The Changing Face of Sex. Wayne P. Anderson PhD

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СКАЧАТЬ and work of the sex researchers, a good source is Edward Brecher’s The Sex Researchers, 1969.

      CHAPTER THREE

      THE ’60s REVOLUTION IN SEXUAL STANDARDS

      The premarital sexual standards took the biggest hit in the sexual revolution. In particular women’s sexual behavior changed the most. The four premarital sexual standards commonly recognized are (Reiss, 1960):

      Abstinence

      Double-Standard

      Sex within an ongoing relationship

      Sex without an ongoing relationship

      Abstinence—our formal single standard for both sexes

      Our laws until recently were built on the standard of abstinence for both sexes before marriage. It is the Christian Church standard and to an even greater degree the Muslim standard. In some Muslim countries I have visited, a women can be killed for even a suggestion of a loss of virtue because of the disgrace this brings upon the family. To insure abstinence before marriage, some cultures go so far as to use an extreme form of clitorectomy that sews up the entrance to the vagina, preventing penetration.

      In the abstinence standard, sexual intercourse is seen as too important an act, too valuable and intimate to be performed with anyone but one’s marriage partner. Sexual intercourse must be saved for marriage. Kinsey’s reports of the number of people having sex before and outside of marriage were very shocking to a culture where this was forbidden.

      Strictly observed, the limit of intimacy was kissing, but over time the rules changed and the standard took different forms. It reached a point where some of my students felt that as long as vaginal sexual intercourse was avoided anything else was allowed.Therefore people such as Clinton could say, “I did not have sex with that woman,” when oral sex was involved.

      Petting in an ongoing relationship is widely practiced, but not acceptable to many religious groups.I had one client whom I mention in another chapter who was pregnant, but still technically a virgin since there had been no penetration. Her boyfriend had ejaculated on her upper thigh and gotten sperm into her vagina with his hands.

      At the time I am writing this in 2011, the U.S. Congress still wants everyone to be abstinent before marriage, and provides money to schools for programs that limit their teaching to abstinence as being the only appropriate sexual standard for the unmarried.

      The ancient double standard

      This was probably the most dominate informal standard in the U.S. until 1968. This assumes that man’s nature is such that he must have sexual outlets. Boys will be boys. Men were often encouraged to lose their virginity while girls were expected to be virgins until they married. In some states a women not being a virgin could be grounds for the annulment of the marriage.

      We also had double standards in employment and legal rights with the core idea being female inferiority. The extreme of this was early laws that treated women as their husband’s property.

      Men in the 1960s who practiced the double standard tended to group women into five different levels based on their sexual availability.

      1.Prostitutes

      2.Party girls who would have sex with any man who took them out

      3.Those who were known to have sex with other men, but were highly selective

      4.Those who would have sex if they were engaged to be married

      5.Those who wouldn’t have sex until marriage vows had been taken

      In the 1960s I had reports that some fraternities kept a list of girls known to be easily available sexually. I had an incident in one of my classes in the mid ’60s of one of the women in class standing up and accusing one of the men of putting her name on such a list because he was angry with her.The class gave her a round of applause.

      Even those engaged to be married could have problems with the virginity issue. One of my clients in the ’60s, who was pregnant after having had sexual intercourse after much pressure from her boyfriend, had been told by him he no longer wanted to marry her because she was no longer a virgin. They did marry, but it was a demonstration of the strong desire of men to marry only virgins.

      As a result, some women would re-virginize because they recognized the need to appear to be a virgin if they wanted to get married. I was told that in some cultures small vials of blood could be purchased to be put on the bed sheet the marriage night so it could be hung out the window the next morning to prove the woman had been a virgin.

      When I first started working with rape victims in the ’60s, we found that many jury members believed that a woman who had premarital sex couldn’t be raped. That is, once they had had sex, further sex, even under threats of violence was not rape.

      Permissiveness without affection

      This was a body-centered, physical-pleasure oriented approach to sex. Sex was separate from love and something done for mutual pleasure. It became very popular in some groups during the late ’60s and early ’70s. The hippies practiced love-ins. Swinging clubs for married couples where partners were exchanged for sex became very popular. This had also been the standard with many male homosexuals, some of whom might have contact with hundreds of people during a year. This has become a standard for some college students where hooking up or one night stands are very common.

      Permissiveness without affection became one of the ways in which sexually transmitted diseases increased in number of victims and resulted in the resistance of these diseases to treatment.

      Permissiveness with affection or in an ongoing relationship

      In this standard, sex is not treated casually. It is person centered and body centered.Given the fact that we now put off marriage during the age when the sex drive is the highest, it is likely this will become the more common sexual standard. Once affection or limerence becomes part of the relationship, jealousy comes into the picture and lovers do not want their partner having sex with someone else.This is probably very deeply seated in our primitive brain given that males of the species do not want to raise the offspring of other males.

      The tipping point

      Although the major changes in behavior took place between 1968 and 1972, this is an ongoing process with the proportions of people following each of the standards changing over time. The following table gives the percentage of women by class who had had sexual intercourse at my university during two critical years.

Year	1968	1972
Freshmen	15	50
Sophomore	26	55
Junior	35	55
Senior	50 СКАЧАТЬ В начало < 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 > В конец