The 20 year cycle

[Tdarcos]

I'd like to see what people here think of something that I think some people may have mentioned but isn't widely known.

Roughly on a 20-year cycle, the mores of society - and since the world is heavily connected now, it tends to be all of Western Civilization - tends to flip back and forth between free love and casual sex being easily available, to it being less available and marriage becoming more popular and casual sex becoming less desirable, to casual sex becoming more available again, then lather, rinse, repeat.

And this has been consistent going back at least 300 years. Back in the 18th century when this country was being formed, it was extremely common for a town to encourage a couple to get married if she got pregnant so that there wouldn't be a bastard chargeable to the town.

But note that despite the supposed "puritan" culture of the 1700s, apparently couples having sex when they weren't married was just as commonplace then as it is now, the big problem being that most of the major contraceptives hadn't been invented.

Wikipedia says the diaphragm wasn't readily available until the 1880s when Wilhelm P. J. Mensinga invented it. And while there were predecessors to the condom as far back as the 1500s, reliable full-penis condoms didn't exist until also the late 19th century.

But the "pendulum" of social trends runs very close to a 20-year cycle. Look back at the last 100 years. The 1920s were very "open" as were the 1930s (a landlord was more concerned that a guy or woman had the money to pay their rent than if they were bringing someone to their room to have sex), the 1940s and 1950s were more "closed,", the 1960s and 1970s were open (almost everyone remembers how loose the '60s were), and things changed during the 1980s and 1990s.

I noticed it myself back in the early 1980s. I realized the sexual mores were changing when I heard women were complaining that bathing suits were exposing too much. When you aren't trying to mate on a regular basis you don't need to advertise your availability that blatantly.

I think the 1960s became open about 1963. The 1980s became more closed almost exactly 20 years later around 1983. And I predicted that the 2000s would become open again. (Human sexuality was still considerably more open during the 1980s and 1990s than it was, say, back in the 1940s but it was slightly less open than the 1960s and 1970s.)

The thing that made me realize that the mores had changed back was the prevalence of "sexting" where girls sent boyfriends nude pictures, and the change in the "statutory rape" laws to add more "Romeo and Juliette" exceptions.

A "Romeo and Juliette" exception is when the law says it's illegal to have sex with someone under the age of consent (which is 16 in 30 states and the District of Columbia, 17 in 12 states and 18 in 8), unless you're "close in age" with them, typically 3 or 4 years.

For example, here in Maryland the age of consent is 16, but it's legal to have sex with someone 15 if you're under 21, and it's legal to have sex with someone 14 or younger if you're no more than 4 years older.

Colorado is even more liberal. The age of consent there is 17, but it's legal to have sex with someone who is 15 or 16 as long as you're no more than 10 years older. (So yes, it means a 24-year-old guy can legally have consensual sex with a 15-year-old girl in Colorado.)

Even in the three states where the age of consent is 18 and there is no "Romeo and Juliette" exception (California, Arizona and Wisconsin), the law only makes having sex with someone underage a misdemeanor instead of a felony if the older person is no more than 3 years older. But note, in those states it's still illegal. If two 17-year-olds in California have sex, both of them can be prosecuted.

So as far as I can see, we're in a fairly open period now, where casual sex is more easily available, and things should remain that way until some time in the 2020s, and if the typical 20 year cycle holds, things shouldn't change until around 2023.

Now, does anyone disagree with my appraisal of the sexual mores of society?