Summer of 69: Sexual Revolution

For many, "Woodstock"  exemplified the counterculture of the 1960s and the "hippie era". The concept of "Free Love" as expressed by hippies, didn't just appear overnight. It's a philosophy with roots deep in human consciousness. It just needs a little encouragement to surface. And that encouragement appeared in the 1960s in the form of new knowledge about human sexuality, "the pill", psychedelic drugs, and a counter-culture which rejected the conservative ways and embraced individual freedom.

"The only unnatural sexual act is that which you cannot perform." (Alfred Kinsey)

A new awareness of human sexuality began to spread among Americans starting with the Kinsey Report in 1948. It was a nine year study of human sexuality which opened everyone's minds to the diversity of sexual behavior. One question in the survey asked whether the person was gay, bi or straight. The results indicating that up to 10% of the entire population is gay, was astonishing at the time. That one stat suddenly put homosexuality into a whole new light for many people. Another stat from the study that blew people away was the fact that nearly everyone masturbates. At last it seems, social science shed new light on sexuality, a once mystifying and taboo subject.

Then in the late '50s, Masters & Johnson did a series of clinical studies of Human Sexual Response in laboratory settings that explored our physiological functions in every fascinating detail. Their report likewise became a best-seller and people everywhere were now discussing such once forbidden topics as vaginal orgasms and pre-come.

These two studies set the backdrop for a new generation to explore their sexuality in a free and uninhibited way. Beat poets and writers like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs wrote popular books that embraced sensuality and sexual experimentation as an essential ingredient to living life to its fullest. Rock 'n Roll music likewise began to express the adolescent yearnings and forbidden desires that were previously repressed.