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Sex in the '90s

Part two:

Sexual Harassment and Obsessive Love

By Daniel Heydon

                                    (Published in Dell Horoscope July 1993)

OBSESSIVE LOVE

Dr. Susan Forward, author of Men Who Hate Women & the Women who love them published the book Obsessive Love in 1991. Advertising copy for this book reads, "whether you are an obsessive lover or the target of that desperate love, free yourself from the prison of that passion." This sounds like the stuff for fiction and indeed it is in the '90s. Any Woman's Blues. Erica Jong's 1990 novel is about a woman gripped by a sadomasochistic obsession for a young hustler and her efforts to free herself from this self-destructive addiction. This she succeeds in doing, only to later in the novel enter another doomed from the start relationship.

Men as well as women are liable to become involved in obsessive relationships in the '90s. Josephine Hart's 1991 best selling novel Damage is the story of a happily married man who becomes sexually obsessed with his son's girl friend. Damage, the novel, became the December 1992 film of the same name, starring Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche

Obsessive love as a grand passion is ruled by Pluto. But if we mean by "obsessive love" the experience of unrequited love, then we are talking about Neptune, most especially Venus/Neptune aspects, but also Neptune in any aspect to a personal natal planet. Quite often the sufferer of unrequited love is often in love with aPlutonian type. When we read of unrequited love that turns into a crime of passion, such as in the film Fatal Attraction (1990). we are again talking about Pluto, especially when in Scorpio. Sometimes, Neptune and Pluto are both involved in obsessive relationships and obsessive individuals. For example, in Single White Female (1992) we are shown a clinging self-sacrificing Neptunian type who turns into a Plutonian psychotic monster from Hell.

SEX AND THE PSYCHIATRIST

Through Freud we know of the links between psychoanalysis and sex, and this preoccupation continues in the 90’s (Yes again, I will refer to that pivotal year 1930 when Pluto was discovered. In that year the first institute for the training of psychoanalysts in the United States was set up in Boston, Massachusetts). Paradoxically, Pluto in Scorpio in the '90s has brought us films and real life stories of psychiatrists acting out their obsession with sex or shrinks sexually involved with obsessive types. All of us are familiar with the basic psychiatric tenet that the patient often falls in love with the analyst, or rather in technical jargon, experiences "transference."

Now, in the '90s, we learn the situation works both ways and that sometimes it is the therapist who falls in love with the patient. Maybe, this is another example of ‘90s revenge, and that an age-old resentment towards the therapist, as being more knowledgeable about our sex lives than we are, has finally found a voice in current cinema (an extreme example is psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs ) Or maybe, we are taking out our revenge through his disciples on Freud himself, who, so blinded by his Oedipus complex, failed to see that the women who complained about child abuse and incest in the 1890's perhaps were not acting out Oedipal fantasies, but were in fact telling the truth. (See The Assault on Truth; Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory , by Jeffrey M. Masson, published in 1984, the first year of Pluto's transit through Scorpio.) In either case, in the '90s, the therapist has joined the patient on the couch!

1991 brought us The Prince of Tides, starring Barbra Striesand as a psychiatrist who falls in love with her suicidal patient's twin brother. Then we have 1992's Basic Instinct with Jeanne Tripplehorn starring as a potentially homicidal bisexual psychologist who has an affair with her patient. Also in 1992 Annabella Sciorra starred in Whispers of the Dark as a lonely and needy therapist who starts going out with a man who may be a sado­masochistic killer. Richard Gere, as a psychiatrist in 1992's Final Analysis falls in love with the sister of one of his female patients, who turns out to be a psychotic killer.

On the basis of Final Analysis, it appears that clinical psychologist Kenneth Pope wasn't exaggerating, when interviewed by Newsweek about the growing number of reports in the 90's about psychiatrists sleeping with their patients, said, "when a therapist engages in sex with a patient, he or she is engaging in a potential homicidal activity." 7 Though we haven't as yet read in the headlines of any psychiatrists being killed by their patients, we suddenly have a flurry of cases in the public eye of therapists who have violated the Hippocratic oath and have slept with their patients. In 1991 we learned that the late poet Anne Sexton had an affair with one psychiatrist who treated her. In 1992. John M. Hamilton, a 68 year old former deputy medical director for the American Psychiatric Association, resigned his post after the Maryland medical board learned of his two-year affair with a female patient.

How widespread is this activity? A 1986 nationwide survey conducted by psychiatrist Nanette Gartrell revealed that 7 percent of male psychiatrists and 3 percent of female psychiatrists admitted having sexual relationships with their patients. More alarming were Gartrell's findings that 65 percent of therapists said they had treated patients who had been sexually involved with previous therapists. No one knows how widespread these practices are in 1992, but 8 states now have enacted laws making sex between patients and therapists a crime.

The most bizarre story to come to light in 1992 was that of Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Margaret Bean-Bayog who was sued by the family of Paul Lozano for malpractice. In 1991 Paul, a 28-year old Harvard med student committed suicide by injecting himself with cocaine 75 times. Lozano's family claimed that she seduced him. Though a medical board found insufficient evidence of any sexual relationship, Bean-Bayog's diaries which include descriptions of exotic sadomasochistic fantasies were found in Lozano's apartment. In this civil suit, some 3,000 pages of medical records, notes and letters, plus tapes, books, and gifts exchanged by Lozano and Bean-Bayog were presented to authorities. The therapist, who is married with two children, was so obsessed that she wrote to Lozano almost every day during her vacation. Here we have all the ingredients of a TV movie of the week, and yes, two TV movies about Dr. Margaret Bean-Bayog were made by 1993. Also, in 1993, Richard Gere's Hollywood film, Mr.Jones, in which he stars as a manic-depressive in love with therapist Lena 0lin opened to favorable reviews.

In the "90s psychoanalysis itself is being psychoanalyzed. Stuart Schneiderman's New York Times review (August 16, 1992) of three new books about psychotherapy has the following headline, "Therapist, Shrink Thyself." Schneiderman says that Michael B. Sussman's A Cur i ous Calling . Wayne A. Myer's Shrink Dreams, and Stanley Siegel and Ed Lowe Jr.'s The Patient Who Cured His Therapist all deal with the reasons why therapists fail their patients. As the reviewer says, "It appears that the profession's new motto is going to be 'We know that you're not O.K.; does it make you feel any better to know that I'm not O.K. either.'" Be that as it may, the current revelations about sex and the psychiatrist provide us with another example of dark secrets being brought to light while Pluto transits through Scorpio.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT

The October 1991 Hill/Thomas hearings fixated the American public for the full length of the hearings on the issues of pornography and sexual harassment. Whether you believe Hill or Thomas was innocent or that they both were lying, these hearings served the Uranus in Capricorn purpose of awakening the public to the very real need for changes in politics as usual and that the woman's point of view certainly could not be appreciated by an all-male Senate investigating committee. Sexual harrassment per se, which permeates our society and is not limited to just the work place, is a Pluto in Scorpio issue. A strange anomaly occurred in the aftermath of this trial. Though most woman polled believed that Thomas was innocent and that Hill wasn't telling the truth, most women also believed that sexual harrassment was indeed an everyday occurrence in our society — a sort of, "now that you mention the subject, I'm extremely angry about it."

Legislation affecting sexual harrasment only began in 1975 with Uranus in Scorpio. Prior to then, if a man made lewd remarks, he was thought to be boorish, a lout, and ill mannered. Now, with Pluto in Scorpio, judging from a united womanhood in America complaining of this issue, we realize that sexual harrassment is indeed a main­stream problem and a national concern.

Whether or not Anita Hill was telling the truth, women identified with her. In fact, it didn't matter even if she were lying; she had a greater role to perform than a personal one — she, became Pluto in Scorpio's representative of the sexually harassed woman. In this instance, there was a more important issue here than who was telling the truth and that was the issue of sexual harrassment. What in the early '70s was considered a minor concern had now become a national issue affecting all women. Again, Pluto in the sign of Scorpio takes Scorpio issues and makes them go mainstream.

THELMA AND LOUISE

I myself was not moved by Anita Hill's testimony, but I was awakened to the issue of sexual harassment some four months earlier when I saw the film Thelma and Louise. Speaking not as an astrologer or a movie critic, but just as a human being, I agreed with Thelma and Louise, that no one would believe their story that this guy whom they had just met at a seedy pick-up bar had tried to rape Thelma. And yes, I secretly applauded when Louise came to the rescue. Anything to me was O.K. to stop the degradation and rape of Thelma. I was caught up in the moment, just as Louise was. She acted instinctively to prevent a horror from occurring — and I could understand her action, as I could understand the girls making a run for it.

Critics found this movie very controversial. The core issue of this film was sexual harassment, yet many male and female critics missed this message. Some critics thought Thelma and Louise an example of male bashing, for its portraiture of males as insensitive louts. And some feminist critics didn't like the portrait of Thelma and Louise as surrogate male outlaws, and so they saw this movie as an example of female bashing. They saw Thelma and Louise acting as men and they didn't like it.

Though feminist critics acknowledge that women are angry, for women to act on that anger was verboten. Violence is something that only men do, and despite the barrage of female psycho killers in films in the '90s, it hasn't occurred to some feminists yet that both males and females have the capacity to become violent and to kill people.

Shortly after this almost-rape incident occurred, the girls run into a hitchhiker (played by Brad Pitt) and Thelma immediately has the hots for him. One critic said that after a near-rape experience, the almost rape victim would be too traumatized to readily agree to a sexual encounter so soon afterwards. This sounds clinically correct, but we're dealing with human beings here, not case studies. Thelma was attracted to this young guy, for the simple reason that he was cute. Is that so hard to understand?  Remember, she was almost raped, but this experience perhaps was more traumatic for Louise who had a prior history of sexual abuse in her life. No wonder Louise was so quick to the trigger.

Some critics noted in passing the theme of sexual harrasment in this film, but the main theme of their arguments were other aspects of the modern day warfare between the sexes. Feminists didn't like Thelma really getting off on her role as outlaw and getting kicks from violence. But if you view Thelma within the context of her own psychic makeup and don't burden her with carrying the feminist movement on her shoulders, you will see that her actions throughout this film are consistent with her character. She's a person who acts first and thinks later. The consequences of her actions aren't foremost on her mind. It's not a question of what this film says about women, rather it's a question of what this movie says about Thelma and Louise.

One critic interpreted this movie — two women taking a joy ride to what ultimately ends in death — as having the subliminal meaning that if a women exercises the male prerogative of freedom, it will automatically lead to death. Other critics found some of Thelma's actions — ordering the cop who had stopped them into the trunk of his squad car and later blowing up the truck of a lascivious truck driver who made passes at them — excessive and non-realistic. That critic doesn't know, even if she's a woman, how seriously women take the issue of sexual harassment. Thelma's parting words to the police officer were to be nice to your wife and then she adds, "My husband wasn't sweet to me, and look how I turned out."

THE DAMSEL OF DEATH

If the whole story of Thelma and Louise sounds make believe, let's consider the real life story of Aileen Wuornos, more popularly known as the Damsel of Death, the first ever woman convicted of being a serial killer. Remember, Thelma's violence was directed at a policeman and a truck driver, and lo and behold — among the five victims of the Damsel of Death were in fact a policeman and a truck driver. Yes, I know this is a coincidence, but I think a meaningful one. If we think Thelma and Louise's story is non-realistic, what are we to make of this female hitchhiker, who in real life lured five men who picked her up to a violent death?

Serial killers as opposed to mass murderers usually have something sexually traumatic in their backgrounds. The Damsel of Death was abandoned by her mother as an infant and was then orphaned when her father committed suicide while in prison for raping a seven-year old girl. Sexually abused as a child, Wuornos was pregnant at 13, and by age 15, she was selling her body. She told her psychiatrist she had been raped 10 to 12 times as she hitchhiked cross- country. These prior experiences explain her hatred of men, but they do not excuse her actions or make right her vicious revenge on the male sex. Would Thelma, if she had escaped her fate and in the process lost her car, have ended up as a hitchhiker on some highway luring men to their deaths? Both the stories of Thelma and Louise and the Damsel of Death serve as reminders that sexual harassment is not an issue to be taken lightly — by either sex.

1. Factual References in this section are chiefly derived from Newsweek “ Sex and Psychotherapy,” April 13, 1992. pp. 53-57.

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Sex in the '90s

Part Three

Madonna, Pornography, Violence

by Daniel Heydon

                                      (Published in Dell Horoscope August 1993)

Pornography and X-Rated Video Tapes

Despite Attorney General Meese's 1986 crackdown on pornography, thanks to the VCR and the camcorder, porno is still very much alive in the ‘90s and prospering. With Neptune in Scorpio, Playboy magazine became part of our culture. With Uranus in Scorpio, the porno film Deep Throat starring Linda Lovelace was the first ever film of that ilk to be considered to have enough merit to be shown in regular movie theatres. And Marlon Brando's Last Tango In Paris was erotic enough perhaps to hold its own in a porn theatre.

In 1976, with Uranus in Scorpio there were some 780 adult movie houses throughout the country that ran porn 52 weeks a year. (1) But just as the burlesque theatre went out of existence with the advent of movies, so did the pornographic movie theatre begin to seem dated in the early '80s with the advent of the sex-videotape revolution.

Statistics about the sales and rentals of X-rated videocassettes were staggering in 1983 — an estimated 350,000 X-rated films were purchased or rented a week. (2) It was estimated by Video magazine that 1.4 million units were sold that year, with rentals outnumbering sales by 12 to 1, a figure of 16,800,000 rentals. (3) This is the same period as when Hill and Thomas worked together at the E. O. A. C .  Se x  L i e s  an d V i de o t ap e s,  the  title of a popular 1991 film, could also serve as the title of the Hill -Thomas hearings in 1991. Here pornography took central stage as a nationwide TV audience pondered the question whether Thomas in fact spoke to Hill about Long Dong Silver. Yet, I wonder what statistics would have revealed if the same people polled about Thomas' guilt or innocence were asked  i f  they had ever in their lives rented a sex video tape. In 1990, it was estimated by Video Store magazine that the rental of porn videos alone generated around $665 million a year. (4)  Reuben Sturman, known as the porn king, alone was thought to have built an empire that in 1991 grossed $1 million a day from the sale of lewd magazines, videos, and sex toys. (5)

Six months before the Hill/Thomas hearings, the New York Times News Service on April 2, 1991 featured a story on a new product that entered America's video stores around October 1990  — amateur adult videotapes. Many husbands and wives in our society are home taping their sexual encounters and then selling them to adult bookstores which feature pornographic video tapes. The figures cited by Michael Savage, sales manager for International Video Distributor, a wholesaler of adult videos in Newark New Jersey are mind-boggling. His company alone sold over 10,000 homemade sex videos within that year, and he estimated that several hundred thousand amateur videos are in circulation. (6)

With Uranus in Scorpio, it was only a sexy woman or guy who starred in a porno movie. Now with Pluto in Scorpio, pornographic videotapes have indeed gone mainstream. Any housewife, any student, in fact, anybody, no matter what his or her physical attributes or acting ability may be, can now aspire to be a porn star!

By the ‘90s adult movie theatres were all but gone, not withstanding the unfortunate 1991 case of Pee Wee Herman's solo performance in an adult movie house that was witnessed by the Florida police. Not to put Pee Wee further in the muck, but he as well as the other patrons of that adult theatre, also become representative of the Pluto in Scorpio truth that what happens in the dark must now come to 1ight.

Madonna and SEX

What Pee Wee did in the dark that July evening Madonna routinely simulates in the light on her videos and in film — the videos Like A Virgin, Like a Prayer, and Erotica, as well as her film Truth or Dare, will suffice as examples. Michael Jackson, along with many other rock stars, tried to follow suit, but Jackson's video Black and White drew such an outcry from the public, that the offensive parts of it were quickly eliminated. Not only was the public upset about Michael's overt sexual posturing, but also his violent trashing of a car. Perhaps, though, when it comes to libidinous gestures, there is no one like sassy and beguiling Madonna, whose rise to fame and beyond accompanied Pluto's transit of Scorpio.

Her first album Madonna was released July 1983, three months before Pluto entered Scorpio. This album sold slowly, but sales picked up wildly with the release of her second album Like A Virgin, November 14, 1984. At the time of its release Pluto was at 2 SC 48, just past a conjunction to her natal Neptune at 2 SC 18. The release of the single Like A Virgin was a mega-h it, selling 1.9 million copies within six months and the album with the same title had a staggering worldwide sales of 7 million copies in the same time period. On the single Like a Virgin Madonna mocks and destroys the time worn Victorian cliché of woman as either whore or virgin. Here she combines these images to sing, "You make me feel like a virgin, touched for the very first time."

Some university professors now include Like A Virgin (as well as several other Madonna songs) in college courses (e.g. Harvard, Princeton, and UCLA). (8) Madonna has become in academia the prototype example of the postmodern woman. The crucifix against the crotch imagery of Like A Virgin, which certainly is blasphemous to devout Catholics, and in poor taste to many of all religions, has become for Harvard professor, Lynne Layton, an example of the "deconstruction of fixed female identities". (9) For a worldwide audience of rock fans, Like A Virgin, the single, reached # 1 on Billboard's Top 100 of December 1984, and the album with the same title reached #1 in January 1985, displacing Bruce Springstern's Born in the USA from its top position. On May 27, 1985, Madonna made the cover of Time Magazine.  

But has Madonna gone too far with the October 21, 1992 release of Sex, a photo fantasy book of Madonna, which includes whips, chains, and women with pierced nipples. In Sex the cross/crotch imagery of Like A Virgin has been replaced with stiletto knives menacingly held next to her crotch by two tatooed lesbian skinheads. What's more, a staggering first run of 835,000 copies makes this the largest initial release of any illustrated book in publishing history. With a $49.75 price tag (not including tax) will this by necessity result in a media blitz that celebrates the darker sides of sex?

Of course, one publicist that October said he anticipated an outrage such as was created by the first publication of D.H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. Though Madonna says in her interview in the October 1992 issue of Vanity Fair, that sadomasochism is about power and not sex, an entirely different message may be conveyed by Sex ‘s photos in which heterosexual love takes a back seat to images of lesbianism and sadomasochism. Though lesbianism by itself is certainly neither violent nor dark, some buyers of this book may indeed take offense at images of lesbians as sadomasochists. Already, in 1992, there was a violent outrage by the lesbian community over the film Basic Instinct, for it's depiction of a lesbian as a psycho-killer.

Of course, Madonna thrives on controversy and likes to take her fans to the cutting edge. Are these really as she says, her erotic fantasies which we should take with a sense of humor — or is this a calculated career ploy. Maureen Orth writing in Vanity Fair, though, found little of a humorous bent in this book and many other critics felt the same. Nevertheless, Madonna's Sex within the first week of publication entered the New York Times best-seller list as the # 1 non-fiction title in the country.

Is Madonna an angel of darkness or is she fulfilling a cosmic purpose, a Plutonian function of bringing the issues of pornography and sadomasochism up for public discussion?  Does she know what she's doing here or has her Sun in Leo gone out of control? Certainly, she is used to generating controversy and capitalizing on it. Her album Erotica, which was released October 21, 1992 also included the same S & M motifs and echoed the themes of Sex.

Madonna was born with the Sun at 23 LE 06 conjunct Pluto at 1 VI 43. Here we see the planet of light, the Sun, in conjunction with Pluto, the planet of darkness. Madonna herself replied, when asked by Vanity Fair 's Maureen's Orth, if she were out to shock people with Sex, "No, I'm out to open their minds and get them to see sexuality in another way. Their own and others." (10) It would seem that Madonna's purpose from her stated point of view is to use her Sun in Leo to shed light on its natal conjunction with Pluto in Vi rgo.

Madonna's statement echoes that of another famous Leo personality, Mae West, herself no slouch as a sex symbol and a writer, who once said, "I take sex out in the open ... I kid it. I'm a healthy influence." (11) Mae West also said "In choosing two evils, I always try the one I've never tried before" — words that we could easily place in Madonna's mouth, especially, when we consider that Mae West was born with Mercury at 9 VI 39 conjunct Madonna's Ascendent at 8 VI 15. Does it also surprise you to learn that Madonna's Neptune is at 2 SC 18 in close conjunction to Mae West's Uranus at 2 SC 38 — or that Madonna's Uranus at 12 LE 42 conjuncts Marilyn Monroe's Ascendent of 13 LE 04 and that Madonna's Sun at 23 LE 06 also conjuncts Marilyn's Neptune at 22 LE 13? To make these chart comparisons complete, note that Marilyn Monroe's Sun at 10 GE 27 is conjunct both Mae West's Pluto at 9 GE 44 and her Neptune at 11 GE 07. Here we have, Mae West, Marilyn Monroe and Madonna, linked together by the outer planets as sex goddesses for the ages!

Sadomasochism in the '90s

Sex and violence are the two best sellers in our culture, so it's perhaps not surprising that sadomasochism, which combines both sex and violence in the same act, is on the rise. We are no longer shocked by it, for kinky sex or allusions to it are readily available, from off-color jokes by our humorists to films like Blue Velvet (1987) and Tie Me up. Tie me down (1990). Though Farm Aid fundraiser John Cougar Mellencamp sings "I was born in a small town", in another video, set in a biker bar, he sings to a girl draped in chains "it hurts so good" — after hearing these lyrics, we may wonder if the small town Mellencamp comes from is Twin Peaks.  With Pluto in Scorpio, there is perhaps no better image of the fact that S & M has gone mainstream than the TV ice cream commercial showing a man begging like a dog for treats from his teasing dominatrix with the accompanying voice over "Evidently, it's not your normal chocolate chip." (12)

A current Pluto in Scorpio trend is the wearing of rings in the nipples and genitals. In April 1990, one California business reported over 600 body piercings in that month alone, including the nipples of a bank president and the genitals of many Orange County housewives. As John Leo in US News & World Report said," this is the clear imagery of sexual slavery, springing from the hardest core, most hostile porn, but it is presented as a natural and harmless extension of earings and nose jewelry." (13) When I read a review of Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy, a novel about clitorectomy (i.e. female circumcision) which reached #4 on the NYT best-seller list on August 2, 1992, I was presented with a different kind of "sexual slavery."

Feminist critics have certainly spoken out about the barbaric nature of this ritual inflicted on women in Africa and other cultures, yet I have not heard any feminists raise their voices about the new fad for clitoral rings. Do we have a double standard here?  If rings were put on the clitori of circumcised black Africans, would that have made this ancient custom alright. Would the ring have resulted in pleasure for the victim instead of pain? Is this a situation where if you try it, you'll like it, or is the truth of the matter more like that experienced by Alice Walker's character Tashi whose clitorectomy was an experience of "suffering and humiliation." (14)  Or am I missing the significance of those genital piercings in California, which is, that maybe these piercings were especially sought after so that the wearer of the clitoral ring could indeed experience "suffering and humiliation".

No doubt Madonna's photo album, Sex and her record album Erotica will bring, what is for me a disturbing topic, into a clearer light. Though in the '90s, such taboo topics as incest, child abuse, and rape are now topics to be discussed at the breakfast table, we hear of no support groups for the survivors of sadomasochism nor do we have statistics on how many people are into it.

Does this mean that society doesn't view S & M as an aberration and that it is thought of as a normal part of sex, at least for some individuals? As Madonna implicates, should we practice a live and let live attitude to this phenomenon in our society? Is sadomasochism only a problem, for people like me? And now I speak only for myself (and I hope I do not sound like either Dan Quayle or Tipper Gore) — but do we have to have the accoutrements of the dungeon to add mystery and excitement to our sex lives. Certainly, for many of us, just getting to know someone, to dare to become intimate, is scary enough. And when intimacy is achieved, do you not feel, to quote the very same lines of Madonna that I did in the last section, "like a virgin, touched for the very first time." Here Madonna speaks of sex as a rebirth and here she seems to be in touch with sex as that primal experience which D.H. Lawrence, a Scorpio, so often celebrated in his work.

Though S & M came out of the closet, so to speak,  in the '70s with Uranus in Scorpio, when punks wore black leather and safety pins in their ears, soon to be accompanied by Vogue in 1975 using S & M motifs in their fashion ads, little has been written about this subject in the '90s (I know that, thanks to Madonna's Sex, all this will have been changed by the time you read this article). The fashion world by the way has gone from ‘70s S & M to ‘90s vampire chic, as befits our bloodthirsty culture. (See Entertainment Weekly September 24, 1992 issue and Mirabella, October 1992).

The inspiration for this new fashion turn was provided by Francis Ford Coppolo's Bram Stoker's Dracula, which was released November 1992. Bram Stoker's novel was written in 1897 with Uranus in Scorpio; with Uranus again in Scorpio in 1977, Frank Langella starred in the Broadway play Dracula; and the classic film Dracula starring Bela Lugosi was released in 1931 just after Pluto's discovery. As of November 1992, you'll no longer have to travel to Transylvania to purchase your vampire accessories. This was the month that mass market " Drac " wear began to appear in specialty boutiques and department stores throughout the U.S. Also available are upscale accessories like blood-red lipstick, jeweled fangs, and coffin handbags. Yes, fashion does mimic the movements of the outer planets and yes, with Pluto in Scorpio, the vampire look went mainstream in 1992!

But to return to the subject at hand. Susan Brownwiller in her Against Our Will; Men, Women and Rape speaks of rape not as a sex crime, but as a power trip. And Madonna tells us that S & M is not about sex, but about power. (In astrology, Scorpio is a sign linked with both sex and power.) Though society feels it is an outrage when S & M takes the form of the battered wife, apparently many members of society feel that nothing is out of whack when both parties to a sadomasochistic act willingly assume the roles of dominator and submissor.

Much has been written in recent years about how we live in a mucho-macho society where men are domineering. Women have rebelled against being assigned a submissive role in our society. And in our universities in the ‘80s and '90s, we have read of professors losing their tenure because of sexual innuendoes that are considered politically incorrect. Yet, despite all the sensitivity to this issue, we have both men and women writing in books of their sexual experiences of bondage or what it feels like to have another human being cower before your whip. These stories are not written with regret or guilt – but with eroticism.

It is felt by many in publishing that this is a victory for women’s rights, as pornography was strictly a man’s preserve at the time when  Neptune was in Scorpio and Playboy first appeared. Though it is a healthy sign that we can laugh about S & M, there are greater issues at stake here. The goals of a kinder gentler relationship between men and women, one in which equality reigns rather than themes of dominance and submission, will not be achieved, so long as our culture saturates us with the conflicting message that S & M is alright in the bedroom but not in the corporate boardroom.

But there are still other reasons to be concerned about sadomasochism. On occasion, we read of S & M that has gone too far, like the case in NYC in 1985, where a male model ended up dead after a night of S & M playfulness. Perhaps, this will help us realize that it is significant that psychologists say that hostility, guilt, and lack of self-worth can turn a person in this direction and that in some instances, a childhood history of sexual abuse can lay behind an adult taste for sadomasochism. Perhaps, we will come to realize that an experience in which someone who gets his or her kicks by making someone else feel small and in which the other party gets delight from being degraded is perhaps just not right. That a sexual coupling that for some people makes the participants feel larger than life because power needs are being fulfilled can lead to death is a circumstance that should not be ignored.

The 1991 release of the film Silence of the Lambs and the publication of American Psycho, both about serial killers, prompted Barbara Ehrenreich to devote an editorial in Time to society's enjoyment of such things as decapitation, dismemberment, eye gouging, and the like. She notes how we desecrate our bodies today, in one form or another. She calls for a more realistic treatment of sex by Hollywood with an occasional film showing sex between people who are wrinkled and overweight and who actually like each other. She feels we need to make friends with our bodies again — that we need to be reminded that our bodies can be good for a romp now and then, by which she means,” something involving dancing and petting as opposed to dicing and flaying." (15)

With Pluto now in Scorpio, perhaps the 1993 publication of the unexpurgated Lady Chatterley’s  Lover (16) by D.H Lawrence will refresh our memories that sex indeed can be a primal scream, not one that derives from pain or inflicting pain, but rather from ecstasy (not the drug by that name). Lawrence wrote about sex as an experience that does indeed make the earth shake and the heavens move, and the participants reborn to themselves as individuals, who in togetherness achieve a oneness with the universe. This perhaps is one of the ultimate mysteries (some, sadly, will say  --  fantasies) associated with Pluto and Scorpio. Let's hope, by the end of this transit, that sex as ecstasy, mysticism, and literally out of body travel, will be the catalyst that once again reacquaints humanity with the relationship between the spiritual and the physical, with the relationship between body and soul. Is there any significance to the fact that in 1930, the year of Pluto's discovery, the song Body and Soul was at the top of the charts? Yes, I know, what cynics among you might say, so were Ten Cents a Dance  and Love for Sale .

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FOOTNOTES

• “The Porno Plague”, Time, April 5, 1976, p. 58
•  Don Gentile, Thomas Hankaham, and Charles W. Bell, “Seen in the best homes: X-rated Video Cassettes,” New York Daily News, 10, 29, 1984 p.4
• Ibid.
• Jess Cagle, “The Feds secret war on porn,” Entertainment Weekly, December 7, 1990.
• Time, November 4. 1991,  p.37.
• Michael de Courey Hinds, “Home Sex Videotapes Hot on the Market,” Austin American Statesman, April 2, 1991.
•  Ibid.
• Elizabeth Tippens, “Mastering Madonna,” Rolling Stone, September 17, 1992.
•  Ibid.
•  Maureen Orth, “Madonna in Wonderland,” Vanity Fair,  October, 199
•  As quoted by Lois Rodden in Profiles of Women (American Federation of Astrologer, 1979) p. 152. Planetary Data for Mae West and Marilyn Monroe are from this book. Planetary data for Madonna from Dell Horoscope’s Superstars,1985
•  John Leo, “Haute porn, Hard-Core Couture,” US News and World Report, June 13, 1990, p. 20
•  Ibid 

•  Quoted by Janette Turner Hospital, New York Times Book Review, June 28, 1992,  p.11

• Barbara Ehrenreich, “Why don’t We Like the Human Body,” Time, July 1, 1991

•  Note: In 1993 the BBC dramatized Lady Chatterley's Lover in a film directed by Ken Russell although the more explicit scenes were toned down.
  

 

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Sex in the '90s

Part 4: 

DATE RAPE, CHILD ABUSE, INCEST

 by Daniel Heydon   

DATE RAPE

Mythology tells us that the Roman God, Pluto, in disguise, raped the young Persephone and carried her off to Hades, where he made her his queen. This abduction was immortalized in marble by the noted sculptor Bernini in 1621 (Pluto was in Taurus then, Scorpio's opposite sign). As astrologer Liz Greene notes in her book The Astrology of Fate , whenever in mythology Pluto left his domain in Hades and made an entrance to the upper world, it was accompanied by a rape. 1 This link between Pluto and rape holds true in astrology as well, for whenever an outer planet is in Pluto's sign, Scorpio, the issue of rape is a matter of public concern.

Shortly after Neptune entered Scorpio, December 1955, Billie Holliday's 1956 autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, was published. In this book, she revealed that she had been raped by a 45-year-old neighbor when she was ten. With Uranus' entrance into Scorpio, December, 1974, the public's attention once more was focused on the issue of rape. In 1975, Joanne Little was declared not guilty of stabbing a white prison guard who tried to rape her. That same year, rape laws were changed in 9 states to offer better protection for victims of rape. Perhaps, the rape of singer Connie Francis in 1977 made the biggest headlines while Uranus was in Scorpio. She was awarded $1,475,000 from the Howard Johnson motel chain because she was not provided with a safe and secure room.

In 1975, Susan Brownmiller gave us the now classic breakthrough study of rape in our society, the best seller, Against Our Will; Men. Women. And Rape. This book changed society's perception of rape. Brownmiller attacked the concept that rape was a sex crime, arguing instead that it was a crime of violence and power over the woman. She also corrected the then prevailing Neptunian view of rape as an indicator of masculine machismo and the rapist as a heroic sexual outlaw in her chapter entitled, "The Myth of the Heroic Rapist". In this chapter, she notes how film, literature, and music, from the glamorization of Jack the Ripper to Mick Jagger's "Midnight Rambler" gave us a false idea of what was actually happening in the instance of rape.

With Pluto now in Scorpio the brutal rape of the Central Park jogger by three black teens in 1989 enraged us all, as did the earlier 1983 gang rape of a young mother on a tavern pool table by six Portuguese aliens in New Bedford, Massachusetts. This terrifying rape became the basis for the 1986 film, The Accused, for which Jodie Foster won an Academy Award. With Pluto in Scorpio in 1986, this rape was not glamorized, but rather it's horror was explicitly revealed on camera.

However, we must keep in mind that not all rapes are committed by disadvantaged urban youth or rowdy thugs, and not all victims are female. A 1991 survey of students at Stanford University revealed that 1 out of 8 men surveyed had at one time been forced to have sex by a man they knew. 2 Most of the sexually assaulted women surveyed at Stanford also knew their attackers. Indeed, we are learning in the '90s that the would-be rapist is more likely to be the clean cut acquaintance next door than a violent stranger. An emotional national debate is occurring at this moment as to what actually constitutes a rape. An editorial in the New York Post argues that if a sexual encounter, forced or not, has been preceded by a series of consensual activities — drinking, a trip to the man's home, a walk on the beach at 3 in the morning — the charge against the alleged offender should be different than one filed against the violent youths who raped and mugged the Central Park jogger. 3

Sometimes, the issue of mutual consent is clouded. If the participants are young, drinking, and aroused, they are not very good at communicating. Often, date rape occurs, because men and women tend to misread each other's signals. As Susan Estrich, author of Real Rape , says, "in many cases, the man thought it was sex, and the woman thought it was rape, and they are both telling the truth." 4  Further complicating the issue of date rape are those who make false accusations of being raped when they have other reasons for their anger. As Nancy Gibbs says in Time "rape is an abuse of power... but so are false accusations of rape." 5

1991 brought us the celebrated rape trials of both boxer Mike Tyson and William Kennedy Smith. Whether both these men were actually guilty of rape or falsely accused is a matter of conjecture by many in society. As Liz Smith reported in her syndicated newspaper column, 9/16/92, a rumor making the rounds in 1992 is that Mike Tyson was framed by the Mafia in his date rape encounter, because he was threatening to quit professional fighting.

The real verdict or outcome of both these courtroom dramas, however, is that these much publicized trials served the cosmic function of focusing public awareness on the Plutonian issue of rape. More than 100,000 women reported being raped in 1990, a nationwide record, according to a Senate Judiciary Committee study released March 1991. The same study indicates the rate of sexual assault is increasing four times faster than the overall crime rate. More shocking were the later statistics of that same year 1990 released April 1992, by the psychiatric department at Medical University of South Carolina, which revealed that far more rapes occurred in 1990 than the Justice Department says — a staggering figure of 683,000 rapes a year!

Reliable statistics about date or "acquaintance" rape are hard to come by. Many of these incidents go unreported and some accusations about date rape are false. Be that as it may, in a 1990 study of 6,159 students by the National Institute of Mental Health one of four college women reported being the victim of rape or attempted rape, and nearly 90 % knew the assailant, half involving dating partners.

Date rape was the subject of William Faulkner's 1931 novel, Sanctuary, which was published shortly after Pluto's discovery. Now, with Pluto in Scorpio, date rape is not only a concern on every college campus, but it has also become an emotionally charged issue that affects each and every one of us. Pluto in Scorpio is telling us that both sexual parties have a moral duty not to use sex as a weapon to inflict either psychological or physical pain. Then, mutual consent will be a given, based on mutual respect.

CHILD ABUSE

In the same year as Pluto's discovery, 1930, the German film M, starring Peter Lorre as a murderer of children, was released to international acclaim. This classic film helped to solidify in the public eye the picture of the child abuser as a loathsome perverted psychotic. For years, children were brought up with the admonition not to accept candy from strangers. With Uranus in Scorpio in 1979, the public was shocked to learn in Christina Crawford's autobiography, Mommie Dearest that her mother, the revered film star, Joan Crawford, beat her at times with a wire coat hanger.

However, it wasn't until shortly after Pluto's entrance into Scorpio November 5, 1983 that the public became aware that child abuse was more prevalent than we thought and that the child abuser was more likely to be a family member, a parish priest, a school teacher, a day care worker, or a friend of the family than a stranger or "dirty old man".

1984, the first year of Pluto's transit in Scorpio, was a pivotal year as far as an increased awareness of child abuse was concerned. The Mc Martin pre-school day center scandal March 1984 made the public aware that trusted caregivers of children are capable of violating that trust. Even though some of the accused were exonerated after a 4-year trial, the public was in panic about child abuse the full year of 1984.

Unfortunately, the Mc Martin case was not an isolated example of child abuse in 1984, as further investigations of day care centers that year revealed that abuse of children was a widespread occurrence in day care centers — witness the cases that suddenly were in the public eye, from Chicago (May 84) to Florida (Aug 84), to New Jersey (Aug 84) to Bronx, New York (Aug 84). On May 14,1984, with Pluto retrograde at 0 SC 06, Newsweek ran the cover story "Sexual Abuse — The Growing Outcry Over Child Molesting" and on August 25,1984, with Pluto at 29 LI 57, NBC followed suit with its news show, The Silent Shame; The Nature of Child Abuse. One of the main concerns of this documentary was the use of children in pornographic literature. This expose led to Denmark cracking down on the child pornographers in that country.

Would this be the end of the story, unfortunately, not. Making the headlines in magazines, such as Rolling Stone and Newsweek in 1991/2 were the shocking revelations that a new kind of child abuser had come to public awareness with Pluto's entrance into Scorpio — kids as young as the age 5 brutally molesting other children. 6

First knowledge of this horrifying news came in 1984, during the first months of Pluto's current transit of Scorpio, when a Pacific Northwest juvenile counselor, Alison Stickrod Gray, found herself face to face with a 5 year old girl who, though herself a victim of sexual abuse at age 3, had been sent to Gray's office not as a victim of sexual abuse but as a sexual offender. About the same time in Los Angeles, Kee Mac Farlane was confronted with the same horrific situation --- a 4-year-old boy who had been sexually traumatized by an 11-year-old boy in a foster home.

In the  years since these first cases were discovered, there has been a flood of reports of kids molesting other kids. Because Mac Farlane was unable to find a treatment program in either the juvenile justice system or in the existing field of victim treatment in our society for someone so young as this 11 year old boy, who was both victim and victimizer, she was led to start her own program in 1985, known as SPARK (Support Program for Abuse Reactive Kids). Later, she, with co-author Dr.Carolyn Cunningham, wrote the first book on the subject, When Children Molest Other Children.

For years, it was thought that adults who themselves had been molested as children grew up and then became child molesters. Society had no idea that some kids soon after they were molested in turn molested other children. Pluto in Scorpio is bringing us more insights into the causes and cures of child abuse, yet there are many questions still to be answered — for example, there are some cases of children, who have not been molested themselves, inflicting horrors on other Kids.

Each year of Pluto's presence in Scorpio brings new and more shocking stories of child abuse: from the couple that starved their 13 year old son to death in Fort Worth Texas in 1991; to the much publicized Steinberg case in New York 1987, which led to the death of 6 year oid Lisa; to the 1990 HBO movie Judgment about a pre-pubescent boy who was molested by his parish priest (one of many stories that have come to light in the 90's about priests and ministers as sexual molesters); to the North Carolina day-care operator who received 12 life terms for sexually abusing 12 pre-schoolers in 1991.

More and more people in the '90s are breaking the silence and speaking out about their personal memories of child abuse. Writer Richard Rhodes gave us his critically appraised 1990 biography A Hole in the World, a story of triumph and survival over a childhood marred by an abusive step mother. The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson published his 1991 autobiography In My Body, in which he also tells of life with an abusive father. Singer Sinead O'Connor also in 1991 told her story of a life of frequent beatings by her violent mother to Spin magazine in 1991. Roseanne Cash in her 1991 Central Park concert sang This World. a song about child abuse. The trio, Wilson Phillips, made up of the two daughters of Beach Boy Brian Wilson and one daughter of John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and Papas, on their 1992 album Shadows and Light sing Where Are You?, a song based on Chynna Phillips' memories of being sexually molested as a child (The assailant was not a family member).

In an effort to encourage more people to speak out about child abuse and to help both the victim and abuser to get help, the documentary Scared Si1ent. hosted by Oprah Winfrey, herself a victim of child abuse, was simultaneously broadcast on CBS, NBC, and PBS on September 4, 1992. As Winfrey notes, child abuse has reached epidemic proportions in the '90s, with a 1000 new cases being reported daily. She adds, abuse within the family often remains an unspoken horror because children will endure almost anything to keep the family together.

Indeed, there are many suffering in silence, their voices yet unheard. Perhaps, Suzanne Vega sings for all of these children in her 1987 hit song Luka. As critic Stephen Holden notes in the New York Times about Suzanne Vega singing Luka : in her "first-person monologue of a battered child, she projected a cheerful stoicism ... the suppression of fear, rage or self-pity in her voice suggested a character who was resilient but numbed." In Suzanne Vega's words," They only hit until you cry / And after that you don't ask why / You just don't argue anymore."7

INCEST

In William Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury, which was published in 1929, shortly before Pluto's discovery in 1930, Quentin's awareness of the genuiness of his sexual longings for his sister Caddy, in his mind, was tantamount to actually committing incest and before the novel's end he commits suicide. With Uranus in Scorpio, the terrifying dark secret that lay at the bottom of the 1974 mystery-murder film Chinatown was incest. Though Scorpio is the sign of secrets, with Pluto here, even the most sinister and darkest of secrets are now coming to light.

This is especially true, when we consider the groundbreaking TV movie Something about Amelia, a sensitively depicted story about a father who commits incest with his daughter and subsequently is rehabilitated. Something About Amelia, for which Roxana Zal won an Emmy, for her portrayal of Amelia, was first broadcast January 14,1984, with Pluto at 1 SC 46. This TV movie was one of most widely viewed programs in television history and it awakened the general public to the fact that incest is more common than we thought. It also did away with some of the stereotypical thinking about the subject. But, equally important, it showed there is hope for both the victim of incest and the victimizer — a message that has now become prominent with Pluto currently in Scorpio.

If we take a look at Steven Spielberg's 1985 The Color Purple , based on Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize winning 1982 story of an Afro-American's harsh and brutal life in a poverty-stricken South, we marvel at the triumph of the human spirit over adversity in the example of her heroine Celie, as played by Whoopi Goldberg, in this her first film performance. Certainly, the odds were against this character, who not only twice was made pregnant by her incestuous father, but also endured and survived a marriage with an abusive husband, to later enjoy a healing and a coming to terms with her individuality — a remarkable performance by Goldberg about a remarkable human being in a remarkable film.

Still, some moviegoers may have been left with the feeling that in the mean environment of the main character's upbringing, in which incest was just another sordid fact of daily life, that Alice Walker's South was the same South that inspired the sometimes gothic fiction that we associate with writers such as William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Flannery O'Conner, Carson Mc Cullers, and Tennessee Williams — all of whom have written of either aberrant characters or characters victimized by the sheer horror of their environmental circumstances.

Though The Color Purple 's immediate literary forbearer was the equally magnificent I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1972) — multi-talented Maya Angelou's personal memoir of what Susan Brownwiller, in her Against Our Will calls, "the most moving and painful account of childhood rape that ever was put to paper," the catastrophic circumstances of her early life are beyond most readers' experiences. 8

And this is why Something. About Amelia is so noteworthy. The Color Purple and I Know Why a Caged Bird Sings are works of art and testaments to the endurance of the human spirit that evoke in the reader the same incredible awe that we reserve for those who survived the holocaust. These are larger than life figures. In Something about Amelia we have incest for the middle class (I don't mean these words as a disparagement), but rather here we marvel how a proper refined office worker (as played by Ted Danson), who has many likable qualities, could come to these circumstances.

We see incest here affecting the whole family, and we see that family pull together. There are no villains here, which makes it all the more remarkable to us that incest could occur at all in Something  About Amelia, our stereotype casting of victim-victimizer is blown away here. Guilt doesn't make the abuser commit suicide, or the viewing audience breathe a sigh of relief that the victimized daughter has finally gotten away from this awful man -- for he is not an awful man, even though what he did was horrific. Both victim and victimizer stay around for the healing that must occur if this family is to survive, if this father/daughter relationship is to be reborn

Much work is going on in the '90s to heal the survivors of incest. So painful are the repressed memories of early incest, that many victims of incest do not recall these experiences until much later in life. Though much ado has been made of the fact that celebrities like Roseanne Arnold, La Toya Jackson, Man Derber Atler, a former Miss America, have in a chain reaction come forward in 1991 to speak of their childhood misfortunes, some members of the media have callowly dismissed these confessions as publicity stunts.

But Roseanne Arnold, Van Derber Alter, et.al. are typical of the typical incest survivor. Since Pluto entered Scorpio, laws have been changed in many states to account for the fact that many victims of incest do not recall their experiences until years later (typically, between ages 29-50). Consequently, the statute of limitations has been changed in incest cases, thanks to the pioneering work of incest-law reform advocates Patti and Kelly Barton, Shari Karney, and Mary R. Williams in 1985/6, whose patient labors began to pay off in 1988, when Washington became the first state to allow victims to bring suit for up to three years after the memory returns. 9  A dozen other states have since followed Washington's example. Books such as The Courage to Heal , by Ellen Bass/Laura Davis(1988) and Allies in Healing (1991) by Laura Davis recently have been written to help the incest survivor reclaim his or her life.

Many victims of incest have been reaching out to help others victims of incest. Some may feel that these are examples of "misery loving company" — but it does help to have someone to talk to. Ask Oprah Winfrey, one of the first to speak out on this subject in 1985 and now a leading spokesperson on any form of child abuse. It was upon hearing someone else's true story of being molested by a parent on her own talk show that, for Oprah, it suddenly all had to come out. On national TV, with tears rolling down her cheeks, Oprah Winfrey unashamedly told the world that she too had been a victim of incest.

She spoke out in the same year that she received the public's deserved admiration for her performance in The Color Purple , where she played Sophia, a character with a zest of life, whose spirit is crushed because of a severe beating. No one whoever saw this film will forget the pain engraved in Oprah's eyes, when we first see Sophia after the beating. In retrospect, you just know she drew on her own experience of being abused to give such a meaningful performance.

On Scared Silent. the 1992 TV documentary on child abuse, hosted by Oprah Winfrey, there was one case history of a incestuous father and his daughter (whom he had not seen in three years) reunited in a therapist's office. Here we see the tenuous rediscovery of their relationship. Indeed, the challenge being faced in the 90's by both the abused and the abuser is to learn how to forgive both the self and the offending party. The case history on Oprah's show in 1992 renews the promise of Something About Amelia, which was first broadcast seven weeks after Pluto's entrance into Scorpio in 1983 — that through forgiveness, faith, therapy and love, both the victim and abuser will triumph over the past to be reborn, to face a new beginning in life. In some instances, and incest in our world must rank among these instances, the darkness must come before the light.

Footnotes

1. Liz Greene, The Astro!ooy of Fate (York Beach, Maine, Samuel Weiser Inc., 1984), p. 40.

2.National Enquirer, September 24, 1991, p.23.

3. As reported by Nancy Gibbs in "When Is It Rape?", Time June 3, 1991, pps. 48-53.

4. ibid .

5.  ibid .

6. The information reported here on kids abusing other kids was derived from Newsweek’s "When Kids Molest Kids", March 30, 1992 and Sara Terry's "Sins of the Innocent", Rolling Stone , October 31, 1992

7. Susan Brownwiller, Against Our Will; Men. Women, and Rape (New York: Bantam, 1976, p.302.

8. See "Incest and the Law" by Carol Lynn Mithers, The New York Times Magazine, October 21, 1990 for a full account of early attempts to reform incest laws

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