Sexual Revolution

What does "sexual revolution" mean? When, how, and why did it begin? What, if anything, did it change? And what hope do we have that its ideals of equality and pleasure can be realized? From Susan Sontag's "Pornographic Imagination" to Al Goldstein's notorious review of Deep Throat, Sexual Revolution explores the cultural, economic, political, and moral consequences of new ways of sexual thinking and behaving — reclaiming the female orgasm and challenging the double standard; celebrating open marriage and homosexuality; and defying taboo and censorship. With Anne Koedt's classic "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm" and Norman Mailer's "The Homosexual Villain;" Helen Gurley Brown to Lenny Bruce — to name a few — this book features the voices of those who registered and provoked popular consciousness and transformed how we think about sex. Today, Dr. Phil talks about oral sex among grade-schoolers and porn star Jenna Jameson gets a six-figure advance for her memoirs. Something has changed, but Sexual Revolution reminds us that our sexuality remains a bitterly contested battleground. This collection includes selections by Erica Jong, Lawrence Lipton, Masters and Johnson, Betty Dodson, Gayle Rubin, Timothy Leary, Henry Miller, Huey Newton, Sigmund Freud, Simone de Beauvoir, and many others.

- Selections from Betty Friedan, Masters and Johnson, Alix Kates Shulman, Anne Koedt, Barbara Seaman, Gay Talese, Susan Sontag, Kate Milet, Paul Goodman, Shere Hite, Herbert Marcuse, Lenny Bruce, Simone de Beauvoir, and many others

Introduction / Jeffery Escoffier -- Foreword : Pure possibility / Erica Jong -- pt. 1. Recognitions. The second sexual revolution -- The erotic revolution / Lawrence Lipton -- Reflections on the revolution in sex / Francis Canavan -- The sexual revolution / Kermit Mehlinger -- All they talk about is sex, sex, sex / Tom Buckley -- pt. 2. Female sexuality. Women alone? Oh, come now! / Helen Gurley Brown -- The female orgasm / William H. Masters and Virginia Johnson -- A theory of female sexuality / Mary Jane Sherfey -- The myth of the vaginal orgasm / Anne Koedt -- Organs and orgasms / Alix Kates Shulman -- Is woman insatiable? / Barbara Seaman -- The zipless fuck / Erica Jong -- Getting to know me / Betty Dodson -- "Tell me what you are thinking about," he said / Nancy Friday -- Uses of the erotic : the erotic as power / Audre Lorde -- pt. 3. Changing sex lives. America's best kept secret / Lawrence Lipton -- Exploring the new freedom / Gay Talese -- Open marriages / Nena O'Neill and George O'Neill -- The myth of black sexual superiority : a re-examination / Robert Staples -- Styling, profiling, and pretending : the game before the fall / Gloria I. Joseph -- Eulenspiegel? What's that? / Ron Tyson -- The leather menace : comments on politics and S/M / Gayle Rubin -- Millbrook '66 : on sex, consciousness, and LSD / Timothy Leary -- pt. 4. Obscenity, pornography, and erotica. Obscenity and the law of reflection / Henry Miller -- The People of the State of California vs. Lenny Bruce / Lenny Bruce -- Think clean -- Pornotopia / Steven Marcus -- The pornographic imagination / Susan Sontag -- Pornography in the service of women / Angela Carter -- Review of Deep Throat / Al Goldstein -- Feminism, moralism, and pornography / Ellen Willis -- Talking sex / Deirdre English, Amber Hollibaugh, and Gayle Rubin -- pt. 5. Homosexuality. Revolt of the homosexual / Seymour Krim -- The homosexual villain / Norman Mailer -- Memoirs of an ancient activist / Paul Goodman -- A letter to the revolutionary brothers and sisters / Huey Newton -- Notes of a radical lesbian / Martha Shelley -- The myth of the myth of the vaginal orgasm / Jill Johnston -- Cocksucker / Anonymous -- Indiscriminate promiscuity as an act of revolution / Charley Shively -- A secret side of lesbian sexuality / Pat Califia -- What we're rollin' around in bed with / Amber Hollibaugh and Cherrie Moraga -- pt. 6. Thinking about sex. "Civilized" sexual morality and modern nervousness / Sigmund Freud -- Sexual repression, instinctual renunciation, and sexual reform / Wilhelm Reich -- The transformation of sexuality into eros / Herbert Marcuse -- Sexuality and psychoanalysis / Simone de Beauvoir -- Liberation : toward the polymorphous / Dennis Altman -- The social origins of sexual development / John H. Gagnon and William Simon -- Power and sex : interview with Michel Foucault / Bernard Henri Levy.