User:Courtalbanese/Sexual revolution in 1960s United States

The Women's Movement[edit]

Second-wave feminism developed in the 1960s and 1970s, demanding equal opportunities and rights for women. The feminist and women's liberation movements helped change ideas about women and their sexuality. In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan discussed the domestic role of women in 1960s America and the feeling of dissatisfaction with that role. Friedan suggested that women should not conform to this popularized view of the feminine as “The Housewife” and that they should participate in and enjoy the act of sex.

After the publishing of the Feminine Mystique in 1963, Betty Friedan continued on to form the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966. Similarly to first-wave feminists, NOW focused their feminist efforts on legal and legislative change. They sought women's equality through lobbying and political activism, inspired by the work of groups of like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Examples of this legislative change includes NOW's lobbying of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for the recognition of sex discrimination in the workplace throughout the 1960s. There was another, younger, and more radical group of women's liberationists forming in the 1960s simultaneously to NOW, inspired by grassroots civil rights and New Left movements of the 1960s as well.

The women's liberation movement also criticized the sexualization of women through beauty standards in the 1960s. The New York Radical Women, a radical civil rights, New Left, and antiwar group, protested against the Miss America beauty pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey. These women threw their bras, copies of Playboy, high heels, and other objects of beauty into a “Freedom Trash Can.” Later feminists argued that sexual liberation allowed the patriarchy to hypersexualize women and gave men “free access” to women.

Feminists extended this criticism of beauty standards in the 1960s through their appearances and outfits as well. They protested the traditionally feminine by cutting their hair short and refusing to wear women's clothing or makeup. Feminist activists took this approach to challenge the social construct of gender and the perceived differences between men and women. By wearing men's clothes and rejecting traditional femininity, activists drew mainstream attention and questioned the defining features of a woman to society. Many members of this more radical branch of the movement throughout the 1960s argued that feminine clothing and beauty standards were a method of oppression imposed by the patriarchy.

Lesbian feminist groups contributed to this questioning of the social definition of women through dress and theory as well. Some of the most popular work by a lesbian feminist group was the Radicalesbian's 1970 manifesto "The Woman Identified Woman", in which they assert that the role of women is defined in relativity to men, rather than as an independent person. They argued that women's liberation would occur when women were able to separate from the patriarchal concept of femininity and thus sexually and socially separate from men. Manifestos and essays like "The Woman Identified Woman" were commonly distributed amongst members of the women's liberation movement. Oftentimes these writings were not traditionally published, but spread at conferences and meetings; they were written critiques of the patriarchy, femininity, and other issues central to the women's movement. An example of an essay distributed in this way is Pat Mainardi's "The Politics of Housework" from 1970, in which she writes satirically of her husband's negligence of the housework and criticizes the inherent division of domestic labor within the home.

However, despite second-wave feminists sometimes being considered “anti-sex,” many women were interested in liberating women from certain sexual constraints. The women's liberation movement prioritized “its cultural challenge not to unjust laws but to the very definitions of female and male, the entire system then called ‘sex roles’ by sociologists.”

Gay Rights and the "undocumented" sexual revolution

Homosexuality was still considered a developmental maladjustment by medical establishments throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Prejudices against homosexual behavior were cloaked in the language of medical authority, and homosexuals were unable to argue for the same legal and social rights.

Homosexuals were sometimes characterized as dangerous and predatory deviants. For example, the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, between 1956 and 1965, sought out these 'deviants' within the public system, with a particular focus upon teachers. The persecution of gay teachers was driven by the popular belief that homosexuals could prey on vulnerable young people and recruit them into homosexuality. In addition, male homosexuals were often seen as inherently more dangerous (particularly to children) than lesbians, due to stereotypes and societal prejudices.

In addition, most states had sodomy laws, which made anal sex a crime. It was punishable by up to 10 years in prison. There were also restrictions on the portrayal of homosexuality in film and television, like the 1934 Hays Film Code, which banned any homosexual characters or acts in film until 1961. However, by 1971, the first gay pornographic feature film, Boys in the Sand, was shown at the 55th Street Playhouse in New York City. With this movie, the gay community was launched into the sexual revolution and the porn industry. Earlier homoerotic films existed, especially in Europe, as early as 1908. These films were underground and sold in discreet channels.

The gay rights movement was less popular in the 1960s than later decades, but it still engaged in public protest and an attitude “celebratory about the homosexual lifestyle.” The Mattachine Societies in Washington, D.C. and New York staged demonstrations that protested discrimination against homosexuals. These groups argued “that the closing of gay bars was a denial of the right to free assembly and that the criminalization of homosexuality was a denial of the ‘right to the pursuit of happiness.’” In 1969, the United States had fifty gay and lesbian organizations that engaged in public protest.

These gay rights groups also challenged traditional gender roles, similar to feminist movements of the time. The Mattachine leaders emphasized that homosexual oppression required strict definitions of gender behavior. Social roles equated “male, masculine, man only with husband and father” and equated “female, feminine, women only with wife and mother.” These activists saw homosexual women and men as victims of a “language and culture that did not admit the existence of a homosexual minority.” The homophile movement and gay rights activist fought for an expansion of rights based on similar theories that drove some heterosexual women to reject traditional sexual norms.

Lesbian rights movements in the 1960s tended to be combined with the greater Women's Liberation Movement, though they still faced ostracization and oppression from some feminist groups. Notably, in 1969, NOW leader Betty Friedan claimed that the lesbians within the women's liberation movement were a "lavender menace" that would halt the validity of the women's movement. Despite this ostracization, lesbian communities began to grow in the 1960s similarly to those of gay men. One way awareness of the community was able to spread was because of the rise of butch-femme fashion and outward expression of lesbianism after the Second World War. Lesbian and queer groups were targeted for their gender ambiguity and dress through three-article clothing laws, which required persons to be wearing at least three pieces of clothing that correlated to their gender assigned at birth. Many butch lesbians were able to adhere to these laws by wearing women's underwear and socks, or "men's cut" shirts and slimmer skirts instead of slacks. The rise of butch-femme dress allowed for visibility to the lesbian communities, and many women were able to find queer spaces simply by following butch women. Another way lesbian community was able to spread was through the popularization of lesbian pulp novels throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Though pulp novels were often formulaic, troupe-filled, and intended more for a male voyeuristic audience than queer women, they allowed women to find representation and queer identity in media, which had been heavily restricted until the 1960s.