They were looking for sex without strings. It turned out that "the strings"--the emotional and spiritual nourishment that longstanding relationships offer--were essential: sever them and the pleasure chills.

One thing I've never understood when people talk about (A) how good things were back when before everyone started getting divorced or (B) how unsatisfying casual sex can be, is that they never address the social conditions that led to the sexual revolution. It didn't just erupt from a perfectly happy society -- it was a backlash against an overly repressive, guilt-ridden culture, right?

Weren't the changes of the time more about invidual choice than prosyletizing a promiscuous lifestyle?

Someone please explain to me why some people are so obsessed with claiming everyone's sexual behavior should conform to one standard.

P.S. -- Note to Roger, syphilis killed a lot of people waaaaay before Eros and Civilization brought a plague of STDs upon us.

To be fair, MacKinnon never said "all sex is rape." But it is a persistent myth, even among many feminists.

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/mackinno.htm

http://www.feminista.com/archives/v3n8/trigiani.html

and there are some others if you Google them.

Adrienne

Per Adrienne's comments, I'd clarify that I said Dworkin, not MacKinnon. Here's the Dworkin quote I had in mind:

Romantic love, in pornography as in life, is the mythic celebration of female negation. For a woman, love is defined as her willingness to submit to her own annihilation.... The proof of love is that she is willing to be destroyed by the one whom she loves, for his sake. For the woman, love is always self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of identity, will, and bodily integrity, in order to fulfill and redeem the masculinity of her lover.

But a little Googling finds her meaning made more explicit:

No woman needs intercourse; few women escape it.

and

Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape. In seduction, the rapist often bothers to buy a bottle of wine.

Sounds clear to me. Maybe she's been misread, but barely.

Nevertheless, here's a separate clarification that Dworkin has offered about her book Mercy:

Penetrative intercourse is, by its nature, violent. But I'm not saying that sex must be rape. What I think is that sex must not put women in a subordinate position. It must be reciprocal and not an act of aggression from a man looking only to satisfy himself. That's my point.

D'oh! Sorry about that.

From the snopes link, apropos Kimball:

MacKinnon is not universally respected or liked, even within the ranks of feminism. Her outspoken nature and strong opinions have created enemies for her, and she has become a convenient target for anyone looking to run down the movement by caricaturing one of its prominent member as a strident harpy who has loudly asserted as fact any number of fool-headed opinions.

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