Sexuality: a search for perspective; 10; The Emancipation of Women and the Sexual Revolution -- Sidney Cornelia Callahan, author and Lecturer from NYC.

We call it the sexual revolution though that really isn't too good a word I don't think it sort of suggests to you know to the barricades would always seems to be much more kind of a letting down of barriers which is what is happening. So I think a better word is to call it a sexual renaissance which is in the making you know a sexual flowering in our culture of blooming. And this is dependent I think upon our changing our ideals of sexuality and our stereotypes of both male and female roles and these are stereotypes which may be losing ground but are still. Quite influential in the culture. Michigan State University radio presents sexuality as a search for perspective a series of recorded lectures from an interdisciplinary colloquy on human sexuality held on the campus of Michigan State University. The purpose of this series is to provide a comprehensive discussion of human sexuality in its broadest possible perspective. And yet deal with this important and timely topic in an

organized informed and rational manner. The lecturer today will be Mrs. Sidney Cornelia Callahan author and lecturer from New York Mrs. Callahan holds degrees from Sarah Lawrence College and is the mother of six children. She is the author of the illusion of event beyond birth control. Our topic today will be the emancipation of women and the sexual revolution. Now Mrs. Sydney Cornelia Callahan. I always put in Cornelia and Sidney Cornelius and they don't think another man writing about women telling them what to do. I feel that it's about time that women did talk to people about women and particularly had their say on premarital sexuality. I think the main thing we need to do in sexuality today is to de mythologize sexuality. And yet

keep it human. And this is a difficult thing to do. It's very hard to accomplish both at the same time. But no knowledge and discussion and careful thinking which I'm sure you will have here. Dispel mystery fear and taboo which is very damaging to the human condition. I particularly want to affirm all of those speakers who have talked about the importance of culture in determining our sexuality and in particular the sexualities all important grow from our cultural conditioning how important culture is in shaping what we think our sexual roles. Once we grasp this point that we are men. We've been made what we are to a certain extent through language through the culture through the human influence. I think this gives us a certain freedom if man who has this freedom

to shape himself. He has shaped himself through this cultural conditioning then he has the freedom to reappraise how well he's done. He can evolve new attitudes which can be passed on to a new generation and that is what I think we are about. Now. I too particularly want to urge new ideals of the sexual roles in our culture femininity and masculinity. I think it's been extremely damaging that we have stressed polarity and division between male and female. The whole mystique of the yen and the yang this total difference between the sky and the earth. Between heart and head. All of these polarities that have been divided up as female and male characteristics I think instead we ought to stress the common humanity and the similarity of personal development in both the sexes.

Even if we are biologically tending toward one direction which I don't think can be proved. But I want to cover myself in case we have really turns out the hormones are more influential than we think. Even if this is so. Men. Being the free species to a certain extent should try to cultivate a growing. From this polarity so that we wish for men to develop sensitivity intuitiveness personal concerns cultural creativity. All of the things we just thought the war suspiciously feminine. I wish for women to develop more initiative more aggression responsibility for the wider world and a sharper commitment to professional work. And the world. Where women are not. Caught unprepared for their second life

there. Twenty years after childbearing when they have as much productive life left as a man of 20 had 100 years ago. Because of the longer life span and the ability to go back in the community once one's children have been raised. People keep telling me about the empty nest period I don't really believe it. They keep saying that there comes a time when they go away. So this we should prepare for this commitment to doing something meaningful within the community and to see that this takes a kind of an initiative an aggression a future planning which we have not expected of women. You just expect them to be charming and passive and to be pleasing to him in so many ways. Well I think these developments in our sexual roles. Are going to determine what happens to our sexual revolution. We call it the sexual revolution though that really isn't too good a word I don't think it sort of suggests

you know to the barricades always seems to be much more kind of a letting down of barriers which is what is happening. So I think a better word is to call it a sexual renaissance which is in the making you know a sexual flowering in our culture a bloomy and this is dependent I think upon our changing our ideals of sexuality and our stereotypes of both male and female roles. And these are stereotypes which may be losing ground but are still. Quite influential in the culture. Here I think. Of the problems of the new feminist too. It's not a simple problem. When I think go see moaned about who are who. Whose feminism kind of takes the form of say coming out for male brothels for women for emancipated women. This is her idea of emancipation. This is equality. Well I think there are many women would

refuse to take the traditional male model of humanity without a great deal of reappraisal. As someone else has said in a another context who wants to be integrated into a burning building. See where my producer says a lot about what is the more human model. Male or female. So I feel we have to worry about the masculine mystique as well as the feminine mystique. And along with the sexual Mystique which is embodied in so many of our adolescent manifestations in the culture today. Of course poor Oh Hugh Hefner here I'm going to bring him up again. Let's say can we really take you. Seriously. And when I. Find Playboy is around the house. I really don't mind if. My children look at the pictures as long as they don't read the editorial.

Clip the print and leave the pictures. Erotic imagery being developed but I do mind that I do hear. About women as objects and authors and people being and so I think that this may be on the way out. Being an optimist course I cannot help but think that the changes advocated for women are probably more revolutionary and perhaps more important for us to concentrate on today. Although I always end up taught starting to talk about women and ending up talking about men so I really shouldn't say it's more important. Both of these are important developing different roles but at least the emancipation of women seems to be still in process. Women have not yet been granted full personhood full equality given full expectation for their potentiality in our culture. Or would you find that instead of more Ph.D.s or more days or more

women in government. Are more women finishing college. You find the opposite we're gradually going down down so that less women are really making these commitments. So that the that the feminist of a generation ago would be horrified. To see that there is less. Taking of these new opportunities by women today. And so I would echo Mrs. Mendax plea. That we concentrate on furthering the mental passion of women. And remember that the Chinese women used to have their feet bound in order to give them that inability to strive. It was thought very seven minutes long. And I think we are binding women's minds with our standard ideas of the feminine role. The fact that we don't as expected of women we let women off often without. The highest. Development of their

potential. And this we should do something about beginning with our. Daughters and our sons. My topic is pretty sexuality. So I'd like to talk about the effect of women's emancipation. On our sexual situation today. And I'm absolutely certain that if we hadn't been this development of women. We really wouldn't be having a sexual renaissance in this for several reasons. In the era of the emerging heterosexual. Relationship into a personal form of communication an expression of love. You've just got to go at women for personhood and equality. Obviously you just can't have it in a personal relationship unless you've got two persons. You have to grant women personhood. Times and Freud said after 30 years of practice what women want.

Is to be thought of as person individual persons. So you must have this. This idea of women as a person have a higher concept of law. There must be equality and freedom for the lab to choose his or her lover. And when women were granted only animal or sub rational existence then they could really never be aware of the necessity was always there. Speaking of the ethical ethics of sexuality. Speaks of what he calls the alien dignity of another Each person must grant to another. What he calls alien dignity in all relationships but especially in sexual relationships. And I think this is quite important if there's another person there. It's not just an object. It's not just a game. There's another

person there with his rights his dignity his center which is just as important as my own. What is extremely difficult for a master to grasp this to a sleigh. For a parent to grant this to a child for instance or a customer to grant this to a prostitute and vice versa. Dignity requires a certain freedom of choice. An absence of necessity and equal respect. And I just don't think you get this in cultures which practice polygamy. You're the woman as always sharing her status with another woman so that she's never totally equal with the husband or with the bride price where you really been bought to a certain extent and your families are involved in forced into arranged marriages. All of these things which were common all over the world. Before. Well I just don't think you could develop. A sexuality which was based

on freedom equality and integration of sex within a developed personality one who chooses. So we assume that sex is not simply a biological drive or release from tension. Then it does require integration in the complex cultural development of personality you're rational. We're emotional. We're cultured. We use language. And I think it's impossible for us to go back to an idea of sex simply as an outlet of. Attention even our pleasure is very condition to a certain kind of psychological knowledge that this is pleasure. We learn pleasure from other people it is social as well as biological. And I think once you get that integration within the personality that idea that's the way it is. And this is the way it is it's hard to

revert. To. The earlier analogies use for sexuality. Eating for instance. Nothing quite so the sexual relationship between a man and a woman he described with an eating analogy. Maybe because since is usually a man who uses this imagery that obviously leaves women as well. Which is not a particularly edifying or free position. And that's sort of. A Pet of the kind of imagery which. Which. Does not grant women full personhood. And brings back the relationship rather than on the Are you worried that our relationship of a person to another. So I feel that saxes is one of the important that we come to know ourselves and communicate with others.

It's not simply an outlet. It's not simply a very spiritual. It's. Totally a theory or romantic ideal. It can never be consummated difficulty with romantic love. That you can never live together you have to kind of dive a climax like just in a song. And that's not a very good. Idea. Either. But it is. A way that we express love a way that we personalities our own identities and come to communicate with others. And this mutual giving and receiving in a sexual relationship. Is best when you've got a giver on a receiver. Who can mutually give and mutually receive and be equal in dignity and I think this is what is behind even the rarest even the most sexual libertine coming out the greatest license of permissiveness always want at least

consenting adults needing this. A sense of equality and freedom tween to even at a very minimal level. So I can feel that this is one way that the development of women is necessary the emancipation of women is necessary just for sex to be developed just for marriages to be developed in America. So we have the idea of. Growing together. Rather than using each other. So the emancipation of women and their development of free poke persons in the culture is necessary for marriage as well. As for the changing roles. And I think that American marriages have the potential of being the best marriages the world has ever seen. It's now possible to combine friendship and marriage and a mutuality in sexual expression and ways impossible in the past even impossible in other countries today. And

specifics of this kind of emancipation of women a new freedom the ability to divorce in a sense you don't out of necessity. The ability to control fertility so that we need widely accepted sceptered and available contraception and the acceptance of feminine sexuality. And of course civil equality in marriage and in the outside society. And I think we also need to have a certain economic independence for women just to grant the equality of all these other areas. She should have. A certain economic independence so she does not have to marry simply to achieve status and to be able to be free in the society. So I feel that this kind of freedom gives a certain time to a certain ability to marry more freely. And to make their

marriages better. And Saxon can also now include a new tenderness and physical release which I don't think it often before. Think women who are not oppressed or suppressed socially and intellectually also find themselves on oppressed and unsuppressed sexually and emotionally and I don't know that you can prove this correlation that if you teach women to be aggressive or to think a great deal of themselves or to respect themselves or to seek fulfillment in all the other areas of life that they will also. Become more aggressive sexually and develop in this way. But it does seem to be the case. This is what happens. So I think this development of passion in marriage for women is one of the best sign. Of our sexual renaissance. And the much debated question of feminine orgasms in marriage it seems undebatable but this

fully should be a norm for women as well as men. Now no one wishes to make a fetish of sexual achievement or mechanical measurements with unmarried women an orgasm is a part of the human potential given. And as we've heard from others at least in others only human species has this ability in human females to have this kind of release this pleasure and certainly to consider it unnecessary. Or beside the point. I think it's just a rhythm that a male insensitivity. And Leslie Barber who's a psychoanalyst talks about the tyranny of the female orgasm and that too bad. Anybody ever tell a woman so. I feel this is the last gasp of a kind of male. Privilege which is very damaging to both men and to women.

This may not be necessary for procreation but then procreation is not really as necessary to our culture anymore. The population problem and so forth. As the development. Of a good marriage and the family situations to launch and raise the few children that we can have. So I think that we should consider that this past passive ity. And this. Sexual standing of women that we saw within the last hundred years as extremely abnormal abnormal interlude the sexless Victorian lady can be viewed simply as an aberration. In the long cultural history of man. Sure things were better before she appears in the sea. Things will be better after. No one can remember when ladies were. Repressed and couldn't enjoy themselves at all or even supposed to know about this.

So the specifically sexual differences between men and women I think may not be as distinct. The sexual differences and their. Performance in their interests and so forth. When we have a new freedom to develop all the way down to the nursery. So that we don't begin early conditioning women to be inferior even to day Masters and Johnson in their studies. Concluded that male and female sexuality is more alike than it is different. I thought that was we were freed from Freud Royds wonderful theories of feminine development which gave a great deal of support to those who wish to keep women in stereotyped roles. And I felt that their finding that women were just as interested had just much ability potential and sexuality was a certain was a free freeing women for this new particular fulfillment.

So there may be still a difference in timing or peaks of sexual development or difference in time or arousal. But these also might be less acceptable to cultural change. I wonder if those statistics which show that. Educated more educated young men are less willing to accept. Going to a prostitute than they were. A hundred years ago. I wonder if this does not show that even men and the supposedly driven young highly sexed adolescent stage. If these men are raised with more feminine. Sensitivity if they cannot also be developed to require more emotional commitment and of thought and affection and their sexuality. If we say that men and women have been the say had the same potential but that somehow culture has conditioned women to wat a fraction of women have been

able to have lived up to this ideal of chastity The reason we put not say that with the proper conditioning men could also. Become more sensitive more personal more. Demanding more of themselves in this realm. Giving up forever the kind of predatory. How far can I go. How much can I get for this kind of realization that the emotion would be important in this relationship to my not even so sure that the myth. Driven mail is all that true. I don't know that it's really hormonal. This hormonal drive to release years that it might not also be tied up. With a certain amount of status and the youth culture. And a certain amount. Of cultural conditioning that this is the way I prove the reality. I think we have to wait and see on this. I definitely feel.

That when it comes to marriage men can be trained to sensitivity and that women can be trained and conditioned to this greater sexual. Arousal and that this kind of combination of developing the women of erotic inner journey in Men of a personal sensitivity that this can be a kind of marriage isn't the kind of sexual life together that we have never seeing in any culture before because it is tied up with a certain freedom of choice and a certain level of economic. Technology which makes certain things really. Freer for the couple in the sense that fertility control or even just the back breaking labor that certainly must have been very degrading to women and certainly tired people out much less leisure much less ability develop all of these other forms of expression. So I

feel that this feminine reticence and Reserve has been based on fear. Of consequences and upon their inferior role has been given to them. So I think once we discuss now as in marriage and what marriage can be then we can focus on premarital behavior I don't think you can really talk about premarital behavior in a void so to speak unless you're also interested in what behavior is going to be of course what do we mean by premarital. You have to define that to an infant one day you know could be said to be exhibiting behavior. To the opposite extreme. Elizabeth Taylor somewhere between husband number three and number four could be considered a Primero at stake. So situation is exactly what we have a man whom we are talking about pre-marital behavior

I think we all mean that time after puberty until first marriage generally in the early 20s. We should keep this in mind I think just. This year in one's life. Well I want everybody to think about how they're going to live especially women. I think it's interesting to think about what is sure. This premarital stage is compared to the time that most women and men will spin in our culture we spend more time married because we live longer you know. Several times we're we believe in marriage and we spend lots and lots of time marriage. And not much time premarital period. As a long married person 15 years well over 30 I confess I do find. Premarital sexual behavior less interesting than questions of marriage and marital sexuality that seems much more graphic. My point of view

and I feel that it might be a symptom of our cultural insecurity. That adults. Should be so subject to the youth culture that they are so overly concerned and shocked by what the young people are doing. Premarital behavior among the young. Why should we make students scapegoats. I feel at this time of life seems awkward difficult confusing and unsatisfying enough all by itself. Without adults adding more pressures. Criticism and shock. I think we really find ourselves in the late 20s. Get going in the 30s and again you really can't afford it. And if students could grasp this. They might have some of the pressure taken off. These supposedly happiest years. Which always seemed to be alternating between misery and less.

So this particular trying situation. So I feel we have a mystique of youth all happy happy happy you. Which doesn't seem to have any. Connection with the war in Vietnam in the Graduate Record Exam or getting into the right profession and finding one's mate and deciding on all these things that we have to decide upon. Living in a very transitory community all the things that make life difficult. We're doing at this age. However this premarital period isn't totally non related to the rest of our life. It is this kind of learning that we're doing at this time is important. And they will probably have some effect in later years. So I think that these new factors which are making marriages. That are. In the making in adulthood that are more satisfied are also going to affect the premarital years. This freedom and

will be reflected by more choice in premarital behavior. I think about that very. Well. Today. Economic necessities just as much as not. Have consequences just as. The emancipation of women will make a huge difference in the pretty picture because women may choose to go. Without being sanctioned by the society at least not in the ways they have been in the past. Their motivation will not be economic social and physical. You know things that will happen but will certainly be much more choice. A free decision of what I think to have. A concept of virginity or any of the damaged

goods to be purchased by people. And man we're going to affected by the humanizing which makes marriages better are not going to have the same demands that their wives be virgins while they do what they wish. They're no longer. Purchasers or perspective. Potter finale was looking. For. The just perfect. Mother in the same way. As men and women become equal and equal in society so they become equally responsible for their behavior in the premarital years a double standard I think should be bad. And that seems to be the most all things to the male female relationship. The fact that. Responsibility is not. Given to both. Equally.

And that men demand more of their potential wives when they demand of themselves and this seems just terribly deceitful one way and also a very bad start a marriage. So I think we will. Think about premarital behavior in ways that we're thinking about marriage and how we think this relationship. Is related to marriage. How is this time of my life related to this big long period of my life. Now we can look at all in all different ways. You can say that this is a learning time. This is what premarital behavior and learning. To be unmarried. Or you can see this is my last alone before. Marriage closes in. And I think there been many people who seen it in many different ways. And obviously the way we think about these relationships are going to depend on how we think

what we think the nature of man is what is development and destiny are. So I don't think there's any special morality. Because just there is a human idea of how humans ought to behave. What. Human. Nature is capable of. Many things that I think there's a special sexual morality or special premier. Morality either. I see three models of the relationship between premarital behavior and natural behavior developing the problem anymore but these seem the most current and we seem to have opted. For the learning idea rather than the last before marriage I mean we all seem to realize that we want to learn to be married well that's an American ideal and so we feel this is a time where we should be learning to be married.

So we see one minority view as a model involving total permissiveness in both premarital behavior and mouthfull behavior. So the assumption here is usually either that sex is attention which demands and should be given outlets. At all times. That's kind of a mini view of the man beneath a man recalls or there's a sort of super exalted ideal of the goodness and spirituality of sex which sanctions total instant sexual communication with anyone and any other human being. At any time. So you have these these two theories of man. Kind of the super exalted one and the kind of the nothing but an outlet why should we ever. You know deny an outlet in this way. And both. Can be result in the theory. Of total permissiveness. If sexual impulses do not hurt

another they should never be denied. Should be open to all and sexual communication is primary in life. So this permissiveness. In theory usually conflicts with everyday life and society. And with man's innate aggressiveness and possessiveness which. He man his pert perfectible he certainly has. Had these. Thoughts generation after generation and to ignore. Aggression and possessiveness is to get in trouble. I feel that utopias such as there need a community to all of this is with common property that solve that problem. Uncommon and these are generally broad weaknesses. Weaknesses within human beings who are not really as perfect as they hoped they had been and I think some of the hippie communes have faced the same difficulties when they attempt to live a totally permissive

sexual code. It's extremely difficult to maintain total permissiveness consistent societies have at least had the incest taboo mostly and some control of marital sexuality with its group. Anything else has been even debated there's ever been such a thing but still there's always some limit for matter how many people are involved there's always some limit out of them which is then given to sex just as there's always been a limit to aggression. Not being an angel these limits are necessary if he's going to live with other people so that life together in a certain extend his life restraint it's a price we pay. To say that sex is totally business is to take it on very unrealistic view of human life and how involved we are one with another. I'll second more feasible model. Of. Premarital marital behaviors that

generally coming to the fore in our culture. A majority view and this is that premarital permissiveness with affection before marriage leads to a marriage and which relative fidelity is required fidelity is recognized as a good thing and is necessary for the rearing of children. But individuals private Her film is still considered primary. So that if you don't have sexual fulfillment you have a divorce. Sometimes adultery is even sanctioned. In this view and not totally condemned. And we have what is usually called serial monogamy. As a result. This is not. Really ready at all. And to prepare for this kind of a marriage people are permitted. To experiment with different people and even to live with their lovers before marriage. And this is not.

Taught very particularly destructive because affection even deeper affection. Is considered nasty before engaging in intercourse. Or common residence. Of children brings on marriage or just a general maturity and 4 decision and one partner will often bring on marriage. Contraception can make this sexual experimentation without danger. On the personal dimension of refraction. It keeps it from being totally damaging to personality development. In fact many people would argue that it helps people live their way into marriage. This is especially if this is combined with a deep sense of personal responsibility. And the importance of taking thought in one's exercise of sexual freedom. This is I feel more human. And a better idea than the older. Fear ridden. And sanctioned sexuality. With its double

standard which is based so much upon the inferiority of women. And the oppression of women. This in this view sex is still seen as very important in life it can't be denied. But it's also seen as a part of a whole life got to be integrated in the personality to a certain degree and if those of you her doctor race today I'm not so sure that the boy wouldn't be insulted it's a girl said that he was a she was only physically attracted to him. I know many boys who value many men who value their their their ego is involved in many other areas of themselves and they would not like simply be. Thought of as sexually attracted period. So I feel that this. Scene sex is a part of life. Trying to integrate into the rest of personality is is really in this particular model that we're growing into in the culture. We still have the private.

Individual as supreme. By the divorced or not scorned because they're seeking happiness. Are there no social sanctions against the unmarried because they're seeking happiness. And this majority view sex. Is just really evolving into a culture much like Sweden today. When I look in the future I see Sweden. And I feel this is the way we're going to be. You know my husband just came back from Sweden and he said what a disappointment that this is we are the ultimate in bourgeois self control with repression we've never seen such an orderly tidy tidy group of people in your life. He said obviously they need sexual timelessness in order to live at all. All those Bergman movies must be giving us the gloomy message. But. Isn't our culture. Perhaps going the same way that overcontrolled technical culture and

sex may be the one way people have left to have emotional release to have playfulness to have. Pleasure pleasure the disappearance of pleasures and one even wrote a book disappears a pleasure to have some drama in life or joy. A way to communicate with one another. I think that we put such a stress upon sex in our society because the rest. Of our society has become so flocking in so many areas. Also this particular culture we have now is a reaction against the 19th century. I think this reaction is still going on how this middle class 19th century Horatio Alger view. Of. Sexuality was so damaging to so many people that we're still reacting against is the hypocrisy of this the double standard involved in this. So we don't really

know. You know when this reaction will finally be over. So I feel that if today the new permissiveness before marriage really helps better marriages to. Really carries out the equality of women. Then we will have made a certain amount of social progress from the older idea of marriage and abstinence based on honesty and economic necessity. And sexual repression. I think we simply have to wait and see because not enough people have lived this yet. Even Sweden is not as advanced as we might think that. Having many debates within their culture too. So I think this is something that we will just have to watch and see what happens and how it works and what kind of people it produces. Well in the mean time I gather I can live with this model of behavior but I can't really get

into it. Other than the part about women's equality. I can. Work to increase the idea of personal responsibility and importance of personal freedom and I too see the freedom of choice. And personal commitment being the most important thing that we've gotten from the sexual revolution. But I cannot help but there will always be still a sizeable minority view. Which is a third model of relationships. So I would expend effort trying to encourage a counter-culture minority view in a minority model of premarital sex sexuality. As a left wing christian I'm used to being in what Peter Berger calls the cognitive minority all people have to get used to. Many people have to get used to being in the contents of my heart just as I am for pacifism socialism.

Find myself against abortion and capital punishment on the principle of not taking away a potential future. I also find myself a spouse of you. Premarital sexuality. I'm honestly more attracted to the ascetic sexual idealism of the Revolutionary Guards than I am to our middle class revolution I see our virtues but I'm really drawn to the fact that people can live for an ideal and for a communal ideal. I see that our majority view having its merits also seems so individualistic and privately consumer oriented rather than being oriented toward ideals in the social community. The Consumer's Guide has taken over everything. I understand that. A previous speaker heard the audience shout sexual turns to get over there in barrels

but that was lovely. NEWS REPORTER. But I think many of us today. Rather need to shout discredited words and I have a vision of people shouting just. A sad. Little and sad almost modality. Well I'm sure that we today are as embarrassed by using these words at least in the east here is embarrassed as by using these words. As a mini mini for using the frank sexual terms so I would a sparrow's Well we get over this embarrassment. And see a third model of premarital. Chastity on marital fidelity as a an option. And the view here of sex is that while it is a it is minimally a biological tension it is in men so much more a primary language and mode of free expression that does not always

have to be given quote. I agree with this and literally Kinsey's use of the term tension outlets. So sexual expression into work and love for community Freud's concept of sublimation may not be exactly right the way it works but I know that it does work. A dedicated celibacy is possible for many people without psychological harm. And for young people a free expression of sex. Can be denied until marriage. Without. Having neurotic. People or bad marriages particularly on our hands. In the language of sexual expression silence is worse when it intensifies other speech. With an ideal of fidelity in marriage which supposes exclusive loyalty. And promise to one person for a lifetime. The ability to

keep promises is quite important and one has to learn to direct oneself through inhibition. This becomes the ability that's quite important in our everyday life. So this is a view of adolescence assumes that control of sexuality in the youthful years is a good basis a good preparation for marriage and maturity. It's necessary for the best kind of love making that one be able to do. And it's certainly necessary to social social stability and a kind of sensitivity to others especially for the male the female. Erick Erickson has spoken of fidelity as a particular virtue to be developed in adolescence and defines it as the ability to sustain loyalty as freely pledged in spite of the inevitable contradiction of value systems. Erickson therefore questions whether early freedom in the direct use of

his sexuality would make men fear as a person. And there's the argument. After all as well as feminine orgasms and pleasure and ambition and sublimation are also the mark of our human species with our fewer instincts on our very very big brain. We can run through alternatives. And choose we don't have to act out every alternative in order to learn. I know that actual experience is not necessary for marital sexual fulfillment either for men or women. I think that in this primary pleasurable language we learn very quickly and we can learn together. The sense that it is pleasurable and it is primary. Keeps it from being distorted. Lack. Of experience.

I feel that what we may not like is elaboration. All the other forms of communication which may not be and may not be as pleasurable and therefore take a great deal more time. In order to learn. And if this is what makes good marriages. That we have. Learned all these other things as well so that we can have. With Two Virgins the the the never the never to be seeing in social history Two Virgins marry. It can be a unique delight to participate in a very exclusive history. Which one learns together and this is one of the joys of fidelity. The fact that this is a story which no one else will ever know or be a part or. Maybe a comedy at times it's one's own comedy. So in this model of premarital and marital behavior the ultimate in the most complete sexual union is reserved for an ultimate and complete

commitment of one person to another. That is economic legal social and rational commitment to a shared future would correspond to the sexual communion. So when we have the idea of the sexual cycle running from kissing to corridors. And certain lengths the point would be to do unless this cycle to appropriate and to approximate our ability to make other kinds of commitments make verbal commitments to comic commitments to make electoral commitments and so forth. The fact that man is a delay delay in. Developing animal as well that we don't come ready made we have this law. The idea of man is a few lies day long growing period and I think that helps us to become an elaborate species an interesting species challenging species. And this if we if we make one form of communication so easy which it will be easy anyway and not

emphasize all the rest. And we're not use that delay wisely. And I feel this need for keeping commitments correlated is quite important. I think this impresses upon keeping ourselves together. Not having parts of our nature or parts of our personality running or without the rest following. This the sense of keeping ourselves together. This emphasis on committing the future and the communal nature of sexuality the fact that what we do doesn't matter. In the wider. Circle at which we live. This should not be based on fear or social sanction as in the past. But upon a certain aesthetic idealism and freedom of choice is just an aesthetic fitting as to integrating present and future sexual unity with other complete unity and I think this is why people marry and this is why there is so much restraint. Somebody wondering today why is there with all the facts with all the opportunity why is there so much

restraint and I think it's the idealism that gives the restraint the desire to have this complete unity of experience and a hope that men can collect himself and not be a divided self again. We are the only species that can make promises. We can foresee the future. We can control our futures no animal can and promise keeping gives us a certain identity strength and certainly gives a certain strength to the society. As Hannah Wright said in the human condition without being bound by the fulfilment of promises. We would never be able to keep our identities. We would be condemned to wander helplessly from without direction in the darkness of each man's lonely heart. I think there's a great deal of wisdom in this identity and fidelity are tied up with being able to keep promises which to a certain extent is going to be bound upon inhibition and the ability to say

no to some things in order to say yes to others even if they're in the future even if they're in another space a place we're not as bound by the instant release. And by the place we happen to be there for I feel sexual promise and sexual fidelity is important to much permissiveness without commitment it would corrode our basic trust in one another. It seems to me the trust in marriage is one of the most important components for making it succeed. As I say again no legal or social sanction just simply a realisation that as words are important as money is important all sorts of other things are important so what we do sexually are important in the community not have to say that honestly the happiest people I have ever know who are the most productive people who had seemed to got get themselves together been able to give themselves to each other and to the community in the hope. Where those who did have the

highest ideals of premarital chastity amount of fidelity. Paradoxically sex seems most fulfilled released in those people who had let it direct. Their behavior. At least now this may be a cultural accident I'm sure I'm a horrible sample but there must be some correlation between a certain diffuse identity which you get in primitive cultures. And. A. Sexual permissiveness that does not demand that this part of life be integrated with every other part. So since man must live in consecutive time unlimited space is going so much available energy. I think the development to discipline to channel his sexual energy to work for creative productivity in communal how. That this is something that makes his life happy and makes his community community stable.

Besides I think we've got the wrong ideal often of motivation. We're not always seeking release rest but the easiest way. We we seek tension. We seek challenge we we seek even barriers and limitations at times simply for the joy of overcoming them. And I think when we focus upon the future future goals and a new generation in the communities welfare that we seem to agree with something very deep within human beings. As Snoopy so Perceptor remarked of the human species in a Peanuts cartoon you have to see Snoopy lion clown with his used as he says this. If you expect nothing you get nothing. I think there's a great deal of wisdom in this. So in conclusion I'd like to emphasize once again that I expect much of both men and women down to the double standard I prefer. Much more permissiveness. Than a double standard of permissiveness.

This I hope is fast disappearing. I'd like to see the development of men and women's roles in society. New Freedom of choice. We're not behaving in a new way. Or in a playful way because we have to because we want to because we've chosen a new potential for marriage that we have a pluralism of choice different lifestyles which make growing up more complex than ever maturing and living in adulthood more complex. But I feel that now that my optimism culture sexually means that this sexual renaissance is coming the majority of you will be more and more endorsed by people and this is an improvement over the past. I cannot help but cherish the hope that once our reaction against the past is over we played out this in the sexual renaissance has really

bloomed. That we might see a return to idealism. And in the meantime I feel that the minorities commitment to chastity and to consider the whole community very well thank you very much. Thank. You have been listening to Mrs. Sydney Cornelia Callahan author and lecturer from New York as she spoke on the emancipation of women and the sexual revolution. This is Ben's sexuality a search for perspective a series of recorded lectures from an interdisciplinary colloquy on human sexuality held on the campus of Michigan State University. Editor for the series is Steve Jensen. This is a Michigan State University radio production. This is the national educational radio network.