People And Events: The Pill And The Sexual Revolution
People & Events: The Pill and the Sexual Revolution
As the feminist movement evolved in the late 1960s, women started challenging their exclusion from politics and the workplace. They also began to question traditional sexual roles.
Immorality -- or Empowerment?
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. Feminists and social conservatives quickly clashed over morality of the "sexual revolution," and the Pill was drawn into the debate.
The Pill as Scapegoat
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 was, in fact, responsible for the sexual revolution. The Pill's revolutionary breakthrough, that it allowed women to separate sex from procreation, was what conservatives feared most. The theory was that the risk of pregnancy and the stigma that …show more content…
In a 1966 feature on the Pill and morality, the magazine U.S. News and World Report asked, "Is the Pill regarded as a license for promiscuity? Can its availability to all women of childbearing age lead to sexual anarchy?" The author Pearl Buck took an even more dire doomsday approach to the Pill when she warned in a 1968 Reader's Digest article: "Everyone knows what The Pill is. It is a small object -- yet its potential effect upon our society many be even more devastating than the nuclear
As the feminist movement evolved in the late 1960s, women started challenging their exclusion from politics and the workplace. They also began to question traditional sexual roles.
Immorality -- or Empowerment?
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. Feminists and social conservatives quickly clashed over morality of the "sexual revolution," and the Pill was drawn into the debate.
The Pill as Scapegoat
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 was, in fact, responsible for the sexual revolution. The Pill's revolutionary breakthrough, that it allowed women to separate sex from procreation, was what conservatives feared most. The theory was that the risk of pregnancy and the stigma that …show more content…
In a 1966 feature on the Pill and morality, the magazine U.S. News and World Report asked, "Is the Pill regarded as a license for promiscuity? Can its availability to all women of childbearing age lead to sexual anarchy?" The author Pearl Buck took an even more dire doomsday approach to the Pill when she warned in a 1968 Reader's Digest article: "Everyone knows what The Pill is. It is a small object -- yet its potential effect upon our society many be even more devastating than the nuclear