2,103 words 
Men are citizens of their age as much as citizens of their country, as Schiller once remarked. Young people, especially small children, have an almost limitless capacity for assuming what they see around them is normal, since they have nothing else to compare it with. I was born in 1963, which means I came of age in the 1970s and early 1980s. My early impressions are of those years, and such impressions are strong because youth is when one is most impressionable. In certain ways, the America of the 1970s is more real to me than the country I now live in. I often catch myself forgetting that cigarette vending machines, public telephone booths, and library card catalogues no longer exist. Other generations have their own early memories which come to serve as their criteria of what is normal.
Doing a lot of writing and thinking about sexual mores as I do, I intend to write an essay soon on all the sex-talk of the 1970s based on my vivid memories of the period. But this is not that essay. I want to begin by discussing dating, marriage, and sex in the 1950s, the last decade before the sexual revolution. To those who came of age during those years the mores of that time still feel normal, which they more or less were. But they were also the last years in which historical normality prevailed. The revolution came along in the 1960s, and the world has not been the same since. My own generation and those which came after have, therefore, never known a sexually normal society. But future generations will inevitably experience such a world once again.
The sexual revolution was a vast, decades-long fiasco whose full nature and effects are only now becoming visible. But eventually the people who lived during these decades will die off and the world will be able to renew itself. Boy will once again meet girl, get married, father children, do his best to support and care for his family, and try to remain halfway contented with life as it is. Women will have to make the best of things as well. This is the nature of our world, and it cannot be fundamentally changed. Any attempt to do so can only end in disaster, and the more stubborn the attempt, the greater the disaster that will ensue. The sexual revolution was an unusually stubborn revolt against the nature of things, but is now playing itself out.
The process of renormalization is already well under way. It cannot be carried to completion, however, without radical institutional and legal restoration. You can read Stephen Baskerville’s writings to learn the nature of these absolutely necessary changes. Nature and normality are returning, but not back yet; we are still living through a late phase of the revolution.
But more about all that later. For now, I wish to discuss dating, marriage, and sex in the America of the 1950s. Obviously, I am not the person best qualified to hold forth on this subject. There are still a fair number of people, though they are getting elderly, who can speak about the subject on the basis of personal experience, and I invite them to compare my account with their memories and correct any mistakes they think I have made. But I have read and heard enough about the years just before my birth to make some observations confidently.
America was still under a largely monogamous regime, which meant there was a boy for every girl. Some boys and girls were physically attractive and some were unattractive. Nobody ever claimed this was fair. It is certainly not fair to individuals, but evolutionists understand there is an explanation and a sort of justification for it. (Here I am speaking of physical attractiveness, leaving aside for the moment the attractiveness of male status and wealth to women. While it is true that for many women “there is no such thing as an ugly rich man,” it is simply untrue that looks are unimportant to them.) This explanation is that physical attractiveness signals good genes. Anyone who marries an attractive person increases the odds that his or her offspring will be physically healthy. So attractiveness is nature’s way of ensuring that the healthiest are also the most likely to mate and reproduce. Nature cares about the species, not fairness to individuals.
With all this being said, however, and to repeat myself: under a normal regime of monogamy, there is a boy for every girl. The actual pairing up occurs in the same way it does among all mammalian (and most non-mammalian) species: the males display, and the females choose. The usual pattern which emerges is that the most attractive women tend to choose the most attractive men. The next most attractive choose from the remaining men. The pool of men gradually dwindles until, at least in theory, the most ill-favored individual woman is left with Hobson’s choice: between the least attractive man and none at all. In short, the whole business of attractiveness is not all that attractive—but it is the way things are.
To men, attractiveness in a woman is mostly a matter of youth and beauty. Yet certain other qualities such as innocence (including premarital chastity), modesty, loyalty, and goodness of heart can strengthen the claims of the plain Janes, while their absence can persuade a handful of exceptionally wise men to turn aside even from stunners. The slow pace of courtship gave more importance to these qualities, and sometimes even to genuine aspects of moral character with little connection to sexual attraction at all. But nobody was under any illusion that attractiveness could be made not to matter. (By contrast, anyone looking for a one-night-stand, whether man or woman, has little reason to consider anything but attractiveness and appetite.)
To women, attractiveness in a man is somewhat different. For far more than care to admit, it really is largely a matter of looks, especially if height is counted as part of a man’s looks. Others are more drawn to status, wealth, power, or social skills. Some can be won by a display of physical courage. The things women often claim to value such as sensitivity, a sense of humor, or “respect for women” matter hardly at all. It’s not that women are deliberately lying, in most cases, but that when asked they say not what actually draws them but only what it would make rational sense for them to look for.
An overt question such as “what do you value in a man?” gets answered by the woman’s cortex, the rational and late-evolved part of her brain where the power of speech is located; sexual desire is based in the limbic system, more primitive and far deeper than the level of speech and rational thought. Women often quite simply do not know why they prefer the man they prefer; they simply do. Only careful observation of female behavior can reveal the truth, not direct questioning. No woman is chasing physically puny, flat-broke, low-status, socially awkward cowards: this tells you what they look for in a man.
The happiest marriages probably go to those men and women who can be least swayed by mere attractiveness and choose rationally, but this is extremely difficult for most young people of either sex. For this reason, obtaining a good spouse and achieving a happy marriage is often little more than a crapshoot. Older and wiser men and women can often be heard speaking simply of having been fortunate or unfortunate in their marriages, and they are correct. Both sexes eventually come to see that what made their marriages successful or unsuccessful often had virtually nothing to do with what motivated them when they were young and inexperienced. They try to tell their children not to lay so much stress on attractiveness, but parental advice is no match for hormones: mom and dad are obviously too old to understand love.
So the most important single thing to observe about dating, marriage and sex in the 1950s is that it still followed this classic pattern. And the three phases still occurred in the order listed. Not many people started by having sex, then getting married, then divorced—only thereafter to begin dating.
Dating was nearly universal, not something reserved for the glamorous. Even the plain Janes and plain Joes dated, usually with each other. Only at the very margins or among the religiously celibate was there no dating at all. The practice was at once an opportunity to enjoy oneself innocently, learn social skills, observe human nature, and seek out a spouse.
It was a boy’s prerogative to ask girls out on a date. Girls were not allowed to usurp this prerogative by asking boys out. The girls, with hormones coursing through their young veins, sometimes chafed under this limitation, for some of those boys were pretty cute. But their parents were unbending: it was not ladylike for a girl to ask a boy out.
Occasionally a girl would simply be unable to resist, pick up the telephone, and call a boy she liked. Usually, one of the boy’s parents would answer the phone. Hearing a girl’s voice, the father or mother would say: “I’m sorry, Johnny is not free to speak with you now.” Johnny may well have been sitting right there not doing much of anything. “You can see him in school tomorrow,” the parents would say. They would not hand their son the phone. It was not ladylike for a girl to call a boy. There was no exception for a boy and girl who were “just friends,” either.
I remember learning about this quaint American folkway of the 1950s from a high school teacher in the late 1970s. Pupil and teacher, we both marvelled at the rigid and straight-laced sexual mores of the 1950s. Surely things were much better now in the more relaxed and less constrained 1970s! Today I no longer feel so certain.
A few days following a little adolescent contretemps such as this in the America of the 1950s, a surprising thing would sometimes happen: Johnny would call the girl up and ask her out on a date! What explains this miracle of mental telepathy? Did his parents simply inform him of the name of the girl who had called for him? Not necessarily. If Johnny was out of the room when the call arrived, he might never even learn of it. Yet there he would be a week later calling up that self-same girl.
The explanation, of course, is that the human female is highly adept at getting what she wants indirectly, without the use of words. Subtle hints and body language were often enough to suggest to the admired boy that his offer would very likely be viewed favorably. So boys were not necessarily flying blind when they asked girls out. The “girls do not ask boys” rule applied only to direct verbal communication, but this apparent restriction was scarcely any obstacle to an enterprising girl if the boy was not entirely disinclined to get to know her.
You can buy F. Roger Devlin’s Sexual Utopia in Power here.
Anyone who dated during the 1950s will recall a word constantly upon the girls’ lips in those days, but which their successors today almost never use: reputation. Many girls and young women were virtually obsessed with what they called “maintaining a good reputation,” the chief component of which was, of course, pre-marital chastity. All of them had been taught by their mothers that “good men want a virgin,” and were even entitled to expect one. A girl who lost her virginity ceased to be “marriageable,” and the thought of spinsterhood was frightening. Worst of all, marriageability was important not only in the eyes of tall, handsome, high-status, big-spending men, but even of quite ordinary ones.
Yet a girl who refrained from fornication did not necessarily preserve her reputation. She had to avoid not only direct sexual wrongdoing but even any possible appearance of it. Many a girl carefully insisted on getting back home no later than the hour specified by her parents to avoid “damage to her reputation.” Most people lived in small towns, but even big-city neighborhoods had strong social bonds and, as the saying goes, “people will talk.” Old Mrs. McGillicuddy might see Jane returning late from a date and start telling all the neighbors. Jane’s reputation might be ruined forever even without her having done anything wrong. Young men were welcome to socialize with girls, but had to respect their insistence on the need to preserve their reputation. Many even learned to be solicitous for it themselves.
39 comments
This was a great read. Stallone’s Rocky character tried to impart some of that (by then) outdated wisdom about a girl’s reputation onto Little Marie the 12 year old street kid he took an interest in by saying: “You don’t really have to be one [a whore] you just act like one and that’s it. Boom you get a bad rep, y’understand? Twenty years from now, twenty years from now, people’ll say ‘you remember Marie?’ ‘No, who’s she?’ ‘She was the l’il whore that hung around the Atomic Hogie shop.’ ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, now I remember her!’ Y’see, they don’t remember you they remember the rep! Y’understand? You gotta boyfriend? No, you ain’t gotta boyfriend? Y’know why? Why do you think you don’t got a boyfriend? Because you hang out with those coconuts on the corner, y’understand? You hang out with coconuts, you get nowhere. You hang out with nice people, you get nice friends, y’understand? You hang out with smart people, you get smart friends. You hang out with yo-yo people, you get yo-yo friends! Y’see, it’s simple mathematics.”
Great article! Mr. Devlin, I have read and listened to every piece of content on sexual matters you’ve produced or been involved in. Yes, all.
I am married with children. I grew up with a negligent and mentally-ill father. You, Dr. Stephen Baskerville, and Dr. Daniel Amneus are three men who have filled the gap in informing me about sexuality, manhood, marriage, and fatherhood. Not once in my life did my parents speak to me about such matters.
I’d like to write more. I’m busy at the moment. I want to add that in the time and place I grew up, the 90’s latchkey-kid era in one of the boroughs of NYC, looks and height were hardly spoken of. Status and anti-social behavior ruled. Some of the biggest womanizers I knew were short and wicked.
Regarding dating & marriage in the 1950s, does anyone know how long couples typically dated before tying the knot? Maybe the strong chastity-before-marriage leanings were what drove so many people to tie the knot with those they didn’t know so well. From what I’ve observed it seems that many people in that decade, & before, met & married their spouse within 6 month’s time.
I remember my grandmother (born in the early 1920s) saying to me that she had only prayed the Solemn Novena twice in her lifetime. One of those was when she was worried about me leaving the East Coast for the West Coast at 18 years of age.
I asked the other occasion upon which she prayed the Novena. She replied, “It was when I was determined to go to my marital bed a virgin.”
Nostalgia is a dangerous frame of mind, it makes us see things as we want them to be, not as they actually were. Sure, the behavior you described had a partial validity in middle and upper class neighborhoods but the context in which they occurred are gone forever. There were plenty of drugs, alcoholism, miscegenation, homosexuality, pornography, pedophilia, etc., hidden in the house next door and in poorer white neighborhoods. The environment in which this desired behavior occurred is dead; the church no longer has the influence it once had; nobody cares what other people are saying behind their back; white women have children out of wedlock (often with non-white men and flaunt it); men and women walk around, covered in tattoos from their toes to the top of their heads. Where is this moral force coming from to return us to this former happier time? The Jews destroyed it! Jeeze-O-Pete, they normalized homosexuality! 😥
You can refer to my other post above. By the 90s, all those social pathologies, aside from pedophilia and homosexuality, were rampant amongst the middle class in the area of the borough of NYC I grew up in. And boomer fathers allowed their daughters to screw the scum of the earth. I have stories of actual sexual abuse that occurred because of this. The devastating effects of the sexual revolution need to be discussed and not underestimated.
The America of the 1950s, as you describe it, looks more like the Europe of the 1920s. Up until the 60s Americans were more sexually prudish than Europeans, where there was the influence of two wars.
I like the image of the 50’s, but these idealized versions of the past don’t help us. It is just more of the escapism that the Right often falls into. Live in the present, because that’s our only option.
You got any ideas for regulating sex going forward? And yes, serious societies regular sex. And it can be done without being goofy or religious prudes.
We already do regulate sex.
The entire premise here is wrong. White Nationalists aren’t going to start getting women if society becomes more strict about sex.
Sex isn’t regulated at all in the US. I don’t know where you got such a notion. Women are free to screw whoever they want when they want. And that includes VERY young females to screw the scum of the earth, men who in white times would’ve been in big trouble. Air-headed boomer dads in my time, the latchkey-kid 90s, didn’t give a damn about their daughters’ activities.
We aren’t strict at all and most of the loudest WN’s don’t have wives and children in our “sexual liberation” even though they are good looking and intelligent.
When I say “regulate”, I mean legally. Sounds like you’re talking about social regulation —which is more complicated. To start with, there has to be a very cohesive society for strict social regulation to be effective. Something like a small, homogeneous farming community. We have social regulation now, but it is more or less based on consent, and not much else.
Basically, men and women can date whoever they want as long as they’re of legal age. Parents might disapprove of who their kids like, and try to steer them away, but ultimately it’s up to the individual. That is how it’s always been with Whites. We don’t force anybody into relationships because it’s a recipe for disaster, but sometimes difficult conditions can force people together. Although, Whites are good at improving these conditions.
As for White Nationalists, we have trouble attracting women because a lot of us are bottom of the barrel guys. That’s why these ideas about forcing women to date certain men come up.
It sucks for WN, but we’re not going to remake society so they can finally get some pussy.
Where did you get the idea that white nationalist males could not get women? I was married ten years and didn’t like it. It is easy to get white women, so easy any non-white male can do it, the hard part is finding a quality white female you want to have children with and spend the rest of your life with. 🥰
These attractive and intelligent white men can get women. I’m supposed to believe they literally can’t find ONE women worthy of family formation for each of them? I suspect a portion of them, despite “14 words!” simply don’t want that, are indulging in sexual hedonism, or fried their brains from perpetual WN content consumption or production to the point where social acumen has been lost.
It’s impossible not to notice how popular the PUA and MRA attitudes have been with White Nationalists. That popularity doesn’t come from nowhere.
Where does this bottom of the barrel thing come from? The events I’ve been to have been pretty photogenic. The crowd was rather different 40 years ago, but that was then.
Most White Nationalists look like autists — but looks aren’t enough to be successful with women. The fact that so many WN think this says a lot.
Here’s an idea: bring back shame.
Traditional culture was self-regulating through its sense of mutual obligation -WE have to maintain standards for each other. As Mr. Quint points out, that standard has been debased by the usual suspects, but it can return.
My brother related such an incident. He and a female friend were eating dinner in a mid-scale restaurant. They had noticed a family with a young girl, about 12 years old, dressed inappropriately; as they walked past them my brother’s friend looked at the couple and asked, “Why is your daughter dressed like a slut?”
The soft middle (NPCs, in the modern vernacular) will follow where strong leaders direct them, and conservatism is making a decent comeback. Perhaps it is not too late.
Did the parents reply?
It is possible to shame politely, i.e. “I feel compelled to request that this restaurant considers establishing a dress code for those completely unaware of what is acceptable public attire within a dining establishment.”
The comment was a ‘drive-by’ (walk-by?) with no chance or expectation of response. I get the feeling that the place was not all that nice – I imagine Applebee’s or Red Lobster – and anyone dense enough to allow a 12-year-old to dress like trash anywhere in public would be immune to anything less direct.
The object of such an encounter, it seems to me, is to have other patrons glance sidelong at the offenders and for all within earshot to up their presentation to avoid such embarrassment.
I recently became aware of the medieval practice of ‘skimmington’ (see its Wikipedia article), which is long overdue for a return.
Well, almost by definition religious, prudish, and goofy.
I am not a fan of promiscuity, and if it were up to me I’d put some of these tattooed and pierced kids into camps, but I think there is a bit of a moral panic going on here.
What exactly do you propose?
🙂
Re: moral panic. I consider billions of dollars in bastard taxes fallen on third parties, sexual abuse, fatherlessness and all social pathologies caused by it, false rape accusations, incentivized divorce, and the inability for decent men to find mates to be serious problems.
I’ll try to answer regarding what I’d propose later on.
Not much can be done until we re-establish White communities. The tattooing and piercings usually stem from mental illness, which itself is often caused by the breakdown of communities. However, sexual mores can only develop — and be enforced — in stable communities, so ground zero can’t be sex.
That is a pretty widespread “mental illness,” it seems. Unfortunately older generations are joining the dumb kids and getting tatted up as well. It used to be a joke many years ago that the tattoos would fade and not look so good in the nursing home. Now the old people are sporting new tatts. I think we need to crack down on the ink merchants. Teach them how to grow cabbage on a state farm in striped uniforms or something.
Anyway, I’ve spent a fair portion my life living in Eastern Idaho which at the time had anywhere from 90 percent LDS (Mormon) to 75 percent. It was or is about as prudish as you can get without wearing Amish clothing and without not reporting sexual abuse to the police (as is a problem in some Amish communites from what I understand). And contrary to popular belief, Mormons only wear Pioneer Dresses on Pioneer Day (July 24th).
Anyway, when I visit family in Idaho the regional girls seem to fall into two categories:
Tall, attractive blonds and brunettes with Tatts ─ and tall, attractive, blonds and brunettes without Tatts. Invariably the clean ones will be the LDS girls.
I graduated from both BYU-Idaho and Idaho State University. I am not any longer a Christian or a Believer, nor a big fan of religious persuasions in general ─ especially “cradle-to-grave totalitarian regimes” [that’s just a joke] like the LDS or the Amish ─ but there is something to be said for gently but faithfully promoting Standards.
I think many Christians and White Nationalists could learn something from that.
🙂
And it can be done without being goofy or religious prudes.
Nothing wrong with prudery* – religious or any other kind.
*a tendency to care a great deal about seemly behavior and morals especially in sexual matters (definition from Merriam-Webster)
When you say “idealized”, what do you mean? Do you think Devlin is misrepresenting the 1950s? Or do you think because some people had premarital sex that therefore there’s no difference between the 1950s and today?
I mean trying to recreate or live up to a thing that might not have existed in the first place.
This is a common trope in politics and society. “It wasn’t perfect back then and the ideal wasn’t lived up to; society always had problems. So let’s do nothing.”
Nobody is saying that here.
I wish I could be as optimistic that things will self-correct. It wasn’t a walk in the park back in the 1980s, though fortunately I did crack the code. For young guys today, things look a lot worse. I’ve heard that about 30% aren’t even trying; they just checked out semi-permanently. How did the sexual marketplace react to a massive drop in demand? Not one bit at all!
Demand by who, women or men? Under current conditions, women generally m aren’t going to be affected if 30% of men drop out of the sexual market. Many women simply do not care about that because they aren’t interested in marriage, have their own money, can screw attractive men even if they themselves are ordinary looking, and the 30% of men who’ve dropped are likely not who they lusted for in the first place. A chunk of women don’t care about men at all anyway; they went their own way (WGTOW). Contrary to MGTOW thought, a strike isn’t going to have women begging for the aforesaid 30% of men, likely nearly all of whom are ordinary, to come back to the market.
Even if most men checked out, the remaining ones, likely those who are attractive, could still get busy with women in great multiples of their numbers, a sexual Utopia come to life.
I’m a married man but I’m considering getting your book as I’ve liked your writings and would hand it over to my son when he becomes a teenager in just five years from now.
As Roger Devlin correctly noted here, it’s women who determine whether a connection is made or not. This puts them as the sellers in the sexual marketplace. Thus, men are the buyers, who bring their resources to the table to make a “purchase”. It follows the same laws of supply and demand as the economic marketplace, though in practice it can take a long time for market prices to fluctuate. But fluctuate they do. So in the 1950s, the price was very high, usually requiring a lifetime commitment. By the end of the 1960s, it was dirt cheap when hooking up became a thing. It got a little higher in the 1970s, where you’d customarily buy dinner to get the hot date. Etc…
In the present day, things are really topsy-turvy. So, to clarify what I said earlier, imagine what would happen if 30% of investors suddenly cashed out their 401Ks, IRAs, and brokerage accounts. There would be a massive market crash rivaling the Great Depression. On the other hand, I don’t think there’s been a time before in history when 30% of men said “to hell with it all”. And again, the sexual marketplace hasn’t budged a bit, which seems quite strange. A parallel situation has happened in Japan with their “herbivores” and hikkikomori, and their population statistics are now in freefall because of this.
Great post. Thanks for it.
Do you have any ideas for correction? I’m for what Roger Devlin and Dr. Stephen Baskerville propose, starting with changes to laws.
The ideal fix would be a cultural solution, in which everyone realizes things like the following:
The Sexual Revolution went too far
Bad behavior isn’t “cool”; it deservedly gets bad reputations
Adolescence isn’t supposed to extend into one’s 30s
If you bring children into the world, you support them and are there for them
Drug dealers, gang members, and felons aren’t “exciting”; they’re losers
Etc., etc., etc.
All that would be quite helpful, but I can’t make it happen; I’m not the Pope!
A good measure on the legal front would be a reform of divorce laws. People could still get out of marriages, but no longer with the expectation of taking away more than they put into it, or getting a monthly allowance after they’ve terminated the relationship. Moreover, no child support if the paternity test is negative; a cheating ex can stick it to the real father, she knows who he is. Finally, rein in the bottom feeder “family law” attorneys; anyone who recommends a client to make false allegations will be in deep shit. Culturally, we should come to the understanding that it’s the moral equivalent of perjury to end a marriage over ennui or stupid reasons.
Finally, I’d put a $1/month tax on dating apps. It’s a trifling amount, but would put a brake on the worst effects of the desperation and ego-pumping. Also, porn videos would get a $0.25 excise tax per run. This would bring things back to the days when you had to put quarters into the booth, and people didn’t just goon off for hours in front of the screen. Since I’m already dreaming with all this, (((Pornhub))) users would get a “coomer” emblem yard sign.
I think that 30% of men out of the game is the standard throughout the history and not the anomaly. Think of the endless wars and the battlefields filled with young corpses.
My thesis is that the proletarian masses may be irreparably coarsened and subverted. 🧐
I think one important aspect is overlooked in the article: young women had only a relatively short window of opportunity to get married in the 1950s. Roughly between 18 and 23, maybe 26 they had to find a partner to marry them. This made them much less choosy than today. In particular, such a system favored average and slightly below average attractive men. It was much more likely that there would be an average looking girl who would settle for them in the sense of the philosophy that “better is the enemy of good”.
Women still have that short window of opportunity. Biology hasn’t changed.
The difference is back then everybody told women this fact of life, and now they tell women they have a short window of opportunity to start a career. The work is the most important thing in life attitude has made everything worse.
Wonderful article. I am that child of the ’50s. My millennial family was an absolute bust – woke all over. One dead of the vax, another wierd via childhood vaxes, and 3rd simply angry and out of touch. But I had a wonderful chance to start over, moving to Ukraine and starting again, kids now 13, 7 and 4.
I often post on the differences on my Substack. Education – no ed schools, no teachers’ unions. Just the three Rs, no indoctrination. No television. None! No pop music. They sing traditional songs. Still doing Christmas. No mixed marriages – just Ukrainians. No adopted kids of which I know. Nobody they know identifies as gay. Wonder of wonders, they are absorbing their parents’ values!
It is America of the ’50s redux.
FWIW, I wrote a well received review of Sexual Utopia, which went down when Amazon trashed all 550 of my reviews on account of wrongthink about Covid. Still visible through my Substack.
I suspect the whole ‘Happy Days’ view of the 1950’s is a myth. Without being promiscuous it’s difficult to know if it’s not good for you or otherwise. Better to get casual sex (a relatively harmless activity compared to many other options) out of your system than go to the grave obsessing that you may have missed out on something. Repression is not a path to growth and understanding.
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