Any chance I can ask for Cast of Thousands to return?

40 years ago would have been 1966 or 1965 (since this thread is from 2005).

To comment #10, Susan: weren’t the 60’s the time of hippies, flower power and free love?

I don’t think sex before marriage 40 years ago was nearly as rare as your perception seems to tell you.

Or even 50 years ago. Lots of “preemie” 8 month babies were born back then! :)

“Let’s talk about college. When I went to college there were no mixed-gender dorms. (Horrors!) The women’s dorms had lockout times and sign-out policies. (This wasn’t peculiar to Stanford. It was quite common.) It took more cleverness than I had at least, and I tried, to sneak a man into my dorm. There were Dragon Ladies - elderly, fierce watch-dog types - at the door, and let me tell you nothing got by these people. Women were required to live on campus under these ladies’ eyes for all four years.”

The irony here Susan is that in another thread I said I wanted to live in your gated community and you thought I was funny. The reality is that you were living in a priviledged and protected (gated) community.

So, Amp:
Please list for me any redeaming qualities of The Sopranos. I’ve only seen the equivalent of about one episode but it just struck me as generally unpleasant.

Also, I grew up on Rodgers and Hammerstein. You guys are barbarians.

This is so so so so SO not my experience. I am a little bit younger than you are, Susan. I was born in 1952. I had sex (everything except for intercourse, which was the common practice in those days) for the first time with a boy in 1965, when I was 13. I had almost-sex with boyfriends before that. I vividly remember a Life magazine article, feature article, I believe, about 10- and 11-year-old girls having sex with boys, because they were near my age and so the article caught my attention

Hell YEAH we were having sex back then and hell YEAH there was plenty of date rape back then. Usually it was the “everything but” kind of sex, but it was sure enough sex. And a lot of that “everything but” sex was *rape*, only we didn’t understand it to be rape because we thought that just as you accuse women and girls of up there, we had “cooperated” or even “managed” the situation — say, by letting the boy kiss us or just being alone with him where there were no adults around (I guess that’s “management”), “making out” with him, and the consensus of the time was that if a girl got herself in those kinds of situations, what could she expect? Of *course* she was going to end up raped, except it wasn’t called rape, it was called what happens to girls when they “tease” boys.

And no WAY were boys disparaged or dissed in any way for rape because they never copped to having raped and we didn’t *know* we’d been raped. To the contrary, they were heroes with their peers because they’d scored. And oftentimes, they were heroes because they lied about having scored. That happened a *lot* and often it happened because some asshat *had* exploited a girl or even raped her and moved quickly to make her out to be a slut in a sort of pre-emptive strike against any accusation that he may have raped her. Of *course* no boy was respected if he had raped a girl, but not because rape was so bad, because having raped was evidence that the boy was so *desperate* and un-macho and un-studly or whatever that he had to rape just to get some. ::::rage::::

Not only were we being date raped, we were being incested and molested by family members and friends of the family as well. And like mousehounde and bean and others have said, *you didn’t talk about that*. It was *probably your fault*. If you got pregnant, just as mousehounde’s mom (grama?) said, you got sent away. Several of my friends were sent away in junior high to give birth in “homes for unwed mothers” and give them up for adoption.

Argh, what you have written there is as far from my experience as can be imagined and I really do not get that. I am white, grew up the daughter of an attorney in the suburbs, and went on to the University of Washington in 1969. Things were no different when I was coming up than they were when you were coming up.

And thank you, Kim, for those good words. And yes to what ginmar said as to these references to the “ruling orthodoxy.” That phrase together with the idea that sex didn’t happen without girls “managing” or at least “cooperating” gets me wondering what you’re trying to prove here, Susan. Not to mention I, and plenty of my friends, had sex we didn’t and did want, both, in the presence of our parents! In cars! Downstairs! You name it. Tell you what, if some boy had his hands down your pants in the back seat of the station wagon while dad was driving, you definitely were not going to be speaking up about it! Not only because you’d be toast but because he might end up shot. And boys knew this. And girls got date raped.

Heart

Heart

For example, consider the transitive property of Amp’s preferences: How can Amp think so highly of Sondheim AND of the movie West Side Story, when Sondheim thought so little of that movie?

Admittedly, Secret Garden is an impressive (and non-Sondheimian) selection. But what about Spamalot? Or Wicked?

Sondheim didn’t think much of the movie? I didn’t know that. But as I’m sure you’d agree, just because I admire an artist’s work doesn’t obligate me to agree with his tastes. I thought some of the changes made between the musical and the movie of West Side Story were a significant improvement; particularly the new order of the songs, and the new lyrics for “America.”

Haven’t heard Spamalot yet, other than the bit that was on the Tony Awards show, which was cute but didn’t blow my socks off. I adore Wicked, but I’m not sure my affair with it will last, unlike my affair with all shows Sondheim.

Sheelzebub, you’re right - that is appalling. Correction made.

1) I’m all for Neal’s logic about how it’s lunacy to be held accountable for getting someone inebriated and taking advantage of them. With this in mind, I’d love to get Neal wasted and “convince” him to sign over all of his assets to me, since it’s apparently no big deal to do the same WRT sex.

2) If you say “orthodoxy” over and over again, it sounds kinda funny. It also sounds like a new painkiller or acne medication. (So Susan, if you have the urge to type that word in again, please don’t. It will only cause me to keep laughing, and everyone here will ask me to share whatever drugs I’m on. And then I’ll have to say that I’ve taken some orthodoxy.)

3) I am appalled–*appalled*– that Amp left out “Merrily We Roll Along” by Sondheim.

For example, consider the transitive property of Amp’s preferences: How can Amp think so highly of Sondheim AND of the movie West Side Story, when Sondheim thought so little of that movie?

Admittedly, Secret Garden is an impressive (and non-Sondheimian) selection. But what about Spamalot? Or Wicked?

If you must discuss all those other topics, you can look for them [music swells] … on another thread [evil cackle]!

There’s no point in discussing the prevalence of things that you admit that we cannot tell how prevalent they were then (or, are now, for that matter). You’re assuming that because no one talked about it, that means there was a lot of it. I’m assuming that because no one talked about it, there wasn’t as much. No one knows or can know.

I know that I personally, and my girlfriends, felt safe. Maybe we were wrong to feel safe, but we did. I heard about some date rape when I was an undergraduate. The perpetrators had a hard time getting dates after that. (Surprise!) But I’m sure that’s equally true now.

Maybe we need to “out” these guys, that’s one suggestion. Even if the law won’t act, maybe it ought to be next to impossible for these creeps to induce any woman to have anything to do with them thereafter.

We - you - don’t have to put up with this. With feeling endangered. There’s got to be a way to make everyone feel safe.

But I’ve been thinking, and I’m realizing that I’m coming out of a very different context than you are.

Let’s talk about college. When I went to college there were no mixed-gender dorms. (Horrors!) The women’s dorms had lockout times and sign-out policies. (This wasn’t peculiar to Stanford. It was quite common.) It took more cleverness than I had at least, and I tried, to sneak a man into my dorm. There were Dragon Ladies - elderly, fierce watch-dog types - at the door, and let me tell you nothing got by these people. Women were required to live on campus under these ladies’ eyes for all four years.

Well, then, how about the men’s dorms? They were strictly patrolled as well, though maybe not quite as strictly, but that didn’t work either.

There were no sororities.

So, what does this add up to? It adds up to a situation where even having consensual sex was quite a project, and one which in the nature of the situation required the cooperation, if not the total management, of the woman involved. I could tell stories….we were not, needless to say, unsuccessful….

And then there was The Ratio, a very peculiar situation. When I went to Stanford there were two male undergraduates for each woman. Campus-wide, counting the graduate schools, it was 4 to 1. Scarcity drives up the price. If some guy was rumored to be forcing girls, or was otherwise piggish of behavior….well, there were lots of guys.

I’m well aware, from talking to my children, that these constraints no longer exist. I’m not for a nanosecond questioning your experiences - in fact, I have every reason to believe you.

The real question here is, how to combine the freedom of movement which women now rightly enjoy with the social restraints which largely prevented date-rape 40 years ago. Are men so unteachable that we can only restrain them by force, which was largely done when I was a kid? (SUCH a bad opinion of men!)

Or is there some way to have the best of both worlds?

I don’t put my experience forth as normative, certainly not for all times and places. But I’m telling you that things haven’t always been as bad on this front as they are now, and maybe we can learn something from those times when it wasn’t to improve our own times.

OK? I don’t quite understand the hostility I’ve received on this one. But I meant well.

Since Roiphe was mentioned - here’s an article that you might find interesting to read:
Kathy Pollitt wrote this review for the 10/4/93 New Yorker about Katie Roiphe’s “The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism on Campus”

On the mutual respect thing. Emphasis on mutual, right? You say everyone else here is not listening to you and not willing to learn from your views, just because they’re not validating your equation between personal experience in a privileged college with the total sum of experience of Americans in the fifties and sixties. You’re dismissing people of your own age disagreeing with your generalisations and you’re picturing talking down to a bunch of “you-all” rebellious adolescents brainwashed by some “ruling orthodoxy” who you compare to right wing catholics. You shouldn’t be surprised if it comes off as flaming.

Also you sound contradictory about your expressing your views - if you believe your experience is enlightening, why not elaborate on the reasons you think are at the root of what you perceive as lower incidence of rape in the past? Nevermind for a second if there was less or more sex, and less or more rape. What is the point you want to make about the relation between sexual abstinence or promiscuity outside marriage, and rape?

(It is so bizarre to have this discussion in an “About” page indeed!)

Susan, I’m really sorry you felt attacked. And some of the posts here were definitely rude and attacking.

On the other hand, to me, some posters tried their very best to disagree with you politely and respectfully, and you didn’t seem willing to acknowledge that.

There really weren’t many studies of unreported rape prevalence before the mid-1980s, that I know of. However, the sociologist Eugene Kanin did a study of forced sex in the mid-1960s. As I recall (and I’m going from memory), he interviewed women in sororities, and found that around 15-20% had been forced to have sex at some point in their lives. (This is pretty similar to what more recent studies of rape prevalence have found).

Of course, it’s impossible to say if what these women experienced was representative or not. Perhaps your experience was more typical than theirs. Nonetheless, it is non-anecdotal evidence that indicates that, at least among some groups, rape wasn’t as rare as we’d wish it to be, even in the mid-1960s.

I was not around in the 50’s and 60’s. So, in order to try to understand what you are saying with regards to rape not being prevalent or happening that much, I asked my Mom. Sad, I know, but I still ask Mom about things I don’t understand. :) Now, Mom is 78. When she was in her twenties it was the early/mid fifties. I asked her if she remembered hearing about rape during that time. She said “No”. It didn’t happen. I rephrased the question. {And I would like to point out that even at my age it is awkward talking to your Mom about sex::g::} I asked if women ever got forced into having sex {note: I didn’t phrase it that way. I asked if guys ever made girls “do” things.} She said “well ,yeah. But they got married so it didn’t matter.” I asked about the girls who didn’t get married. I asked if they ever said anything. She said that girls that didn’t get married got sent away for while. I asked did that happen if they were raped. She said that it wasn’t talked about. Girls didn’t talk about that happening. If they got pregnant, they got sent away. If they didn’t get pregnant, they pretended nothing happened. I asked her did girls get raped. She just kept saying it wasn’t talked about. She said “good” girls only went out with boys their parents knew. If “something” happened, the parents of both made them get married. I asked her did she think some of those girls had been raped, not just that “something” happened. She thought a while and said yes. But she added that back then, if that happened, you married the guy. So no one knew. She said that things like that {rape} were not talked about then. No police reports were made unless a stranger did it and beat a girl up badly and even then, sometimes, it wasn’t reported because it would be bad for the girl if folks knew. Now this is all anecdotal, I realize that. But maybe the reason “rape” didn’t happen as much in the 50’s and 60’s was simply that women/girls it happened to just didn’t say anything? I should note that Mom never went to college, she lived in a series of small towns. So I am sure that what you experienced or saw was different from what she did.

Susan:
Bye.

I personally am not interested in how you “pulled this off,” because of what you say here:

———
SUSAN’S QUOTE: Date rape? Sure. Drunken date rape? Sure. But the guys were not … no one thought it was sort of OK, except a lunatic fringe. A guy did that, and word got around, and then he found out that interesting intelligent women wouldn’t go out with him. (Maybe he didn’t care, who knows.) But it wasn’t without its penalties.
———

I’m not interested in solving date rape if it involves sluffing the rapists off on my less-intelligent, less-interesting sisters.

(Sorry about the format, all; I haven’t figured it out.)