You may also notice that your penis is no longer so erect; now it angles slightly down. Again you need have no anxiety, it is just as efficient and you will enjoy sex just as much! Occasionally you will find, during the time when you and your partner are pleasuring each other, before actual intercourse, that you lose your erection and your penis becomes soft and flaccid. This is again normal, and all that is needed is to stimulate your penis again, when it will become erect once more.

Once your partner is ready, and you begin thrusting in her vagina, you will find that you last longer than you did when you were younger.

This is an advantage, you both obtain pleasure for longer, and the energy you expend will not harm you. You may find that you do not have an orgasm although you have enjoyed the sensual, erotic pleasures of intercourse. You must not be anxious that your virility and sexual ability are diminishing, the response is normal, and another time you will find you can ejaculate. The main thing is that you both enjoyed sex. And if you are still aroused, ask your partner to stimulate your penis or, if you prefer, masturbate.

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The punitive action of society against homosexuals who transgress do more damage to the individual than committing magistrates imagine.

The laws against homosexual acts are enforced by the police, usually by the vice squad. In some places, the vice squads act in an excessively punitive manner towards homosexuals; in others, they act with restraint, unless pressured by civic leaders, clergymen hostile to homosexuality, or aspiring politicians wishing to remove the ‘permissiveness and degeneration threatening our values’. The legal penalty of most homosexual acts which are not ‘in private between consenting adults’ (which in England and Wales means that no more than two people may be in the room, or by extension the house) may be a prison sentence, although increasingly such punishment is not being given.

Yet there can be few institutions better suited to damage a homosexual’s self-esteem and more likely to subject him to physical degradation than prison. Most prisoners are young and fit men who, of necessity, have to suppress heterosexual urges and can find relief from sexual tension only by masturbation or a temporary homosexual relationship. When a known homosexual is put into this environment he is at physical and mental risk, and the experience may permanently injure him both mentally and physically. Even if injury is avoided, the experience can do nothing to diminish the individual’s homosexuality – and presumably the purpose of imprisonment is treatment rather than to ‘teach the poofter a hard lesson’.

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Sexually transmitted disease can infect a middle-aged business man, who got gonorrhoea when on a visit to another city, a sailor, or a long-distance truck driver, who is either denied a permanent companion, or separated from her for a long period; but the age group most likely to be infected are those aged 15 to 25.

Moralists may say that people should be chaste and avoid sexual

contacts. The fact remains that people are not chaste and nine out of ten people, male or female, get gonorrhoea if they have sexual intercourse with a partner who has gonorrhoea. If they have sexual intercourse with a partner who has active syphilis they have one chance in three of being infected. And the more times they have intercourse with an infected partner the more likely they are to be infected.

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The fourth scenario is one in which the frustrations increase, hostility appears, and the couple separate.

In the fifth scenario, professional help is sought. The nature of the help varies. The wife may seek psychiatric help as she believes that if only she could reach orgasm rapidly the problem would be solved. Unfortunately, such an approach is palliative at best, damaging at worst. She may suggest, on the other hand, that her

husband seeks professional help. This solution, although directed to the main problem, is also a poor one.

Another two choices exist. The first is for the woman to obtain sexual release with another partner, either male or female, which is scarcely conducive to harmony. The second choice is for the couple to seek professional help. This is the only solution which will permit the relationship to continue and which offers a guarantee that the man’s problem can be corrected.

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The fact that safe abortions and efficient contraceptives are now more readily available has also reduced the number of babies offered for adoption by married women (or deserted wives), who already have several children.

The changes which have occurred are beneficial socially, but they have made it harder for an infertile couple to adopt a child.

Because of this, the idea of making the woman pregnant with the semen of an unknown donor is becoming increasingly popular. This is called A.I.D. – or Artificial Insemination by Donor.

Before the insemination is attempted, investigations have to be made. There must be no obvious reason why the woman should not become pregnant. She must be healthy and have been investigated to find out that she has patent (open) oviducts and be ovulating. One method of determining if she is ovulating is for her to take her temperature each morning just after she has woken up and before she has eaten or drunk anything. The temperature of a woman who ovulates shows a fall and then a rise.

The time of ovulation can be predicted more accurately by taking a sample of the woman’s blood and by measuring a hormone called estradiol. This peaks about twenty-four hours before ovulation occurs.

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