lover, have been wheeled as effectively as an axe at the head of offenders, producing a psychological decapitation only slightly less awesome than its physical counterpart. This sort of subliminal tyranny has mesmerized large segments of the population into hopeless submissiveness and branded those individuals who have purposely attempted to resist it as deviants-a word with negative social and psychological overtones which far exceeds its dictionary definition.
To those of us with a stake in the future of this country, the challenge should be obvious. What is being called for is not more militant propaganda but an all-out effort to create an atmosphere wherein individuals may feel the freedom to break the hold of the institutional forces of genital-organization-to break them in as creatively and in as many ways as those who are involved mutually feel comfortable with.
You have in your hand a novel of one young woman's struggle to achieve a liberated sexual ethic ... and in the process to learn to differentiate between love and sex. Her struggle is, in a very real way, a microcosm of the conflict we all face-or will face, in one way or another. The novel is written by an author with keen insight into contemporary society and into the psychological motivation of a young heroine's search for sexual expression....
We, the publishers, urge you to read this novel.
The Publishers