ABSTRACT
I n many ways, the sexual revolution of the sixties was a product of demographic and physiological forces. There was an extraordinary number of teenagers and young adults relative to the rest of the population. “We’re talking about a time when hormones were raging,” says one former hippie. “As far as I am concerned, much if not most of the energy driving the counterculture, the protests, the activism was just from kids trying to get laid.” The late sixties were marked, in some sense, by a critical mass of mating urges, a sort of collective libidinal overload. But the sexual revolution also had a more interesting, intellectual component. Students were not merely seeking out sexual experiences; they were talking about, writing about, and reading about the meaning of sexual freedom. It was a time when ideas mattered, and ideas about sexuality mattered a great deal.
