In this series, we’ve been expanding on a topic addressed in a very interesting article entitled “Liberated and Unhappy” (which was posted recently on the New York Times website). It was written by Ross Douthat and based on a paper about “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness” from economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. In his article, Mr. Douthat noted that:
“American women are wealthier, healthier and better educated than they were 30 years ago. They’re more likely to work outside the home, and more likely to earn salaries comparable to men’s when they do. They can leave abusive marriages and sue sexist employers. They enjoy unprecedented control over their own fertility. On some fronts - graduation rates, life expectancy and even job security - men look increasingly like the second sex.”
And he added that:
“But all the achievements of the feminist era may have delivered women to greater unhappiness. In the 1960s, American women reported themselves happier, on average, than did men. Today, that gender gap has reversed. Male happiness has inched up, and female happiness has dropped. In post-feminist America, men are happier than women.”
Since most people reading this aren’t old enough to remember how things used to be way back then (prior to the sexual revolution which had started in the latter part of the 1960s), we set the stage in “Part 1” by showing where things started and why things were the way that they were back then.
“…
several catalysts played a role in the 1960s for the sexual revolution
…”
Several catalysts played a role in the 1960s for the sexual revolution and the subsequent press to change the rules of the game for the benefit of women.
One factor was the Vietnam War, which ratcheted up dramatically in 1965 with the arrival of combat troops from the US and expanded further in the next few years as troop numbers were boosted, ultimately to more than 500,000 men at the peak.
That in itself would not likely have been a factor in the social upheavals which followed, save for one fact: the military draft was alive and well at the time. And many of the participants (draftees) who would be sent over to kill Vietnamese and to get shot at themselves (and have a good chance of getting maimed or killed in the process) were not entirely enthusiastic about the likelihood of their being picked to go.
On their way to protesting the Vietnam War
Many didn’t have the “warrior ethic” and therefore didn’t understand how there could be glory in invading another country and killing their people (or why it was necessary). But perhaps even more so, the idea of being killed or maimed yourself was not an enticing prospect.
And that was a big factor in the vehement anti-war demonstrations that followed: many of the participants “had skin in the game” … in no small part, it was their own butts they were trying to save.
The Vietnam War
and the Sexual Revolution
Although the Vietnam War and the sexual revolution were not directly related, they were indirectly related in a couple of ways.
At the simplest level, very few younger women of that era were eager to push stridently for total equality with men. Why not? They assumed that actual equality would open them up to being drafted and to being sent off to be killed or maimed in Vietnam.
“…
the idea of “equal rights” sounded good, but the idea of “equal responsibilities” was far less appealing
…”
The idea of “equal rights” sounded good, but the idea of “equal responsibilities” was far less appealing.
In hindsight, of course, they needn’t have worried (as when your gender comprises 52% of the electorate, it’s not at all difficult to legislate double standards so that you get equality only on “the good stuff”, such as “equal pay”, but not on “the bad stuff”, such as getting drafted). But at the time, that was a real fear on the part of younger women and they were quite content to let the men of the day handle the dirty work. And so would I have been if I had been a young woman back then.
A second impact involved respect for societal rules in general. Once you decide that the existing social order and the rules that it promulgates are wrong (in the case of invading other countries and killing their people), then that opens up the rest of the existing societal rules for rethinking.
And one of the existing societal rules which was rethought was the one about “no sex before marriage”.
And so the same college campuses where ant-war activities were being vigorously undertaken also tended to be where the sexual revolution first took root. And in part, that was supported by the “hippie” philosophy (which evolved at the same time), whose mantra was…
“Make love, not war”
That philosophy sounded awfully good to male college students of the day, but female college students in large numbers also got aboard that train. If you’ve had daughters or female cousins (or had friends who did), you’d have noticed that many girls become “boy crazy” once they’re into puberty. Their hormones are raging just as the boys’ hormones are.
What kept things from getting too “out of hand” was strict parental and societal supervision (curfews and so on). But when young women got to college and suddenly had a lot less adult supervision, those hormones kicked into high gear. It was a big interesting world to young women and they were usually eager to sample all of the goodies on offer. And, in the more rebellious era they were in, they did.
Another factor leading to the sexual revolution was the arrival of the contraceptive pill. Available methods of birth control had been (until then) problematic. Sterilizations were permanent, condoms took away much of the pleasurable sensation of sex for men, IUDs caused cramping and could cause bleeding, diaphragms were messy and also hit or miss (in terms of effectiveness), and abortions were illegal in those days (in the event that your birth control method did miss).
“…
the pill got around those limitations
…”
But the pill got around those limitations. Of course other limitations were discovered later (such as a small chance of blood clots from pill usage and the risks of catching venereal diseases), but this was in the era before AIDS and back then venereal diseases were assumed to be easily curable if contracted.
Birth control pills were a wonder drug at one point
At the time, the pill seemed the ultimate wonder drug. It did not interfere with the pleasurable sensations of sex and it largely took away the one real constraint on having lots of casual sex (assuming that the woman took the pill every day and was truthful about doing so): the fear of pregnancy.
A lot more casual sex took place on college campuses (and presumably elsewhere also to a somewhat lesser extent) than was the norm a decade or so earlier. Young women in the late 1960s were doing a lot more partying than complaining.
But all good things change over time
and the era of “free love”
was no exception
Up until that time, people tended to be quite a bit younger when they married than is the case nowadays. As a result, “25” was a critical number: women back then believed that if they hadn’t landed a husband by the age of 25, they were too old to have a chance to land a great guy and would even have to struggle to get one of the “left-over guys” to marry her.
And that became a self-fulfilling prophesy … if almost everybody married at 18 or 20 or 22, nearly all of “the good ones” really would be gone by the age of 25. As a result, if a woman was 23 and not yet engaged, she would be really worried … as she should have been under the circumstances back then.
To be entirely candid, a large percentage of women who did go to college back then seemed to have done so primarily to meet and marry a college-educated man (that is, one with superior future earning power). After all, they were highly unlikely to get a high-paying job themselves (thanks to the “glass ceiling” in place at most companies in those days) whether they got a college degree or not.
Were all the good ones taken?
So it was the norm before the sexual revolution for women to not dilly-dally too much when they got to college. They would party a bit (to “chum the waters”) but then would quickly decide on their target, get into an exclusive relationship with him and work on getting him to the altar. In effect, they were sacrificing short-term pleasure (a few years of partying) in favor of getting a long-term gain (a high-earning-potential husband who would ensure that they would hopefully be set for life).
But with many more women being in less of a hurry to marry once the sexual revolution got underway, the self-fulfilling prophesy of “all the good men are taken by age 25” was also no longer the case. The less was the urgency to marry early, the more that college women partied. And the more that college women partied, the less was the urgency to marry early.
All was great for the first few years of this, but then another problem surfaced: it turned out that women peaked relatively early (in terms of sexual desirability to the opposite sex) compared to men on average. A woman who was swarmed by eager suitors as an 18-year-old freshman in a large university was likely to be getting noticeably less male attention several years later and by then graduated and in the working world.
“…
early marriage … enabled women to make the best deal possible when they were at their peak desirability
…”
That, of course, was a big part of the reason why societal traditions had pushed early marriage: doing it that way enabled women to make the best deal possible when they were at their peak desirability. That was also the time that most guys were at their weakest in terms of negotiating power, since they hadn’t figured out women’s games yet and their testosterone levels were off the charts (ensuring that they’d do their thinking with their “little head” rather than their “big head”).
But women did not adjust well to finding themselves in lesser demand with each passing year. And rather than recognizing that Nature is just designed that way, they became bitter. And who did they blame? They blamed men, of course. We were shallow cads who would toss aside a “quality woman” (namely, her) for a younger model. How dare we???
That was a natural response on their part, however, as human nervous systems were designed so that our expectations (about what we deserve in the future) are based on the best we’ve had before in that area. It becomes the new “floor”. And therefore, peaking early makes for a very rough transition to lesser status.
It’s not just women who
go through this, by the way
A male athlete may have two Super Bowl rings by the age of 26 and later find himself with two bad knees and cut from the team at age 32 (despite having more than 40 more years of life ahead of him and much lower status and greatly diminished earning power to look forward to). Aging pro athletes also often have trouble adjusting.
As noted above, that created a certain amount of bitterness toward men in general (for “using” women and then “tossing them aside” in favor of younger women). But there were two more factors which helped to increase the appeal of feminist doctrine to women in the first half of the 1970s.
One was the fact that women who had been in universities several years earlier (when the sexual revolution was in high gear) were likely to have graduated and to be out in the working world. And once they were in a workplace setting, they noticed that the high-status high-paying jobs went almost exclusively to men (that being the way things were done in the past to corral women to the altar by removing their ability to have a luxurious lifestyle except through marriage).
And they didn’t like that
existing societal rule either
They wanted to have the option of living the good life without having to also have a husband. If they did meet a great guy and married him, of course, that was fine. But they wanted to have the choice, especially if they were not desirable enough to attract an above average male to marry.
The final piece of the puzzle was put into place in 1973: the military draft was ended. And that’s when the push to achieve the growing feminist agenda kicked into high gear. It was then considered “safe to go into the water”.
That set the stage for all that has followed since. In “Part 3”, we’ll look at how the rules of the game have changed as a result.
Stay tuned,
-Mack Doppler
