Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love

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Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love

by Thomas Maier (Goodreads Author), Dorie Barton (Read by)

3.47 · rating details · 51 ratings · 16 reviews

This critically acclaimed biography offers an unprecedented look at William Masters and Virginia Johnson, their pioneering studies on intimacy, and their lasting impact on the love lives of today's men and women.

Compact Disc, Abridged, 0 pages

Published April 1st 2009 by Phoenix Audio (first published March 20th 2009)

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Jan 09, 2011

Elizabeth rated it

Shelves: biography

after reading masters of sex, i am totally charmed by virgina johnson. for whatever reason, i always thought she was a stiff old doc like bill masters. but i was wrong. some notes:

--seated on a leather lounge chair, a woman, naked except for a pillowcase over her head, rubbed the outside of her vulva with a long, plexiglas penis. attached to a small camera with a plate glass optical eye, this “motor powered phallus” could produce high-quality color-motion photographs. sensors fixed to ...moreafter reading masters of sex, i am totally charmed by virgina johnson. for whatever reason, i always thought she was a stiff old doc like bill masters. but i was wrong. some notes:

--seated on a leather lounge chair, a woman, naked except for a pillowcase over her head, rubbed the outside of her vulva with a long, plexiglas penis. attached to a small camera with a plate glass optical eye, this “motor powered phallus” could produce high-quality color-motion photographs. sensors fixed to various parts of the woman’s body recorded her heart rate, electrical impulses of her brain, and nearly every other kind of measurement conceivable. nearby sat researchers william h. masters and virginia johnson along with their staff, all clad in white cotton lab coats. when the woman slipped the dildo inside her vagina and climaxed, she allowed researchers a sustained, precise look at her flushed, contracting vagina. over the next few years this basic experiment would be repeated with hundreds of women. the findings proved explosive: the female orgasm in absolute physiological detail.

--a celebrated obstetrician and fertility specialist with a tenured position at washington university, bill masters began his sex research in 1955. during the next twenty-one months, he interviewed 118 female and 28 male sex workers in st. louis and other cities, meticulously recording their sexual and medical histories. he soon began observing the prostitutes with their clients. he stared on, stunned. unlike nearly every other MD in his field, masters made a crucial admittance: he knew next to nothing about female sexuality, or even, the most basic physiological facts of fucking itself.

--by 1956 masters had moved his studies into the controlled settings of a laboratory. with the help of a few bulky machines, he began his earliest inquiries into the female sexual response. however, the course of his research changed radically when a female participant asked him "what if I fake it?" masters blinked, said flatly, “i don’t know what you mean.” after months of watching prostitutes, it had simply never occurred to him. the woman tried explain: “that’s what I do for a living, i fake orgasms to hurry up and get the man to come...” he remained dumbfounded, and within months, hired his first and only female research assistant.

--the first time virgina johnson saw a penis was in the backseat of a 1941 plymouth. it was also the first time she had sex. “i didn’t know anything about anything,” she recalled. when she began singing on army bases at age eighteen, she experimented with different men, many men. “i had an active interest in sex,” she explained, “but never particularly to the men I was involved with.” able to separate sex from love, she needed neither devotion nor infatuation though she did fall in love with an army captain. “i took it [sex] for granted,” she said. "to me, it always a natural requirement, a need. it didn’t shock me.”

--hired as a secretary, johnson had little interest in medicine at the time or a college degree. after four months, masters promoted her to research assistant, a decision that perplexed almost everyone. but Johnson excelled. her ability to recruit as well as gain the trust of a wide variety of volunteers truly made the human sexual response (1966) possible. their sample pool shifted from prostitutes to coeds, nurses, university employees, friends and neighbors. the only requirement was that the women be able to orgasm regularly and easily from penetration. as one female participant explained, “she made me feel that i was not only getting paid but helping my gender as well.”

--less than a year into their partnership, masters made johnson a proposition: by engaging in sex with each other, they could extend their experiments into actual experience; rather than replying on photographic documentation, they could observe the so-called sex flush themselves, allowing them greater insight into the sexual response cycle. although a forced arrangement, according to the their biographer, masters saw it as consensual where as johnson interpreted it as a job requirement. “bill did it all—i didn’t want him,” she later remarked, “i had a job and i wanted it.”

--the overall effect of human sexual response (1966) was that it demanded that the clitoris be studied, described, written about. in fact, the study was so alarming precisely because it was so specific, so full of immutable details. although much of their ‘revelatory findings,’ such as the fact that women can climax as fast as men with proper stimulation, had been established by kinsey, masters and johnson were seen as proving these otherwise speculative assumption via "facts," i.e. hard science and technology.

--echoing kinsey, masters and johnson found that due to the clitoris’s small size, little blood is needed for the clitoris to become erect, and after orgasm, blood quickly floods out, allowing many women to have multiple orgasms. they stressed the clit’s singular, unmatched qualities: “the clitoris is a unique organ in the total of human anatomy,” they wrote. “no such organ exists within the anatomic structure of the human male.”(less)

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Dec 03, 2011

David rated it

pretty good dual biography of Masters and Johnson, the sex researchers. He had an affair with her while still married to first wife, then 20 or so years later left her for a re-found girlfriend from his teenage years. And you're probably aware of the work they're famous for in observing couples having sex and providing some of the first detailed descriptions of sexual response, treatment methods for sex dysfunctions, etc.

William Masters died before this book was written, and even wit...more

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Jun 21, 2009

Audacia Ray rated it

Shelves: gender-and-sexuality, read-in-2009

I'm not generally in the habit of reading biographies (exception: I've read all the biographies there are to read about Victoria Woodhull), because I don't really subscribe to the "great men" approach to history (I'm somewhat more susceptible to "great women"). I'd rather read about social movements and popular culture. That said, William Masters and Virginia Johnson spawned a new age of sex in the United States, so: worth reading.

I really enjoyed this book - the ...more

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Oct 07, 2009

Michael added it

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Sep 22, 2009

Krissy rated it

· review of another edition

Wow, talk about Masters and Johnson! If there is anything you ever wanted to know about them, it is in this book. Plus quite a few things you didn't know you wanted to know. It may be because I'm in a related field to M&J and have always seen them as forefathers, but I was enthralled with the book from start to finish.

Why only 3 stars? I'm not positive that the content really required 375 pages of text to explicate. Also, the opening description of Virginia's first sex experience wa...more

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Jul 15, 2010

Jeannie Chao rated it

This is a fascinating biography of the famous OB-GYN Bill Masters and his assistant Virginia Johnson who revolutionized how sex is viewed in medicine and society. The book details their controversial techniques, and their intimate and simultaneously estranged relationship. Sometimes real life is more fascinating than fiction.

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Aug 05, 2009

Thorn MotherIssues rated it

Shelves: read-2009

I hadn't really known about Masters & Johnson as people and this brought a lot of insight. I just wish there had been more focus on their later years, what drove Masters to advance crackpot theories about homosexuality and Johnson to destroy all their tapes, things like that. Still, I learned plenty of things I hadn't known.

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Nov 04, 2011

Frank Spencer rated it

· review of another edition

co-biographies are one of my favorite types of book; there is a lot of personal information here about the two people; getting older may not reduce your ability to have sex, but it really took a toll on their scientific careers

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Jul 13, 2010

Miranda rated it

I didn't finish this. Disappointingly neither too pedantic nor pedantic enough to satisfy me. (lol?)

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Oct 12, 2011

Sabrina rated it

Learned a lot about them I didn't know.

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Jun 17, 2009

Mitch rated it

Good overview of recent cultural history

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Dec 04, 2009

Fatima marked it as to-read

6/28/2009 NY Times Book review

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Jun 11, 2010

Kylie rated it

· review of another edition

A very well written biography, and actually interesting. It's amazing that these two people had the courage to pursue the needed medical research on this topic that people just did not want to talk about or found deviant. So much knowledge came from them, we should be thankful they had the tenacity to do it.

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Aug 26, 2009

Tressa rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: sexuality

Sort of dry and boring, not as interesting as a book on Kinsey I read last year. There is some good information on the history of Masters and Johnson, if that's what you're looking for. If you're looking for titillating, buy a Zane book.

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Jul 03, 2009

Jonelle rated it

A good companion to Bonk -- take a more critical eye towards deficiencies in their work.

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Jul 24, 2009

Elizabeth marked it as to-read

from the library c2009

there is a cd set for this book now.

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Dec 24, 2011

Chip Rowe rated it

· review of another edition

Dec 18, 2011

Elizabeth rated it

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About Thomas Maier

Thomas Maier is the author of The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings, which was adapted for Warner Home Video DVD, and the critically acclaimed Dr. Spock: An American Life, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1999. He is a special writer at Newsday. He lives in Long Island, New York.
www.thomasmaierbooks.com

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