Sexual revolution

The term "sexual revolution" is used to describe an alleged loosening in Western sexual mores in the 1960s and 1970s following the development of accessible and reliable contraception - specifically, "the Pill." While it's not clear if people were really boinking more than they had been previous to the sexual revolution (recent statistics show that the rate of premarital sex in the general population has been fairly constant at 90-95% of the American population over the last century, for example), by the early 1980s, with the fear-mongering of herpes and threat of HIV/AIDS, the party was, if not pretty much over, at least operating under a new set of rules.

The Sexual Revolution of the 1960s was fueled by the second wave of feminism and its achievements: in 1965, the Supreme Court legalized contraception in Griswold v. Connecticut; eight years later, in 1973, abortion became legal through Roe v. Wade. This was far from a coincidence: at the core of second-wave feminism was the idea that women deserved just as much sexual freedom as men. Younger women were disgusted with the traditional idea that women should be expected to be mothers loyal to their husband, and fought hard for equal sexual rights.