Is Love, American Style, Really So Bad?

It was a fitting release for the week leading up to Valentine’s Day . . . a report on sex that lent an air of desperation to all those folks in line at candy counters and Victoria’s Secret.

Simply put, black lace teddies and romantic candlelight dinners aside, American men and women are dreadful in the sex department.

That’s the finding of what’s been hailed as “the most revealing snapshot of American sexual health” since the Kinsey Report 50 years ago. According to the study, more than four of every 10 women and three of every 10 men in this country suffer some form of sexual problem, ranging from low desire or inability to achieve orgasm to anxiety or physical pain.

These problems, warn the study’s authors, “warrant recognition as a significant public health concern.”

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The report was front-page news across the country, its dry, medical-scientific jargon interpreted in sexually explicit terms under headlines like “Bewildered in the Bedroom,” “Don’t Like Sex? You’re Not Alone” and “It’s Not Whoopee for All.”

Internationally, our image took a beating as Japanese media reported, “Sexual Dysfunction Prevalent Among Americans,” and French newspapers crowed, “Sex Is No Fun for Many Americans.”

The study was fodder for days on radio phone-in shows as callers relaying their most romantic Valentine’s Day encounters alternated with others recounting horror stories of inadequate lovers and unsatisfying sex.

Men would “get lucky” more often if they’d help with the dishes, women whined. Men suggested that women could improve their sex lives by visiting strip-tease joints “to learn how to stimulate a man.”

There were crude jokes and titillating confessions, a guy bragging that the researchers certainly didn’t talk to him “because I have never been too tired for sex,” followed by a woman admitting that her husband had given up on romance after a few “failures” in bed, so she’d taken up with a neighbor who was “man enough” to meet her sexual needs.

It was a dialogue that spoke volumes about our societal discomfort in talking about sex, about our inability to go beyond the mechanics, the plumbing, the performance issues to talk sensitively and seriously about the intimate issues that “good sex” involves.

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The survey--conducted in 1992 but reanalyzed using “sophisticated statistical tools” and released in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. last week--involved more than 3,000 men and women from ages 18 to 59 who were asked about their sexual backgrounds and practices, and whether they’d had any of a list of sexual problems in the previous year. The most common problem cited by women, reported by 22% of those surveyed, was low sexual desire. The most common male problem (21%) was premature ejaculation.

But I have a hard time getting worked up over either the nature of the problems or the extent of the so-called sexual crisis.

For starters, two of the study’s three authors have been employed as paid consultants for Pfizer, the drug company that makes Viagra . . . which just might explain their characterization of erectile dysfunction as “an important health concern.”

And maybe I’m of the “cup is half full” perspective, but I find cause to celebrate in the truth hidden among those statistics:

At least six out of every 10 Americans--70% of men and 58% of women--reported 12 months of dysfunction-free sex--a year’s worth of encounters without a single complaint. That’s like a base hit every time at bat, or the sexual equivalent of an entire year without one bad hair day.

Those numbers may alarm the sex researchers, but they sound pretty darned promising to me.

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It’s hard to know what it all means.

The survey says that, for women, “low well-being is strongly associated with sexual problems.” But does that mean women are distressed because they’re not having good sex, or that they’re so preoccupied with other stresses in their lives that sex has slipped a few notches in importance? And which problem do you fix to remedy the other?

Still, many of the findings were interesting . . . provocative, even, in defiance of conventional wisdom. For instance:

* Married people have more satisfying sex lives than singles. Unmarried men and women are significantly more likely to report sexual anxiety, impotence or problems achieving orgasm.

* A woman’s attitude toward sex does not affect the likelihood that she’ll have problems; the prude is just as likely as the vixen to have a satisfying sex life. But men with “liberal” attitudes toward sex are 1 1/2 times as likely to experience premature ejaculation.

* Sexual experience doesn’t necessarily affect performance. Most men and women who’d had more than five sexual partners reported neither more nor fewer sexual problems than others.

And my personal favorite:

* Sexual dysfunction is most common among younger women and older men. For women, the prevalence of sexual problems decreases as we age; among men, difficulties increase.

Maybe that’s what guys like Hugh Hefner have in common with those 20-something women they attract.

And maybe it explains what Stella found out when she got her groove back . . . maybe there’s a lesson for us on the silver screen.

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Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is [email protected].