Disentangling genes from nature is like identifying limbs in a massive orgy. Confusing and ultimately, unimportant. Yet, it’s always an interesting conversation.
Among swingers, this might be nothing but a demure, post-coital conversation, but for the rest of society it’s the kind of debate that produces violence and absurd state legislation.
Most of the people I’ve met in the lifestyle have been what social science calls a “Type A” personality. Initially considered to be a risk factor for coronary heart disease in the original 1950’s study, Type A’s are defined as “high achieving workaholics who multi-task, drive themselves with deadlines, and are unhappy about the smallest of delays.”
Sound familiar? Swingers don’t fuck around. While America’s Puritanical roots continue to keep most of our countrymen from getting what they need sexually, we pursue carnal fantasies with the same gleeful verve as our government pursues oil and terrorists.
Swingers are like big wave surfers or skydivers or stock traders. Our brains respond like pachinko machines to the cocktail of adventurous sex. We light up and plink and plonk and revel in both success and failure.
But is this the way we were wired at birth or did we learn this somewhere? There has been no formal study of this issue. Sociologists have traditionally used diseases or adoption and twin studies to present their arguments, but it’s totally inconclusive.
Mrs. Thunderotica argues that it’s completely behavioral. She grew up in a strict Muslim country. She thinks swinging is “about exposure and the opportunity to get (sexually) high.” She doesn’t equate the willingness and motivation to swing with, say, being born homosexual. It may take a certain type of personality, she argues, but the primary influence is the larger social structure we’re born into.
She asserts that the idea of swinging never crossed her mind until she came to live in the United States, yet she still admits she’s “always been a thrill seeker.”
Ah, but I have to disagree with her (if only it means I will be terrifically abused this evening). She grew up in a country where to be caught administering a hand-job to her boyfriend in a craftily parked Renault would have landed her in a Midnight Express-type prison and, far more importantly, tainted her family’s name. Yet my dear Mrs. Thunderotica still chose to risk herself, with consequences that we cannot ever begin to understand here in the U.S., in the name of sex.
Hardly empirical data, I know, but sociology is a pseudo-science of inference and personal opinion. We must acknowledge that we are dealing solely in opinion.
So here’s my opinion. No, being a swinger is not like having Downs Syndrome. That’s true. And really, it’s not like being gay. In my humble worldview, there are two poles. One is hetero and one is homo. Most of us are bisexual meteors that crash land between the two. But truly gay and hetero people are born that way. Why it’s easier for women to walk between these poles is fodder for another article, but I’ll take a moment to comment on men.
Most men don’t want to admit it, but they love seeing other men’s cocks fucking women and getting sucked by women. Porn would not be the business it is if this were not true. That does not mean most men want anything to do with other men’s cocks. Even incidental contact is scary. But we learn to deal with it. We live in a tremendously homo-phobic society, yet after awhile, male swingers get comfortable with the proximity of alien cock. Yet we all, male and female, force ourselves into these situations. Therefore, the ability to successfully swing comes from a confident sense of self. That sense of self is learned.
But this confidence is not solely derived from our childhood or our community. Only so much can be learned. I believe that to put oneself in this position takes a certain type of wiring.
By her own admission, very few of Mrs. Thunderotica’s friends were flaunting fate by giving handjobs in Renaults at the age of 15. There was something within her specific genetic make-up, her brain, which made her take that risk. She has told me a thousand times how much it would have killed her father and her family if she had been caught. Hell, in her country, there was a Koran-carrying police force specifically looking for such teenage promiscuity. Yet, still she risked it.
I’ve spent a good deal of my life surfing very large waves. Some of my friends are the best big wave surfers in the world. I promise you, their desire and ability to surf a 50-60 foot wave has nothing to do with their upbringing, it has to do with a “craziness” that we all respect in the big wave community. It’s not definable. Some of these guys came out of nothing. Some of them came out of upper-middle class Palos Verdes homes. It’s the same with climbing, sailing or high-risk finance. Some of us are thrilled by risking death and failure and humiliation, while some of us are terrified by the idea of missing Wheel of Fortune. Yet, this is no value judgment. It’s what makes this issue so confusing. Without hard data to reference, it’s all opinion and conjecture.
In 2002, scientists at London University’s Institute of Psychiatry reported they’d isolated a “risk-taking” gene that links adrenaline hounds like big wave surfers and swingers to heroin junkies. Not particularly pleasing to be lumped with the horse heads, but in my book it makes horse sense. There has to be more than just our environment.
Look at yourself. Look at the people you swing with. I want to hear your stories because I’m really curious and personal experience is the only data we have.
And may all your discussions be post-coital.
