Free Love is Not Free
A Review of Make Love, Not War:
The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History
by David
Allyn
Author Biography
David Allyn, born April 30, 1969, earned a
Ph.D. from Harvard, never dreaming of writing books like
I Can’t Believe I Just Did That, a book about
overcoming embarrassment and personal shame, or Make
Love, Not War. Although not a first hand account of the
information detailed in this book, Allyn did extensive
research, interviewing many that lived during the time of
the sexual revolution.
In 1962, Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl was
published, the sexual revolution was launched, and “there
was no turning back.”1 The 1960s sexual
revolution was possibly one of the most revolutionary
movements in American history, from the most basic ideas,
such as equal pay for equal work, to the most revolutionary
ideas, like group sex. This period represented a massive
step forward, away from the conservative, Freudian views,
which originated before our nation’s founding.
Helen Gurley Brown sparked much controversy with her book
Sex and the Single Girl, but never dreamed it would spark a
revolution that would take over a decade to slow down. She
was the first to, in print, admit she that had lost her
virginity before marriage and that she had enjoyed a long
history of casual encounters throughout her premarital life.
Even more controversially, she was the first to condone
premarital sex, saying in her estimation “not having slept
with the man you’re going to marry [is] lunacy” and
reminding readers “sex was here long before
marriage.”2 Hough Hefner, a lifelong champion of
the right to privacy, founded Playboy magazine— the first
magazine to include photographs of naked women— as well as
the Playboy Club. The birth control pill was a way for women
to control contraception, and for those who saw nothing
morally wrong with it, to have a night of simple carousing,
as they felt all men did. It was, although not explicitly
stated so in the Bible, railed against by Catholics, as well
as those who followed the logic of Dr. Sigmund Freud, who
felt that this kind of power, if given to women, would put
them in the position of domineer, rather than men, who were
naturally suited to the job. William R. Baird, after
witnessing the worst results of a self induced coat-hanger
abortion, took his living room with him through poorer, less
educated areas informing people about birth control. This
was achieved with a faux fireplace, wood walls, and drapes
put up in an old UPS van, so he could “create an atmosphere
that… you were in Bill Baird’s home” to give them a more
comfortable environment in which to talk about very
uncomfortable subjects.3 For this, he was
arrested eight times in five states. Naked Lunch is among,
if not the most controversial novel to date; so much so that
even Playboy banned it. Massachusetts, one of the states
with the most stringent censorship laws actually granted
Naked Lunch full First Amendment protection, marking a
turning point in freedom of literature. These many firsts
paved the way for the future of far more jarring and
controversial literature and creations.
Marriage was, and is, a source of heated controversy,
whether it is homosexuality or more than two to a marriage,
nobody ever seems to be able to agree. Robert Rimmer’s The
Harrad Experiment typified the views of a sexual utopia; in
a liberal college, students are paired with a person of the
opposite gender, and assigned readings such as the Kama
Sutra, which teach them to “rise above possessive
inclinations” and create a “new sexually oriented
aristocracy” by separating sex from love.4 This
novel became a must have on college campuses, and became
something close to the Bible for many who saw the problems
of the world in the same way Rimmer did. Although group
marriage was not persecuted as a distortion of the
institution of marriage, it never became a mass movement. Be
this as it may, it was a perfect reality for many, and an
unattainable dream for many more. Interracial marriage is a
different story entirely, however. In thirty states, before
World War II, laws existed against interracial marriage,
some calling for sentences of up to ten years. These, in
1966, were abolished in the state of Virginia by the Unites
States Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, stating,
“Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry,
a person of another race resides within the
individual.”5 The double standard between men and
women had been an issue that was not strongly questioned
before the start of the sexual revolution, but once it had
started, there was no stopping it. At Barnard college, an
all women’s school, Linda LeClair lied to the admissions
office so she could live off campus with her boyfriend,
which was against school policy. The principal expelled her
over a school Judicial Council’s vote against it. Many
students purposely violated school rules in protest of
Linda’s unfair expulsion. Oh! Calcutta! was a model of the
sexual revolution. The name was a “play on the French
expression ‘Oh! quell cul tu as!’ (Oh, what a nice ass you
have)”— a title that was not misleading in the
slightest.6 Including a scene where a boy and his
father speak conversationally about his orgasms, it is
little wonder that it was met by loathing from many. Some
people went so far as to protest against the theatres it was
shown in, or called for violence against the theaters. It
grossed $360 million. Not only was promiscuity frowned upon,
masturbation was also seen as unwholesome, and was given
fictional side effects, such as a shorter life span,
insanity, or blindness. Few actually followed this rule of
society, as exemplified in Portnoy’s Complaint, where Philip
Roth tells of his life “spent locked behind the bathroom
door…in dread that [his] Loathsomeness would be discovered”
probably by his parents, who instilled this thought that the
act of self stimulation was such an unwholesome
act.7 As interracial marriage was socially and
legally reprimanded, so was homosexual marriage. Police
formed frequent stings on gay bars, and the bartenders and
drag queens would be arrested; all others would be taken in
for the night, or an attempt would be made to “identify,
prosecute, and ‘cure’ them” of their terrible
disease.8
Not all of the literature during the sexual revolution
benefited it. There were some, like David Reuben, who
published all of the unfounded, idiotic, inaccurate,
pseudo-scientific superstitions and myths that people grew
up hearing, in his piece of literary garbage Everything You
Always Wanted to Know About Sex… But Were Afraid To Ask.
When he appeared on the tonight show, he brought with him
fifty-three percent of the ratings. He also reinforced every
myth about homosexuality there had ever been, such as their
insatiable love of odd sex, or that they were all child
molesters; he even created the rumor about “a doctor who had
extracted a rodent from the rectum of a gay man.” Even this
obvious lie was widely circulated as fact. This was a
pitiful step back all the way to the Freudian thoughts
before the revolution started. Some, as one group instituted
by President Johnson, stuck to scientific grounds for their
research on facts and science. This group studied adult
bookstores and bookstores with adult sections, and 89% were
white, 74% were twenty-four to forty-five, and 51% wore
business suits and ties, shattering the ‘dirty old man’
stereotype. They also found that only two percent of
Americans ranked pornography in the top three most important
problems in America. Possibly the portion of the movement
with the most difficulty was the lesbian movement. Not
accepted into the woman’s movement and disgusted with the
Gay Liberation groups, lesbians forged ahead on their own
under the leadership of Robin Morgan, a child star. Lesbians
saw in gay men a group of single-minded imbeciles who,
rather than finding serious relationships or seeking public
recognition, “thought life was a fuckathon.”9
Allyn’s thesis in his novel Make Love, Not War is to give
the information he had gathered on both the difficulties and
benefits of the sexual revolution in America. Allyn
remembers growing up with “the vague sense of having missed
something magical and mysterious,” not having been able to
participate in the sexual revolution.10 The
author, therefore, has no first hand accounts of the era,
which in fact aids the book in its credibility, because all
of the information present in the book was given to him by
others. This removes the possibility for it to be distorted
by one man’s general opinion of the era. His point of view,
therefore, is kept to strictly one of a historian, reporting
on the information gathered from others. The 1990s, the time
when Allyn took on the daunting task of summarizing
objectively the entire sixties sexual revolution, was a time
of general prosperity—a perfect time for writers—and a time
of openness about sexuality following the sexual revolution.
The writing of this book was done around the time of many
occurrences that fit precisely with the book’s subject
matter, almost all of which lead Allyn to a more
conservative viewpoint, such as the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
This was also the time that many of the college students who
comprised a strong portion of those involved in the sexual
revolution came of age enough to share their embarrassing
personal accounts with a novelist.
“No other book gathers together this array of material” on
the sexual revolution, from underground leaders of the
revolution, like Plato’s Club and Stonewall, to publicity
based leaders, such as Hough Hefner and Betty
Dodson.11 This is a very sweeping novel that
covers some of every material imaginable. There is no
subject in the social spectrum of the time that is not
reviewed. However, “Allyn is best on trees, not the forest”
as far as the book as a whole.12 The entire thing
taken at once is a quick sweep through a decade with
thousands of details that could never be covered, but those
topics deemed important are given complete thought and
attention, and are developed thoroughly and concisely. While
he “occasionally gives short shrift to historical
background,” it is rare, and needs to be more
frequent.13
The novel, as a historical piece goes, is very well planned,
and very well researched. The way many things are tied
together within chapters, as well as between chapters, adds
fluency to the Allyn’s book. Allyn usually ends each chapter
with a tie-in to what the next chapter is about. However,
many of the chapters are incorrectly combined or separated.
A perfect example of this is chapter 14’s, titled “Medicine
and Morality,” a topic spoken of at length in chapter three
in respect to ‘the pill.’14 The book as a whole
seems lacking in a certain aspect that is not quite
discernable, but, reading each chapter as an individual
unit, the novel is a wonderful, informative and true to form
historical novel, with all the natural drawbacks of its genre.
The sexual revolution of the 1960s and early seventies was a
watershed in American history second only to the American
Revolution. The decade was one of radicalism in the most
exact definition of the word. With poles like the Freudian
scholars and the Catholic Church, to the Plato’s Club owners
and Hough Hefner, few remained in the middle about any
subject. This is with the possible exception of pornography,
on which many simply took an indifferent stance. All of the
sixties’ sexual revolution had to choose between privacy and
individuality, or governmental and religious control over
their own, and other’s lives. Socially, what is considered
accepted changed drastically, in large part due to the
sexual revolution. Politically there may have been even more
changes, as the definition of allowable censorship and other
laws of the kind were set, such as that, for the first time,
“interracial marriages [were] legal” in all states. The
sixties sexual revolution was one of the closest things to a
complete watershed in American History.15
The sexual revolution of the 1960s and early seventies,
according to Allyn’s own words, was not a very strong
watershed in American history. He explains all of this, in
detail, in the epilogue. Although nude beaches exist, and
gays and lesbians are able to be free legally, there are
still stigmas about being ‘easy’ or ‘loose’ with one’s body;
birth control still remains expensive and abortion providers
are afraid for their lives at all times. America trails
pathetically far behind liberal nations of Europe, such as
England and France. While interracial marriages are
recognized, gay marriages and group marriages are not. Even
the word gay is odious in itself, as are its synonyms.
Nudity, outside of sexual euphemisms, is unseen in family
films as well as in public. The sexual revolution was a
watershed, but only mildly, and is slowly still going on today.
The 1960s sexual revolution was one of the most
revolutionary movements in American history, from the most
basic ideas, such as the right to choose one’s marriage
partner, to the most revolutionary ideas, such as personal
privacy from the government. This period represented a
massive step forward, away from the conservative, Freudian
views that had been established long before our nation’s
founding.
review by Brian Fox
- Allyn, David. Make Love, Not War The Sexual Revolution:
An Unfettered History. Boston: Little, Brown And Company,
2000, 10.
- Allyn, David 10.
- Allyn, David 35.
- Allyn, David 72.
- Allyn, David 92.
- Allyn, David 119.
- Allyn, David 137.
- Allyn, David 147.
- Allyn, David 251.
- Allyn, David 3.
- Tiger, Lionel. “Tuned In, Turned On, A history of the
Sexual Revolution.” The New York Times 19 Mar 2000. 01 Jun
2006. .
- Tiger, Lionel
- Tiger, Lionel
- Allyn, David 175.
- Allyn, David 296.
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