MEN IN DRAG, by Jason Webber, Century Books, K.D.S. Corp. Cleveland, Ohio, 201 pp, $1.25 (1969).
One of the flood of pseudoscience paperbacks pretending to explain us, this one is weirder than most. If you have told a non-TV friend about your "hobby", and he now regards you as one would regard a seasick nymphomaniac, maybe he's read it. And yet, the author knows something of us—just enough to be confusing. He feels all TVs are sexual deviates and that the masochistic TV is “far more honest" than those of us who look down on him. He refers to a dressmaker "Alice" in the present tense, but the description precisely fits Helen Lancaster who passed away two years ago. Then he relates TV to marital sex and to wife-swapping clubs.
The most fascinating part is Chapter 9, where he claims to have data on 1976 TVs from the American Association for Sexual Behavior Studies, interviewed in the U.S., Canada and England! Some 37 ques- tions, in addition to age, occupation and religion are listed and the average answers reported. According to both Virginia and myself, both of whom know most of what is going on in TV-land, this survey is as phony as a $7 bill, but the answers make sense. They are not just a re- hash of Virginia's survey; the questions are different and so are the percentages, when comparison is possible, but not wildly so. Inciden- tally, they rated TVia as "the most helpful" publication.
At the end is a string of masochistic case histories, but it ends with a perfectly respectable account of a TV party on Long Island Sound which the author feels, as do I, is at least partly fanciful. A strange book, and sort of fascinating. I'd like to talk to the author a good safe distance away from the nearest bedroom!
THE MALE LESBIAN, as told to Roger Blake, PhD, Century Books 101J, K.D.S. Publ., Superior Bldg., Cleveland, Ohio, $1.75.
(Virginia had heard about this one and suggested I look it up. I couldn't find it, so I quote Jeri Kaye's review in Femme Forum No. 24): "Definitely foul, including some perversions I hadn't heard of before. Save your money and ignore it." Thanks, Jeri, I'll do just that.
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