Educating girls in the wake of the sexual liberation 60s
What the free-love hippies of the 60s taught Millennials, and what Millennials can teach the next generation of young women.
"How many ladies in the house? How many ladies in the house without a spouse? ... On that independent shit. Trade it all for a husband and some kids. You ever wonder what it all really mean? You wonder if you'll ever find your dreams?" - Kanye West, I Wonder
The lobbies of fertility clinics are filled with Millennial women who are hoping that at least one good egg remains to fulfill their desire to get pregnant and start a family. They are in advanced maternal age, as they are told—hopeful geriatric mothers. Many of these Millennials have long known that they want to have kids, but spent their 20s and early 30s caught up in the culture of living the single lady life—a life of partying, late-night hook-ups, and freedom from the perceived burdens of committed relationships. They are the byproduct of the sexual revolution of the free loving 60s. They were told that men and women could be equals, not just in the social, political, and economic realms, but also in how they approach sex and relationships. That they can explore sexuality and desire just like men do without consequence. This was a false, luxury belief.
Trainwreck, the documentary about Woodstock '99, is aptly titled. The film showed scenes of sound stages being ripped apart, vendor tents looted, semi-trailers exploded, garbage covering the ground, and young people drunk, high, exhausted, sick, and dehydrated. None of it looked fun. The film also drew attention to the exposed breasts of women, groping men, casual sex during late-night raves, and incidents of rape that were shockingly common throughout the festival. The villains of the documentary were capitalism and toxic masculinity. But regarding the latter, the story is much deeper.Â
The organizers and promoters of the festival glorified Woodstock '69 and shook their heads in disapproval and disgust when the destructive behavior of Millennials in '99 did not mirror the peaceful, free-love hippies of the 60's. The elephant in the room went unacknowledged: those hippies were, in many respects, the parents of the Millennials of '99. They failed to see, and the producers of the documentary failed to acknowledge, that there is a throughline from the seemingly harmless and liberating concept of free love, in its sexual revolution form, to what it looks like in practice when a generation comes of age raised under the ideology. The signs of sexual liberation run amok were sprinkled throughout society in the late 90s, if the organizers and promoters had bothered to look.Â
Girls Gone Wild, an adult entertainment company, launched in 1997. The crew followed spring breakers to places like Florida and Mexico, where wet t-shirt contests and foam parties were a norm, to film young women exposing themselves and acting "wild." Sex and the City, a popular HBO series, aired in 1998. The character Samantha Jones illuminated what it meant to act like a powerful woman with the sexual prowess of a man. Around the same time, Chelsea Handler made hook-up culture sound fun in her book My Horizontal Life. And, although the book told the story of a man, Tucker Max, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell was a best seller and popular read among young women. Max exemplified the promiscuous, heavy-drinking man to avoid, the one who would seduce you but never love you, yet he, Handler, and Jones were, in many respects, interchangeable. They all personified the supposed thrill of a single life filled with parties and one-night stands.
These are just a handful of social trends tied to the concept of sexual liberation that coincided with Woodstock '99. Trends that signaled to women that they could simultaneously feel liberated and garner the favor of men. Certainly, many young women lived through and observed this social environment and didn't think much about it, going on to graduate from college, start a career, get married, and have kids without experiencing any repercussions of the hook-up culture that surrounded them in their teen and early adult years. Other women absorbed and embodied the culture and continued the spring break-style partying of their high school and college years into their late 20s and early 30s, only to find themselves scrambling to wed a suitable mate, and (sometimes wed, sometimes unwed) sitting in the lobby of a fertility clinic assessing their chances to have a child.
Notably, the women in fertility clinics are the fortunate ones who might be able to have kids and start a family after all, because they have the financial means to undergo fertility treatment. Other women who grew up believing, then rejecting, the pervasive ideology that the unattached life is endlessly fulfilling aren't so lucky.Â
Certainly, many women did not think that sexual liberation foreclosed the opportunity to get married and have kids—they thought they were doing what men desired in a mate, after all. But they learned too late that the men who come knocking late at night and leave early in the morning aren't looking for the same thing. These women were miseducated about the differences between men and women in their views on sex and relationships. They were told that the differences don't exist. That men and women are similar in their desires and thus approach committed and non-committed relationships in the same way. This idea was sold as liberating for women, but as Louise Perry puts it, "the new sexual culture isn’t so much about the liberation of women [...] but the adaptation of women to the expectations of a familiar character: Don Juan, Casanova, or, more recently, Hugh Hefner"—the playboy. The playboy approach to relationships does not guarantee marriage and a family, often far from it. The older Millennial women sitting in fertility clinics can attest to this reality and their knowledge about sex and relationships is no doubt valuable to the kids they will raise.
Perry spells out 11 pieces of advice she would share with her daughter to counter the so-called wisdom of the sexual revolution: "Distrust any person or ideology that pressures you to ignore your moral intuition." "Chivalry is actually a good thing." "Monogamous marriage is by far the most stable and reliable foundation on which to build a family." To name just a few. Perry believed the progressive narrative about sexual liberation and the gender equality it guaranteed. And she is not the only one rejecting the premises of the post-60s culture around dating and sex;Â other women with similar political persuasions are also vowing to teach their girls about gender imbalances and what they mean for heterosexual relationships. A vow that shows perhaps the tide is turning, and young women (and men) will learn that they do not approach sex and relationships in the same manner, that there are indeed differences between the sexes, which have implications for marriage and family. To be sure, girls may grow into women who sincerely do not want to settle into a long-term partnership and have kids, but they can only make that decision with honest information. Information that many Millennials did not receive.
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