SEX WITH GIRLS
BY EDWARD BRONGERSMA

“Sex with Girls”, is the second part of “The Outlets”, the final section of “Boys and their Sexuality”, the third chapter of Loving Boys, the encyclopaedic study of Greek love by the eminent Dutch lawyer, Edward Brongersma, of which the first volume (including this) was published by Global Academic Publishers in New York in 1986.

Masturbation is the best training for intercourse with a partner, as accompanying fantasies have already anticipated it.

Some boys are convinced that they should stop this habit as soon as they start having intercourse.

92 At the age of 14, Helmut fell in love with a 28-year-old female teacher. Occasionally at school he had been able to look up under her skirt, and this he would think about as he later masturbated at home. She was aware that she excited him, and soon she gave him a chance to visit her in her home while she was in bed. Helmut said, “I kissed her breasts until she became terribly excited, and then I quickly took off all my clothes. Then we embraced, and she gripped my penis and inserted it into herself, and I nearly fainted, the feeling was so strong. (…) She was the first woman who had been so sweet to me; it was absolutely delicious, and since then I’ve never again done it to myself.^[1]

On the other hand there are boys who deliberately masturbate to emission before going on a date with a girl in order not to be tyrannised by unwanted erections.^[2] Regular intercourse with girls, it seems, does reduce masturbatory activities. In the NISSO research it was found that the percentage of masturbating boys diminished from 98 to 65 for those who had regular intercourse, but even among these 14% still relieved themselves sexually more than three times a week.^[3] 

BEGINNING

In former times, European boys began to have intercourse at a much earlier age. In ancient Athens they were supposed to do this at fourteen.^[4] Solon, the legislator, built brothels to meet their needs, and, in lines that subsequently became famous, the poet Philemon sang his praises:

“Of all mortals, you were the first to do this really useful social deed. You saw boys going about with their strongly swelling cocks: to protect the peace of the matrimonial bed from such an excess of male force, you decreed that brothels be built. Now everyone can find a girl ready and willing to come to you quite naked and offer herself. Now when you’re troubled by the male impulse you just pay with a little coin, and without affectation or pretense that there is this or that in you she doesn’t like, she will do just want you want, and as you want it done.”^[5]

In classical Rome boys could marry at 14, and before they were married they patronised prostitutes. One of their favourite pastimes was to go to the slave market where naked girls were displayed for sale and inspect their breasts and genitals, feeling them with their fingers.^[6] Moral authorities like Cato, Seneca and Cicero recommended that boys visit prostitutes. Cato praised a young lad for going to a brothel for relief when he met the boy emerging onto the street.^[7] And Cicero wrote, “If someone professes that intercourse with prostitutes should be forbidden to boys, he may reveal strong moral principles, but he is not in harmony with the moral freedom of our times, nor with that of our ancestors. For was there ever a time when these things didn’t happen, when they were forbidden? When were there objections? When were people not permitted to do this?”^[8] The Islamic culture, too, sees no objection to boys having intercourse before puberty.^[9]

The European of the middle ages seems to have shared this view: we have already given examples. The city of Nuremburg announced officially that boys of 12 and older were free to visit brothels.^[10] During the course of the 19th and the first half of the 20th Centuries, adult repression certainly managed to raise the average age for first intercourse. Contemporary research, however, uniformly confirms that a counter-movement set in during the last few decades and that boys now tend to have their first intercourse earlier than did the preceding generations.^[11] They become physically mature at an earlier age, and thus have a stronger sexual appetite at a younger age. In addition they are more self-confident, freer, less inclined to bother about adult admonitions or to postpone the satisfaction of a desire that, all things being equal, is quite natural and healthy. These factors have made intercourse, according to Borneman^[12] a perfectly normal activity for boys of 13 or 14.

We should never lose sight of the contradictory demands our culture makes of its boys, telling them on the one hand that, if they want to be men, they must pursue girls, but on the other hand that it is immoral to seduce them.^[13] Even sixty years ago Dr. Stekel^[14] could write that it was often the most intelligent and energetic boys who first ventured into intercourse. With the manifold methods of preventing pregnancy now available, today’s youth finds the official interdictions even more incomprehensible.

93  When asked, “What things would you like to do but which aren’t allowed?” 14-year-old Caleb immediately replied, “I’m not free to sleep with a girl – and won’t be even when I’m fifteen.^[15]

In his Dutch research, Sanders^[16]  came up with some figures for age at first intercourse, and these are compared in Table 6 with those of Sigusch & Schmidt in their book on the German working class,^[17] Giese & Schmidt in their book on German university students^[18] and those from Biener’s study of 531 Swiss boarding school pupils.^[19] The percentages are cumulative (i.e. showing what percentage had experience with intercourse at the indicated age).

Table 6. Boys’ Experience With Intercourse vs. Age

In the United States the number of early starters seems much higher. “On April 25, 1979, the House Select Committee on Population reported that one out of every five American children aged thirteen or fourteen had had sexual intercourse.”^[20] A 1978 survey of 1,000 teenagers of various ethnic and income groups in New York City determined that 76% of the boys and 64% of the girls had engaged in coitus at least once, most of them by the time they were sixteen.^[21] In the sample of the Hite report,^[22] 55.6% of the males had by the age of fifteen experienced vaginal intercourse, and 54% had had anal intercourse with girls; at fourteen, 52% had licked a girl; at thirteen, 52% had been sucked by a girl. There is much divergence between the various ethnic groups, and also with delinquents. For experience with intercourse among the 15-year-olds, Blake^[23] reports: white males 21%, non-white males 56%, incarcerated white males 46%, incarcerated non-white males 81%.

Giese & Schmidt questioned German university students about the main incentive for their first intercourse. It was to express love within a loving relationship for 41%, sexual impulse for 26%, curiosity for 16%, the influence of parties, alcohol, etc, for 10%, being seduced for 4% and prestige for 3%.^[24] We can conclude from this that only 14% went along with it more or less passively while the great majority was decidedly active, moved by love, sexual hunger, curiosity or image building.

94  Twelve-year-old Conny said philosophically, “When the opportunity comes, it will happen.” His opportunity presented itself when he was thirteen (Personal communication)

The Kinsey Report^[25] made it clear that boys who have attained a higher educational level accept masturbation more readily than do working class youths. Boys who work and earn money are socially more independent and less infantile than those who still go to school. Working class youth are more likely to regard masturbation as an activity unfit for men and to look upon intercourse with girls as the only suitable sexual activity. In factories the adult workers, even “solid citizen” family fathers, often encourage and help their teenage colleagues and apprentices to have sex with females. Such men evidently feel uneasy talking about their sexual adventures and thoughts in the presence of inexperienced boys. Thus they like to see them initiated, with the benevolent conviction that this will help them to become “real men”. Masturbation is held in contempt as child’s play; they see no way to avoid it other than to look for a girl. When we compare the figures of Sigusch & Schmidt (working class youth) with those of Giese & Schmidt (university students) we see the strong influence of these convictions.

95  One of my own research subjects, a strikingly handsome and youthful looking 18-year-old from Amsterdam, told me, “I knew absolutely nothing about sex when, at fifteen, I became apprentice cook in a restaurant. One night I accidentally dropped a pile of plates, and the chef observed, ‘You must have jerked off too many times yesterday to make your hands tremble like that!’ Surprised, I asked, ‘What do you mean, jerk off?’ and he replied, ‘To rub your cock until you get that nice feeling.’ In bed that night I put it to the test. It was a marvelous discovery. I was so thrilled about it that I immediately woke up my brother, two years younger than I, to teach it to him, too. For the next few months we did it every night for all we were worth. Then suddenly one day the thought occurred to me that masturbating was only a substitute, so I decided, ‘This will be the last time; from now on you’ll have to do it with girls.’ I went downtown and told several girls, without mincing words, what I wanted. One was willing, so I had my first fuck standing up in a dark doorway. It was delightful, and afterwards I felt very proud of myself. A few weeks later I went to work as a waiter in an American military officer’s mess in Heidelberg. That was just after the war; almost no German boys or young men were left anymore, so the girls were very hungry for sex. I was prodigiously successful: not a single night passed without one of them sharing my bed.”

His only concern was lust and pleasure. For others, love is the incentive, and their number increases as the age becomes older. Among Danish boys who had had their first intercourse at sixteen or younger, 43% said they had been inspired by love, 56.2% by curiosity. Among those who had begun at 17 or older, the numbers were 70.5% and 29.5%.^[26] 

With younger adolescents, their love may be very sincere but it is seldom lasting, and this may give rise to deep disappointments on both sides. Nevertheless, the appetite is there, lasting and real, and at times it swells to fever pitch.

96  Guyotat^[27] in one of his novels shows his hero Serge, young son of a colonial governor general, in such a state: “Through the whole night, naked, writhing in sweat, he struggles with the pillow between his thighs, under his chest, between his teeth. At first cock’s crow he falls asleep, contorted, at the foot of his bed, his male member losing its turgidity, hiding in the shadow of his belly. It grows cold; he rolls onto his back, legs spread out. The air dries the seed on his thighs and in his open fists.” Serge awakes before sunrise, goes, naked, to the window, leans out of it and whistles. The sentry sees the naked boy’s body – “how smooth and shining it is! The stones are reflected in it. ‘When will you bring me to your whores, Nano?’ – ‘I told them about you. I spoke to them about the colour of your eyes, the hue of your body, the trembling of your belly. They’ve stuck your picture on the wall of their reception room.’ (…) ‘Bend down.’ Serge trembles. He inclines his head toward the soldier, who raises his arm, stretches out his hand to the face of the boy, strokes his cheeks, his forehead… (…) makes it slip over his buttocks, then he draws the boy’s head down to his breast and kisses him upon the lips (…) Serge half opens his lips and his tongue touches the lips of the soldier (…) The eyes of the soldier shine and tears run down his cheeks. Serge drinks them.”

If only curiosity and the desire for prestige are the motives for his first intercourse, the boy easily carries it out with the brutality and self-centredness appropriate to his age.

97  Agnes, a girl of 16, tells her older friend Roger: “The boys would like to do it but they still don’t dare. I remember, when I was fourteen, sleeping with a fourteen-year-old. He’d never yet fucked a girl. But I can tell you he had already been tormented for a long time by his desire.”

Roger: “I don’t dispute that boys are tormented by it, but they still think football is more important.”

Agnes: “No, certainly not, not underneath. They’re thinking about fucking all the time. I’ve read part of Julien’s diary, the years when he was twelve, three years ago now. He was in love with me. But, as I was in love with another boy, he wrote, ‘Oh, if only he wasn’t there, what a wonderful time we could have. Christian and I with Agnes: we could to all kinds of things to her that would be very nice.’ I remember (…) sleeping with him once and he harassed me the whole night through. He wanted to caress me continuously, and so on. But in those days I was much less interested than he was; I didn’t fancy it; in fact, I was really quite scared of it.”

Roger: “Maybe it was more that he imagined such things were expected of him than that he really wanted to do them.”

Agnes: “No, because much later we discussed it and he said, ‘I’ve only rarely ever since had such a feeling of existing as I had that night’.^[28] 

With disarming candour young Julien here expressed the developmental importance of sexual intercourse for boys going through puberty: the consciousness of “being there”, of existing. Evidently Julien had grown up to the point where he could experience sex this way but the girl couldn’t yet. At such an age boys simply push on, concentrating with single-minded purpose upon their own needs and not those of others.

When boys discuss their experiences in this area, we often hear some rather unpleasant tales.

98  Some quotations from the excellent sex education book from New Zealand, Down Under the Plum Trees may illustrate this. Often boys seem to have intercourse only to feel macho and important, or to dominate and humiliate the girls.

a) “We used to really put girls down by fucking with them. Once we’d fucked a girl we weren’t interested in her – then there’d be someone else. The girls who hung round with us all knew that we were just out to fuck. We were tough guys so it wasn’t dating, it was just us trying to fuck them, and them trying not to fuck with us and still keep hanging around with us.”

b) “One night I was taking a girl home and I was with a friend. I didn’t care about the girl, I just wanted to fuck her. I said to her, ‘I’ll go out with you if you’ll let me and Willy fuck you,’ She really loved me, she did, you know. She said OK and we fucked her in the toilets. It was raining so we couldn’t fuck her outside (…) After I fucked her I hated her for letting me do that to her.”

Often the boy is simply carried along by his comrades, without really wanting it himself.

c) “We’d sit by girls in the movies and the big thing was to get your finger up. All the guys would know who was going to sit with who. They’d say, ‘You sit with Rangi, have a go. George got two fingers up.’ I didn’t know why we were doing it. It was a hell of a thing to do – slowly putting your hand up her dress or in her jeans, then trying to get past everything. I didn’t like the feeling of a girl’s cunt. It was so slimy, it made me feel sick sometimes. The girls didn’t like it either. Some got really upset.”

d) “When there was a lot of us and only one girl we’d try and get her to splash for us all. We wouldn’t watch while the others fucked her – it was a kind of personal thing. One guy fucking one girl while the others were more or less pretending it wasn’t happening. Then another would fuck her. It wasn’t a big celebration. It was just each individual wanting a fuck, and there happened to be nine or ten individuals. We would have been a lot happier if there had been nine or ten girls. It made me kind of sick coming at the end thinking of all the other guys being in her and all that sperm.^[29] 

99  In the archives of the Brongersma Foundation are unpublished literal transcriptions of conversations a psychologist had with a number of adolescents about their sex lives (Southern Germany, 1980). Herman, 17 years old, said, “I was 16 when a school friend invited me to a birthday party. The boy, Eugen, had rich parents and lived in a beautiful house outside town. In the attic he had his own disco and everything – a bar with an incredible variety of drinks. Of course, he’d also invited girls, but I was a bit surprised that they weren’t our age but slightly older, wore heavy makeup and the craziest short skirts. There was a girl for each one of us. Eugen had it all completely organised. With music and alcohol we soon were feeling great: by midnight we were all pretty drunk. Suddenly the lights went out. The girl who had sat all the time next to me and with whom I had danced, at once started to grope me in the dark. She kissed me, tickled my neck and went gradually down and down with her hands, until she started pawing me between my legs, unbuttoned my trousers and took hold of my cock, which had become real stiff. At first I fought back wildly, but this whore – I later found out that’s what she was – had a fairly firm hold on me, and, as I was tipsy, she soon overcame my resistance. Before I knew it she’d undressed me completely. I don’t know how she did it, and still less how she took off her own clothes, but suddenly I felt her naked body upon mine. She pulled me to her; I felt her tits; her hands ran over my back, between my legs. Then she pushed me down on the floor, and then my cock was inside her. This was the very first time I ever fucked. I don’t know how long it all lasted, because afterwards I fell asleep. Then I felt something cold and wet on my face. I woke up: all the lights were burning again. I was lying naked upon the floor with all the boys standing around me. The girls had already disappeared long ago. Loud laughter greeted my awakening. I’d wanted to be swallowed up and just disappear. At six, still rather drunk, I went home. Since then I hate girls. I didn’t feel very much fucking this whore. I don’t know exactly what she did with me; I suppose they had put some drugs in that last drink.”

Continue to Disparity Between Boys and Girls of the Same Age

^[1] Stieber, H., Verführt… Bonn: Europäische Bücherei, 1971, 67. [Author’s reference]

^[2] Osborne 1977, II-6 [Author’s reference, but it is not clear which of several writings listed in the author’s bibliography as by C. Osborne and published in 1977 is meant]

^[3] Boer, J. de, Gevoelige kwesties omtrent seksuele kontakten van jongeren. Zeist: NISSO, 1978, 2A-F-1-3. [Author’s reference]

^[4] E. Borneman, Lexikon der Liebe, Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 977 [Author’s reference]. Can anyone please come up with a real (ie. primary) source for this surprising claim? [Website footnote].

^[5] E. Borneman, Lexikon der Liebe, Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p.1139;  Bloch, I., Die Prostitution. Berlin: Marcus, 1912, 216. [Author’s reference]
     The real (ie. primary) source is Philemon’s play Brothers, as quoted by Athenaios, The Learned Banqueters XIII 569d-f. It would have been helpful of Brongersma to have revealed that the source is a comedy. [Website footnote]

^[6] Really? The editor of this webpage would be delighted to be corrected, but in the meantime feels obliged to point this sentence out as yet another of many probably owing more to the salacious imaginings of moderns with respect to ancient Rome than to anything that can be found in an ancient source. It is so sad that Brongersma, as well as Rossman, insist relentlessly on rubbishing themselves as trustworthy recorders of the past by indulging in this invented nonsense, though the blame should probably lie mostly with modern man: there seems to be no limits to what one can say about the remote past without shaking his credulity [Website footnote].

^[7] Horace, Satires I, 2: 34-35 [Author’s reference].

^[8] E. Borneman, Lexikon der Liebe, Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, pp. 741, 1142 [Author’s reference]. The webpage editor has not tried to check the authenticity of this alleged quotation. In view of Brongersma’s dismal record as a would-be historian, sadly nothing he says about the remote past can be taken seriously enough for research that is not backed up by the citation of an ancient source [Website footnote].

^[9] Bloch, I., Die Prostitution. Berlin: Marcus, 1912, 131 [Author’s reference].

^[10] Stockert, F.-G. von, Die Sexualität des Kindes, Stuttgart: Enke, 1956, p. 54 [Author’s reference].

^[11] Zetterberg, H. L., Het seksuele leven in Zweden. Den Haag: NVSH, 1969, 29 [Author’s reference].

^[12] E. Borneman, Lexikon der Liebe, Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p 1423 [Author’s reference].

^[13] Bloch, H. & Niederhoffer, A., Les bandes d’adolescents. Paris: Payot, 1963, 144 [Author’s reference].

^[14] Stekel, W., Psychosexueller Infantilismus. Berlin: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1922, 60-61 [Author’s reference].

^[15] Schérer, R., L’emprise. Des enfants entre nous, Paris: Hachette, 1979, p. 251 [Author’s reference].

^[16] Sanders, G., Het gewone en het bijzondere van de homoseksuele leefsituatie. Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1977, 71 [Author’s reference].

^[17] Schickendanz, H.-J., Homosexuelle Prostitution. Frankfurt: Campus, 1979, 142 [Author’s reference].

^[18] Giese, H. & Schmidt, G., Studenten-Sexualität. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1968, 140 [Author’s reference].

^[19] Biener, K., Jugendsexualität und Präventivmedizin. Stuttgart: Fischer, 1973, 63 [Author’s reference].

^[20] Janus, S. S. & Bess, B. E., Latency: Fact or Fiction? In: Constantine & Martinson (Eds.), Children and Sex. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1981, 19 [Author’s reference].

^[21] Linedecker, C. L., Children in Chains. New York: Everest House, 1981, 118 [Author’s reference].

^[22] Hite, Sh., The Hite Report on Male Sexuality. New York: Ballantine, 1981, 956 [Author’s reference].

^[23] Blake, R., The Sexually Precocious Teenager. Cleveland: Century Books, 1970, 21 [Author’s reference].

^[24] Giese, H. & Schmidt, G., Studenten-Sexualität. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1968, 157 [Author’s reference].

^[25] Kinsey, A. C. et al, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1948, 508 [Author’s reference].

^[26] Hertoft, P., Unge mænds seksuelle adfæd, viden og holdning. København: Akademisk Forlag, 1968, II-38 [Author’s reference].

^[27] Guyotat, P., Tombeau pour cinq cent mille soldats. Paris: Gallimard, 1967, 76-77 [Author’s reference].

^[28] Schérer, R., L’emprise. Des enfants entre nous, Paris: Hachette, 1979, pp. 247-248 [Author’s reference].

^[29] Tuohy, F. & Murphy, M., Down Under the Plum Trees. Waiura (New Zealand): Alister Taylor, 1976, 176-177 [Author’s reference].