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Howdy Horn Honkers.
Let us talk about S-E-X.Someone asked me the other day in what way we can chart obvious changes between generations. I offered that popular music is one way, politics and social action, of course, but honestly…I think it’s sex.
The social construction of human sexual behavior changes with every generation. At least in most Western countries. I shall attempt to discuss this without using words that might be offensive to some folks. Wish me luck, y’all.
In the 1950s dating was a prim affair, at least by outward appearances. Women, in one of the worst social ideals ever, were encouraged by society and the church to keep their virginity until marriage and guard it like a first-edition Cabbage Patch doll locked in a sweaty glass case until it could be presented at a society-sanctioned time.
Females were supposed to resist every carnal and youthful hormonal urge. Sex was a moral issue for that generation but it wasn’t to uplift or protect women. If you got wed at 15 you were still expected to unlock the cabbage cabinet. Young women were sternly instructed not to bump squiddles before marriage. Their reputation and sometimes their future could be at stake. This was a way to control woman’s bodies and the message was clear: you will feel stupid, shameful, fearful and worthless if you dare go heels-to-Jesus before you have a ring on your finger.
Please know I’m not saying sexual innocence, or virginity, is nothing special. I’m saying men will celebrate losing theirs to a prostitute in Tijuana. So, ladies, don’t let society fool you. It’s your cabbage. Do what you want with it. Keep it, give it away, save it for marriage, or throw it at that cute guy who sings with the Led Zepplin tribute band. You know, the tall, slender guy with the tight jeans and long, golden, curls that brush his shoulders like curly fries from God. Oh…sorry. I got lost in the mists of time. Where were we? Oh yes, the virginity cabbage. Do whatever you want with it.
After the pristine 1950s the early 1960s brought the birth control pill to wider but restricted use (it was actually developed in the '50s but it was illegal to advertise contraception in most of the U.S. back then.) In Connecticut contraception was criminalized (even for married folks) until 1965. It took the SCOTUS to overturn that intrusion into the bedroom rodeo.
Oh, by the way, condoms had been legal in the United States since 1918. Next time you want to slam the mighty and vast spread of Baby Boomers, just remember one of the many reasons there was such an outcry for the pill to be widely accepted and distributed is because near the end of the baby boom, in the early 1960s, there were women who had four and five kids and still a decade (or more) of fertile years to go. Y’all. These supermoms were tired as hell and ready to cut a bitch. Remember the saying: “It’s a vagina, lady, not a clown car.” Give those women a break, birth control and a cocktail. Small wonder once the pill was widely available we got the “free love” movement of the 1960s. And with it came a freedom for woman to choose. Choose partners, choose when to, or not to, conceive (a great boon for females in the workplace, which also allowed a woman to make her own money, which meant even more freedom). Women were now in control of their bodies and lives in a way they hadn’t been previously. So, in the 1960s everyone was celebrating sexual freedom by bonking to some of the best music ever made.The 1970s were all about sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll and that’s all I’m going to say about that, except yay. The wild, innocent, messy, overdue and occasionally self-centered sexual revolution rolled onto a deep, dark pothole in the 1980s when AIDS was discovered in the one of the worst ways possible – by people dying of a mostly sexually transmitted disease. Called “the gay cancer” or “gay plague” at first, it eventually made its way into the hetero population. You can bet the establishment finally took notice when straight people and children contracted HIV (sometimes through blood contact or transfusions) and died.
We lost too many fine people to that disease and here in the U.S. the Reagan administration is largely to blame. Collectively, Reagan & Co. ignored and treated it as a joke in press conferences until 1985-6, by which time thousands had already perished. The next time you want to snap at the media, just remember it was the press who literally pressed the White House to respond to the crisis as early as 1982. In the 1990s music morphed into the grunge and ever-evolving rap era and people were still doing the no-pants dance, albeit a little more carefully, but by then some anti-viral drugs (yay science) were available to treat HIV. These days the drugs are great, effective, and the disease is in check, although still with us.
So basically what I’m saying is sexual mores seem to change or shift generationally. It's interesting to watch. It’s also amusing how the previous generation often seems shocked by newer generation sex stuff, no matter how wildly they were doing the horizontal hula in their own time.In 1958 we had “no sex before marriage.” In 1998 we had “Sex and the City.”In the 1960s we had 007's Pussy Galore. Today we have WAP. Back in my day, for us hetero women, men were just happy to get under our skirt and behold the poom-poom. These days I notice random dudes on the internet nonchalantly chime in with the way they prefer you shave your panty hamster. So things change. Always.There. Whew. I did it without using any offensive language.
