Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: Sexual intercourse beganIn nineteen-sixty-three (Which was rather late for me) -Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles' first LP.-Philip Larkin, 'Annus Mirabilis' (1967) 1 One of the most popular cultural narratives of the late twentieth century figures the period from 1960 to 1980 as an age of sexual revolution, a moment that saw a shift in social mores concerning sexual permissiveness and British sexual attitudes.But what specifically the term 'sexual revolution' means, 'when it began (if it did), to whom it applied, and what changes it wrought' are 'highly contested subjects'.2 As the epigraph to this chapter indicates (albeit facetiously), for Philip Larkin, the start of the sexual revolution can be pinpointed precisely to 1963, a year preceded by the infamous Lady Chatterley trial of 1960, in which the re-issue of D. H. Lawrence's 1928 novel faced charges of obscenity, and the release of The Beatles's debut album Please, Please Me, the title song of which was accused of being an ode to oral sex. 3 For Margaret Drabble, however, when precisely the sexual revolution began was less clear.
Author: O'Callaghan, Claire
Language: English
Topic: Gender and Feminist Studies
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2811336556