Feminism, Women's Lib and the Sexual Revolution

     Before the advent of feminism and the sexual revolution in the early 1960s, women mainly did not work outside of the home.

     Society during the cold, stuffy days of the 1950s and generations before told women that they had to belong to a man and could not have a career and family at the same time. They were told that they must play the role of wife, mother and homemaker and have a whole lot of children. In other words, fulfill all the needs of their husbands and especially their sexual needs.

     In 1960 a bona fide miracle occurred in the United States. A great hero by the name of Margaret Sanger (1879 – 1966) burst onto the medical scene by making oral birth control pills a reality (2015). This woman was the founder of the American Birth Control League, the forerunner of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (2015).

     Today, Planned Parenthood is still the foremost leader of contraception delivery services to women, especially in poor communities that they serve. Full disclosure: I am a huge supporter of Planned Parenthood. I have given the organization thousands of dollars over the years on the grounds that they are the number one abortion provider in the United States.

     Probably the greatest thing about the birth control pill was that it sparked what became known as the “Sexual Revolution”. This quite simply was an event that took place beginning in 1960 but really did not take off until the late 1960s where, because of Sanger’s efforts to bring the pill to market, women all over America could make their own reproductive choices and could determine for themselves to whom they wanted to have sex with and how often and when. As already mentioned, before the 1960s, women were always expected to fulfil their husband’s sexual needs no questions asked and more often then not those needs resulted in many pregnancies. Now, women could take the pill and have as much sex as they wanted and control how many babies they would produce.

     Also, single women could then be free to become sexually active with men that before the invention of the pill could never even consider becoming intimate with. All they would have to do is take the pill and if they chose to become sexually active, whether that be promiscuous or in a steady, committed relationship they could do whatever pleased them and not suffer any kind of unwanted pregnancies. This has got to be one of the greatest inventions of all time.

     Naturally, after coming off the cold days of the 1950s where society was backwards in their radical conservatism and close-minded attitudes especially towards sex, the invention of this pill was very controversial indeed. What made this subject so intensely controversial at the time was that in generations before the 1960s Americans believed that the female orgasm was not something to have any concern about during sexual intercourse. It was only the man who had to be satisfied sexually. This mainly came from a myth that circulated in society that women were not sexual creatures (Carusi, 2023), only the men were sexual with those kinds of needs. So, for a pill to come along to make a woman free to express herself sexually and explore her own sexuality in whatever ways they wanted, especially if she chose to have many sexual partners the conservative society in America just could not cope with this concept of female sexual openness.

     For the new group of women that became known in later years as “feminists”, or women that believed in women thinking for themselves and not living under the oppressive yoke of male dominance, they believed the pill to be a form of “sexual empowerment” (Carusi, 2023).

     It is a fact that the pill caused a lot of promiscuity and a great deal of women let their inhibitions down and indulged in what became known for time immortal as the “sexual revolution,” and “counterculture” which was all about free love (aka sex) but what social conservatives did not consider at the time is the positive impact that the birth control pill really brought to sexually active couples.

     Unlike in generations before 1960 it was understood that big families were a reality. This was partly because for the first two hundred years or so our country had been mainly an agrarian culture and farms dominated the economy, therefore, the farm owner wanted many children, especially boys, to help run the farm. There were always those couples who decided that they would just like to have big families, but many times, the reasons for big families were either the lack of birth control altogether or else ineffective birth control.

     With the advent of the pill, couples could now engage in sexual intercourse and not worry about pregnancy. They could plan to have maybe one or two children instead of expecting possibly having ten kids during the life of their marriage. This is such an amazing thing when somebody thinks about it. The ability to choose how much sex they want, and they will not have to worry about having too much sex because the pill will regulate the amount of pregnancies the woman has has been a Godsend.

     In England, during the years of 1950 – 1980, teenage girls were having a lot of sex.

     In many ways, English girls of this period were much like teenagers in America today. Forty to sixty years ago the mores of sexuality and sexual knowledge for girls as they entered puberty were much more of an exploratory and more highly knowledgeable level then their mothers or grandmothers. When British girls’ mothers were their age society told them that “nice girls” did not have sex before marriage. They must be celibate until their wedding night. But, by the 1970s, teenage girls in England not only did not think like their elders but they knew much more about sex then their mothers and grandmothers knew when they were thirteen or fourteen. Plus, there were new “incentives” and “Justifications” for having sex (Hannah, 2020). There was an attitude in Britain in the 1970s that dictated about sex, “Everybody else is doing it so I better” (Hannah, 2020) was causing many young girls to lose their virginity long before they walked down the aisle in a wedding dress and say their “I do’s”. The social norms by this time had changed to the point where adolescent British girls were almost expected to “give it up” with their boyfriends nearly as soon as they started dating in early adolescence (Hannah, 2020).

     British morals of the 1970s has pervaded American society. Today, most young people are having sex before marriage with a few exceptions. This is just the way the world is nowadays.

     As we have seen, the sexual revolution has really transformed the world and made us into more open societies and hopefully America will never go back to a Leave it to Beaver society.

References

(2015). The birth control: A history. Planned Parenthood.  https://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/1514/3518/7100/Pill_History_FactSheet.pdf.

Carusi, Daniela, M.D. (2023) The pill and the sexual revolution. PBS: American Experience. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pill-and-sexual-revolution/

Charnock, H. (2020). TEENAGE GIRLS, FEMALE FRIENDSHIP AND THE MAKING OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND, 1950–1980. The Historical Journal, 63(4), 1032-1053. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X19000396