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A week ago, in the context of a discussion on some NYT article, @2rafa commented that “there is an unstated (on the progressive side) premise among all people that casual sex is a bad deal for women and devalues or dishonors them in some way”. It generated a few replies but basically no further discussion, even though I’m sure it’s worthy of further discussion, and here’s why: as far as I’m aware, it’s certainly not the case that progressives had this attitude from the beginning of the Sexual Revolution, which is what the context is here. Obviously they used to have a different view in general, but sometime along the way, they changed their minds, because things turned sour, essentially.
Before continuing I think it’s important to qualify, as 2rafa also did, that other ideological groups also share this basic view, but the two main differences are that right-wingers tend to state this view openly, whereas progs are usually reluctant to do so, and that they do so on religious and moralistic grounds, whereas progs concentrate on women’s individual long-term interests, not on any other considerations.
So anyway, I said to myself: surely these people, being progressives, believe that the Sexual Revolution, while a laudable event, went haywire at some point, and didn’t bear the fruits it was supposed to. And I can tell that this is a relatively widespread view, because I can see it expressed in various online venues all the time, not just this forum.
What went wrong then? What did the Sexual Revolution basically promise to average progressive women, and why did that turn out to be a lie?
I’d argue that the more or less unstated promise of the Sexual Revolution to young single women was that: a) they will be sexually free without inviting social shame i.e. normalized sexual experimentation and promiscuity on their part will not have an unfavorable long-term effect on men’s attitudes towards them, and women will not sexually shame one another anymore b) they will be able to leave their constrictive gender roles to the extent they see fit, but this will not lead to social issues and anomie because men will be willing to fill those roles instead i.e. men will have no problem becoming stay-at-home dads, nurses, kindergarteners, doing housework etc.
And none of that turned out to be true.
Am I correct in this assessment?
Why is your conclusion that it was all a lie? You are aware that attitudes, especially about sex, hardly move on a linear, one-dimensional scale. History is about things changing in many ways, some good and some bad and many unforeseen. It's about context and tons of interactions with contemporary events. This is extra true in this case because as you start to allude to, these expectations were largely unstated -- and that's because the Sexual Revolution wasn't particularly intentional. There's some early links to feminist movements in the creation of the birth control pill (1960) due to its then-controversial moral implications, but research was heading in that direction anyways and I think that a lot of the movement was simply an intersection between that invention, which allowed wider scale lower-consequence sex (very important!), the happenstance of Vietnam War counterculture already starting to go full steam ahead, and an already-rising incidence rate of what Wikipedia rather blithely calls "non-traditional sexual activity" that had started back in the early 50s. In other words, the Sexual Revolution was more a thing that happened rather than a directed or conscious movement.
Truth be told however, a lot of stuff was happening for women in the 1960s and thereabouts. I feel strongly the Sexual Revolution should be treated as its own thing, but all that stuff makes it hard to be totally certain. Specifically, you had traditional Second Wave Feminists focused on legal stuff and equality, you had a more hippie-based cultural movement, and you had some radicals hanging around as well, as well as some other political events. There were a lot of big legal things happening including sex being allowed into movies and books more, equal pay pushes, and you are correct, a lot more talk about gender roles.
And that's where I think you're succumbing to a bit of presentism. "Normalizing" both the act of sex (particularly unmarried sex) and discussion about sex is by definition contextual. We use the word differently today. Normalizing to someone in 1965 might mean that it's now normal to talk about sex in casual conversation and a heightened awareness of sexual activity, including queer stuff. Whereas in point a above, you say that it's about not shaming each other and not having unfavorable impacts. That's not really what the promise was, if there even was one. The conversation was just getting started, in the public consciousness. So talking about it being a lie just doesn't make sense.
Part b might be a valid criticism of second wave feminism, but not the sexual revolution. And it's one I wouldn't be so quick to declare as false. Certainly some feminists declared that loosened gender roles might be better for everyone, but I think the language was (and should be) more of a moral and legal question about rights than an explicit "I Offer - You Receive". In other words, it isn't fair nor just to force (societally and legally) certain roles and restrictions on women because they are people too, even on the off chance it makes society overall worse. And again, here I believe you are projecting what is actually intended as a third/fourth wave feminism criticism onto the second wave. Both the claim about men having no issue doing traditionally female-coded things as well as the activism behind it doesn't historically line up at all with the Sexual Revolution. I would say that for example, a push to accept house-husbands didn't really start to bloom until maybe the 2000s.
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