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Birds, bees and hippies: sex education on TV and in Oz magazine in Britain of the 1960s-70s.
- Source :
-
Sex Education . Mar2024, Vol. 24 Issue 2, p172-187. 16p. - Publication Year :
- 2024
-
Abstract
- Despite the much-touted 'sexual revolution', during the 1960s-70s, at the time most Western education systems avoided sex education. This article identifies contradictory discourses about sex as manifested in two distinct cultural expressions that co-occurred in those years in the UK. The first represented mainstream social conservatism – in the form of short sex education films produced for schools and colleges. The second, more radical alternative was the British-Australian underground magazine Oz, which expressed the sexual freedom of the counterculture. Both are discussed from the perspective of visual cultural history as competing agents of sex education – one reproducing the conservative paradigm, and the other aiming to dismantle it. While the films took a biomedical and preventive attitude to sex and embodied a patriarchal heteronormative approach , Oz supported sexual freedom and shattered taboos about such issues as abortion and sexual diversity, as well as celebrated women's sexuality. Nevertheless, male-dominant culture was also reflected on its pages, particularly in gratuitous images of female nudity. Despite this visual sexism, the article highlights the magazine as a countercultural entertainment medium educating for sexual pleasure and offering a creative, nonconformist perspective on sex that was way ahead of its time, and also of our own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 14681811
- Volume :
- 24
- Issue :
- 2
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- Sex Education
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 175069449
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2023.2167071