Articles

Thank you, John, for sending me the link to Group Sex: Is it 'Life Art' or A Sign Something is Wrong.  This article ran in 1971 at the onset of the Sexual Revolution.  Betty is interviewed and quoted.  Here are some of my favorite Bettyisms:

“When I got divorced in 1965, I decided to find out everything I could about sexuality,” she said. “I set about letting go of jealousy and possessive feelings, and understanding I could love more than one person. It was the most important thing I ever did.”

Miss Dodson, who said she was married to an advertising executive and described her married life as “typical of that scene,” said she no longer used the word “love.”

“The essential problem is to learn how to be loving,”, she said. “Loving is an attitude.”

Miss Dodson said she had found out, very quickly, that “group sex is something you do with friends.”

“Organized group sex is a little bowling league kind of thing,” she said. “It's super‐compulsive — there's a frantic quality to it. It's weird.”

Since her introduction to group sex, she has had both homosexual and heterosexual experiences (almost every study reports a high incidence of homosexual activity among females and very little homosexual activity among males).

“If you aren't into a sexual exchange that is bisexual, you aren't into sexual freedom,” she said.

After this article, Betty had a string of obscene phone calls. One caller would ring and recite all the curse words "she" knew and then hang up. It was always right before dinner.

In many ways, this article outed Betty and set her on the course of sexual liberator. There's something about being quoted in a sex article for the NY Times that changes everything. When my piece ran, I felt like I was outed and had to make something of my sex career.

I'm so happy that articles like these are being digitally archived and released online.