Learn all about the sexual revolution. Understand what the sexual revolution was, know when it began, and learn the consequences it had.
Updated: 11/21/2023
Sexual Revolution | Definition, Liberation & Consequences
Frequently Asked Questions
What did the sexual revolution lead to?
The sexual revolution led to a decrease in birth rate, as women were more able to control reproduction with the contraceptive pill ("the Pill"). It also led to a greater acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities and rights. There has also been an increase in the production and consumption of pornography and a decrease in monogamy due to the sexual revolution.
What contributed to the sexual revolution and what was its impact?
The sexual revolution was pushed forward due to an unlikely coalition of scientists, feminists, hippies, and gay rights activists who believed that a freer, more progressive sexuality was in order. Together, these advocates helped move societal morals on sexuality forward and brought greater acceptance to sexual diversity and difference.
The Sexual Revolution, or the sexual liberation movement, took place in the United States and throughout the world beginning in the 1960s. It was characterized by the relaxation of stringent moral rules and values around sex and sexuality, including broader acceptance for premarital sex, the exploration of queer identities and homosexuality, masturbation, and various forms of contraception, including the birth control pill and abortion. It was also a time in which women were able to explore sexuality more openly outside the traditional marital context.
Sexual morals prior to the sexual revolution were far more stringent in the United States and around the world. The years after World War II were a time of great economic growth and prosperity, but they were also a time of constricting moral values in Western countries. The popular media ignored the concept of sexuality and focused instead on conjugal harmony and marital bliss that was defined by sexless family values. Television and film portrayals of family life removed sex from the equation, often suggesting that married couples slept in separate beds. The 1950s were also a time in which conservative forces united in a campaign against those suspected of engaging in homosexuality. J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was one notable figure who linked homosexuality and sexual deviance to communism during the early years of the Cold War.
Prior to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, there were moments in which more modest progress on the sexual front took place. In the United States, Margaret Sanger led the effort to widen the availability of birth control for all women, founding the American Birth Control League in 1921. Although she faced great resistance, there was a growing acceptance in American society for birth control among married women who had already had children. In Soviet Russia, a sexual revolution took place alongside the Bolshevik Revolution in the early 1920s.
The Russian revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai was a major proponent of "free love," which sought to abolish the institutions of marriage and the nuclear family. Early Bolsheviks saw marriage and sexual restrictions as a tool of patriarchal, capitalist subjugation, and sought to create a more sexually egalitarian society. During the same time period, a sophisticated sexual culture also flourished in pre-Nazi Germany, which included a robust queer and LGBTQ+ scene. However, the 1930s was an era of conservative crackdowns on sexuality around the world, and a new sexual revolution would not reemerge until the 1960s.
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When did the Sexual Revolution begin?
Several events led to the origin of the 1960s and 70s sexual revolution. By the late 1950s, the scientific community was coming around to the idea that repressing sexuality was detrimental to individual and societal well-being. This was a period in which researchers like Alfred Kinsey, William Masters, and Virginia Johnson began studying the intricacies of sexuality. Their research proved to be controversial, as skeptics believed that sexuality was natural and sexual deviance was a moral, rather than a scientific or medical, matter. During this period, a number of books on sexuality were published that explored subjects that were previously thought to be too taboo, such as sexual attraction, arousal, pheromones, and orgasm. Kinsey also founded the Kinsey Institute of Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction in 1947, with the express purpose of "advancing sexual health and knowledge worldwide."
The feminist movement was also at the forefront of the sexual liberation, with feminists arguing that women's lack of reproductive rights was a main factor in their ultimate subjugation in society. The original feminist movement (first-wave feminism) sought to gain legal equality for women in the form of voting rights, achieved in 1920 in the United States. However, second wave feminism emerged in the 1960s with a focus on more complete human rights and equality for women.
As part of the second-wave feminist movement, feminists sought to increase women's equality by granting them more bodily autonomy. Thus, the invention of the birth control pill ("the Pill") in 1960, the first oral birth control, granted women the ability to practice their sexuality without fear of pregnancy. Social conservatives opposed the Pill for several reasons: they believed it would lead to women being more promiscuous, engaging in extramarital affairs, and the downfall of the family. Unlike previous forms of contraception like diaphragms, which required women to insert them just before sex, the Pill was passive and reliable. Women could take the pill indefinitely to avoid pregnancy without concern around pausing to insert a vaginal device before intercourse. This presented a shock to conservative values, as many argued the Pill allowed women to escape the consequences of promiscuity. It also destroyed the notion that unmarried women were "old maids" or "spinsters," as unmarried, childless women began to be seen as promiscuous rather than frigid.
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The counterculture movements of the late 1960s, especially the hippie subculture, played an important role in progressing the sexual revolution. The hippie youth movement had roots in the 1940s-50s hipster and beatnik movements that flourished in progressive neighborhoods of New York City and San Francisco. Borrowing from the progressive 1920s movements, hippies subscribed to a "free love" philosophy, eschewing monogamy as subjugation. They viewed sex as a spiritual exercise that could be enhanced by psychedelic drug use, group sex, and homosexuality. The hippie concept of communal living extended to the sexual realm, and many hippies believed sharing sexual partners was natural to the human condition. The hippie subculture crossed over into the mainstream in 1969 with the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, a festival that brought hippie notions of free love, music, and psychedelics to the mainstream press.
The Sexual Revolution and its consequences
The sexual revolution had enduring consequences for American society and the world. Unlike the sexual revolution of the 1920s, the impact of the sexual liberation movement of the 1960s and 70s were farther reaching and more substantial. The contraception movement and the invention of the Pill made birth control accessible for a larger part of the population. In 1965, the Supreme Court ruled that it was unlawful to prohibit contraception in the Griswold v. Connecticut case. In 1973, Roe v. Wade broadly legalized abortion. The rate of teenage pregnancy has steadily decreased since the 1960s due to the increase in sex education and a greater availability of birth control. The introduction of the Pill also led to the steady decline of family size. Today, the average American woman has just 1.74 children in her lifetime, down from five children in the 1950s.
The sexual liberation movement has also led to a greater acceptance of LGBTQ+ individuals in Western societies. The Stonewall Riots that took place in 1969 in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City were a major flashpoint in the battle for gay and lesbian rights. Stonewall took place within the context of the Gay Liberation movement, which fell under the umbrella of the larger sexual liberation. Heterosexual allies, including feminists and hippies, joined with the Gay Liberation movement to promote a greater tolerance for gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals.
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Notably, however, the sexual revolution continues to be challenged to this day. Some conservatives, as well as radical second-wave feminists, firmly oppose the greater publication and disbursement of pornography that came from the revolution, arguing that it degrades public opinion of women and leads to the breakdown of family values. Several American states have backtracked on abortion and LGBTQ+ protections, seeking to undue the progress of the sexual revolution.
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Sexual liberation is a concept that is characterized by a broadening of sexual morals, practices, and identities throughout a society. Liberty refers to the idea of personal freedom and is the basis of contemporary democratic values. Thus, the call for sexual liberation in the 1960s and 70s that took place throughout Western countries fits into an existing social and political ethos. Like other social movements that took place in the twentieth-century United States, including the feminist and civil rights movements, the sexual revolution was based in the concept of Americans' First Amendment rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Activists argued that sexual restrictions, like laws that prohibited pornography, impinged on their personal freedoms. The idea that sexual liberation was a fundamental right ultimately led to a significant expansion of what was considered acceptable within society's sexual morals.
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The Sexual Revolution or the sexual liberation movement was a substantial social and cultural phenomenon that took place in the 1960s and 70s, first in the United States and then around the world. It was a time in which people reevaluated strict sexual mores and became more accepting of premarital sex, homosexuality, birth control and abortion, and other formerly taboo sexual topics. Unlike the sexual revolution of the 1920s, its impact was more substantial and continues to impact society's relationship with sex today.
The sexual revolution was brought about by an unlikely coalition of allies - scientists, feminists, hippies, and gay liberation activists. The movement was characterized by several key events, such as the invention of the contraceptive pill (the Pill), the Stonewall Riots, and the Woodstock festival. The enduring legacy of the revolution is vast but includes greater reproductive autonomy for women and greater societal acceptance for LGBTQ+ individuals and rights. Notably, there were stark opponents to the sexual revolution who argued that a more liberal sexuality would lead to social collapse. These oppositional views continue to exist today and have been strengthened in recent years by legislation that aims to restrict abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.
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Video Transcript
America's Sexual Revolution
Most of us probably remember history lessons about the American Revolution, French Revolution, and even the English Revolution. These were pretty influential events in history and affected how governments would operate for centuries. Thus, the word ''revolution'' carries with it some serious significance. The word ''revolution'' is usually reserved for transformations not only in the structure and leadership of a government but also to its citizens.
When we think of the word ''revolution,'' we may also think of things like war and fighting. However, there are other revolutions that have happened in history that didn't include war but still transformed the actions of the government and its citizens. One such revolution was the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s in American history. The sexual revolution was a specific period during the 1960s and '70s in which attitudes towards sexual behavior became more tolerant and liberal in the United States. This revolution did not just happen spontaneously, but rather was influenced by a number of other factors that were happening in American society at the time.
Origins of the Movement
If you turned on a TV prior to the 1960s, you might be shocked to see the types of families showcased on mainstream television shows. During this time, traditional families were shown with a mother and father that were always married and never divorced and who had two to three children, of their own no less, and who always had the best of manners with one another. Fathers wore suits and smoking jackets while women wore dresses and pearls around the house, and the children were off diligently performing their household chores. What was never seen or really even hinted at was that a husband and wife were having sexual relations with one another. At the time, this was much too risqué or controversial to be mentioned to a television audience. In fact, before the 1960s, it wasn't uncommon to have a married couple still sleep in separate beds!
Once the 1960s arrived, there began a shift in accepted social norms. The ongoing civil rights and anti-war movements created a younger generation of people that questioned authority and rejected their parents' values. Many in this younger generation, particularly in San Francisco, were part of a subculture known as hippies, which promoted a culture of ''free love'' that placed emphasis on the power of love and the beauty of sex. The origins of the sexual revolution also owe their origins to the emergence of the feminist movement, where women started challenging their exclusion from politics and the workplace. They also began to question their sexual roles.
Influence of the Pill
At the core of the sexual revolution was the concept - radical at the time - that women, just like men, enjoyed sex and had sexual needs. Feminists asserted that single women had the same sexual desires and should have the same sexual freedoms as everyone else in society. For feminists, the sexual revolution was about female sexual empowerment.
For social conservatives, the sexual revolution was an invitation for promiscuity and an attack on the very foundation of American society - the family. This clash between opposing viewpoints came to a head with the invention of one little pill. This pill has become so famous in fact that just saying ''the Pill'' is enough for most people to understand which pill you're talking about, and for those that don't, the Pill was the first widely reliable form of contraception for women.
As female sexuality and premarital sex moved out of the shadows, the Pill became a convenient scapegoat for the sexual revolution among social conservatives. Many argued that the Pill more than just influenced the sexual revolution, but was, in fact, responsible for it. What was so revolutionary about the Pill was that it allowed women to separate sex from procreation. This is what conservatives feared most. Up until the arrival of the Pill, the risk of unwed pregnancy, and the stigma that went along with it, prevented single women from having sex and married women from having affairs.
Now, however, conservatives were afraid that single and married women would be having sex anytime, anyplace and with anyone without the risk of pregnancy, thereby bringing the collapse of the family unit in society. However, these fears were largely misplaced and unwarranted. Women up to this point were already having sex, but using other less reliable methods to prevent pregnancy. In reality, the family unit still remained intact, and society wasn't thrown into a tailspin.
Impact of the Sexual Revolution
The sexual revolution and the advent of the Pill allowed women to choose when to begin their families, because for the first time ever, more women were able to leave home and join the workforce on a more regular basis. The sexual revolution also did away with the notion that a woman wouldn't be able to find a husband if she weren't a virgin. It also gave rise to a singles culture, where an emphasis on virginity and marriage were slowly replaced by a celebration of single life and sexual exploration. In fact, people like Hugh Hefner put out a racy new magazine called Playboy that promoted bachelorhood and the swinging single lifestyle, and Helen Gurley Brown put out a book called Sex and the Single Girl, which championed career women and open sexuality, effectively destroying the notion of the ''old maid.''
Lesson Summary
The sexual revolution was a dramatic shift in the conservative norms of society during the 1950s to the more tolerant and liberal attitudes towards sexual behavior of the 1960s and '70s. This revolution did not arise on its own, but was caused by the creation of a rebel culture that first began during the civil rights and anti-war movements that were also occurring during the 1960s, and the emergence of the free-love hippie culture that originated primarily around San Francisco.
The gaining momentum of the feminist movement, where women started challenging their exclusion from politics and the workplace and began to question their sexual roles, also helped create the sexual revolution. The biggest influence the sexual revolution had on society came with the creation of the Pill, which was the first reliable form of contraception that women could take. While conservatives were worried that this invention would cause the downfall of the family unit, this worry was unfounded.
The sexual revolution also created a lasting impact on society, making it okay for women to have sex without first being married and also promoted a singles culture, where an emphasis on virginity and marriage were slowly replaced by a celebration of single life and sexual exploration.
Learning Outcomes
After watching this lesson, you should be able to:
- Define the phrase 'sexual revolution'
- Describe how the feminist movement impacted the sexual revolution, especially with use of the Pill
- Examine how the revolution also promoted singles culture instead of marriage and virginity
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