The revolution we live in today started in the 1940's not the 1960's.

**julie** · 21st-March-2009

“Silent” Sexual Revolution Began In 1940s and ‘50s

The sexual revolution did not start in the free-loving 1960s as is commonly thought, a University of Florida researcher says. It began with the “silent generation” of the 1940s and ‘50s, which as its moniker implies, didn’t talk much about sex.

U.S. Census Bureau statistics on premarital pregnancy and vital statistics on single motherhood between 1940 and 1960 point to the unexpected conclusion that there was much more sexual activity during those decades than Americans were willing to admit, said Alan Petigny, a UF history professor whose research was published in the fall issue of the Journal of Social History.

“People didn’t start having sex because Elvis Presley was shaking his hips or because Hugh Hefner came out with Playboy,” said Petigny, who said he is the first historian to use census data focusing on premarital pregnancies. “After 15 years of Depression and war, there was also a desire on the part of Americans to live in the moment and enjoy life, and they were accordingly less likely to defer to traditional restraints on their behavior.”

According to Petigny’s research, the sexual revolution actually began during World War II, which had a great liberalizing effect on values, affecting everything from child-rearing to religion.

For example, the proportion of the population that considered alcoholism a disease rather than a moral failing increased from 6 percent in 1944 to more than 60 percent in 1954, Petigny said. Dr. Benjamin Spock, in his 1946 book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, which was second only to the Bible in sales, advised parents not to become alarmed by their children masturbating. By 1950, even the politically conservative Norman Vincent Peale was warning his readers about the dangers of sexual repression, Petigny said.

He relied on vital statistics and census data rather than sexual surveys, such as those completed by Alfred Kinsey and his staff in the ‘40s and ‘50s because the government’s hard numbers are likely more reliable. “Because rates of single motherhood focus on what people have done as opposed to what people claim to have done — or not to have done — they are significantly more reliable than either subject interviews or polling data,” he said.

“The evidence from our study using census data suggests that the ‘40s and ‘50s experienced a sizeable increase in the frequency of premarital intercourse,” he said. “To argue otherwise, one would need somehow to reconcile the more than doubling of illegitimacy among whites, the more than tripling of all out-of-wedlock births and the evidence of a dramatic increase in premarital pregnancies.”

Between 1940 and 1960, the frequency of single motherhood among white women increased from 3.6 to 9.2 newborns per 1,000 unmarried white women of childbearing age, Petigny said. Among all women, single motherhood rose from 7.1 to 21.6 newborns per 1,000 unwed women, he said.

“Between the beginning of World War II in 1941 and the inaugural issue of Playboy in 1953, the overall rate of single motherhood more than doubled,” he said. “The silent generation may have been silent about what they were doing, but they weren’t all that complacent.”

The crucial distinction between the ‘40s and ‘50s and the 1960s are in differences between conventions and conduct — what people said versus what they did, Petigny said. During the ‘60s, Americans simply were more willing to acknowledge the extracurricular sexual activities of the young than they had been during the previous decades, he said.

Rather than a sexual revolution, an upheaval in social conventions is what occurred in the 1960s. What was publicly respectable changed enormously as social conventions came into line with personal conduct or as public manners converged with private morals, he said.

Lawrence Friedman, a visiting professor in the history of science department at Harvard University, calls Petigny’s findings “very revolutionary.” Petigny tells us that “during the ‘40s and ‘50s big social and cultural changes occurred, and we acknowledged them and they became part of ‘60s headlines when the changes had already occurred,” he said. “It’s quite extraordinary for a young historian to think this big and this broadly.”

Link is HERE

Single Parenting was never a feminist goal.

The reason mostly why everything changed was because people could communicate and things that were never discussed suddenly were.

THE 1940s: MEDIA: OVERVIEW

World War II Dominates

The 1940s were dominated by World War II This was as true for the media as it was for other areas of American life. From 1941 until the majority of the troops returned home in 1946, newspapers and radio concentrated their coverage on the war. From small-town newspapers reporting the content of letters received from hometown soldiers to reports on the latest battle, the war was the overwhelming event of the decade. The newspaper war correspondent, epitomized by Ernie Pyle, became the lifeline for citizens who could not experience the valor and horror of war. Margaret Bourke-White, as a photographer for Life magazine, brought images of the war and the world to Americans and became a celebrity herself.

Military Media

Thirty-seven American newspeople, among them Pyle, lost their lives in World War II. At the scenes of conflict, the men and women in uniform were kept informed by thousands of military newspapers, the most important being Stars and Stripes. More important for the postwar world were the thousands of military people who worked on miltary newspapers and improved the quality of U.S. newspapers after the war.

Radio in the 1940s

Radio showed its importance in the nearly instant reporting of major events, such as the Battle of Britain and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Edward R. Murrow and William Shirer, among many others, set the news standard for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) network, a standard that would follow into the new dominant format, television, and last for decades after the war. But radio was not just a purveyor of news during the war. Radio meant entertainment, and the 1940s was the last decade in which radio was dominant. Music had long been a staple of radio, much of it performed live. Musicians had been unhappy for many years with what radio paid them for their talents. In the 1914 the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) was formed to collect royalties. Musicians and composers remained unhappy with the situation in the early 1940s, especially with the increased use of records on radio. Boycotts by ASCAP led radio broadcasters to form Broadcast Music Incorpoarated (BMI) as an alternative liscencing group in 1939. Legal battles erupted in the 1940s that remained unsettled decades later.

Beginnings of Television

Television had become a viable technology in the late 1930s, but legal delays, and then the war, halted widespread introduction until the late 1940s. After the war the broadcast companies put large amounts of money into television, starving radio, which had been their focus for twenty years. Most of the radio programs were transferred to television by the early 1950s, leaving the radio with music. As quickly as radio had transformed American life in the 1920s, television began a new revolution in the 1940s and 1950s. Federal rules mandated more competition in the television world, causing the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) to divest itself of one of its radio networks; that network became the American Broadcasting Company (ABC).

Comic Books

The stultifying years of the Depression and the war were leveling influences on American society. Most everyone suffered through those two events, and the resulting sense of unity was an opportunity for business to sell to a mass market of everyday Americans. Two examples of this trend are the comic book and the paperback book. Comic books were successful in the 1940s, as they provided cheap, exciting entertainment. Superheroes flourished during a time in which evil was all too real in the world. Captain Marvel, Captain America, Batman, and other heroes like them did battle with evil and fed the imagination of the youth of the United States. On a slightly higher plane, at least sometimes, was the paperback book. The first American paperback imprint was Pocket Books, created in 1939. Many other imprints followed over the next decade, reprinting both literary classics and entertaining genre stories such as Westerns and detective fiction.

McCarthyism

But the end of the war and the rise of the Soviet Union as a European and world power brought new problems that erupted in unlikely spots, such as the media. The first rumbling of institutional anticommunism led to the blacklist, whereby motion picture, television, and radio artists and writers were denied the freedom to work under their own names. During the 1950s the darkness of McCarthyism intensified before the pain of these victims eased.

Transition

War can bring about revolutions, both in the countries that are defeated militarily and the countries of the victors. The media revolution in the United States did not occur immediately after the war. During and after the war, indeed even during the Depression of the 1930s, revolutionary seeds were sown in the media that did not fully bear fruit until the 1950s, a truly revolutionary decade.

Link HERE

Technology changed the world. The world just evolved.

**Male-Rights-Network** · 22nd-March-2009

I agree with this. WWII created a moral vacuum where all the old social norms could be thrown out the window. Feminism benefited hugely from WWII.

Interesting too that the first issue of mass porn mag Playboy in 1953 coincides with a huge growth in feminism.

Technology has played a huge part in the femmie revolution; but it's important to remember that some of these technological innovations (e.g. the contraceptive pill) were often funded by feminists.

**Percy** · 22nd-March-2009

The twentieth Century saw great upheavals across society and while economists and sociologists focus on the exterior signs, most commentators overlook the psychological impacts.

The trend toward the increased labor force participation of married women began well before the feminist movement and contributed to its development. Labor force participation by women began to increase around the turn of the century - for married as well as single women - after 50 years of Whig pressures to increase the franchise and voter base. (the true origins of the women's vote). It exploded after WW1 and accelerated further in the 1940’s. Contrary to popular myth, not all the “Rosie the Riveters” were sent home the day after the armistice in 1918. A large percentage of women workers continued to work after both of the wars.

In fact, the acceleration in married women’s labor force participation was so strong in the 1940’s, that economic historians dispute not so much the timing of this shift, but its cause. Feminist ideology was not the primary driver of women’s independence, despite the claim that Feminists make.

That independence varied from country to country but was driven by the substantial loss of life by men during the First World War, particularly in Britain, and Australia, most of the European countries and to a smaller extent in America, where the war did not touch their home soil, leaving many women without marriage opportunity. We are talking of millions of men here. A substantial percentage of marriageable men. Those who came home from war were the weary and the maimed. This is important and left a residue of resentment and anger amongst women.

It propelled women into an enforced independence which they took to sometimes with much courage and ingenuity, setting a pace that continued. When once again men laid down their lives in the millions for hearth and home and women’s safety the issue was made even more acute.

Just consider for a moment the psychological effects on women. They had come from families in which women were dependants, like children. Men did most of the money-earning work and women were matriarchs in the home. Virtually any young women could find a husband. Men queued to woo. The wars changes all of that. The two world wars reduced the marriageable male population in the west by over 25%.

In WW1 the women encouraged men to war, shaming the men who did not want to go a die like flies. After the war the competetion for the vastly reduced male numbers was intense and women resented having to strive to find a husband and felt guilty for their own unreasonable demands and shaming actions. The 'river didn't flow right to their door'. But they took to 'work' replacing the dead men. They had to. While some were successful, many struggled and the resentment grew. And the guilt.

Then came WW2. More men going to war to protect home and hearth and women. More dead men in their millions with the maimed as left-overs for the women to squabble over. More guilt and resentment. The guilt was not to be retained and restitution made to men, but projected onto men.

Of course promiscuity grew. It wasn't from the men so much as from the women. Men had plenty of healthy intact women to choose among but women had to compete for the healthy men and a large propoertion reluctantly had to take the maimed, the burned, the legless and armless. Even the eyeless. They fought dirty. The genteel, coy, disarming, charming, feminine ways declined dramatically, replaced by the vamp and the 'easy lay'. And they blamed men for that too. ("It's what men want " !) They acted promiscuously against their long-held and ingrained upbringing. A cognitive dissonance set in with a vengance which festered until the 60's. Self-loathing on such a scale cannot be healthy.

A rich soil for resentful, guilty, dissonant womenfolk to develop suitable 'punishment' for men. Feminism.

**musicman.2** · 22nd-March-2009

Quote from Percy

The twentieth Century saw great upheavals across society and while economists and sociologists focus on the exterior signs, most commentators overlook the psychological impacts.

The trend toward the increased labor force participation of married women began well before the feminist movement and contributed to its development. Labor force participation by women began to increase around the turn of the century - for married as well as single women - after 50 years of Whig pressures to increase the franchise and voter base. (the true origins of the women's vote). It exploded after WW1 and accelerated further in the 1940’s. Contrary to popular myth, not all the “Rosie the Riveters” were sent home the day after the armistice in 1918. A large percentage of women workers continued to work after both of the wars.

In fact, the acceleration in married women’s labor force participation was so strong in the 1940’s, that economic historians dispute not so much the timing of this shift, but its cause. Feminist ideology was not the primary driver of women’s independence, despite the claim that Feminists make.

That independence varied from country to country but was driven by the substantial loss of life by men during the First World War, particularly in Britain, and Australia, most of the European countries and to a smaller extent in America, where the war did not touch their home soil, leaving many women without marriage opportunity. We are talking of millions of men here. A substantial percentage of marriageable men. Those who came home from war were the weary and the maimed. This is important and left a residue of resentment and anger amongst women.

It propelled women into an enforced independence which they took to sometimes with much courage and ingenuity, setting a pace that continued. When once again men laid down their lives in the millions for hearth and home and women’s safety the issue was made even more acute.

Just consider for a moment the psychological effects on women. They had come from families in which women were dependants, like children. Men did most of the money-earning work and women were matriarchs in the home. Virtually any young women could find a husband. Men queued to woo. The wars changes all of that. The two world wars reduced the marriageable male population in the west by over 25%.

In WW1 the women encouraged men to war, shaming the men who did not want to go a die like flies. After the war the competetion for the vastly reduced male numbers was intense and women resented having to strive to find a husband and felt guilty for their own unreasonable demands and shaming actions. The 'river didn't flow right to their door'. But they took to 'work' replacing the dead men. They had to. While some were successful, many struggled and the resentment grew. And the guilt.

Then came WW2. More men going to war to protect home and hearth and women. More dead men in their millions with the maimed as left-overs for the women to squabble over. More guilt and resentment. The guilt was not to be retained and restitution made to men, but projected onto men.

Of course promiscuity grew. It wasn't from the men so much as from the women. Men had plenty of healthy intact women to choose among but women had to compete for the healthy men and a large propoertion reluctantly had to take the maimed, the burned, the legless and armless. Even the eyeless. They fought dirty. The genteel, coy, disarming, charming, feminine ways declined dramatically, replaced by the vamp and the 'easy lay'. And they blamed men for that too. ("It's what men want " !) They acted promiscuously against their long-held and ingrained upbringing. A cognitive dissonance set in with a vengance which festered until the 60's. Self-loathing on such a scale cannot be healthy.

A rich soil for resentful, guilty, dissonant womenfolk to develop suitable 'punishment' for men. Feminism.

Sounds horrible for men. So women apparently felt guilty? So why did they shame men?

They still act like dependents. They depend on men and the government.

I wonder how women would feel if they came back from war and men rejected them for being unattractive.

Any way to bring about change?

As in end the wooing process or make it two way and prevent this huge loss of male life? And change female guilt.(How sad any women could marry but man had to actually accomplish something. some men even believed chivalry included taking care of a pregnant woman abandoned by her lover).

This is horrible what happened to those men. I can't even imagine the reverse happening.

We still have to provide for and protect women. Men still go to war to protect women. I don't see how that will ever change.

Aren't the men in the armed forces also dying to protect their fellow female soldiers out of some sort of natural chivalry?

**julie** · 22nd-March-2009

Quote from Billy

FIXED!

“Silent” Sexual Revolution Began The Moment Jules Entered the Room!

Link is HERE

I gather you are making a point?

**julie** · 22nd-March-2009

Excellent writing Percy.

Just want to add that there is much history of WWI going around on how the men where not just injured but left to die while caught up in barb wire and shot and stabbed.

They didn't even shoot them. They just left them behind to die slow painful deaths.

Quote from Male-Rights-Network

I agree with this. WWII created a moral vacuum where all the old social norms could be thrown out the window. Feminism benefited hugely from WWII.

Interesting too that the first issue of mass porn mag Playboy in 1953 coincides with a huge growth in feminism.

Technology has played a huge part in the femmie revolution; but it's important to remember that some of these technological innovations (e.g. the contraceptive pill) were often funded by feminists.

It is neat that you commented.

Sometimes I am unsure where you are coming from. Sometimes I think we are on the same page an then sometimes I think we are at opposite ends.

I agree with what you have written.

**julie** · 22nd-March-2009

Quote from Billy

Naaa, but I forgot to smile didn't I?

Strange how such a minor thing can give a different impression.

OK, now I see the funny part.

bababob · 22nd-March-2009

The impact of World War II still effects all of us in ways that are everything from subtle to salient. Small wonder we in the States get
one or more TV programs on it just about every single day. These shows aren't just about U.S. forces either. I've watched the PBS special on The London Blitz about three times so far.

But you are right, Feminism did not arise out of the The Womens' Movement back in 1966. It was influenced by a number of things,
most noteably the increased political involvement the '60's spawned.

Women from prestigious colleges were not expected to take part in
planning or decision-making. They were expected to have the coffee and doughnuts ready for the big boys. Add to this the return of Lilith and goddess worship, the Radical Feminist Lesbian Longstockings,
the Daughters of Sappho and the indiscriminate use and combination of
hallucinogens; and you've got the origins of the misandry we're fighting.