Sexual Revolutions

The sexual revolution of 1960-1980 created a major break in attitudes and practices in Western societies. It created many new freedoms for gay men, youth and women, in terms of sexual imagery, information, and rights. Leftists denounced the revolution's consumerism whilst feminists lamented its continuation of sexism. Conservatives criticised the extreme individualism which it purportedly encouraged and the subsequent loss of traditional values. The contributions chosen by Gert Hekma and Alain Giami offer a critical exploration of these changes in the Western world, as well as in the USSR, engaging with topics such as abortion, contraception, sexuality, paedophilia, pornography, and the law. Surveys from this time suggest a transformation in the practices and attitudes of the general population. A comprehensive analysis of this shift, Sexual Revolutions explores the views of feminists, leftists, liberals, artists, scholars and church leaders. The repercussions of the sexual revolution went beyond sexuality. It was a Gesamtkunstwerk that coincided with major social changes in issues such as religiosity, education, justice, medicine, politics, institutions, and arts, and so this work begins to reveal the many aspects of the sexual revolution.

Gert Hekma is Lecturer at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. His research is on the sociology and history of homo/sexuality. He wrote numerous articles and edited many books on those subjects, most recently A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Modern Age (2011).

Alain Giami is Research Professor at Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale, France where he coordinates a multi-disciplinary group of researchers in the field of sexuality and social sciences. He has been working and writing for thirty years on relations between sexuality, medicine and health in a social context, and wrote many articles and edited books on those subjects in France and Brazil.