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The Sexual Revolution was sparked and made possible, by the development and widespread availability of effective birth-control methods. So arguments about sexual freedom should not hinge on issues about unwanted or unplanned children, that are passed off on someone else to raise or to pay for the costs. For those who take the responsibility to use those contraceptive methods, it is a mostly separate problem, apart from one that is based on other bad outcomes from unrestricted sexual activity.
Prior to that revolution, most young people could take for granted that they were not going to have much sex, if any at all, outside of marriage. It was a miserable time to be young, for everyone. That revolution was also a time when young women began to gain more opportunities, such as participation in athletics, politics and many types of professions that were previously mostly all-male. Sexual opportunities were closely tied to all other sorts of opportunities, especially for women.
If you took the young people of today, and told them that their sexual freedom was to be limited to that of those who were young 50 or 60 years ago, they would probably go ballistic and foam at the mouth in despair. Most of them today, could probably not even comprehend being repressed like that. The difference between being young before and after the revolution, was like night and day. And thankfully, it finally came and is appreciated much more by someone who had one foot in the old world and one foot in the new one.
There was still a lot of sex among the young even before birth control, the consequences were just more severe (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdal...ies_in_Ireland) and it was kept quiet. To go back to the old "values" would mean going back to punishing women for their sexuality, which is the main thing that changed with the sexual revolution (men were always having lots of sex, well before "our" revolution).
But yes, the Pill was the advent of the Sexual Revolution. I would argue that women were gaining rights at that time simultaneously however, I don't think that came until later...it was the Pill that allowed women to really plan careers for the first time ever, and that eventually led to more women wanting equal access to the workplace, and that led to the Women's Lib movement of the late 60's through 70's that started evening the playing field.
Was there in fact a "pre-herpes" day? I remember having concerns about STDs back in the 1970s. They certainly existed. "The Clap" (gonorrhea) was a concern for my father's generation, as was syphilis, and those weren't new then, either. What parallel universe did you grow up in?
In the late 70s herpes became a big media story getting the cover of magazines like Time and Newsweek. It went public in a way that syphilis and gonorrhea didn't. While those other diseases may have been used as a plot in a televised drama herpes being from a virus was the one with no cure, you could only suppress the symptoms and abstain from sex until your outbreak passed.
In the late 70s herpes became a big media story getting the cover of magazines like Time and Newsweek. It went public in a way that syphilis and gonorrhea didn't. While those other diseases may have been used as a plot in a televised drama herpes being from a virus was the one with no cure, you could only suppress the symptoms and abstain from sex until your outbreak passed.
OK, but then what that poster is bemoaning is not the days before STDs but the days before his awareness of them. I knew before I was a teen (which threshold I crossed in 1970) that one not infrequently got unsavory and not necessarily curable or treatable, but always humiliating, diseases from non-monogamous sex. It definitely did not leave me feeling free to cut a wide swath through the girls in my high school even apart from any moral or theological concerns about it.
Go back 200 years. People became sexually mature and married by about age 16. Life was short and brutal. People had as many kids as survived and the human lifespan was about 35 years. Most people were uneducated, churches were mandatory, life was simple.
Present day: People become sexually mature earlier and they need to be well educated to make a decent living. Many continue in school beyond age 30. Marriage is much later, now about age 30.
To expect them to be in constant denial of sexual urges from age 13 to 30 is not realistic.
For sure. In medieval times, royalty locked their teen daughters in towers to preserve her virginity until a suitable suitor was found. These days, they'd have to lock her up for 15 years, while potential suitors got their advanced college degrees and built a career, lol.
OK, but then what that poster is bemoaning is not the days before STDs but the days before his awareness of them. I knew before I was a teen (which threshold I crossed in 1970) that one not infrequently got unsavory and not necessarily curable or treatable, but always humiliating, diseases from non-monogamous sex. It definitely did not leave me feeling free to cut a wide swath through the girls in my high school even apart from any moral or theological concerns about it.
The days before his awareness of them? Pretty hard to miss when schools showed films on the nasty outbreaks on the skin, and so forth--scare tactics to keep teens in line.
To be honest, I am not sure if I 'miss pre-sexual revolution days'. I was still essentially a child in the very early 60s and therefore probably missed the start of the 'sexual revolution' anyway (especially since I lived far from Berkeley, etc.) - though I guess I must have heard about 'free love' and I know I knew about the 'hippies and flower children'. But I married early .. in 1967 to the man who took my virginity. Looking back, I am now sure that I didn't have a clue about sex (other than the basics of 'how to' which were pretty simple on the surface) - till perhaps I had had 2 children and read the book of the day 'Joy of Sex' and realized women were supposed to enjoy it too. That revelation contributed heavily to the eventual dissolution of that marriage since my husband was not willing to read and buy into that 'new concept'. Pretty sad commentary on life in those days. I am fairly sure had I known more at the time, I would have chosen another man to marry and/or waited much longer 'to' marry that first time. And, by 'known more' I don't mean having had more actual 'experience' with more partners.
However, much as I think perhaps it would have been much better for me personally to have had more 'information' on which to base my own decisions about sex and love and marriage, etc. I think the pendulum has swung way too far in the other direction in recent years. We have gone from sex being a verboten subject to its glorification above all else - and to sexualizing children in a way I do not think is healthy for anyone, to 'hooking up' being seen as the best way to live (it seems), to movies and tv shows which do intimate that sex IS love and love is only 1 kiss away from meeting someone for the first time. Now we are flirting with the concepts surrounding sexual 'identity' as being totally separate from one's sex/gender so that apparently we can all now somehow be 'fluid' and feel ok about ourselves in the process (unless we happen to be what used to be seen as 'normal') - and while we are morphing the language to prove that everything is allowable and 'normal', suddenly nothing is really 'normal' at all. We human beings are so complex and frankly I don't really think we are that 'smart' at all but it is what it is. One can only maintain personal integrity I guess - and decide not to 'participate' if one does not 'agree' with what is going on.
But, moving on .. sex itself is NOT intimacy and I think that many younger people these days, despite being apparently so informed and experienced in the myriad of acts related to physical sex, still have no idea about 'intimacy' and its importance to lasting relationships. They know techniques perhaps better than I ever did, and they may have higher expectations for 'self-satisfaction' - neither of which is bad (the latter especially for women) - but I have to wonder if they have much more understanding of how to be intimate (and what constitutes that) than I did back in the 60s.
At any rate, for all the changes that have taken place over the years I have lived as an 'adult', I am not sure that I see we have made much real 'progress' when it comes to what I see as the truly important things in life that are connected to our sexuality and expression of same in intimate relationships. Despite the fact we are now 'allowed' by societal mores to do just about anything sexually speaking, to know that whatever we choose to do in that realm is 'sanctioned', etc., has that left us with better and deeper relationships .. has that left us with truly happier people .. has that left us with better judgement when it comes to who we select as longer term partners? Do we understand commitment and what true commitment takes any better than we ever did? Are we really better off than we used to be if for all the sex that we now supposedly express we are no more connected than we ever were - and maybe are less connected even?
I think somehow we missed a VERY critical step along the way to what often can look like the public sanctioning of debauchery .. and I think that is sad for us all. We went from repression (and frankly ignorance) to open expression and acceptance of anything as 'normal' and I think we missed the most critical point about human sexuality (beyond procreation) somehow. Along the way probably a few good things have come of this 'deflowering', don't get me wrong, but in many ways I think we are not at all further ahead than we were back in those days before our modern version of the 'sexual revolution'. (I call it the modern version because throughout the ages there have been similar 'revolutions' (see the PBS series about Rome for instance .. there is really nothing new these days. There is an ebb and flow to man's history - we in this age can take no real credit for being the 'first' to open the cages and unleash the beasts of Pandora's box.)
The fact is that human beings have a capacity for using sex for more than procreation - and that probably makes us pretty unique in the animal world - but it often seems that despite all we are still avoiding (what I see as) the better and higher reasons for sex - true connection with another human being, intimacy, an expression of caring rather than just of 'prowess' in the sexual arena. But, of course, this is just 'my opinion'.
I guess it would just be nice that if instead of society treating physical intimacy so casually like it does today (i.e., things like FWB, ONS, and solely casual intimacy), people were to think of intimacy as a more sacred, rarer, and very special experience that is intended with someone that that you truly love, and also hopefully intend to marry. In my immediate geographical area where I reside, it has been nearly impossible for me to find virtually any women that still value those kinds of older-school views and beliefs about the rules and norms sleeping with someone? It seems to be expected instead that males are assumed to be be very experienced in that regard, and that they will automatically want to (and thus be expected) to sleep with as many females as possible? As a male, that's not the kind of relationship I want to have with a female -- which is why the contemporary trend of encouraging as much casual intimate behavior and hook-ups as possible is very discouraging for me, on a more personal and individual level.
I totally agree with you on the bold above.
There are still people out there who value such things.
It doesn't matter if 99 out of 100 do not... the 1 that does, is out there.
Probably wondering where the heck you are...
Maybe you are just looking in the wrong places is all...
On the other hand, the last few generations have made positive advances. Society is starting to accept the fact that many species of animals, including humans, have homosexuality as a normal, natural behavior. We shouldn't go back to pretending it's not, and taking away people's rights for being who they were born to be.
Yeah, we should. This country is a joke with all of those overly exaggerated flaming homosexuals all over tv and movies. There is barely a single show on that doesn't have a gay person on it. It isn't normal. It is a choice. There is no absolute proof otherwise. When I look at films or newsreels of our country post WWII, I see a proud nation. Now it is made up of a bunch of freaks. It was a time when men were men, not affeminite ladyboys. And no, I am not anti gay. I would never hurt one or say anything to someone who is gay. I am saying that I, and the majority of the country, have no desire to see it in action out there in public. if you say that my comments offend them, then I will come back with they are offending me with their lifestyle being paraded around.
Somehow, you think that accepting any behavior at all moves us forward as a nation. That is BS. It is the sign of a nation losing all of its moral fiber. That's how Greece and Rome fell.
There is a reason that men and men and women and women can never procreate. Think about it.
Does anyone else miss the loss of pre-Sexual Revolution ideals and norms about physical intimacy? Personally, I am not a fan of contemporary trends, although I guess it's way too late to put that genie back in the bottle at all...
Oh god no - thank god that hypocritical prudish nonsense is dying a death. Although you can still find it in theocracies and other suffocating cultures.
And I presume you mean American Victorian - sexual revolution ideals. Medieval, Roman and earlier times had different ideals again.
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