Changes in Family and Sex Roles in Twentieth Century America The Rights Revolutions of the 1960s

The Challenges…. To White Supremacy – Civil Rights To Patriarchy -- Second Wage Feminism To Sexual Orthodoxy – Sexual Revolution and Gay Rights

Civil Rights Movement 1940s-1950s: NAACP, Urban League, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, attack the “separate but equal” doctrine in American law and social practice. –1954: Brown v Bd of Ed overturns Plessy v Ferguson –Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus and starts a movement of nonviolent civil disobedience.

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Civil Rights Movement Goals Integration of institutions of public and economic life Equality of opportunity for all Americans End of theories of racial inferiority and white superiority …. Principles of “rights talk” expands to other avenues of life….

Civil Rights Legal and Legislative Changes First the courts: Brown v. Board of Education (1954) desegregated public schools. –Repudiated the theory of “separate but equal” Equal Pay Act of 1963: –Men and women must be paid the same for the same jobs. Civil Rights Act of 1964 –Nondiscrimination in public accommodations –Title VII: Nondiscrimination in the labor market Voting Rights Act of 1965 Housing Act of 1968 –non discrimination required in housing markets

Second Wave Feminism Challenges the patriarchal family Challenges the sexual control of women Challenges roles of masculinity and femininity and women’s place in society

The Baby Boom

Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and its Legacy “Playboy” culture for men and…. Birth control pill for reliable contraception for women Lead to new possibilities for and debates about gender relations….

Second Wave Feminism Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) signaled new challenges to the limitations on women’s rolesThe Feminine Mystique New organizations appeared: –National Organization for Women (NOW) (1966) –Women’s liberation and consciousness raising groups – late 1960s and later

Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem

Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and its Legacy: Gay Rights

Same Sex Relations We have examined the history of sexuality primarily in the context of the history of the family. Western religious traditions conceptualize same sex sexual relations as deviant and/or sinful, and classify same sex physical relations with other forms of deviant, sinful, or prohibited sexuality (e.g., fornication, adultery, bestiality, masturbation). The logic behind such a conception is that the purpose of sexuality is procreation, and such behavior is not potentially procreative.

Movements for Sexual Liberation Come from a variety of interests, e.g.,…. –Heterosexual Men and Women –Science and Medicine –Gays and Lesbians

Science and Medicine... Challenge the authority of law and religious authorities to define the “normal” and the “deviant” in sexuality. –Psychologists: Freud –Sociologists Alfred Kinsey –Physiologists Masters and Johnson

Sociologists......begin to survey sexual practices. The Kinsey Reports of the 1940s and 1950s demonstrated the discrepancy between morality and practice For example, 1/3rd of men acknowledged a sexual relationship to orgasm with another male

Physiologists... Masters and Johnson conducted ‘experiments’ to study human sexuality by putting people in a laboratory, wiring them up and recording physiological responses. When: 1950s and 1960s

Gays and Lesbians…. And the the right to sexual autonomy. In the US, cities developed gay and lesbian subcultures (turn of the 20th century), including bars and restaurants, and networks of jobs and relationships of support. These communities were periodically harassed and prosecuted under local vice laws.

Gay Rights Organizations 1924 The Society for Human Rights in Chicago becomes the country's earliest known gay rights organization The Mattachine Society, the first national gay rights organization, is formed by Harry Hay, considered by many to be the founder of the gay rights movement The Daughters of Bilitis, a pioneering national lesbian organization, is founded.

Gays and Lesbians... In 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, a bar in Greenwich Village, NY, the patrons fought back when the police attempted to raid the bar and arrest patrons. A street riot broke out and led to an open movement for the rights of gays and lesbians, patterned on the civil rights and women’s liberation movements.Stonewall Innfought back

Stonewall Inn

Making Gay Culture Visible