We have not yet, despite our age, finished with sex.  Today’s post is from David Allyn’s Make Love, Not War the Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History Little, Brown and Company New York, 2000. This comes from the introduction to his epilogue.

IN 1994, SURGEON GENERAL JOCELYN ELDERS, RESPONDING TO the AIDS crisis, recommended that schools discuss the safety benefits of masturbation over intercourse.  She was summarily fired.  Virtually no one in the nation rallied to her side.

There are several ironies to the Elders incident.  Two decades earlier, Elders would have had numerous defenders.  Her suggestion would have been interpreted in light of the ongoing sexual revolution.  Her ideas might still have seemed provocative to some, but many educated adults would have recognised the obvious importance of teaching children a pragmatic approach to avoiding an incurable, life-threatening disease over maintaining reticence about a practice as timeless and widespread as masturbation.

The man who fired Elders was non other than President Clinton.  As the Monica Lewinsky affair later revealed, clinton is no exemplar of traditional morality.  Or, rather, Clinton is just that: a man who practices the traditional rites of hypocrisy.    When it came to the health of the nation’s children, Clinton was unwilling to speak up for a secular, rational approach to sexuality because it might cost him public approval.  When it came to his own personal pleasure, Clinton was quick to act on his desires and lie as necessary.

The point is not to blame the resident for his all too human failings.  The real point is to recognise how deeply ambivalent most of us remain about human sexuality.  We remain ashamed of our own desires, alienated from our own bodies, fearful of the judgement of our neighbours, calmly hypocritical and deceitful.

Fortunately, the sexual revolution did accomplish many positive things.  Even though various religions still disapprove of contraception, there is no longer any real social stigma attached to using birth control.  The double standard is less pervasive than it once was.  Premarital sex is acknowledged as a reality by the mass media.  Abortion is still legally available.  Censorship is much rarer than it used to be. . . .  Gays and lesbians enjoy unprecedented visibility and freedom.  Interracial marriages are legal and interracial romances are represented in film and on television.  . . .

But overall, the sexual revolutionaries of the sixties and seventies did not accomplish nearly as much as they had hoped they would.  First, as the Elders incident reveals, many of the backward attitudes that existed prior to the sexual revolution have persisted despite the best efforts of sexual liberals to stamp them out.  Adolescents of both sexes still look down on girls who are too ‘easy’.  Birth control remains expensive . . . Abortion providers must fear for their own lives.  Politicians still say one thing about sex and do another.  The religious right still tries to appeal to ‘decency’ in order to censor provocative art.  Gay unions are not legally recognised, while homophobia and gay bashing are still rampant in some areas and may even be on the rise.  Gang bangs still occur at college fraternities.  Many young men still possess callous attitudes towards women.  Nonsexual nakedness remains almost taboo in family films and television and even in news magazines.  Depictions of violence and simulated violence remain staples of popular entertainment while the portrayal of sex and simulated sex continue to provoke controversy.