Sexual revolution

Sexual revolution

Part of the counterculture of the 1960s
Buttons from the sexual revolution
Date	late 1950s – early 1970s
Location	Western world
Participants	Regional: Sexual revolution in 1960s United States Social/commercial movements: Free love Gay liberation Golden Age of Porn
Outcome	Wider acceptance of sexuality, homosexuality, contraception, and pornography

The sexual revolution, also known as the sexual liberation, was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the late 1950s to the early 1970s.^[1] Sexual liberation included increased acceptance of sexual intercourse outside of traditional heterosexual, monogamous relationships, primarily marriage.^[2] The legalization of the pill as well as other forms of contraception, public nudity, pornography, premarital sex, homosexuality, masturbation, alternative forms of sexuality, and abortion all followed.^[3][4]

The term “first sexual revolution” is used by scholars to describe different periods of significant change in Western sexual norms, including the Christianization of Roman sexuality, the decline of Victorian morals, and the cultural shifts of the Roaring Twenties. Sexual revolution most commonly refers to the mid-20th century, when advances in contraception, medicine, and social movements led to widespread changes in attitudes and behaviors around sex. The sexual revolution was influenced by Freud’s theory of unconscious drives and psychosexual development, Mead’s ethnographic work on adolescent sexuality in Samoa, Unwin’s cross-cultural studies, and the groundbreaking research of Kinsey and later Masters and Johnson, all of which challenged traditional norms and expanded understanding of human sexuality.

The widespread availability of contraception from the early 20th century onward empowered individuals with reproductive choice, spurred legal and cultural shifts such as Griswold v. Connecticut, and influenced later landmark rulings on privacy, abortion, and LGBTQ+ rights. Free love is a related social movement advocating for the separation of the state from sexual matters like marriage and birth control, emphasizing personal freedom in relationships, though it faced decline in the 1980s due to the AIDS crisis.

By the 1970s, premarital and non-marital sex had become increasingly accepted in the U.S. due to the rise of birth control, later marriages, declining stigma around divorce, and the normalization of casual and non-monogamous sexual relationships.