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TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
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TIME, Almanac of the 20th Century.ISO
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1960
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60sex
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1994-02-27
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<text>
<title>
(1960s) Sexual Revolution
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1960s Highlights
</history>
<link 07169>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
The Sexual Revolution
</hdr>
<body>
<p> [Americans discovered that the freedom from fear of unwanted
pregnancy that was the gift of "the pill" went hand in hand with
other kinds of sexual freedom.]
</p>
<p>(January 24, 1964)
</p>
<p> Men with memories ask, "What, again?" The first sexual
revolution followed World War I, when flaming youth buried the
Victorian era and anointed itself as the Jazz Age. In many ways
it was an innocent revolution. In This Side of Paradise, F. Scott
Fitzgerald alarmed mothers by telling them "how casually their
daughters were accustomed to being kissed"; today mothers thank
their stars if kissing is all their daughters are accustomed to.
</p>
<p> The rebels of the '60s have parents with only the tattered
remnants of a code. Adrift in a sea of permissiveness, they have
little to rebel against. Parents, educators and the guardians of
morality at large do pull themselves together to say "don't,"
but they usually sound halfhearted. Closed minds have not
disappeared, but as a society, the U.S. seems to be dominated
by what Congregationalist Minister and Educator Robert Elliot
Fitch calls an "orgy of open-mindedness." Faith and principle are
far from dead--but what stands out is an often desperate search
for "new standards for a new age."
</p>
<p> Publicly and dramatically, the change is evident in Spectator
Sex--what may be seen and read. It remains for each man and
woman to walk through this sexual bombardment and determine for
themselves what to them seems tasteless or objectionable,
entertaining or merely dull. A healthy society must assume a
certain degree of immunity on the part of its people. But no one
can really calculate the effect this exposure is having on
individual lives and minds. Above all, it is not an isolated
phenomenon. It is part and symptom of an era in which morals are
widely held to be both private and relative, in which pleasure
is increasingly considered an almost constitutional right rather
than a privilege, in which self-denial in increasingly seen as
foolishness rather than virtue.
</p>
<p>(April 7, 1967)
</p>
<p> "The pill" is a miraculous tablet that contains as little as
one thirty-thousandth of an ounce of chemical. It costs 1 1/4
cents to manufacture; a month's supply now sells for $2.00
retail. It is little more trouble to take on schedule than a
daily vitamin. Yet in a mere six years it has changed and
liberated the sex and family life of a large and still growing
segment of the U.S. population. Of the 39 million American women
capable of motherhood, 7,000,000 have already taken the pills;
some 5,700,000 are on them now.
</p>
<p> Does the convenient contraceptive promote promiscuity? In
some cases, no doubt it does--as did the automobile, the drive-
in movies and the motel. But the consensus among both physicians
and sociologist is that a girl who is promiscuous on the pill
would have been promiscuous without it. The more mature of the
unmarried in the Now Generation say that, far from promoting
promiscuity, the pills impose a sense of responsibility.
Formerly, many a young woman rejected premarital relations
specifically because of her fear of pregnancy. Now, on the
pills, she has to make the decision according to her own
conscience.</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>