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Sexual Revolution(s) in Britain

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Sexual Revolutions

Part of the book series: Genders and Sexualities in History ((GSX))

Abstract

The period commonly associated with sexual revolution in Britain — roughly between 1965 and 1970 — saw what historian Hera Cook calls an ‘astonishing’ ‘pace of change’.1 Joe Orton was upending sexual and relationship norms in the theatre, television was broaching sex as never before and Mick Jagger was (paradoxically) getting ‘no satisfaction’. Government ushered in a raft of liberalising measures — partially legalising abortion and homosexuality in 1967 and introducing no-fault divorce in 1969. The initial stipulation that the pill be available only to married women (from 1961) was lifted in 1966.2 After pacifist Dr Alex Comfort’s reissue of Sex in Society in 1963 and his appearance in a BBC TV debate in the same year (giving the book a much higher profile than the original 1950 edition) came William Masters and Virginia Johnson’s Human Sexual response (1966) and David Reuben’s Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex (1969). They each in different ways emphasised what Comfort subsequently dubbed ‘the Joy of Sex’ in his 1972 classic. San Francisco’s infamous 1967 summer of love crossed the Atlantic and played out piecemeal in London’s Soho, Kings Road and Notting Hill. It brought hippies, free love and psychedelic drug culture into clearer view. Different — and certainly wider use of — recreational drugs marked a distinction between the generation.

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Notes

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Authors
  1. Matt Cook
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Gert Hekma (Lecturer) (Lecturer)

  2. Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, France

    Alain Giami (Research Professor) (Research Professor)

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© 2014 Matt Cook

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Cite this chapter

Cook, M. (2014). Sexual Revolution(s) in Britain. In: Hekma, G., Giami, A. (eds) Sexual Revolutions. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137321466_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137321466_7

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45804-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-32146-6

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

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