What was society like before the sexual revolution?

Texastentialism · 2019-12-10T02:09:55+00:00

The stabilization of society was considered more important that individual happiness or fulfillment.

That's why people stayed in shitty marriages. It's why Prohibition was a thing - most of you here on PPD today have no idea how profoundly destabilizing and damaging alcohol abuse was to the lower classes back around the turn of the 20th century. That's why people did all kinds of things that made them unhappy, that they were "supposed" to do. A lot of people probably found great meaning in playing out their roles. A lot of other people were probably miserable, but sublimated that into drinking (heyo) or beating their kids or whatever.

The sexual revolution wasn't only sexual; it was the liberation of the individual from socially scripted roles. Women gained employment opportunity. Men gained the ability to say "fuck this" and quit their Organization Man jobs and go live off the land or whatever. (Yes, yes, most men did not do this, but more men did it than before the sexual revolution.)

Read C. Wright Mills for further detail on just how the pre-sexual revolution US operated.

Edit: There is a very good example of this in Mr. Ridgway's family. His grandfather joined the Navy after Pearl Harbor and, from all accounts, was an excellent sailor, flying through the officer ranks and in line to take command of his own ship when the war ended. He loved it and was good at it, and his wife was willing to be a Navy wife and go around the world with him. Except no, his father told him that as the elder son, his future was running the family steel mills. So he came back to the Midwest and that's what he did, and was miserably unhappy the rest of his life, and made everybody around him miserably unhappy. It is nearly impossible to imagine a Western parent making such a demand today, or a Western child acceding to it.

PapaPinyun · 2019-12-10T02:55:37+00:00

probably you would have been working too hard to worry about this

churnthrowaway123456 · 2019-12-10T02:51:59+00:00

Prostitution was very common and tacitly accepted (the whorehouse was just that building)

People still fucked out of wedlock, they just ended up with back alley abortions or shotgun weddings.

smokecheck1976 · 2019-12-10T11:21:36+00:00

No, certainly all men did not have a wife and family. Let's put a pin in that, though, because mortality from accidents for young men and boys was also much higher.

As late as the 1950s most people did not leave about a 25 mile radius of where they grew up. Most of America consisted of small towns. Most Americans were religious and attended church every Sunday. This meant that most everyone you were going to meet either knew you or knew of you, and your reputation, and your family's, was extremely important. They did not do things that brought shame, and if they did, they could find their family dealing with them harshly.

Divorce laws were not generous. The state did not issue welfare or child support to women that chose to become single mothers, though there was some support for widows. They were much more realistic. They understood that young boys were interested in sex, and that this desire needed to be tempered, they didn't see it as wrong. They understood that girls were interested as well, but a single mistake could leave the girl's family with another mouth to feed, and a great deal of shame on the family. There were still young women that had their passions overtake their good sense. More than one baby has been born well before the usual nine months.

If a young man wanted to date a girl he would ask her out for ice cream or a soda, which was just that. If he enjoyed himself, he would walk her home. If she enjoyed herself, she might kiss his cheek before she went inside. They both knew they rules. If they wanted to date more, then the boy would have to meet the girl's father. Then they could expect to be chaperoned. They might be allowed to date alone if her father had given his assent to marriage and she had accepted as well.

That being said, there are reasons that a young man could not find a wife. His family may have a poor reputation. He may have earned a poor reputation. He may be seen as lazy if he didn't work. If he acted out of line, people may assume he was crazy.

TheBookOfSeil · 2019-12-10T03:38:49+00:00

War, industrial factories, slap-stick comedy, racism, women in the kitchen, sexless marriages, wild teenagers.

Not a lot has changed, except maybe the industrial factories part. Most of that has been moved overseas to cut costs.

NockerJoe · 2019-12-10T01:29:13+00:00

Society was repressed because it had to be. There was a period beforehand where prostitution and alcoholism was rampant in the 18th and 19th century before things turned around into prohibition and there were way more war veterans than could actually have their mental health looked at so it all got repressed.

I would describe that society as like one step removed from a breakdown simply because it never actually addressed the myriad elephants in the room and tried to simply sweep it's issues under the rug.

DontTouchTheCancer · 2019-12-10T09:29:44+00:00

Fucking meant children.

Not all the time, but pretty much.

It meant if she fucked around on you, that kid might not be yours. It meant teenage fumbling behind the bleachers meant leaving school at 15 and pretty much lifelong poverty compared to what you could have achieved if you had finished high school.

In antiquity, it meant never marrying off a daughter, because nobody wanted to buy in to a woman bringing in other people's kids to feed. And since killing a baby was monstrous, they'd just kill the girl.

ElfFey · 2019-12-10T07:13:20+00:00

I wonder why people have downvoted this as it seems such a straightforward and banal question.

Anyway I would like to answer this part of your question;

And how did society become like that?

As it's already discussed about society immediately prior to the sexual revolution, which was the nuclear family.

Before the nuclear family there were thousands of years of different social systems, but what led to the nuclear family was a genuine attempt at democracy and fairness for all people to have a chance at happiness in life. This came about after the fall of monarchies in Europe. Prior to the firmly established monarchies which were overthrown during the revolutions, people lived in class societies with little real upward mobility. Wealth and power was controlled in the hands of noble families. If you were born poor, you were destined to die poor, and even if you somehow became rich you would never achieve any real social power due to your bloodline.

Still, people in the lower class actually lived in ways that were not so dissimilar to us, having sex and marriage and families etc. Going back further, it was a time of constant threat and warfare where most men died in battle. In fact it is believed that a few thousand years ago 10% of the men were warlords who controlled all of the resources (and women) and none of the other men alive at the time ever married or even mated (visible through genetic research.)

Fast forward to medieval nobles, their children traded like chess pieces, then revolutions, industrial revolutions and shifts of power to the working class, and the idea of freedom for all men. The idea of freedom for all women led to the sexual revolution. Therefore it's become a highly debated topic since the patriarchy was partially dismantled to the benefit of all classes of men, but then finally dismantled in its overpowerment of women. This led to so many previously unseen issues that we confront today.

ZoroasterFlame · 2019-12-10T02:30:50+00:00

Natural until the 1950's, then a bunch of Freudians working for the corporations and the state decided that nature needed social engineering in order to avoid another uprising of the masses like in the first half of the twentieth century. Funny how that worked out.

sleeper5ervice · 2019-12-10T01:34:11+00:00

In general a marriage is between families and not individuals.

In my opinion this was more so the case pre sexual Revolution; it's an immigrant mentality. One might argue that the breakup of the nuclear family and intergenerational dependencies is an overall loss of culture, then we might ask what fills that void.

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G77R23D · 2019-12-10T02:19:11+00:00

Air travel was incredibly expensive and very bumpy.

DaphneDK42 · 2019-12-10T05:23:25+00:00

The world became like this because it was possible. The sexual revolution didn't happen with some forward goal in mind. It was a reaction to things like increased wealth, better birth control, mass media, etc. Hollywood had their own sexual revolution in the 30s, it just took a few decades to trickle down to the general population.

ontherailstoday · 2019-12-10T06:16:17+00:00

All the sort of folks who are now divorced? Were married and at war with each other 24/7 for so long as they both shall live. So 50% of married couples each wished that the other member of the couple would just die already kthx.

anyhow society became like that because of agriculture making real estate a thing thus the need for inheritance and the desire to build wealth to buy real estate.

rus9384 · 2019-12-10T06:24:33+00:00

It was that talking about sex (with anyone besides your partner) if you are a woman and having premarital sex was considered unacceptable.

Was it so that all men could have a wife and a family?

Every normal man, probably. Just as today.

khoilog · 2019-12-11T07:02:55+00:00

https://youtu.be/BCV6paTXyCU

2019-12-11T12:12:48+00:00

All I know is that people were almost just as sexual as they are today, and that society had really polar-opposite attitudes about sexuality existing at the same time. Additionally, some aspects of history are heavily-debated.

Examples that I know of:

Sex was only approved if it was penis-in-vagina, between a heterosexual couple, with the man on top, and if they were married. At the same time, the nobles and aristocrats throughout history were allowed to have concubines and mistresses.
Sex was heavily demonized yet for most of history, 13-16 year olds did get married and became fathers/mothers at that young of an age.
The demonization of sex in history is sometimes debated just because of the sheer amount of pornographic art and text from said eras, including ancient history, the Medieval period, and the Victorian era.
In some ancient cultures, attitudes towards homosexuality were pretty tolerant, but pretty much no one stood up for kids being molested, and pretty much no one believed lesbian/bisexual women even existed, and still shamed women for being sluts.
Demonization of sex again, the Catholic church was cutting off boy's testicles to keep their voice pure (castrato), plus molesting plenty of kids while shaming them about sex at the same time.

You don't even need to go far to see how society's attitudes towards sex is skewed and hypocritical. See some documentaries about Saudi Arabia, the Middle East and Asia. They're pretty traditional and conservative cultures, the average person on the street will tell you homosexuality, porn and sex before marriage is immoral, yet there is a huge underground industry of prostitution, child molestation (google baka bazi) and even public porn screenings.

2019-12-11T12:22:22+00:00

This is a question for r/askahistorian or r/askhistorians_NSFW. No one here is really qualified to answer properly

gimpgirl555 · 2019-12-10T11:17:16+00:00

You mean before they let women out of the home basically? I don't think that exactly every man could have a wife. But I think that society strived for that everyone should get a partner to marry.

The downside was that people had it a bit too good, became spoiled, and then decided to ruin everything. Blame the Boomers.

Atlas_B_Shruggin · 2019-12-10T01:43:37+00:00

It was great

Title	What was society like before the sexual revolution?
Author	knowledgeseeker999
Upvotes	7
Comments	99
Date	December 10, 2019 1:02 AM UTC (6 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/e8j6pq/what_was_society_like_before_the_sexual_revolution/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/what-was-society-like-before-the-sexual-revolution.298584 https://theredarchive.com/post/298584

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