A price to pay?
Free Love: Was there a price to pay?
Usually I really enjoy Brian Alexander's columns. His America Unzipped series paints a really interesting portrait of American sexuality and its changes.
His latest article, however, smacks of sexist, judgmental tripe. Exhibit A:
But there is no question that we are still living with the “free love” fallout. Everything from the rise of Viagra to “Girls Gone Wild” and feminist porn, to the sex education debate and the Christian fundamentalist backlash, bears the mark of that bohemian sexual revolution.
"Fallout" certainly has negative connotations, and just about everything in that list is abhorrent to somebody (except maybe Viagra - I don't think it's an inherently evil product. What's evil is its marketing. And how insurance providers wouldn't cover birth control until it came around and they wanted to cover that). Perhaps this instance is simply irresponsible editing, rather than out right idiocy. Let's read on.
The first page of the article is about all of the bad stuff we now have to live through all thanks to those dirty hippies. STD rates skyrocketed, abortion became legalized...but, oh wait, hippies weren't singlehandedly responsible for the new sexually liberated culture? Playboy had been around for 14 years? Masters and Johnson had published "Human Sexual Response" a year earlier? So...really we should just go back to blaming Hugh Heffner. Except that the concept of "Free Love" had been around since the 19th century (I'd argue earlier: look up John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester, in the 18th).
So really, the hippies didn't do anything new. Let's just hate on them anyway; it's the 40th anniversary of the summer of love.
Half way through page two we get to some actually positive things that came from the Summer of Love. Feminism took to the streets, as women realized that "free love" meant men got to have sex with whomever they wanted without responsibility.
Oh, and here's where we get to the extremely debatable parts of this article:
The age’s radical feminist notion of eliminating marriage never materialized, but demand from 40 years ago to have “the freedom to love, to chose whom to love and how to love,” written by Goldfield and her essay collaborators Sue Munaker and Naomi Weisstein, is taken for granted by the young women — and men — of the MySpace generation.
I realize that I'm on the older end of the MySpace generation (OT: I realized last night that I am getting old when I was playing a game at a high school summer camp and no one knew who Captain Planet was), but our choices in who we love are still rather limited: interracial relationships are still relatively rare and god knows that you'd better love someone of the opposite sex! Making out with a girl in a picture to post to MySpace so you'll get knew friends is completely different from marching in a Pride parade. Or fighting for the right to marry your girlfriend.
“Some [people] are monogamous, but they are choosing to be, rather than following some script. Maybe they are not having sex with 10 people at a time, but now they are following their own script,” says [Eli] Coleman [Director of the Program of Human Sexuality at the University of Minnesota and editor of the International Journal of Sexual Health].
I'd argue that monogamy is pretty much the norm. Unless you stumble on some interesting websites, the only way you're going to be exposed to the modern tradition of polyamory is if you're in a large city. We still largely follow the sexual role scripts in our society. (Alexander claims that studies support Coleman's statement...by citing a survey from 1994 that says 64% of women born between 1963 and 1974 had co-habited before marriage. That has nothing to do with multiple sex partners and everything to do with pre-marital sex. NOT the same issue)
Usually I really enjoy Brian Alexander's columns. His America Unzipped series paints a really interesting portrait of American sexuality and its changes.
His latest article, however, smacks of sexist, judgmental tripe. Exhibit A:
But there is no question that we are still living with the “free love” fallout. Everything from the rise of Viagra to “Girls Gone Wild” and feminist porn, to the sex education debate and the Christian fundamentalist backlash, bears the mark of that bohemian sexual revolution.
"Fallout" certainly has negative connotations, and just about everything in that list is abhorrent to somebody (except maybe Viagra - I don't think it's an inherently evil product. What's evil is its marketing. And how insurance providers wouldn't cover birth control until it came around and they wanted to cover that). Perhaps this instance is simply irresponsible editing, rather than out right idiocy. Let's read on.
The first page of the article is about all of the bad stuff we now have to live through all thanks to those dirty hippies. STD rates skyrocketed, abortion became legalized...but, oh wait, hippies weren't singlehandedly responsible for the new sexually liberated culture? Playboy had been around for 14 years? Masters and Johnson had published "Human Sexual Response" a year earlier? So...really we should just go back to blaming Hugh Heffner. Except that the concept of "Free Love" had been around since the 19th century (I'd argue earlier: look up John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester, in the 18th).
So really, the hippies didn't do anything new. Let's just hate on them anyway; it's the 40th anniversary of the summer of love.
Half way through page two we get to some actually positive things that came from the Summer of Love. Feminism took to the streets, as women realized that "free love" meant men got to have sex with whomever they wanted without responsibility.
Oh, and here's where we get to the extremely debatable parts of this article:
The age’s radical feminist notion of eliminating marriage never materialized, but demand from 40 years ago to have “the freedom to love, to chose whom to love and how to love,” written by Goldfield and her essay collaborators Sue Munaker and Naomi Weisstein, is taken for granted by the young women — and men — of the MySpace generation.
I realize that I'm on the older end of the MySpace generation (OT: I realized last night that I am getting old when I was playing a game at a high school summer camp and no one knew who Captain Planet was), but our choices in who we love are still rather limited: interracial relationships are still relatively rare and god knows that you'd better love someone of the opposite sex! Making out with a girl in a picture to post to MySpace so you'll get knew friends is completely different from marching in a Pride parade. Or fighting for the right to marry your girlfriend.
“Some [people] are monogamous, but they are choosing to be, rather than following some script. Maybe they are not having sex with 10 people at a time, but now they are following their own script,” says [Eli] Coleman [Director of the Program of Human Sexuality at the University of Minnesota and editor of the International Journal of Sexual Health].
I'd argue that monogamy is pretty much the norm. Unless you stumble on some interesting websites, the only way you're going to be exposed to the modern tradition of polyamory is if you're in a large city. We still largely follow the sexual role scripts in our society. (Alexander claims that studies support Coleman's statement...by citing a survey from 1994 that says 64% of women born between 1963 and 1974 had co-habited before marriage. That has nothing to do with multiple sex partners and everything to do with pre-marital sex. NOT the same issue)
