David Hoffman: 'This Ordinary Man Didn't Get The Sexual Revolution'

Source:David Hoffman- I'm sure this man has a name, but I don't know who he is.

"My subscribers have been asking me to, on occasion, post a complete interview without edits. This is one. The person asking the questions is my co-executive producer on my television series on the 1960s. The interview was conducted in 1989 as part of 180 interviews we did for that series. My idea was to talk with ordinary people from all political and social stripes about their experiences of that time."

From David Hoffman

Not surprising that anyone who is older than the Silent Generation ( Americans born in the 1930s, generally ) and in some cases members of the Silent Generation didn't get the 1960s Sexual Revolution.

Pre-1963 or so, America was a Phyllis Schlafly, Beaver Cleaver, Ozzie and Harriet Utopia: "hi honey, "I'm home" wasn't just a popular 1950s sitcom phrase, but what most of America was about as far as relationships between American men and women: man worked and paid the bills: woman stayed home and raised their kids. Of course Americans were having sex pre-marriage back in the 1950s and even before that, but they didn't talk about that. They didn't live with each other pre-marriage. They didn't have kids pre-marriage. Americans tended not to talk about their sex lives in public.

Starting in the 1960s, America started changing dramatically because you had all of these Baby Boomers ( Americans born in the 1940s and 50s ) entering, graduating high school, entering college, and graduating college. These Americans were tired and bored with their parents and grandparents America and wanted to live their own lives. Listen to their own music, watch their own movies and TV, party with their own people and go to their own parties. And perhaps the most divisive aspect of the 1960s having to do with military service where you had all of these Baby Boomers who didn't feel the need to enter the military and didn't believe America should be involved in other countries civil wars. Which is what the divide about the Vietnam War was.

So of course if you came of age in the 1950s and you're weren't a Beatnik, ( 1950s Hippies ) you grew up in an America that looked almost like a different country than what America looked like by 1965 or so. It looked like two different large, developed countries where one America looks more like Saudi Arabia and the other America looks like a free society where everyone is essentially free to be themselves and live their own lives, to do their own thing and not feel the need to be like people who are older than them, just because that's how American life was before.  

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