# What Led to the Radical Sixties? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 21, 2020, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-led-to-the-radical-sixties/854239 "2020-05-21T13:35:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2020, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-led-to-the-radical-sixties/854239/41 "2020-05-22T16:32:03Z")
> [@MortSahlFan](#): > > What about the rebellious music? The Doors, for example (among many others) What rebellious music did the Doors put out? CSNY and Jefferson Airplane did more, and to no effect that I can see. “[Volunteers](https://genius.com/Jefferson-airplane-volunteers-lyrics),” by the Airplane, was a straightforward call to revolution. A couple of weeks ago I heard it playing in a supermarket. ---
**Author:** ![MortSahlFan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3bc359/32.png) [@MortSahlFan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MortSahlFan)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2020, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-led-to-the-radical-sixties/854239/42 "2020-05-22T16:56:40Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > What rebellious music did the Doors put out? CSNY and Jefferson Airplane did more, and to no effect that I can see. > > “[Volunteers](https://genius.com/Jefferson-airplane-volunteers-lyrics),” by the Airplane, was a straightforward call to revolution. A couple of weeks ago I heard it playing in a supermarket. “Five to One”, “The Unknown Soldier” plus a ton of live concerts played to millions of people over a short period of time where Jim would talk. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2020, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-led-to-the-radical-sixties/854239/43 "2020-05-22T17:13:18Z")
This article argues that there was a clear progression from 1950’s rock to 1960’s rock in rebelliousness: > **[The '50s roots of rebellious rock](https://www.csmonitor.com/1999/0827/p17s1.html)** > > Being a teenager has never been easy. That rite of passage has long been marked by pop songs intended to appeal to teens and address their coming-o This one argues that rock was always associated with moral panics: > **[Rock 'n' roll and "moral panics" - Part One: 1950s and 1960s](https://www.usi.edu/news/releases/2017/02/rock-n-roll-and-moral-panics-part-one-1950s-and-1960s/)** ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2020, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-led-to-the-radical-sixties/854239/44 "2020-05-22T17:26:10Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Playboy happened in the 50s. > > Just on a personal note, I need to correct Wesley Clark. The seventies were a terrible financial decade. There was a recession from 1973-1975 after the first round of oil price hikes. The second round made it worse, with inflation spiking over 20 percent. Jobs were impossible to find. It was so bad that Nixon signed the The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) to fund jobs, and CETA benefits had to keep lengthening because even after a year people still couldn’t get a job. I took a couple of CETA jobs myself and I had been on food stamps for a few months in that blasted 1973. It was my worst decade as an adult and I would have laughed in your face if you told me the boomers had it easy. Re: the first sentence. I read somewhere years ago that the women’s movement was a reaction to the Playboy ethos … that families were uncool and men should be free to “pollinate” and move on. Or to dump the old, frumpy wife for a young bimbo. As for your second paragraph, I graduated college in '73, and I can heartily confirm everything you said here. I worked in a department store and was glad to get the work. And the gas shortages were in the 70s, too. Remember lining up for hours on alternate days to hopefully get enough gas to fill your tank? My memories of the 70s were of a lot of angst and financial worry. Also, don’t forget that interest on mortgages – for a long time – were in double digits, like 19%. I would _love_ to have the “excess” money I paid in interest all those years. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2020, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-led-to-the-radical-sixties/854239/45 "2020-05-22T18:15:15Z")
Affluence has been touched on but needs more exposition. The “Generation Gap” was real, contrasting the life experiences of someone born in the USA in 1920-1925 versus someone born in 1945-1950. As children and young adults the older generation went through the Great Depression and World War Two; the younger generation at least in the USA rode ~twenty years of one of the most affluent periods in history. The clash between the [survive/thrive](https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory-of-the-political-spectrum/) mindsets couldn’t have been greater. ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2020, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-led-to-the-radical-sixties/854239/46 "2020-05-22T18:27:44Z")
And comic books don’t forget the comics. > **[The Great Comic-Book Scare](https://www.npr.org/sections/talk/2008/04/the_great_comicbook_scare.html)** > > Two great comic-book scares. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2020, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-led-to-the-radical-sixties/854239/47 "2020-05-22T19:13:18Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > But of the dozen or more forms of birth control why was the pill so influential? For several reasons. One, it was more effective than anything except an IUD. FAR more, compared to a condom, which was the only thing easily available before. Two, it could be used without a man having to know about it, agree to it, or participate in the process. Three, feminism created an avenue where it (along with other forms) was universally available, no questions asked, which had never happened before. I took a bus to Planned Parenthood and got my prescription for the Pill with one appointment. I was fifteen years old. My parents never knew about it. Sex without inevitable punishment was incredibly novel for women, and it changed the world we live in. I think that the confluence of widespread, unheard of levels of affluence and the coming of age of a huge number of young people (the Boom) was critical. All these young people with time on their hands, easy money, health, freedom from fear and hardship (at least for whites). An enormously expanded ability to travel was a giant factor-- you could wander through India and Mexico or hitchhike across Europe for almost nothing. I well remember the sense that the narrow, worried world of our parents was over, and creative new ideas were pouring in like a flood. If you didn’t live through it it is hard to grasp just how shockingly refreshingly new these ideas were to most Americans. Most of this stuff had in reality been around quite awhile (Eastern mysticism, organic gardening, psychotropic drugs, utopian communalism, all predated the 1960’s of course) but suddenly they could be experienced by anyone who wanted to try them out, instead of just a few wealthy bohemians in tiny enclaves. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2020, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-led-to-the-radical-sixties/854239/48 "2020-05-22T19:59:58Z")
If you want the roots of what’s integral to the radical, don’t be square or derivative. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2020, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-led-to-the-radical-sixties/854239/49 "2020-05-22T23:30:39Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Badly needed since all the cars had those big back seats. That actually may have had something to do with it; even without the back seats. The ready availability of cars meant that most people in their late teens and early twenties had a lot more freedom to go do things their parents didn’t know about. Cars had been around for quite a while, of course. But the switch from war footing production to civilian production meant that there were a lot more of them; as well as a lot more of quite a few other things. That shift in production wasn’t instant; and social changes aren’t instant – people who grew up under a previous situation don’t shift gears in how they live their lives instantly if they can help it, and people born after WWII took a while to get old enough to do things much differently. Also, I think there was a swing in the 1950’s to try to get back to what people found familiar, after they’d survived the war, rationing, etc. - which had quite an impact in the USA even though there was no fighting here, and of course much more impact where there was; so it was mostly the people born after that who were ready for change. > [@Deeg](#): > > My vote is that the pill had the largest influence but we’re probably overstating the influence of any one thing. The Roaring 20’s was just as radical for its time as the 60’s and most of the things we’re discussing had little to no influence in the 20’s. The 20’s had the odd incongruence of the liberal (Jazz, movies, flappers) with the conservative (Prohibition). Agreeing with both parts of that. The 20’s were hugely, wildly radical. We tend to forget that. I don’t even think that Prohibition was conservative; at least, in the sense of ‘trying to keep things as they have been’. Most of the USA had taken hard cider, beer, and whisky for granted throughout its previous history. My ten-years-older sister, who was in her teens in the 50’s, was seriously shocked when she saw a dress my mother had worn somewhere around the late 20’s or early 30’s. But there was a lot more to it than just clothes. And, in the case of both the 20’s and the 60’s, there were multiple factors involved in the reasons as well as in the expression. > [@Odesio](#): > > The IUD popular at the time required an invasive procedure where the physician dilated the cervix to insert the device and diaphrams, cervical caps, and other barrier methods had to be fitted to ensure they worked well. And so far as barrier methods go, there’s a difference between method effectiveness and actual effectiveness. One advantage the pill has over other methods is that women no longer had to make sure to take special precautions before sex as the pill took care of all that. It was a game changer. > > Other changes included court rulers making contraception available to married or unmarried women. It wasn’t until the mid-60s that married women had access to contraceptives in all states and it wasn’t until the early 70s until unmarried women had legal access to them in all states. Very much this; and, as Ulfreida said, the Pill required no cooperation from one’s partner; not even waiting while you put in a diaphragm (which, until the 60’s or later, you probably couldn’t get unless you were married; and might have had trouble getting even if you were.) Your partner didn’t even need to know you were taking it. There was a brief narrow window, between the mid to late 60’s and the early 80’s, when contraception was readily available, and nearly everybody thought that any STD could easily be treated with antibiotics. That wasn’t entirely true even at the time, but it was the general perception. The Pill seemed to be all you needed. The potential sexual freedom of that stretch of time had a lasting effect on the culture. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2020, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-led-to-the-radical-sixties/854239/50 "2020-05-23T02:15:37Z")
The Pill also led to feminism via a backlash: In the 1960s men had optimistically presumed (hoped?) that freedom from fear of pregnancy would lead to women joining men in unrestricted swinging promiscuity- which most women did not in fact want. The crassness with which the “Sexual Revolution” often treated women led to women in the 1970s demanding to be taken seriously and not as walking party favors. ---
**Author:** ![wahsahzii](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a6a055/32.png) [@wahsahzii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wahsahzii)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2020, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-led-to-the-radical-sixties/854239/51 "2020-05-25T19:58:14Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Just on a personal note, I need to correct Wesley Clark. The seventies were a terrible financial decade. There was a recession from 1973-1975 after the first round of oil price hikes. The second round made it worse, with inflation spiking over 20 percent. Jobs were impossible to find. It was so bad that Nixon signed the The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) to fund jobs, and CETA benefits had to keep lengthening because even after a year people still couldn’t get a job. I took a couple of CETA jobs myself and I had been on food stamps for a few months in that blasted 1973. It was my worst decade as an adult and I would have laughed in your face if you told me the boomers had it easy. Yeah, I had to live in my car for about 18 months until I had enough money to finish college. Worked on farms for food for a bit. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2020, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-led-to-the-radical-sixties/854239/52 "2020-05-25T21:48:39Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > The Pill also led to feminism via a backlash: In the 1960s men had optimistically presumed (hoped?) that freedom from fear of pregnancy would lead to women joining men in unrestricted swinging promiscuity- which most women did not in fact want. The crassness with which the “Sexual Revolution” often treated women led to women in the 1970s demanding to be taken seriously and not as walking party favors. Coming back to this: It did indeed have some impact; some men seemed to think that the only reason absolutely every woman they wanted to have sex with had had to turn them down was fear of pregnancy or of social sanctions. The idea that no, some women just didn’t want to have sex with them in particular, didn’t go down well with everybody (and still doesn’t go down well with some.) However, this didn’t “lead to feminism”, though it may well have encouraged a resurgence of it. There’s been feminism in the United States, and women demanding to be taken seriously, at least since Abigail Adams told her husband that the laws of the new nation ought to “remember the ladies”. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2020, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-led-to-the-radical-sixties/854239/53 "2020-05-26T06:58:03Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > However, this didn’t “lead to feminism”, though it may well have encouraged a resurgence of it. There’s been feminism in the United States, and women demanding to be taken seriously, at least since Abigail Adams told her husband that the laws of the new nation ought to “remember the ladies”. I think what counted was that it was a bit harder for sexist bosses to refuse to hire women because either they’d get married and have kids or they were already married and were of course going to have kids. I’m not saying this doesn’t happen now - just that it made things slightly easier. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2020, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-led-to-the-radical-sixties/854239/54 "2020-05-27T16:34:35Z")
Posters have largely touched on it, but I see two main issues: 1. College. Prior to the 1960s, college was largely for rich people. Even with the GI bill, very few people went to college. You largely were born, lived, and died in your homogenous local community. So if you were taught to marry your high school sweetheart, get a job and start a family at 18, that women should stay home, and that blacks should eat at a different area of the restaurant, or if the government told you to go fight in Korea, then you had no frame of reference to question any of these things. The post war prosperity allowed many middle class families to send their children to college. Many of my parents’ friends bragged that they were the “first in the family to go to college.” Then, as now, this opens you up to a diversity of viewpoints. You mean there are a lot of women who will have casual sex? You don’t think you need to start a family until you are 30? You think it is okay for women to work outside the house? In your community blacks and whites eat together? You think the government should have to justify going to war? Let’s sit down, smoke some weed and talk about these radical ideas. 1. The Vietnam War. As a backdrop to the above, the Boomers were the first generation not to experience any real hardship or sacrifice. The postwar prosperity allowed them to live a comfortable middle class lifestyle and they were going to college, on their way to great jobs and careers, even better than they had it growing up. Now the government is doing to draft them and tell this 19 year old kid that he has to go fight halfway across the world against people who haven’t done anything to us, but are “spreading communism.” Yeah, well, fuck that. I have a life to live. I have no doubt that the Boomers were just as brave as any other generation and would have volunteered if an enemy had invaded the California coast. But, no, I’m a liberal arts major that has never fired a gun. I am not going over to kill or be killed by these people who have never done anything to me. And I’m pissed about it so “One, Two, Three, Four, We don’t want your fucking war!” Those two things together caused a tipping point which changed society forever. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-led-to-the-radical-sixties/854239.md?page=2)