William Thien

Since the 1960′s something has been happening continuously to the relationship between men and women in America called The Sexual Revolution. It involves frequent, fluid changes, often legal changes to the way men and women address and deal with each other at home, in the work place, in public. The sexual revolution is an offshoot, a facet perhaps of the feminist movement.

But is the Sexual Revolution good or bad for women, for America? And is it really a revolution at all?

Well, for the most part, though I will answer that question to some extent later, that is not why I am talking to you today. I merely want to examine the Sexual Revolution for what it is, not for what we are told it is by say, the corporate media, for example.

Many people think it is the women of America that are the principal players in the feminist movement. It stands to reason, does it not? Feminist movement and women. Feminine, female, feminist movement. It is so darned obvious. Why…it has to be the women behind the feminist movement and The Sexual Revolution, who else could it be?

I am here to tell you that I think it is something different. Yes, women want to improve their lives. And who can blame them?

But the so-called feminist movement is not what it once was, not what it is. No, ladies and gentlemen, I believe the feminist movement has been hijacked as part of a larger corporate business plan meant to sell more products and undermine the American workforce and women, and men for that matter who do not recognize it for what it is, are just the unwitting dupes. Your own champions of the feminist movement of earlier years, the Gloria Steinem’s and the like don’t even know what is happening or may even be key players in what I describe here.

Before the sexual revolution, before Gloria Steinem and the feminist movement of the sixties and seventies, the American labor force consisted of mainly men, except during times of war when women happily manned the production lines to perpetuate the war effort. Before The Sexual Revolution there was less competition for every job. But with The Sexual Revolution and the migration of the woman out of the house and into the work force there were suddenly twice the number of applicants for every job. Corporate America could do nothing but accept the Sexual Revolution with open arms, to fall in love with The Sexual Revolution, in fact it may have even been part of a larger plan. Why? Now corporate America could offer lower wages.

Hold it. What do you mean they could offer lower wages?

What I am saying is that now there were double the applicants for every job with not just men looking for that job but both men and now women, too. More competition for jobs and the wage rate goes down. People get paid less. It is a fact of economics. Now corporate America doesn’t have to pay its workers as much.

A parallel can be seen in the fact that employers like to hire illegal aliens. With more people competing for the same jobs those people will accept less pay and perhaps no benefits to obtain those jobs. That is also a fact.

The presence of illegal aliens in America, because they will work for less, also drives down the cost of labor. Employers, the more unscrupulous ones in particular, like hiring illegal aliens for that very fact, even if they know it undermines the work force and their buying power and will eventually put America out of business. Because America’s own workers won’t have jobs and won’t be able to afford to make purchases of products manufactured by the illegal aliens. It’s a short-term business plan, that one is.

But let’s examine who else benefits from having more employees, or the newly arrived women, in the work force. Automakers. Now that all of those women want to go to work, they are going to need cars. Again, there is corporate America. Before the Sexual Revolution most families had only one car. Now they have two, sometimes three. So the Sexual Revolution is good for automakers. And really, that’s good. It’s good that automakers sell more cars, good for business anyway. And what is good for business is good for everyone for the most part. More workers needing cars means more cars need to be made which probably means more workers will be needed. It is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way. Though, read on.

And if there are more cars on the road, well those cars are going to need what? That’s right, gasoline. And who makes gasoline? Oil companies. And oil companies epitomize corporate America.

The list of those corporations that benefit from The Sexual Revolution is myriad. I merely offer two of the most obvious and omit the others for the sake of expediency here.

By the way, there is nothing wrong with corporate America. And there is nothing wrong with the Sexual Revolution and the feminist movement. I for one think many of the resultant changes to the lifestyles of women make them more attractive and easier to have a conversation with. Before the Sexual Revolution many women would not have entered into a conversation about a variety of subjects and would have simply demurred on the matter so as to adhere to what at the time was considered socially attractive, acceptable behavior. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with their perspective on the matter nowadays, just that I have another perspective to consider.

You might ask again, then, why ask the question “Who is behind the Sexual Revolution?” And what do you mean by the statement in the title of this post “What it is…”?  It was something people used to say to each other during the beginning of the sixties and throughout the seventies. It was a sort of greeting. But in this case, I say it as a question, because as you will see, what it is is usually what it does. And I believe The Sexual Revolution does something entirely different than what it says it does.

My answer is that even though many beneficial things have come to society from the advent of The Sexual Revolution, we must examine it for what it really is, who is really behind it and who benefits from it so that everyone benefits from it to some extent and not just particular segments of our society, so as not to move into something that we cannot back out of.

I believe we must ask the question who is behind The Sexual Revolution because I believe that it has created many demands on society that may not be in society’s best interest in the long run and may outweigh the actual benefits of The Sexual Revolution in the first place, substantially outweigh them. It has created demands on natural resources and changes to our tax situation that have resulted in many burdening new social programs meant to accommodate the “independent woman,” a woman who arrived as a result of the sexual revolution and who perhaps wants to have a child out-of-wedlock but can’t afford to pay for it herself and needs to fall back on public assistance, helping to raise the average federal tax rate of a family of four in 1952 from 2 percent in federal taxes to currently and frequently closer to twenty or thirty or more percent, a substantial, economy stifling burden.

Yet, even with the benefits brought forth by The Sexual Revolution and all of the wonderful changes to society, the negatives may in fact tremendously outweigh the benefits both in terms of dollars and also in terms of resources, in terms of pollution (more cars on the roads means more pollution. And cars are the major contributing factor to pollution in America), and that list goes on and on as well. Again, for the sake of expediency I won’t enumerate them.

But finally and most importantly to the women of The Sexual Revolution, I would not even ask the question. “who is behind The Sexual Revolution” had I not seen polls recently asking women if they would return to a more domestic lifestyle as perhaps housewives, again? Most answered they would not because their female peers would lose faith in them in that they accepted a so-called lesser role than they had taken before, as if there was something wrong with being a housewife.

And it’s that attitude, that of her peers who will think less of her if she returns to a lifestyle in the home, it is that attitude that tells me that even though The Sexual Revolution has brought us many great things, it has in fact not given today’s woman more freedom but less, it has shackled her mind. Because what once was a social movement designed to give a woman more power to choose what she does with her own life has in fact taken away one of her most significant choices, to take care of her own family, to do what she may very well need to do for herself and her own family by acting in their best interest.

The Sexual Revolution has in fact brought fewer choices to today’s woman, not more. And you have to ask yourself…why?

And you have to ask, ”has The Sexual Revolution really been a revolution at all?”

Because what it is…is usually what it does, and The Sexual Revolution is definitely not “What it is.”

Copyright © William Thien 2010

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