The Sexual Revolution

Chris wrote:What's your opinion of The Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and 70s? Do you think it did more good than harm, more harm than good? What were its benefits? What were its flaws? Did it ever end, or is it ongoing?

cheaps wrote:i dont know

Love the honest answer.

I do know - I was there. It was fun. It was a rebellion against the contrived morality and hypocrisy of our parents' generation.

It was the impetus of the baby boom generation coming to age at once, a whole generation of Romeos & Juliets, doing other Romeos & Juliets, not always in that order.

On the down side, it is likely that free love of the '70s helped spread HIV. While we had no deadly "venereal diseases" (our parents' words) and seldom used condoms with sex, the silent virus may have travelled unknown, especially amongst the even more sexually active gay male population. That etiology is ongoing tho.

I think the effects of the Sexual Revolution are ongoing. Casual sex is more casually accepted by society at large now because of the breakthru of those contrived constraints of past generations of Western culture. Since that time in the U.S., outdated beliefs against homosexuality are falling. Sexual activities that were deemed legal perversions where ppl actually went to jail have been ruled invasive of privacy and unconstitutional. And those rulings have taken place in the 21st Century. It is a slow and ongoing process, dismantling centuries of conservative/puritan religious edict and misinformation.

Friendly Veteran wrote:... Also, this freedom has led for us to give more freedom to our kids in many choices while they are still minors. We are now treating them as adults in many areas. To me that has also led on parents treating their kids as if they are their school friends and that has eroded parent authority. From that it has led to less respect to authority, elders, and to some social norms that helped mainting a more healthy society.

Shale wrote:

Friendly Veteran wrote:... Also, this freedom has led for us to give more freedom to our kids in many choices while they are still minors. We are now treating them as adults in many areas. To me that has also led on parents treating their kids as if they are their school friends and that has eroded parent authority. From that it has led to less respect to authority, elders, and to some social norms that helped mainting a more healthy society.

I have to disagree with conformity being a good thing. I am a bit of an iconoclast, challenging authority since adolescence. It is a part of the American ethos, from the founding fathers who challenged authority in a big way (if they had lost we would now be taut that they were part of a traitorous uprising against the crown).

For many generations our culture has been one of conformity, culminating in the status quo mentality of post war '50s. The culture that lived in apartheid, ignored or suppressed the sexual reality for some mythical ideal (fellatio and cunnilingus was an illegal perversion in many states). Then Kinsey started shining light on the myth and ppl began admitting that, yeah I do that all the time.

The Sexual Revolution did not take place in a vacuum. There was revolution all around - namely the black civil rights, womens' lib and gay civil rights - not to mention widespread protest against an unpopular war. It was revolutionary times - and throwing off the traditional sexual mores was just a biproduct to the attacks on the complacent, hypocritical culture in which we were raised.

Things have changed and I think for the better. I realize my wife and I were further out than the norm when we let our 16-year-old daughter's boyfriends share her bed, but at the time we thot it the safest thing to do. And, acceptable by the counter-cultural standards of which we were a part.