Avant-Garde Retreat?

What is the latest word from the sexual frontier? It may be "retreat." Though there is little likelihood that things will ever go back to where they were 30 years ago, the signs are that the sexual avant-garde--those who practice "swinging," group sex, open marriage, bisexuality and the odder forms of experiment--is in decline.

Penthouse Executive Editor Jim Goode says that swinging "has died a natural death." Feminists report that the faddish experimenting with lesbianism and masturbation by women heterosexuals as a kind of militant withdrawal from normal sex with men is now over.

"There's no doubt that all the experimentation and kinkiness are declining," says Ellen Frankfort, feminist author of Vaginal Politics. "Now there's a strong desire for connectedness." Many social scientists, counselors and sex researchers agree. Says Anthropologist Gilbert Bartell, co-author of Group Sex: "These are depressed and unsettled times. There's a more somber feeling among people, a retreat from sexual frivolity." The porn industry is retrenching. In many cities, dirty-book shops report a sales drop of over 50% in the past year.

Many "sex clubs" are disappearing. In 1973 there were 20 clubs in Southern California; now there are eight. To stay in business, one club had to lower dues and add discussion groups.

Swinging is apparently fading. Though figures are obviously imprecise, as recently as 1972 some social scientists estimated the number of at least occasional participants at between 1 million and 1.5 million; now the estimate is down by about 20%. In several cities, swinger bars have turned into traditional singles bars. Tom Palmer, former executive director of the Sexual Freedom League in California, says that he is more involved in midget auto racing than in swinging.

University of Connecticut Sociologist Duane Denfeld, whose recent work focuses on psychological damage suffered by many swingers, suggests that the early, rosy reports on swinging may have owed something to many of the original researchers, who were missionary swingers themselves. Some areas, which got the fad late, still report increased activity. "In Atlanta," Sex Counselor Martin Rosenman says of his home town, "swinging is growing. Everywhere else, it's dying."

No Swinging Marriage. Marriage and sex counselors believe that open marriage--an agreement to allow outside affairs--may still have a future, but the naive optimism is gone. Many counselors report severe and often unexpected problems of jealousy ("something whose power we all underestimated," writes Novelist Robert Westbrook, whose open marriage broke up). In their new book, Shifting Gears, Nena and George O'Neill, co-authors of the sunny bestseller Open Marriage, say (somewhat obscurely) they are recommending "change and growth" and "not a swinging marriage."

On the college campus a degree of sexual freedom is taken for granted, but the emphasis is on stable relationships. "People are pretty serious about sexual relationships now," reports a Princeton woman student. Survey Researcher Daniel Yankelovich finds that the view of marriage as obsolete peaked on campus in 1971 and has declined.

Cohabitation is now an established pattern. Studies at eight colleges round the country indicate that about 25% of unmarried students have lived with a member of the opposite sex on a relatively permanent basis. At Cornell, nearly 10% of these couples lived together three months or more before having intercourse.

Old Strategy. On campus and off, stable relationships still leave room for flings with other partners. There seems to be little interest in full fidelity. But the pain of knowing about a partner's affairs is reviving an old middle-class strategy--hypocrisy, combining official faithfulness and unofficial freedom.

The sexual avantgarde, though never more than a small fraction of the population, has had a way of influencing the rest of the U.S. after a few years. (Yankelovich finds that what used to be considered advanced views in the late '60s are today accepted by blue-collar youth.) And so Alex Comfort, in his new book, More Joy, argues that group sex and bisexuality will be standard middle-class morality within ten years. A year ago, many researchers might have agreed. Now they doubt it.

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