The end of the sexual revolution
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"The hippie dream of peace and love evaporated in the aftermath of the Kent State shootings (May '69), the Manson massacre (August '69), the Altamont murder (December '69), the deaths of Jimi Hendrix (September '70), Janis Joplin (October '70) and Jim Morrison (July '71). It would be another decade before the sexual revolution ended." --Sholem Stein |
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The sexual revolution semi-officially ended in 1984 (cfr. TIME cover of "Sex In The '80's: The Revolution Is Over"[1]) and coincided with the arrival of AIDS (see Benetton AIDS ad) and postmodernism.
Many writers of the sexual revolution era, including Gershon Legman ("Love and Death: A Study in Censorship"), Wayland Young (Eros Denied), Gordon Rattray Taylor and Amos Vogel (Film as a Subversive Art) promised utopia as soon as people got rid of their sexual inhibitions. Gershon Legman in "Love and Death" pointed out that “Murder is a crime; describing murder is not. Sex is not a crime. Describing sex is. Why?” Germaine Greer added “If we were sexually liberated there’d be no president, no police force, no night sticks, no governments.” Free love would solve all of our problems.
The utopia of these writers did not happen because of the aforementioned AIDS epidemic and a because aboos, shame and guilt are inhibitions beneficial to the enjoyment of sex (the forbidden fruit effect) and are necessary to regulate a society. If these inhibitions would not be there life would be an eternal recurrence of the final orgy in Perfume.
Camille Paglia interviewed by Jack Nichols in 1997 famously stated that "Everybody who preached free love in the 60’s is responsible for AIDS." […] "and the price of that revolution has been paid by gay men, primarily. I think that what we’re understanding is the enormous power of nature." […] that nature apparently did not want us to be promiscuous and that it puts a thousand obstacles in our paths such as these diseases.
See also [2].
See also
- Sexual revolution in Scandinavia
- Cohabitation
- Free love
- Permissive society
- Sexual revolution in 1960s America