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As a sex researcher, I’ve grown accustomed to seeing my work discussed in the media. After all, sex is a subject about which almost everyone is intensely curious. However, the tone that has greeted my work and the work of my colleagues has begun to change. It has gotten downright scary, reaching the point where at least one sex scientist I know regularly relocates her research lab to unannounced locations.
Sex research has, of course, always been a contentious and controversial subject—that’s nothing new. What is new is that, after decades of increasing public acceptance of sex science post-Kinsey, attitudes now appear to be in a backslide.For the better part of my decade-long career, my work has largely escaped attacks in the press. On social media, I’ve never dealt with more than a few lone trolls from time to time. That all changed earlier this year, though, when a study I published on sexual fantasies in the Archives of Sexual Behavior blew up Twitter and triggered a massive alt-right blowback.
The study in question looked at the psychology behind so-called cuckolding fantasies—i.e., watching your partner have sex with someone else. These fantasies are surprisingly common. In fact, for my forthcoming book, Tell Me What You Want, I surveyed thousands of Americans about their sexual fantasies and found that more than half of men and more than one-third of women reported having them. With numbers like these, it shouldn’t be surprising that cuckolding has become one of the most popular genres in porn and erotic fiction.
Interest in cuckolding among heterosexual men has been well documented. Sex therapist Dr. David Ley (one of my co-authors on the new study) thoroughly explored them in his 2009 book Insatiable Wives: Women Who Stray and the Men Who Love Them. Cuckolding isn’t limited to straight couples, though. My other co-author on this study, sex advice columnist Dan Savage, says he has received letters from a growing number of gay men who are interested in cuckolding. It was his observation that initially prompted the three of us to get together and research the science of gay cuckoldry.In the end, we surveyed nearly 600 mostly gay-identified men about their cuckolding fantasies, as well as their experiences acting them out. We then compared our findings to those that Ley uncovered through the process of interviewing dozens of heterosexual couples for Insatiable Wives.
According to Tucker Carlson, framing cuckolding in a positive light will “encourage the breakdown of healthy marriages as they’ve been understood for… all of history.”
Our results revealed a lot of interesting differences between gay and straight men’s cuckolding fantasies. For example, whereas there is often an interracial element to these fantasies among straight guys (most commonly, it’s white guys fantasizing about their wives or girlfriends having sex with black men), this theme was practically nonexistent among gay men. In addition, straight men’s cuckolding fantasies seemed to include more elements of BDSM than gay men’s fantasies, such as humiliation and bondage.
One of the most interesting things we found is that most gay men who reported acting on their cuckolding fantasies said that the experience improved their relationship. Ley’s interviews with straight couples yielded similar conclusions. So, contrary to popular belief, letting your partner have sex with someone else doesn’t necessarily seem to harm people’s relationships—in fact, it can potentially make them even better.
When CNN became the first major media outlet to cover our study, it touted our findings in the headline: “Cuckolding can be positive for some couples, study says.” To me, that was a fair, accurate and un-sensationalized summary of our results, so I was initially happy to see it.Shortly after CNN’s piece went live, though, all hell broke loose on Twitter.Tweet after tweet charged that our research—and CNN’s coverage of it—was “messed up,” “sick” and “perverse.” Some went further, claiming that it was “hurting America,” or that it was an attempt to “destroy Western civilization.”The idea that couples could practice consensual non-monogamy and still be happy and committed to one another is something that many people could not come to terms with. I suspect this is why so many tweets emerged claiming that our study was “fake news.”The negative Twitter response quickly carried over to alt-right websites, like Breitbart and Daily Caller. (Perhaps the far right’s interest in cuckoldry has something to do with its embrace of the terms “cuckservative” and “cuck”—reportedly a favorite insult of former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon—to denote a weak or ineffectual man.) Fox News published an article about it, too, and Tucker Carlson was soon ranting about it on his show. According to Carlson, framing cuckolding in a positive light will “encourage the breakdown of healthy marriages as they’ve been understood for… all of history.”
“My plan to be a career academic, after 10 years in such positions, was ended by these political attacks.”
This all took place in a matter of hours. I was fascinated, but also frightened by how quickly the backlash set in and how intense, increasingly bizarre and vitriolic it became. A thread of anti-semitism emerged in which several people argued that because all of the authors were Jewish that the results couldn’t be trusted. Some people even began sending emails asking me to verify my faith. (For the record, I’m not Jewish and I don’t know whether either of my co-authors are.)
There were also those who tried to discount the study simply because of Savage’s involvement. The Daily Caller dubbed him “a deviant and social deconstructionist of the highest order” (a title that, incidentally, [Savage now wears as a badge of honor](http://Savage now wears as a badge of honorhttps://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/01/26/25754530/cuckold-study-gets-conservative-panties-in-a-knot)).The attacks went on and became increasingly personal. People seemed to be looking for any excuse to discredit our study simply because it presented an uncomfortable truth: that lifelong monogamy isn’t essential for a happy relationship. Sadly, this is but a microcosm in the larger world of science denial fueled by the far right. While we often hear the term “science denial” in the context of climate science these days, sex scientists are now finding themselves under siege because their work is seen as a threat to traditional views of sex and relationships. These attacks are dangerous and are having a chilling effect on the field.I spoke to two colleagues, Dr. Nicole Prause, a neuroscientist who runs an independent sex research lab in Los Angeles, and Dr. Joe Kort, a sex and relationship therapist in Michigan. Both of them told me that attacks against them have been on the rise and have only made it more difficult for them to do their work. In Prause’s case, political attacks actually resulted in the loss of her previous university position. She became the target of a coordinated campaign of baseless allegations sent all the way from the university ethics board to the president, including claims that she was making up her data and was secretly funded by the porn industry. Even though she had grant funding to continue her work, the university ultimately refused to extend her contract.“My plan to be a career academic, after 10 years in such positions, was ended by these political attacks,” Prause said. “I founded an independent research company to do the work despite these. We still have fake complaints sent to every conference I speak at about sex films, every journal I publish [in], my state board of psychology (where I am licensed), and my current institutional review boards. There has never been a single substantiated claim, but they try new angles almost every week.”The attacks on Prause’s research have gotten so severe that she regularly moves the location of both her home and office in order to stay safe. She never publicly posts her addresses either.
“I had to remove the word ‘sex’ and only call it ‘smart love’ if I wanted to do any ads.”
Prause’s work is controversial because she, too, has uncovered inconvenient and uncomfortable truths in her line of research. For example, some of her neuroscience work has challenged the notion of “pornography addiction.” It turns out that what’s going on inside the brains of so-called porn “addicts” just doesn’t look like an addictive process. Her research doesn’t suggest that porn use can’t be problematic—just that, when it becomes a problem, it’s not addictive in nature.
A lot of people don’t want to hear that, though, because they’ve convinced themselves that porn is inherently dangerous and destructive. And Prause’s critics seem determined to keep harassing her in the hope that she’ll eventually give up her work. “Activists feel empowered by the anti-science movement to try to shut down actual scientists doing work they simply do not like,” she says. “Given that sex research is very sensitive already, the climate encourages campaigns of harassment by activists with no real grounds to complain.” As someone who works primarily as a therapist and not as a researcher, Kort’s challenges have been quite different from Prause’s, and they go well beyond science denial. I’m talking about a denial of sex in its entirety. “We were told recently we could not use our signage, which had the words ‘sexual health’ in it. [Another tenant] in the building felt that it would harm her patients thinking that we work with ‘sex offenders,’ which we do not. Even after assuring her, she was not OK with the word ‘sexual’ on signage, so the landlords made me take it down.” A sex therapist who can’t advertise that they do sex therapy is obviously going to have a hard time attracting clients—and Kort says the recent change in signage has taken a clear toll on his business. He’s not only encountering pressure to hide what he does in his own office building, he’s finding it online, too. “Facebook will not allow me to use my video series ‘smart sex/smart love’ as a promotion,” he says. “I had to remove the word ‘sex’ and only call it ‘smart love’ if I wanted to do any ads.”
Sex research is too small of a field to take on the science denial fight alone, but the broader scientific community is massive.
Although the current political climate is making it harder for all of us to do our work, neither Kort nor Prause—nor I, for that matter—have plans to change careers or retire any time soon. We’re here for the long haul, and we’re finding ways to cope.
For her part, Prause has a number of suggestions for dealing with what she likens to the “many-headed hydra” facing sex researchers. These include taking steps to protect her own safety, such as not geo-tagging her social media posts. They also include working to ensure the viability of her career, such as sending cease and desist letters to the conspiracy theorists who try to derail her work. She also encourages those in the field who are in a position to speak out to do so more strongly.Prause has also found some solace in the small but growing science resistance. “I increasingly reach out to 500 Women Scientists, March for Science and similar science advocacy groups for help in hopes that I may encounter folks with even better ideas for how to counteract the anti-science political climate,” she says.As Prause’s comments imply, sex research is too small of a field to take on the science denial fight alone, but the broader scientific community is massive—and, as they say, there’s strength in numbers.