1,598 words 
Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here
Another important aspect of sexual discourse in the 1970s was, of course, the then-burgeoning feminist movement already alluded to, but this was of almost no concern to a little boy or adolescent such as myself. I sensed only that it must somehow be related to the attitude of my old grade-school classmate Mary, the one who was so keen to speak out against any possible boyish disdain for girls. While uninterested, I was not really against feminism. It seemed to me reasonable that women should stand up for themselves, although I did not see quite why they felt so strongly that the world was being unfair to them. I never noticed any systematic unfairness to girls or women in my own surroundings.
The big feminist slogans of the 1970s were “equal pay for equal work” and “choice”—the latter not yet a mere euphemism for abortion, but also a reference to the choice between working and staying at home with the children. Speaking of abortion, I am embarrassed to note that I have no memory of the Supreme Court’s January 1973 announcement of a woman’s right to get one, as just discovered by them lurking in the penumbras of the United States Constitution. True, I was only nine years old—but why does Deep Throat remain so clearly in my memory instead?
While the main focus of feminism in the 1970s was on careerism for women, one adherent of the movement named Susan Brownmiller wrote a book on rape: Against Our Will (1975). It was a sign of things to come, becoming the canonical feminist text on the subject. The title is revealing: the author does not condemn rape as a violation of a woman’s chastity, the sacredness of the marriage bond, or the integrity of the family. As a feminist, she did not believe in any of these things. Instead, rape is simply a violation of a woman’s right to do as she pleases sexually. One wonders why it was ever viewed as such a serious matter.
Brownmiller’s 472 page tome—which, pardon me, I do not mean to read—is notorious for a number of dubious theories and assertions, among the oddest of which is that rape is not motivated by male sexual desire. Like many feminists at this time, she believed that men and women were fundamentally similar. And like many women at all times, she found it difficult to imagine sexual desires like her own leading to rape. So she decided that rape must be a crime of power—of the supposedly powerful male sex against the allegedly powerless female sex—that accidentally happens to assume a sexual form. To support this strange interpretation, she claims that forced sex has never been observed among the lower animals. This is untrue: orangutans are one of the better-known counter examples.
According to Brownmiller, rape is not a matter of certain men being unable or unwilling to control their urges, but “a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.” Not all men have to commit rape for the process to be effective. Rapists are a subset of the male sex, but act as its representatives in keeping women terrified and subordinate. Brownmiller is unclear on how exactly we men delegated the rapists to handle this job on our behalf, but it is clear she believes the entire male sex in some sense guilty.
Only four years later, in 1979, anthropologist Donald Symons published a refutation of Brownmiller’s main ideas in his book The Evolution of Human Sexuality. He points out that men have successfully been socialized towards a “more humane sexuality” involving the inhibition of natural impulses. Mating in early hunter-gatherer bands may not quite have resembled caveman cartoons in which men club women over the head and drag them back to their caves by the hair, but they probably involved what modern civilized men would look upon as “rough wooing.” The human race may have made a bit of progress after all. Symons even concedes (perhaps too generously) that under ideal conditions, “males could be produced who would want only the kinds of sexual interactions that women want.” Yet he concluded that “such rearing conditions might well entail a cure worse than the disease.”
Perhaps he should have explained his meaning more fully. I take him to be saying that female desire unaided by male urging might prove inadequate to guarantee sufficient human fertility. In other words, it may be difficult to improve greatly upon the pattern in which men press women for sex while women press back for commitment, with fruitful monogamous marriage the eventual result. (Formal marriage proposals by men clearly accepted or rejected by women might represent the practical optimum—but this presupposes that marriage is a morally and legally binding covenant, which it had ceased to be by the 1970s.)
Of course, Symons’s refutation did nothing to stop the feminist juggernaut.
Over the long term, the most important innovation of Brownmiller’s book was probably her coining of the expression “date rape.” A feminist professor at Kent State University, Mary P. Koss, read Against Our Will and began conducting surveys on “date rape” among young women on her campus. Less than ten years had passed since the rebellious campus sexual experimentation of the late 1960s.
Another innovation of the 1970s was “marital rape.” Sexual relations within marriage have traditionally been viewed as a duty, with the expression “marital duties” long used as a somewhat stuffy euphemism for coitus. But marital intercourse is what moralists call an “imperfect duty,” meaning that while wives are obliged to have relations with their husbands periodically, they are not required to do so at any specific time or merely on demand. Everyone knows about wives getting “headaches,” and even the most vigorous young husbands may fail to rise to every occasion. Since time immemorial, everyone has understood that such intimate matters are best regulated privately.
But then came feminism, with its discovery that “the personal is political.” The first marital rape laws were passed in 1974, with the first court case being heard in 1978. It was not so long since the sexual liberationists had been mocking traditionalists for “wanting to put a policeman in every bedroom,” and now feminists were introducing the punitive powers of the state into every marriage bed. Women would never be equal until they could have their husbands jailed as rapists.
Feminists also organized the first “Take Back the Night” marches against rape in the 1970s (known as “Reclaim the Night” in the UK). The main novelty here was that the participants rejected the traditional view of good men as women’s natural protectors in favor of “sisterhood”—the view that individual women could be better protected by female solidarity directed against men as a group. It was an implicitly lesbian attitude, even if most of the participants were not practicing lesbians.
The neologism “sexual harassment” also appeared in the 1970s, at first as a synonym for sexual extortion, something well-known for hundreds of years past and familiar to anyone who has ever seen a production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. The only novelty introduced by feminists was to conceive the offence as a form of “discrimination.” The first court cases were litigated in the late 1970s. The concept then quickly expanded from its origins as a new term for sexual extortion to encompass nearly any sort of “unwanted behavior” engaged in by men.
Feminists began establishing pseudo-academic “feminist studies” courses and programs. From the beginning, these were exercises in political activism rather than scholarship, but were soon renamed “women’s studies” to disguise this fact. By 1977, there were 276 such programs across the United States, and growth continued for many years afterward. Academics in unrelated fields soon learned to fear the women’s studies harridans. The little serious scholarship that ever went on within such programs could easily have been accommodated within history departments or other academic departments.
All these important aspects of the feminist movement escaped my attention at the time.
Another story of the early 1970s that barely registered on my consciousness was “no fault divorce.” Public commentary on this truly revolutionary change was limited to a few short newspaper articles presenting it as a rather minor reform that would permit divorce by mutual agreement, streamlining the process, removing any stigma attached to it, and making it less acrimonious. What was not to like?
What was not to like, of course, is that divorce without grounds at the demand of either spouse—which is what “no fault” really meant—amounted to the abolition of marriage as a legal institution. An alimony and child support collection system backed by novel criminal laws began to develop almost as soon as the no fault reform was adopted, with the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement created in 1975.
The late 1970s also witnessed a controversy surrounding “palimony,” a term coined in 1977. It referred to financial obligations (if any) consequent upon the end of a cohabiting relationship. By 1981, most states enforced some form of palimony, but the growing realization that no fault divorce represents the de facto reduction of all marriage to cohabitation has reduced the salience of the issue in the decades since. Many states have now dispensed with palimony laws.
Looking back from the perspective of 2025, it seems obvious that the institutionalization of feminism and the introduction of no fault divorce were the really big sexual developments of the 1970s, far more important than Deep Throat or The Hite Report. But no one saw this at the time.
9 comments
This article reminds me very much of the development in the Czech Republic after the fall of communism, when the new regime imposed on us, as it were, completely contradictory theories. On the one hand, the pornography boom convinced men that horny young beauties were waiting for them everywhere. At the same time, the feminist campaign against all expressions of male sexuality began. Only gradually did it become clear to me as a teenage boy that the basis of the capitalist system is the same principle that governs female sexuality: Lure but don’t give! Only a tiny handful of lucky privileged men end up being “invited to the party”, while the rest have labored in vain.
What’s the link between the sexual freedom of women, and the sudden rise in rape allegations? At a glance this seems contradictory, but it isn’t. Why do they want to be free, when they know this opens the door to abuse, exploitation? Basically, females are hypergamic, and in order to maximise the possibility of a perfect mate, the field must be opened up. That is the freedom element. No more society or family choosing for her: she is free to choose whoever.
But what if she makes the wrong choice? What if she regrets her choice – because she finds a better one next week? Well, now she can be absolved of any blame, by claiming assault etc.
The two actually work together perfectly. The effects of both have only got more pronounced since. Every standard girl now has an instragram and quadruple figure follower counts. A standard selfie will gather hundreds of Likes and Comments. Quite often youll even see modelling agencies chip in : “Looking great girl! [Emoji with loveheart eyes] DM us and star in our summer range.” One can only imagine the dizzying, stupefying effect of the dopamine release this attention has on a girl. In effect, her pool of mates is … well …. the entire world. (The concept of racism has done away with any kind of national preference).
If she regrets one mate, she can simply sob crocodile tears, and will be believed: by other women as a matter of course (“Believe All Women!”) and, oddly, by traditionalist conservatives, who act as white knights in this scenario.
All exactly right. You even touch upon a point of which I am aware but probably have not written about enough: the effects of the new social media in feeding female vanity.
I would guess that is for a later article or series. I assume that you’re going to move on the 80s next, then 90s. I am guessing you may stop before the Internet age, as you turned 40 round about then and so were no longer on the pulse of youth culture. However an article in the vein of this series but on the Internet age would be excellent.
As someone born early 90s, social media is something I’ve experienced since early teen years. It has gotten much more intense since then, but even back then the social media setting had realigned gender relations. I think the coming of the smartphone in the late 2000s really exploded female, and normie, and third world use of the Internet. In fact I’d provably deign to suggest that there’s large numbers of people like that online who have never used a desktop computer, ever, and only ever used mobile Internet. Mobile Internet unleashed normies and women (isn’t normie just a byword for woman?) and they started to create a social internet, with a female hierarchy, both among women and between women and men.
Young people growing up now have only ever known the Internet, and take it for granted that girls use it to maximise their social status. It’s almost like it was tailor made for women. Instagram in particular, with its focus on pictures above screeds of text, and even down to the pink-and-peach colored logo (what else is pink and peach coloured?), complete with swishy, curvy, semi-cursive font for the word “Instagram”. When you Like a picture on IG, a love heart pops up on screen. Does this seem like it was designed for striaght men? Pictures of expensive meals, of skimpy costumes, of impressive mountain range views, of idyllic beachside cabanas: its all to say, I’m “living my best life”, “because I’m worth it”, I’m a Disney princess in wonderland. This is all like catnip to the female mind, which is materialistic, and constantly seeking better conditions. Obviously that’s a survival instinct.
I’d also suggest that this culture where (even bang-average) girls get thousands of fawning Likes on Instagram is a partial factor in the tranny phenomenon. You sometimes see MtF trannies (I don’t really believe FtM trannies are really that common) and the before and after pictures. Before, he was just plain old Stephen. Boo-rring! He wasn’t getting ANY likes on socials – he was drab! But he did notice all the girls getting dozens of Likes. The glamour, the style, the sexiness. He had to be noticed like that! So he dolls up and alters into Stephanie, a female, and now is getting more attention.
I believe that is a factor in the trans thing. There are many, but I definitely think that is one. I never really see anybody mention this, however.
Brownmiller’s 472 page tome—which, pardon me, I do not mean to read—is notorious for a number of dubious theories and assertions, among the oddest of which is that rape is not motivated by male sexual desire.
I read some of that book years ago and to be fair some of it was politically incorrect, particularly the parts on black-on-white rapes.
Take this lad, for example:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7746350/meet-the-cross-dressing-tory-teen-who-joined-conservatives-aged-11-and-styles-himself-on-margaret-thatcher/
Okay, he’s not transitioned, but cross dressing as Margaret Thatcher for attention will have worked. Plain old Tom was getting no Likes. No one was sliding into his DMs.
Future Tory party leader? Watch this space. He wouldnt be out place among the clownshow theyve got currently. Maybe s/he can hit the campaign trail with a hologram version of Maggie, using predictive AI to come up with Thatcheresque speeches. “Today, we are not amused to find that London is barely 10% White….”
I was born in 1970. My recollection of the feminist sexuality movement such that it was at the time was a copy of the “Hite Report” in my parents’ bathroom. This was a very explicit book about women getting laid for the sake of getting laid. I treated it like permissible pornography which I suspect is how the tribe of heebs who published it intended it.
I had another thought today and don’t know where else to put it, but it regards sexual relations in the social media age. We need to talk about a situation where every single girl is a supermodel-in-waiting. Imagine being in high school and suddenly the girls are like mini celebrities, with gushing followers, and a LinkTree to all their various socials. Before too long they’ll be monetising this content. And I don’t mean just OnlyFans, but paid ads and shilling products etc on Instagram. This, really, is a stage of revolution that basic 70s feminists could only have dreamed of. The chains of family repression have been broken! (framed in Marxist terms with women as usurped worker and men as usurping Capitalist)
When you combine this with women being selected for jobs more, and generally doing better in life – more friends, live longer, less likely to be single, more sympathy, prioritised by health care providers (who are also overwhelmingly female), more chance of going to uni, lower car insurance premiums, treated better by the courts, much less likely to be bankrupt or homeless, less likely to die in a war, no expectation to work a difficult job (such as refuse collection) ,not demonised by society – the question is becoming, who would even want to be a male anymore? No wonder theres males transitioning. With gene splicing and so on people will probably be able to choose the gender of the baby. What right thinking bien pensant in the west is going to want to choose a hairy, angry, right wing, patriarchal, violent, primitive male? Ive often remarked at how I’ve never known any of my female peers to go jobless- except single mothers, and that’s different – they get provided by Daddy Government anyway, with no stigma. Compare this to my male peers, all of whom – even ones from wealthy families – have gone [long] periods on the dole. I recall a chapter in Michael Moore’s “Stupid White Men” which I read in [the equivalent to what you Americans call] junior high. He seems to claim that men are now obsolete due to the existence of the stepladder, [our only purpose having been to reach the top shelf for a woman] and then lists how women’s smooth bodies and perfect skin means they’re higher evolved than men. I balked at this at the time, I’m glad to say. I’ve got that essay somewhere, I should dig it out.
Another thing in the Internet age is the “fat acceptance” movement. “Beautiful at any size”. We have all seen the grotesque billboards of fat [black] women. Even on porn sites, the fetish catering to fat women calls them BBW, or Big Beautiful Women. Of course, pornographers are happy to cater to any fetish under the sun, and fetish is an almost entirely male-driven thing. Massively obese ones are known as SSBBW, or super sized big Beautiful woman. I know women don’t like hurting feelings, and are tactful to a fault, but these women are NOT Beautiful, and everyone knows it. But it serves a purpose. Catering to even clearly unattractive women who have zero sexo-social capital keeps the grift going, stops the ugly women from rebelling, maintains general female control of sex. It’s a complete revolution. All females, even clearly low value females, are invited in to the elite club.
We can also view the anti trans women ‘TERF’s as women who are not wishing to extend to males their special female privileges. Yes, we can let a morbidly obese woman in to the club; but a man ; no, never! There’s also a strain of simple misandry that goes along with TERF, but that’s a slightly different point. But If you watch Posie Parker, the biggest British TERF, she regularly simply mocks or degrades males. Had the trannies got into the woman club, they know that decades of struggle to turn patriarchy around would have been compromised. Watch Esther Vilar (the ‘Manipulated Man’ author have a TV debate in German in the 70s. The other feminist, can’t recall her name but she was famous, is glaring at Vilar – it isn’t just, “you’re wrong ” but as if to say “Hey! What the [bleep] are you doing? You’re gonna ruin this cosy little situation for all of us! Get on board!”
The terfs will and are being supplanted by “trans”trenders” (Bam Bam Bigelows in a party city wig who lurk about in your daughter’s locker rooms), not actual transsexuals like blaire white and buck angel. The F-to-M like that wreck ellen “elliot” page are some of the most depressed and it makes sense because they pass so well as a twinkish guy when out in public nobody can tell they’re trans and to rest of the world they just look like a White male. Not exactly the privileged patriarchy party they were expecting and when a passable “male” with female sensibilities crashes into reality, chaos happens. What right thinking bien pensant in the west is going to want to choose a hairy, angry, right wing, patriarchal, violent, primitive male? Lloyd Christmas: “So you’re telling me there’s a chance…yeah!!!”
Comments are closed.
If you have a Subscriber access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.