Message of love

After missing out on the '60s, Brown alum David Allyn chronicled the sexual revolution

by Ian Donnis

In deciding to write a book about the sexual revolution, David Allyn seized a juicy antidote to images of research as being dull and plodding. The subject also marked a logical choice for Allyn, who, after being born in 1969, writes that he grew up "with the vague sense of having missed something magical and mysterious. I remember the adolescent's agony of realizing that my parents had witnessed extraordinary social transformations, the likes of which we might never see again."

Allyn, 31, who was raised in Washington, D.C., and graduated from Brown University in 1991, sated his curiosity by writing Make Love, Not War (Little, Brown and Company), an "unfettered history" of the sexual revolution, which was published in March.

While social conservatives associate the '60s with the dawn of an overly permissive culture, Allyn describes it as an era that reinvigorated the American spirit. At the same time, the author describes the sexual revolution as part of a contradictory time that contributed to the overall improvement of American life, but which also left us less at peace with ourselves.

Allyn, a playwright and essayist who lives with his wife and children in Hoboken, New Jersey, will return to Brown this Saturday, May 27, as part of the university's 30th annual commencement forums. While alumni, faculty, students and special guests will weigh in on topics ranging from the Elián Gonzalez affair to Vladimir Putin and contemporary Russia (for info, check www.brown.edu), Allyn and Irwin Goldstein, a Boston urologist who has been extensively interviewed on Viagra, will hold forth on "The Second Sexual Revolution." Allyn spoke with the Phoenix earlier this week from his office in New York City.

Q: What were some of the fundamental contradictions that characterized the sexual revolution?

A: What I found was that in the '60s and '70s there were really many sexual revolutions going on at the same time. On the one hand, you had a very optimistic view of human nature and a sense that we could really solve all of society's social problems through sexual freedom. And at the same time you had a striking materialism and emphasis on the commercialization of sex. The sexual revolution was really shaped by both of those forces. And also, while it was in many ways a secular movement that was attempting to divorce morality from ethics, many of the leading thinkers and figures in the sexual revolution were spiritual leaders. I thought that was very interesting and it was something I didn't know.

Q: American television is filled with titillating sexual imagery, but many Americans are unwilling to speak frankly about sex. Why are we so conflicted about this?

A: It's the our legacy of our puritanical past. It's our greater comfort with the marketplace than with serious thought and self-reflection. In our culture you can find titillating images to sell things everywhere, but it's almost impossible to find images of the naked human body that aren't being used to sell something. Of course, the contradiction between our attitudes about sex and violence are so striking. You so blood on TV all the time; you don't seen semen.

Q: You wrote a seventh-grade term paper on sexual customs during the Middle Ages. How did you get interested in this stuff at such an early age?

A: I used to read The Joy of Sex when I was a little kid at my aunt and uncle's apartment. My uncle was also a photographer, so he had a lot of semi-erotic photographs and magazines. My parents got divorced when I was four, so my father was a single bachelor in the '70s; He was always picking up flight attendants. I would always go with him on dates. I felt the swirl of the sexual revolution in my own life, and he was very eager to talk about sex.

Q: What was it like for you, as a young man interested in sexual liberation, to arrive at Brown in the late '80s, as the threat of AIDS was receiving massive attention?

A: I certainly don't think that we had nearly as much fun as the previous generation did. But, on the other hand, we had the benefit of knowledge. I often think to myself, I would have wound up dead had I lived through the '60s, because I'm sure I would have done everything there was to do.

Brown was a wonderful place where I really felt free to be myself, and I think a lot of other people did, too, especially because there wasn't quite the same pressure to conform to certain images of masculinity. I think it was particular to Brown. Brown's a place about being yourself, being true to yourself and letting other people be true to themselves. Sometimes we got a little self-righteous, particularly about sex, but for the most part it was a wonderful experience. We were young and thought we knew how the world should be.

Q: While some conservatives describe the '60s as the beginning of the end of Western civilization, you write that it marked a revitalization of the American spirit and a particularly active time for secular humanism. What is the most significant legacy of this?

A: I do think, unfortunately, that the primary legacy of the sexual revolution has been the more commercial aspects of it -- commercialized eroticism and the freedom to use four-letter words in popular culture. But at the time, there was a real belief in questioning one's assumptions, in challenging one's own belief and trying to live consistently with one's own principles. People didn't always succeed, but many tried and I think that's really impressive.

Q: Your chosen specialty seems like a salacious counterpoint to images of academic research as being dull and plodding. Were there times when your research was less fun than people would imagine?

A: I have to say I was fascinated by every single aspect of the sexual revolution. But there were times when I was sitting in archives counting the number of letters sent to a particular author and that got tiring after a while.

Q: How have your own views about sexual liberation changed with your transition from a single 20-year-old to a 31-year-old husband and father?

A: I think that I am more inclined to want to preserve a period of quote-unquote innocence. And I'm more unsure of how to be a resource for information about sex for my children without invading their space.

Q: What will you be talking about at Brown, as part of the commencement forum on "the second sexual revolution?"

A: I'm looking forward to finding out about the influence of hormones and genetic biotechnology, Viagra, and the chemical aspects of the sexual revolution. I plan to talk a little bit about how much things haven't changed over the millennia. I have some slides to show from Greek pornography, if you can use that word, for eroticism in [ancient] Greek culture.

Q: What were the most surprising things you learned during your research?

A: I was very surprised by the religious aspect. I was very surprised to learn that in 1968, when the pope ruled all contraception illegal, thousands of Catholic priests rejected the pope's stand and this created a major crisis for the church that I'd never known about. And I was surprised to learn how unscientific the medical establishment often is when it comes to sex; how reluctant the AMA was to endorse contraception, for instance. And I was surprised by many of the couples I talked to who had open marriages in the '60s and '70s and were still together today.

Q: What's your response to the view of cultural observers, like David Brooks, the author of Bobos in Paradise, who believe that a new social ethos has been created by merging the countercultural attitudes of the '60s and '70s with the ambition of the '80s and '90s?

A: I think that one of the things that happened in the late '70s was that the economy started to go into decline. People were worried more about their careers, and they had less time for sexual freedom. People started to blame sexual freedom for a lot of our problems. They went after sex education and pornography and gay rights.

I think that while people may dress a little more casually than they used to, I don't think that people today are engaged in the kind of self-examination that people were in the '60s and '70s. I think people are more concerned with getting ahead. And it's easier to not have to look at the inconsistencies in your life. It's easier to be right than to be happy.

I happen to think when people spend too much of their lives focusing on sex, it becomes silly and self-involved. I talked to some of the people who were children of the sexual revolutionaries, who felt like their parents were just obsessive. I talked to the daughter of the woman who wrote about discovering the G spot. The woman [frequently] wore a T-shirt that said, `I found my G spot,' and the daughter was just mortified.

I guess balance is still a virtue.

Q: What do you see for the future of sexuality?

A: I think that, obviously, the Internet and virtual reality will definitely continue to transform our relationship to pleasure.

I think if homosexuality is genetic, we're going to face a real cultural crisis if parents are given the option of choosing the sexual orientation of their children. I don't think we have to worry about the state creating a policy of eugenics. But we do have to worry that parents are going to choose right-handed heterosexual children, all in the quote-unquote best interests of the child.