Review: "My 100 000 Lovers"

By Ruth Martin

Often when one thinks about addiction, it conjours up thoughts of narcotics, alcohol and the meetings associated with ending the hold these things have over one's life. My 100,000 Lovers, screened on SBS on the 21st of April 2006, explores sexual addiction and how it has affected the lives of three self-confessed sex addicts:

Coralie, who uses her sexual addiction to her advantage, developing a career writing about her experiences for a men's magazine.
Clive, who pursues countless numbers of women through internet dating sites, arranging trysts with them at his home in a country town in Wales.
Kim, who is abstaining from her sexual addiction to save her relationship.

Each individual's experience proved to be illuminating in regard to sex, addiction and relationships and how they relate to the Western cultural notions of male and female sexuality.

Sex in our society is often treated differently, and this was one of the interesting points of the documentary. As was pointed out by Coralie, sex addiction is thought of as being a more pleasant addiction compared to those involving alcohol or narcotics - even to the point of ridiculing the person who has the addiction. The reality for people such as Coralie is that sex takes over every aspect of their lives such that they are not able to function without it. Even though Coralie appears to take advantage of her addiction through becoming a celebrity, presenting it as glamorous, she later shows that it deeply upsets her, revealing that if she does not have the addiction in her life, she fears finding little or nothing of herself as a person. In a similar fashion, Kim reveals that the attempts she has made to satisfy her addiction have made her do many sexual activities that most people would not consider doing, and wonders if there is anything out there that will ever sate her sexual appetite.

It was interesting to note the way in which the documentary itself presented sexual addiction. The documentary chose to reveal the experiences of two women and only one man, but the way in which the women talked about their sexual addiction was markedly different from that of the man. It was evident that everything that Clive does in his life is oriented towards the trysts that he organises online to have at his Welish home. Despite this, Clive spoke of his experiences quite positively, showing how he goes about his rituals to prepare for the women he meets. Whether he believes he has a problem or not is not something that was revealed. In contrast, both Coralie and Kim were very concerned about their respective addictions and how they affect their lives.

This is particularly interesting in relation to the way in which male and female sexuality is portrayed in Western society. In Western society, women learn from a young age that it is unacceptable for them to be sexual outside the realms of marriage and procreation, or failing that, a very serious heterosexual relationship. Women learn from a young age that stepping outside of these bounds result in such negative consequences as having a bad reputation (e.g. being known as a 'slut') or being blamed for one's rape. The restrictions on women's sexuality pervades women's lives, with women constantly feeling that they must be careful about what they wear, what they say, what they do, and where they go, in order to avoid the sort of unwanted experiences mentioned above.

For men, however, the situation is the opposite. Men are expected to be sexual. They are expected sleep with a lot of women and to avoid serious relationships as they do so. For men there are no consequences in the same way that there are for women. If a man has sex with a lot of women, there is no risk of ruining his reputation - in fact, he has everything to gain in regards to his reputation, as he lives up to expectations about male sexuality.

The ways in which male and female sexuality are treated differently in Western society naturally also influences Western views of sexual addiction; it is regarded differently for men than it is for women. Throughout history, women who were overtly sexual or had more sexual experiences than expected of women at any given time have been diagnosed with nymphomania. The way in which female sexuality is medicalised in Western society is particularly telling when the term 'nymphomania', the term for sexual addiction in women, is so well known in contrast to the male equilvalent - satyriasis:

Consequently, the male equivalent of nymphomania, satyriasis, was diagnosed far less frequently [in the nineteenth century] and treated quite differently. Specifically, the symptoms of flirting, seductive glances and other behaviour sometimes labelled nymphomania in women did not constitute a disease in men: Don Juan, after all, was celebrated as a hero. When diagnosed, satyriasis was rarely treated by castration, the equivalent of clitoridectomy and ovariotomy recommended by a few doctors for the nymphomaniac.¹

This is evident in the documentary, as the women felt ashamed of their experiences in a way that Clive was not. In fact, Clive was adamant that he was offering a 'service' to women, in particular those women who associate sex closely with relationships, saying that he was 'revealing the real world' to them. Given this, one wonders whether, if female sexuality was not so restrained in Western society, would Kim and Coralie feel differently about their addictions?

Overall, My 100,000 Lovers was very interesting in the way that it revealed the lives of those affected by sexual addiction but played completely into stereotypes of what is acceptable in regards to female and male sexuality.

[Readers wishing to learn more about Clive Worth's story may be interested in reading his book "A Serial Shagger's Guide to Internet Dating".]

Notes

1.Groneman, Carol, 2001. Nymphomania: a history. Fusion Press, London. p. 6.

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