Re: Sexual revolution: definition, please

tuckerpf@sprynet.com
Wed, 15 May 1996 08:29:04 -0400

On Tue, 14 May 1996, "F Leon Wilson" <CODE1@delphi.com> wrote:
>Before defining the sexual revolution, consider this view:
>
>'Free love' was a way for people to buy into the various waves of the
>social justice movement during the 1960's. When people of colour,
>specifically Black people, was demanding 'equal rights' and the
>non-violent movement was preaching 'love your adversary' many people
>(particular white people) translated/co-opted that feeling/movement
>into what became known as 'free love.' Since there was no higher
>'love' than physical love to be found in the so-called hippie
>communities and closed (segregated) communities in the suburbs and
>ghettos, it reverted into physical love (sex) within their own
>circles. People's time and energy was spent 'loving' (sexually) each
>other and professing to have a love for all people while being firmly
>limited to the social and political circles they were accustomed.

It appears Leon is saying that white people apprehended the social energy
brought about by the civil rights revolution but, owing to the limitations of
such people ("since there was no higher 'love' than physical love to be found in
the so-called hippie communities and closed (segregated) communities in the
suburbs..."), they somehow transformed this energy into having sex with one
another in their own social circles.

Certainly there was always a war on between the competing claims of cultural
radicalism (drugs, sex, etc.) and political radicalism, a divide that
demonstrated itself to have been unbridgeable in the final analysis, despite
much ideological pushing and pulling by Diggers, Yippies and assorted relations.

But it's one thing to stake out the claim of the political over the cultural.
It seems to me that Leon has gone further, and is claiming that as an historical
matter one of the more notable manifestations of the "cultural" sixties was at
its source a function of a specific political sixties development. That is,
that the sexual revolution began among whites in response to social justice
demands by others.

Jeff Apfel