The Sexual Revolution and It's Aftermath: Sex, Drugs, and Rock n Roll

By Jay Ray (written in early 2004)

I was born in 1947, so most of my formative years where spent in the boom of the 50's. The world wanted to replace its dead from two horrific wars, so the concept of family life quickly replaced the ideology of 'fighting for your country' as the preferred thinking that was most encouraged. But we had all experienced a great deal in those wars, and though women were expected to go back to the kitchen and men to the shop floor, we wanted more for our trouble than our parents had required. 

Maybe the explosion of materialism came out of that need for more as payment for the huge amounts of our lives that we had sacrificed. Maybe it was because we had scared ourselves half out of our wits with the far reaching atrocities, that we adopted the attitude that says, "live for today, because there may be no tomorrow". The advent of nuclear power must have given us a 'hurry-up' in that direction. We had seen what happened to the Japanese people.  After all, once something destructive has been used, it can and probably will be used again. Next time it might be us. Get all your living done before it happens!

By the time I was in my teens and the 60's was well underway, the writing was on the wall. Unbridled materialism was wrecking the planet. We began to wonder if our parents were not selling the family jewels for a mess of pottage. We felt like danger was not past at all, but roaring towards us with a hiss, making us appreciate everything acutely for a time. We wanted to be able to experience it all before the 'oldies' did us all in. Our attention turned away from their materialism and what they could buy, to what we were not allowed to contemplate. We wanted freedom. (We still do.) We wanted plenty of time to enjoy it. We wanted 'them' to get off our backs.

'Love not War' was our chant! Except, in our naiveté, we didn't know the difference between love and sex. It's not surprising. I'm not sure anyone knew before or maybe since, to any great extent. What we knew was that war didn't work for us, or for anyone else.  We began a movement that has initiated many changes in the world, and still needs to go a great deal further than where we were able to get it to. One of the big problems remains the difference between love and sex. How to tell which it is you choices are heading you for? Perhaps it was that fact alone that put the eventual breaks on our revolution. Maybe we began having such a good time 'loving' each other, it sort of got in the way of everything else. Whilst we didn't stop materialism ripping up the planet, nor did we create equality for all, our efforts did bring about the environmental movement, alternative technologies, intentional communities, popular psychology, eastern philosophy, and sexual liberation.

And it is about that last freedom I wish to talk. Like anything else that has been suppressed, once released, it polarizes to the opposite side of the pendulum.  It's inevitable really. The pressure that is built up from the suppression process creates a velocity that drives the force in the opposite direction, not unlike an elastic band used to fire a projectile. Stretched to its limit, it acts as a catapult, launching whatever it contains to the opposite point until it either hits its target or runs out of drive. Once sexuality was made an issue for discussion, and exploration, the proverbial cat was out of the bag. Many good things occurred that needed to be freed up, in my opinion.  The need to see women as humans rather than property, recognizing sexual differences as a choice rather than a sin, seeing that both parties are required to make a baby released the mother from the stigma placed on her by an unforgiving patriarchal church wishing to avoid the issue of paternity: all these came out of that box and have improved the life of many but particularly women. Add to that the invention of the pill and other forms of contraception and you have the potential for real freedom ....and further exploitation.

For women, the emancipation from fault and restriction was not as complete as the removal of restrictions from her male partners. Whilst sexual love was now free, trying to get fathers to support and take the consequences of their actions got worse. It was no longer clear cut either. Women had the ability to have sex with whoever they chose, but they then had no proof of paternity. Or indeed knowledge of the fathers  whereabouts.  To the credit of activists, laws changed that accommodated some of this . Supporting parents benefits in some countries made it possible for women to take responsibility for caring for their offspring without the prison of marriage to a man that they often would not have even liked after a few years, let alone continued to love. Or visa versa. Abortion laws made it the woman's right to say what occurred to her own body, in some countries, and despite what many now say, it was never taken lightly by any woman. I have seen too many traumatized women after abortions to believe that. Divorce became easier for both parties not to have their whole life ruined by character changes in a partner, or recognition of mistake. Now women can own businesses, buy houses, run countries. But in some ways, all this did not create greater accountability in our male counterparts.

In fact, social acceptability put a 'no holds barred' caveat on the sexual issue, resulting in anyone feeling free to do anything they like with anyone else. Sometimes consensual and sometimes not. As a result we now have rampant pornography, including with children, animals, live and dead victims, sexual violence in video games, people with sexually transmitted diseases that fight in court for the right not to admit to their partners that they have it. We have gang rapes, date rapes, spiking, not to mention child rape and incest.

In fact there is a call worldwide to wind back all the good that the 60's did for women, to stop the attitude that men have continued to espouse: that it doesn't have anything to do with them. It has to be the women that are restricted to protect them against themselves. The fact that the State ends up paying for male bad behavior, now causes cutback in how much money a mother has to feed her child with. "Put them all in Purdah" seems to have become the cry of the fundamentalist male on both sides of the divide. Though it may look culturally different, the message is the same: we cannot control ourselves, so we must control you.

But I don't believe that. I would not want to insult men by believing that they were so powerless. They have shown that they have huge ability to control in the outer world. I have no doubt about their equal ability for self-control. What they lack, it seems, is the incentive. 

This incentive must come, then, from seeing the affects that these actions have on the ability of the human race to not only prosper, but at this stage, to survive at all. This continuous polarization between us is killing us! Unless men are willing to take a long look at what has happened to them, as well as their victims, I don't hold out much hope for the human species in the centuries to come. However, I do believe they are capable of seeing the difference between love and sex, and the potential that understanding has on their own quality of life, as well as ours. I am sure they can tell that it doesn't equate to the same thing if they are willing to look carefully enough. We can have sex without love and most of what I have mentioned above falls into that category. But we cannot have peace without love, either world wide or between the sexes. 

The sixties were not about free love. They were a sexual 'free for all', the consequences of which must now be dealt with not by further repression, but further emancipation. This time, freeing the male from his own mindset is the necessary action. Men must do this, for themselves and for all species on the planet. They must learn that love is something that occurs in the heart, not elsewhere. It is a feeling of genuine connection to something or someone without the incentive to gain from it personally. It is a feeling not an action. Out of it, though, actions are engendered that are for the good of all, not just some. It is a mutuality of being, not ownership. You cannot love something that you own. The mere fact that you see it as an object that can be possessed, makes love an impossibility. You may treasure it, but that's not the same thing. Love is caring that is freely given. It is an acceptance of what is regardless of your relationship to it. 

Once this change of understanding occurs, everything else will change. There will be no need for repressive laws, because the act of caring will be the paramount paradigm, rather than 'fighting or breeding for your country'. It won't matter what country you were born in or what race, for that matter, you will rest safe in the knowledge that your needs are considered important. There eventually would be no poverty because it would be just as important to have others fed as yourself. You would care about them. You would be feeling 'love'. Currently, with the preoccupation with sex we have neither the time nor the incentive to create the world that way. 

This brings up my final point. Right now, we are all  suffering from the lack of appropriate male role models, because there aren't any! At least, they are few and far between. While men continue to act as sexual predators, they cannot be trusted to nurture at all. We cannot trust that love from a teenage daughter won't be mistaken for sexual attraction. We don't want to suspect the neighbours attention to our 6 year old, but when we have had it happen in our own lives, we cannot take that chance with our kids. We don't want to terrify our schoolagers with admonitions not to trust any strangers. But the current selection of masculine priorities creates that fear.

In fact what we would prefer is the presence of male mentors that we know will  respect ours and their offspring, aiding them in developing those attributes that males have so strongly: confidence in the outer world, ingenuity, physical strength, team-work, leadership. Our girls and our boys need this, but where are these teachers? And when we find them, how can we trust in the present climate that we are doing the best for our children, leaving them to the safety of these men? Currently, sadly, we can't!

But it's not just kids. Young women need to be able to have older males that respect and love them. Males that will honour their young bodies not drool over their innocence. Males that they can talk to and trust the advice of, knowing that there is no agenda, no father/lover cross-over. It's not uncommon for young women to be fascinated by, and obsessed with, older men as they begin their journey through sexual discovery. But if they are not safe to indulge in those fantasies without them being exploited, then their growth becomes as stunted as the male that takes that advantage to himself. It is not a sign of virility that you can 'score' a younger woman. It's a sign of immaturity that you want one!

The fact that men have traditionally chosen women that are unable to match and therefore do not threaten them, does not assist growth in the human species. It may stimulate more births, in an over populated world.  It may pander to the ego of the male that does not challenge himself with an equal age partner or intellectual peer. But it does not encourage the intellectual, spiritual or evolutionary development of the species. To have an intelligent companion that is fully developed in her own right means an opportunity to fully develop yourself, not something to feel put down by. It is an opportunity to rear children with the abilities that comes from appropriate parenting. Healthy, intelligent, creative, outgoing children of growthful parents becoming a generation of forward thinking, loving, egalitarian humans.

At this stage in the development of our species, it feels essential to me that rather than attempting to take things back to the bad/good old days of sexual repression of women using conservative reactionary laws, we need to move forward to a place where true love and caring allows us to respect and encourage the development of all. Not just materially or economically, but socially, intellectually, but most of all spiritually. We need to become a new species built upon the lessons learned by the old one. And we need to do it fast!