"Doing sex before and outside marriage is a great ideal that should inspire us!"
"Be promiscuous!"
"If you question this, you're a prude!"
In the 1970s we were told:
"Everyone, break the boundaries the prudes imposed!"
"Explore sex in all sorts of ways.
Not only with same sex, but also with younger, older, with ..."
"Didn't Kinsey say so?"
"Sex is for pleasure, not procreation."
"Sex is for leisure, not responsibility."
We were also told:
"You want it really!
"If you question this, you are repressed. Freud said so."
In the 1980s we were told:
"No such thing as society. Everyone for himself (sic)."
"Those with money can get all they want. Loadsamoney."
"Your wants are your right."
In the 1990s we were told:
"Sex is a pastime."
"Your wants are your consumer right."
"Divorce is good; nobody's fault; Marriage is boring."
Since the 2000s we have been told:
"Sex is the most important thing in your life."
"Seduction is an artform."
-----
Though male sexual predation is nothing new,
going back millennia,
these decades changed the social norms
of affluent society.
Sexual predation used to be frowned on.
From the 1960s it became not only acceptable
but an expectation.
Was C.S. Lewis right when he wrote, all those years ago [Essay: Right to Happiness, 1940s]
"A society in which conjugal infidelity is tolerated must always be in the long run a society adverse to women. ... Where promiscuity prevails, they will therefore always be more often the victims than the culprits. Thus in the ruthless war of promiscuity women are at a double disadvantage. They play for higher stakes and are also more likely to lose."
Who would have thought, during the 1960s 'sexual revolution', that some of the acts then applauded would be the subject of retrospective court cases 50 years later?
* "Affluent elites" - affluent compared with rest of world, especially the so-called Developing World. Especially university students.
Acknowledgements: Bruce Wearne, Paulo Ribiero, Rich Graydanus, David Koyzis helped with useful comments.
Created 16 December 2018. Updated: 23 May 2019 spelling errors.