The Century of Sex: Playboy's History of the Sexual Revolution, 1900-1999 - Hardcover

Petersen, James R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802116523 ISBN 13: 9780802116529

Publisher: Grove Pr, 1999

Synopsis

Arguing that the 1960s "sexual revolution" was in fact a chapter in a much larger social movement, the author investigates a century of sex and its impact on the culture, from Freud's first visit to America in 1909, through the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique in 1963, to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. 75,000 first printing.

About this title

From the Back Cover

The Century of Sex is a comprehensive chronicle of sexual mores, relations, and politics in the twentieth century. James R. Petersen argues that the "Sexual Revolution" began generations before the advent of penicillin, Playboy, and the Pill-and ultimately produced seismic cultural shifts that have changed forever the way Americans live.

Beginning at the turn of the century with the pioneering efforts of Free Love radicals, The Century of Sex chronicles the ensuing struggles of activists for sexual liberation against the agents of repression. Petersen weaves a decade-by-decade narrative packed with colorful characters, a panoply of causes, and unforgettable events. He profiles the activities of censors like Anthony Comstock-head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice-and agencies such as the Legion of Decency and the Moral Majority, and culminates with the prosecutorial inquisitions of Kenneth Starr. He introduces heroines such as Ida Craddock, who wrote one of the nation's first marriage manuals (and paid for the act with her life), Margaret Sanger, who fought with Comstock over birth control-and won-and heroes like Alfred Charles Kinsey, whose groundbreaking research changed the way we look at sex.

Throughout the narrative, The Century of Sex explores the ways in which historical tumults of the 1900s affected sex-and vice versa-through the Jazz Age, the depression, two world wars, the cold war, the sixties, the disco era, and the age of AIDS. The book covers America's periodic moral panics, from the white-slave hysteria of 1910, to the homosexual panic of the 1950s, to the child-porn scare of the 1980s, and also traces the changes wrought by medical science, social science, and technology, from the vibrator to home video to Viagra.

The Century of Sex is a trenchant chronicle of a turbulent era that proves the truth behind the song lyric from the 1944 movie Pin-Up Girl, "Battles are won in the day time/But history is made at night."

From the Foreword by Hugh M. Hefner: "In 1995, I asked the editors of Playboy to undertake a history of the sexual revolution. But not the one that I am sometimes credited with (or, conversely, blamed for) starting.

Most Americans today think the sexual revolution happened in the sixties and seventies. As they recall, it only lasted a short time and gave us the Swedish Bikini Team, Debbie Does Dallas, unwed teenage mothers, date rape, and AIDS.

The story I envisioned was a far grander event, one that was inextricably connected with the history of the twentieth century. If viewed over a one-hundred-year span, the sexual revolution would be seen for what it was: a great struggle involving ideas, champions, and villains. We would chart the liberation of men and women, of language, the body, the imagination.

I believe that sex is the primary motivating factor in the course of human history, and in the twentieth century it has emerged from the taboos and controversy that have surrounded it throughout the ages to claim its rightful place in society. This was The Century of Sex, when mankind confronted the fears that controlled and shaped sex as they had since the beginning of time-and triumphed."

James R. Petersen wrote and edited the "Playboy Advisor," America's longest-running sex-advice column, for over twenty years. He is the author of 365 Ways to Improve Your Sex Life and has also written for Outside, Diversion, Sports Illustrated, American Way, Ski, and Parenting. Hugh M. Hefner is the editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine, which he founded in 1953.

Reviews

In an accessible survey of 100 years of sexual change in the U.S., Petersen, who wrote and edited the "Playboy Advisor" column for two decades, deftly demonstrates how deeply integral sex and sexuality have been to American society. More importantly, he charts how our endless conflicts over the regulation and representation of sexual activity have been emblematic of broader battles concerning the meaning of freedom and personal autonomy. Although some of Petersen's anecdotes are shopworn (e.g., Charlie Chaplin's lusty demands on his 15-year-old wife and J. Edgar Hoover's surveillance of Martin Luther King's sex life), he turns up some surprises, such as the sustained campaign by religious leaders against the circulation of pinups among G.I.s or the odd fact that such antithetical figures as Rev. Billy Graham and Margaret Mead both attacked the Kinsey Report. While Petersen gives some space to homosexuality, bisexuality and transgenderism, his focus is overwhelmingly heterosexual: for instance, when discussing I Was a Teenage Werewolf in the context of the eroticism of youth-oriented horror movies of the 1950s, he ignores the widely recognized gay male subtext. Lesbianism fares better here but, more often than not, is presented as titillating. By the end of the volume, Petersen's "pro-sex" discussion of the politics of rape, sexual harassment and porn takes on a strident, anti-feminist tone that becomes an unnuanced "defense" of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's philosophy. 32 pages of photos. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Whoopee! In spite of assaults from the likes of Anthony Comstock, Catharine MacKinnon, Bill Clinton, and the Legion of Decency, sex has survived and thrived in this century. That much at least is clear from this abbreviated history put together by author Petersen (author of Playboy's popular sex advice column for 20 years) and edited and with a Foreword by Hugh Hefner himself. Essentially a complilation of tidbits, enlivened occasionally by excerpts from erotic literature (Sons and Lovers, The Amboy Dukes, etc.), this volume also makes it clear that sex was not discovered in the 1960s, but that it was a highly popular, if much maligned, pastime as early as 1900. That was when Comstock and his New York Society for the Suppression of Vice were on the move to seize books, postcards, newspapers, and any other material he deemed obscene. The first decade was also the time of the girl in the red velvet swing, hysteria about white slavery, and Havelock Ellis spreading the seditious idea that sex was not only natural, but healthy. Subsequent decades saw dance halls, movie theaters, and women's suffrage begin to loosen puritanical bonds, as did World War I and Margaret Sanger's campaign for birth control. With World War II came penicillin, the first volume of the Kinsey report, and continuing battles over censorship; the 1950s saw increasing concern over sexual deviation (including homosexuality) and the first issue of Playboy. Next, in Petersen's relentlessly obvious catalogue, came the flower children, feminism, and the pill, followed by a wave of so-called pornography and AIDS. The 1990s have given us technologically enhanced sex, via phone and Internet. Each chapter wraps with a snapshot of names, events, and statistics of the decade. A mosaic that is less colorful and titillating than one might imagine, but rewarding in its reminder of the deep roots of the sexual revolution. (32 pages color photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Petersen, "Playboy Advisor" for 22 years, jams his exuberant and carefully researched chronicle with fascinating and colorful details of American sexual life and mores. It's all here, from exotic dancer Little Egypt to the Clinton scandalsAwith Playboy magazine and Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique emerging as paired heroes challenging the asexual "pod people" of suburbia. He concludes that the sexual revolution has been a war of words, that we have achieved cultural agreement about sex in one thing: nothing is hidden. While Petersen's slant is obviously prosex and anticensorship, he's written a book that encourages readers to really think about the pervasiveness and complexity of sexual issues in American society. And there is much to ponder, whether you agree with Petersen's argument or not. An interesting counterpoint to other histories of sexuality (like John D'Emilio & others' Intimate Matters, Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1997. 2d ed.); for public and academic libraries.
-AMartha Cornog, Philadelphia
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Petersen's credentials for writing this decade-by-decade survey of twentieth-century sexuality consist of his having written and edited Playboy's sex-advice column, "Advisor," for more than 20 years. Sex is a magnetic subject that draws many other spheres into its orbit, from gender roles to popular culture, birth control, and pornography, but the themes that dominate this rapid-fire account are sexual hypocrisy and censorship, the twin offspring of America's puritanism. Petersen chronicles the harassment of birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger, for instance, and the tragic fate of Ida Craddock, who wrote a forthright marriage manual only to be driven to suicide by the brouhaha it generated. He chronicles the dark deeds of censors, including Andrew Comstock and Joe Breen of the Motion Picture Production Code. At times, Petersen's galloping approach seems rote, then, suddenly, he offers something fresh, like an account of the army's approach to controlling venereal disease, or a description of the first stag film, "Free Ride" (1915). But once he hits the fifties, his narrative starts to feel like a documentary running on fast-forward: flashes of Lenny Bruce give way to Playboy Bunnies, girls screaming at the Beatles, the Kinsey Report, Deep Throat, Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, AIDS, phone sex, Annie Sprinkle, Internet sex, abortion clinic bombings, and Clinton's impeachment proceedings. Unlike John Heidenry's more tightly focused What Wild Ecstasy (1997), Petersen rarely touches on the lives of ordinary people, creating, instead, a provocative headline-based collage that charts humankind's perpetual dance of longing and fear: one step toward sexual freedom, two steps back. Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Pr
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802116523
• ISBN 13: 9780802116529
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 548