Word: sexuality
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Lady C.'s erotic enthusiasm caused D.H. Lawrence's novel to be banned as obscene not so long ago; the book was finally cleared in the U.S. in 1959. By then it could take its place on shelves crowded with explicit fiction that celebrated the new ideal of sexual behavior it had helped to inspire. Freedom, spontaneity, pleasure without guilt became the bywords of the liberated '60s and '70s, as many men and women evolved freewheeling rituals of courtship in singles bars, in casual affairs and in relationships in which the outcomes remained insouciantly negotiable...
...enough, it is possible to imagine a future in which Lady Chatterley might again be banned for setting a harmful example, but this time in a grimly different sense. The specter of the deadly and incurable disease called AIDS -- acquired immunodeficiency syndrome -- has cast a shadow over the American sexual landscape. Since AIDS is chiefly transmitted through sex, it is forcing partners to a painful re-examination of their bedroom practices. The heedless abandon of Lawrencian lovers begins to seem dangerous and irresponsible, for oneself and for others. Instead of a transfixed gaze, lovers may feel they have to give...
...heterosexual population. Straight men and women in some cases do not believe it, in some cases do not want to believe it. But barring the development of a vaccine, swingers of all persuasions may sooner or later be faced with the reality of a new era of sexual caution and restraint...
...America in the '80s that means rescinding the sexual revolution of the past quarter-century. Five years ago, concern about herpes caused a similar scare, one that seems trivial by comparison. Now "safe sex" are the watchwords. The mechanics of copulation have become public to a degree unthinkable only a year ago, with detailed discussions in the press and on television of bodily secretions and sexual protection like condoms...
...shrewd Washington Post column, Novelist Erica Jong (Fear of Flying), formerly a high priestess of sexual abandon, put the dilemma succinctly: "It's hard enough to find attractive single men without having to quiz them on their history of bisexuality and drug use, demand blood-test results and thrust condoms into their hands. Wouldn't it be easier to give up sex altogether and join some religious order?" With a little emendation the same plaint can be made by men. "You think twice," observes a 28-year-old male / patron of Lucy's, a crowded singles bar on Manhattan...