I may travel in different, less optimistic circles than Jonathan Margolis does, but when I "look around the world," I do not see "a civilization living and breathing orgasmic longing, orgasmic tension and orgasmic release." I do not see "billions of people ... desperate to have orgasms like the ones they read about all the time." As pleasurable as orgasm is, I am skeptical that much crime in the Western world is caused by men having inadequate ones or that "much of the raw violence in fundamentalist societies must stem from male sexual frustration." (The problem seems to be that men have shortsightedly deprived themselves of "the joy of shared orgasmic pleasure" by oppressing women.) When all this is sorted out-and Margolis assures us it will be soon -"women in the Third World and fundamentalist regimes will begin ... to make progress towards getting their share of pleasure from sex," and "the world will become a calmer, better place." It is hard to take this seriously.

"Fascinatingly, in preliterate cultures around the world where the sex/babies connection is unknown or misunderstood, women, sole suppliers of the delicious snack for the sensation known as orgasm," have, Margolis assures us, "more power than in better informed societies." Really? In fact, it is not clear that any such society exists; women are not monopoly "suppliers" anywhere. (As Margolis himself points out relentlessly, masturbation is universally available-free-as are same-sex sources of "the delicious snack.") Insofar as women have more power in hunter-gatherer societies, it is because they have a larger share in providing day-to-day sustenance, not orgasms.

He seems to think that sex is "natural," that morality, religion, and politics just screw things up. Neolithic man at the dawn of civilization got it right, and it has been downhill all the rest of the way. But then Margolis tells us about the modern day Mangaian boys of the South Pacific-untouched, it seems, by all the restraints of civilization-who go through elaborate training in cunnilingus and breast sucking and are "taught always to bring their partner to orgasm several times" before having one of their own. So much for just letting nature take her course.