--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@... wrote: > > I think absent any social codes, the difference in sexual promiscuity between males and females comes down to consequences. Prior to birth control, if a female had sex with a male, she could be literally burdened with offspring. Not so for the male. Add in the greater physical strength of the male, and you have all the seeds for the difference in attitudes. > "The Pill" greatly eliminated the risk factor of pregnancy, for women, and certainly in the West, physical strength is no longer a guarantee of greater economic power. So attitudes are changing too. Regarding the 60's, I saw a lot of sexual expression, but also a lot of conventional sex roles between men and women, simply dressed up in strange clothing and fashion.
I'm sure I've commented on this rap before, but given the insight that the rapper had, it's worth doing again. I once saw a lecture given by one of my favorite authors in the field of science fiction and fantasy, Ursula K. Le Guin. Ursula -- in person -- is a tour de force. She's wonderful! In terms of her background, there are reasons why. She was raised in a household that included a father and mother who were pretty much the gods of the world of academic anthropology and sociology. She seemed to have picked up a great deal of insight into the human condition as the result of that upbringing, because her fiction works are among the most insightful I've ever encountere w.r.t. the human condition. Anyway, in this lecture, Ursula mentioned a few facts that have never since left my mind. She spoke of the "sexual revolution" in terms of how *short* it was. According to her, what we know of about that period was a short period of time between the invention of penicillin and the birth control pill and the appearance of a nasty virus called HLV. That was *IT*, according to this strong feminist-before-they-were-called-that. Before the invention of the Pill and penicillin, according to Ursula, sex had *at every point in human history* been a potentially fatal experience. A *huge* number of women died in childbirth, and a sizable number of other people died of STDs, some of which (like syphillis) are fatal. Then came penicillin, the first effective treatment for syphillis. And shortly thereafter came the Pill, and that was All She Wrote for many of the "rules and regs" of sexual behavior. Suddenly there were no more potentially fatal "down sides" to gettin' it on, and so people Got It On. The world changed. But then AIDS came along. And suddenly the old fears came with them. And the world changed again, but this time in a more restrictive, more fearful direction.
