A Sexual Evolution?
Does the recent spate of unprecedented natural disasters and the undeniable reality of global warming make you think we’re all riding in the fast lane on a highway to hell? If so, take a deep breath and tell yourself there’s one thing that may yet save our planet: Sex, sex, sex; and lots of it! It’s the one essential quality of life ingredient that no truly happy human can do without (don’t believe me? Check out the dreary disposition of those who aren’t getting any).
But despite our culture’s obsession with sex, we’re remarkable prudish when it comes to frank and mature attitudes about getting it on. It’s no wonder the lofty ideals proposed by the Sexual Revolution gave way to a depressing lack of sexual evolution. To paraphrase Mark Twain’s remark about the weather: Everybody’s talking about sex, but nobody’s doing anything about it. "It’s a commercially driven interest we have in sex. Sex sells, but there’s not the same interest in committing resources to really understanding what’s going on with sexual behavior." says Kinsey Institute Director of Communication Jennifer Bass.
Sex: It’s Not Just for Making Babies Anymore!
Not so long ago, when the world wasn’t brimming with more people than the planet could support, "Reproduction was the only legit purpose for sexual activity. There were admonishments for those who engaged in sex acts that did not result in reproduction or occurred outside of marriage. In the 1800s, people engaged in all kinds of sexual behaviors -- but they were punished because any time a man spilled his seed for anything other than reproducing, it was considered a waste of sexuality." observes Prescott College Professor of Psychology & Women’s Studies Ellen Abell. When the industrial revolution gave us better health, longer life spans and the radical concept of leisure time, seeds were planted for the notion of sex for pleasure. Today, Abell notes, we don’t have the same pressing need for marriage, children and families. "Heterosexuality was invented to some degree as a result of economic concerns and inheritance issues. That’s not the situation we find ourselves in now."
What we do find ourselves in now is an era where multiple partners and sexual identity are being rethought by a generation learning from the successes, and rejecting the failures, of Baby Boomers. That generation of radical ideas and seemingly unlimited potential "went into hibernation after the sexual revolution because of AIDS." according to Stephanie Buehler, a Licensed Psychologist and Certified Sex Therapist and Director of The Buehler Institute. "I am coming up on fifty-two. I remember when AIDS came out; can you imagine if this had been around in the 60s? We’d all be dead. We were indiscriminate."
Still, credit should be given where it’s due. Abell recalls that the lasting impact of what the Boomers did was "to present their children with alternative ways of thinking about relationships, women’s roles and sexual freedoms that didn’t exist prior to their generation." Yet those lofty ideas haven’t exactly translated into evolved or enlightened notions about sex. Abell: "As much as the Boomers laid out radical ideas, they didn’t follow through. In many respects, they emulated the generations before them in terms of relationship modeling." Observing the divorces and infidelity of their parents, children (and grandchildren) of the Boomers "are holding the ideology that things can be different and attempting to live these different models by experimenting in ways their parents did not."
(pictured: A scene from Fire Island in the 1970s, from the film "Gay Sex in the 1970s;")
