Posted on 5/28/2006, 8:10:00 PM by wagglebee
THE permissive revolution has almost wiped out differences in sexual habits between men and women, according to a comprehensive study of sex lives over nearly 60 years.
The researchers argue that this has come about because women’s sexual attitudes and experience have been transformed, while men’s have hardly changed since the 1940s.
They find a near-quadrupling in the proportion of teenage women who are sexually active, while the age at which they lose their virginity has fallen by four years.
Guilt about sex has declined sharply, while attitudes to premarital sex have reversed since the 1940s — slightly more men than women now disapprove of a couple sleeping together before their wedding night.
Jean Twenge, associate professor in psychology at San Diego State University in California, who led the research, said: “In the 1950s and 1960s, men and women were a long way apart; now the gender differences have almost disappeared. The 1960s might have been called the ‘sexual revolution’, but they were just the beginning.”
Although the research is American, Twenge said trends such as improving social equality for women and greater access to contraception meant the findings would also be relevant to Britain.
“The trends we are seeing are pretty common across all western countries, including the UK,” said Twenge. “Many young people see these patterns as the long-overdue shedding of arbitrary restrictions on sexuality.”
Twenge, along with Brooke Wells, a graduate student at City University of New York, compiled the data by analysing 530 studies from 1943 to 1999, covering 270,000 people.
She found that only 13% of teenage girls admitted being sexually active in the 1950s — compared with more than 60% of boys. By the late 1990s this figure had jumped to 47% for girls, while the percentage of sexually active teenage boys had fallen.
In the earlier years of the study women lost their virginity at the age of 19, while for men the age was 18. By the 1990s, the age for both sexes had fallen to 15.
Despite more liberal attitudes to sex the authors say they could find no significant change in the number of sexual partners, suggesting that while sexual experience is growing, promiscuity may not be.
The researchers also find that sexual guilt in men and women, especially the latter, has fallen. The most pronounced change in attitudes was to premarital sex. In 1958, 30% of women said they approved of it, compared with 54% of men. By 1987, the most recent year for which comparable figures were available, women had overtaken men, with 91% having no objection to intercourse before marriage, compared with 84% of men.
Dr Tuppy Owens, 61, a therapist at the Sexual Freedom Coalition, said: “I was a teenager in the 1950s and it was quite difficult to find a place to have sex . . . you were looked on as fast and loose, not that it stopped many of us. Nowadays young people are allowed to have boyfriends in their bedrooms. Sex is considered a good thing to do.”
The change in attitudes since the 1940s is illustrated by films such as Brief Encounter, made in 1945, starring Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson. It showed a passionate but unconsommated love affair, kept in check by repressed social attitudes to sexuality.
By contrast Jerry Hall, 49, the Texan-born supermodel and former wife of Sir Mick Jagger, lost her virginity in a haystack at the age of 14 — along with a female friend — to a bull-rider at a rodeo.
Peaches Geldof, 17, daughter of Sir Bob, has also spoken of the extent of sexual experience in her generation. She said last year that many of her friends had lost their virginity by the age of 13. She added in an interview: “A lot of adults think it’s a bit weird if their daughter hasn’t had sex by 15.”
There have been drawbacks to permissiveness. Along with sexual liberation has come a growing similarity between male and female teenagers in areas such as drinking and violence.
Last year, the Royal College of Physicians warned of a possible “health timebomb” because soaring levels of alcohol consumption among teenagers and young women were leading to an increase in cases of alcohol-induced diseases. Other figures published last year showed a jump in violent crime by girls.
Elain Gallacher, 35, a mother of three from Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow, said she had noticed the change in attitudes, but strongly believed her children should be protected from attitudes that may be becoming too permissive. “My parents were more comfortable talking about sex only in my late teens, but this was only an acknowledgement that this is something other people do before they get married,” said Gallacher. “They were not saying it was an option for me.
“It is so bad for society that we are forcing this intimate experience on young people. A young person can’t control it.”
It is possible some of the change in attitudes reflected in the study may simply reflect the growing willingness of people to talk about their sex lives.
Last year evidence emerged that sexual behaviour in Britain in the 1940s was far more licentious behind the scenes than was acknowledged in public.
The 1949 Mass Observation study, nicknamed Little Kinsey, found that a fifth of married women and a quarter of husbands admitted to having affairs and nearly a third of babies were conceived outside wedlock.
Dr Petra Boynton, 36, a sex researcher at University College London, warned of sexual pressure on women.
“There is expectation on women now not just to be sexual, but some kind of geisha,” she said. “In the 1950s women weren’t expected to enjoy sex, but now you are expected to.”
Boynton added that such social pressures may mean the study should be treated with caution as it depends on respondents telling the truth.
“In the 1950s people were less keen to say what they were doing, but nowadays people have got to say they are sexual so you probably have an overestimation.”
This is very disturbing.
DISCUSSION ABOUT:
Women learn to play it like a man
The feminazis have destroyed society.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To be included in or removed from the MORAL ABSOLUTES PINGLIST, please FReepMail wagglebee.
What's driving a guy like me nuts is the fact that women act like guys nowadays. I mean it really, really, really makes it hard to date when you want, ya know, an actual woman and not one that thinks her ability (or at least attempt) to go shot for shot with you at a bar is a good character trait...ugh.
Meanwhile, birthrates are trending to below replacement levels....
That's because over a million babies are murdered every year in this country.
I like the part about how teen girls sexually activity has quadrupled in 60 years while teen boys have stayed relatively the same.
Those boys were having sex with SOMONE! So it's not that girls are having more sex, they're just lying about it less.
This INSANITY is called Feminism
See what Feminism is TRULY about and you might be SHOCKED!! Right from the Feminists OWN MOUTHS AND PENS!!! NOT FROM EXTERNAL SOURCES!
It's more likely that now more girls are having sex and that a lot less of them are lying about it. However, I remember 20 years ago when I was in high school, the girls who were having sex were having sex with a lot of different guys.
There is an aspect of so-called enlightenment for women that has been a bit of a puzzle for me.
Some men used to visit strip clubs. There's no denying that. Still, I don't think most men did and I don't think it was smiled upon. It was thought of as something rather off-color that men did. It was accepted as such.
Then women began to go to strip clubs and the conventional view of people visiting such places was thrown out the window. Women who participated in such programs were considered enlightened, not doing something off-color.
As a person who did go to some strip clubs in my youth, I do know what the rules were. Viewing what women are allowed to do in the strip clubs they frequent, I can say that there's a completely different set of rules.
It had always seemed to me that women wanted enlightenment. They wanted to be treated by the same rules as men. In many ways, they have not been given access to the same rules. The rules have been rewritted to allow them more latitude than men ever had. And I think that has led to a real coursening of society.
Today strip clubs are much more mainstream. The idea that married and unmarried people frequent them is a problem as I see it. I don't think it has led to a better society. And this has largely been driven by the women's movement. Seems to me that's like shooting yourself in the foot.
My wife ransacks my shed and sells off $500 worth of my rugs for $170... Then she tells me that she is keeping the cash for a candle party that I am to deliver her to this evening. And btw, I get no supper... And can not drink because I will be picking her up at some unspecified time...
And she just informed me that I am going to give her $20 because she is saving her $170...
And I will.
Or the guys were lying about it.
What the hell is a "candle party" and why does your wife need $170 worth?!
One thing that bothers me about the new permissiveness (if it really is new) is the incidence of STDs out there. That alone would be enough to give me pause before I slept around.
One thing that bothers me about the new permissiveness (if it really is new) is the incidence of STDs out there. That alone would be enough to give me pause before I slept around.
Same kid on the phone with Grandma and sold her a dozen boxes of G.S. cookies, then she had Grandma put me on the phone to sell me some too. She didn't sucker me though, I only bought 10 boxes!
Where were these women when I was dating? I would have given body parts for a woman who could go shot for shot with me on Saturday night. As it was, when we were (then) dating, I knew my wife was for me when we went to a steakhouse for one of our initial dates, and she ordered a beer instead of a foo-foo drink.
Many young guys would be happy to find a loose girl, but most would rather marry a girl with morals. Yeah, it's a double standard.
Shhh, you'll blow the whole "hell in a handbasket" scenerio by tossing out obvious truths like that. The only thing that's really changed over the years is the degree of openess that we deal with sexuality. We're still doing the same things in the same numbers, we're just lying about it a lot less.
It might sound nice initially but, trust me, after weeding through dozens of them, it gets really, really old. And, no, they can't go shot-for-shot (but they do try!)
Different strokes I guess. The tee-totaling, or worse, the wine spritzing girls just weren't for me. Unfortunately, I did date a few before I wised up.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.