Alle origini della rivoluzione sessuale. I sessuologi contro il pudore

(At the Origins of Sexual Revolution. Sexuologists against Modesty)

Abstract

Between the Fifties and the Sixties the sex reasearchers were among the most important cultural forces in the struggle for a sexual revolution in the USA. Starting with the pioneering work of Alfred Kinsey and his associates, they made sexual research in laboratories and wrote scientific reports (which often became, in book form, national bestsellers); in the field of the sexual conduct of the American people, their findings on premarital relations, adultery, homosexuality and other related matters challenged the most diffused notions of sexual normality; their readings, theses and ideas exerted an enormous influence on the countercultural generation, on young hippies, on free love supporters, on swapping circles, on the bourgeoning homosexual liberation movements. On the other hand, this very success, and the accusations directed against them from conservative cultural critics, brought many sex researchers to question their own assumptions on sexual morality and to analyse, this time from a less participative point of view, the moral principles and the social outcomes of the sexual revolution itself.