“The Joy of Sex” is a book for the ages

The year was 1972 and liberation was in the air. While Jane Fonda was in Hanoi beseeching American soldiers to stop bombing Vietnam, college students back home urged whoever would listen to make love, not war. What, exactly, it meant to make love in the age of sexual revolution, however, was anyone’s guess. For baby-boomers’ parents, sex was for procreation, and if it brought husband and wife closer together, that was an added bonus. At least, this was the orthodox view. Whatever went on in private was not openly discussed.

Yet the cultural reckoning which began in the 1960s and rolled through the 1970s scrambled that consensus. Armed with feminist manifestos and the contraceptive pill, wives challenged the prerogatives of their husbands in the bedroom. Group-sex enthusiasts at clothes-optional communes rejected the idea that sex must be contained by marriage, while gay men and women who “came out” defied heterosexual norms. As if all that weren’t radical enough, “Deep Throat”, the wildly successful hardcore film of 1972, thrust porn into the mainstream. Though feminists would later question who was actually liberated by the sexual revolution—and who was harmed—to many, it was a time of freewheeling sexuality.