It seems to me, and did then, that some women suddenly felt free to act
like adolescent boys sexually, and a lot of others took a while to figure
out that they didn't want to, even though there were no outside
constraints. Something like my take on orthodox versions of christianity,
that they left believers with a choice between two absolutes and no
boundaries--once lost, why not have fun? Like a recently-lapsed seventh day
adventist with whom I was madly in love, who, having given up the external
guidelines, didn't understand that there was a difference between choosing
a lover and choosing the whole basketball team. A matter of learning to
negotiate the gray areas.
To which I'd add that blaming adolescent boys (and men) for behaving like
adolescent boys rather missed the point. It really wasn't our fault that
women for a while didn't say no very often. An argument that didn't gain
much general force until reality in the form of a death threat slapped us
all in the face.
And of course a lot of us, all genders, were very stoned.
Mark
At 06:15 PM 11/15/2005, you wrote:
>The reference, as I'm sure Douglas Clarke will have spotted, is to
>Pinker's _The Language Instinct_, which discusses the "creolisation"
>of "pidgin" languages by the succeeding generation. The point is that
>the new generation learns the "pidgin" as its native language, and
>systematises it in the process.
>
>I don't know whether Mark is saying that the "happening" of the 60s
>was socially enabled by lots of guilt-free bonking, or that at a
>psychological/metaphysical level the dissociation of sex from death
>freed people's minds in other ways. Maybe both. I've been conditioned
>by reading certain 2nd wave feminists to regard the "free love" side
>of it with a certain suspicion: whose freedom? On what terms? But
>maybe that's already a re-imposition of the very psychic boundaries
>that were being lifted, suspended at the time.
>
>Dominic
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