Much\n of what seems strange and reactionary about Trump is tied to what was \nnormal to a certain kind of Sinatra and Mad Men-era man \u2014 the casual \nsexism, the odd mix of sleaziness and formality, even the insult-comic \nstyle.
But\n while that male culture was \u201cconservative\u201d in its exploitative \nattitudes toward women, it was itself in rebellion against bourgeois \nnorms and Middle-American Christianity. And if Hillary is a (partial, \ngiven her complicated marriage) avatar of Gloria Steinem-era feminism, \nher opponent is an heir of the male revolutionary in whose club Steinem \nonce went undercover: Hugh Hefner\u2026. Hefner\n passed from a phenomenon to a sideshow, while a more feminist vision of\n liberation became the official ideology of the liberal upper class.
But\n only gradually and partially. The men\u2019s sexual revolution, in which \nfreedom meant freedom to take your pleasure while women took the pill, \nis still a potent force, and not only in the halls of Fox News. From \nHollywood and college campuses to rock concert backstages and Bill \nClinton\u2019s political operation, it has persisted as a pervasive but \nunspoken philosophy in precincts officially committed to cultural \nliberalism and sexual equality.
This fundamentally rings true, close to what I was getting at in that Something for Everyone post.
Separating The Sixties into two is an interesting and possibly productive angle though. You have the Playboy Sixties (which started in the Fifties of course, the same time as campus unrest first flared up, this time against \u201cin loco parentis\u201d parietal rules that tried to keep the male students and the co-eds from fucking. My dad mentions being in near-riots at Cornell over this, in a narrative by which \u201cpanty raids\u201d where men would en masse storm women\u2019s dorms and steal their underwear were a blow for freedom.) The Swinging Sixties, what Austin Powers (who woken up assumed communism had won and condoms were for sailors) was riffing on. The Sinatra Sixties. The sixties where the popular New Face Of America was a charming young president with a picture-perfect wife and family and a steady stream of models and actresses piped in the back door.
And THEN, distinct from that, you have the minority-liberationist 60s, the feminist 60s. Which was not obviously or inevitably incompatible with the white man\u2019s \u201860s. That the Civil Rights Movement of the \u201850s demanding membership in white society would eventually be eclipsed by a black nationalism asserting pride in distinct blackness was not obvious or inevitable. Betty Friedan\u2019s original goal had been, taking heterosexual pairing as a given as the correct state of mature women, to make it work for both parties. And her warning of the \u201cLavender Menace\u201d of lesbians coming to prominence in late-60s feminism came from a suspicion that given the chance, these women who were not drawn to men and were increasingly articulating theories of feminism based on complete life without men were unlikely to spend the feminist reputational capital she\u2019d cultivated on Making Marriage Great Again.
And points to him for pointing out that the Playboy stuff and so much of that period\u2019s masculinity wasn\u2019t the last hurrah of a long stable maleness but a new-at-the-time innovation that was understood as counter to existing stability.
Like, do you remember that 1965 Playboy interview where Sean Connery, deputized as James Bond, agent of masculinity, extrapolated from his character to expound on the necessity of violence in maintaining correct male-female relations?
PLAYBOY: How do you feel about roughing up a woman, as Bond sometimes has to do?
CONNERY: I don\u2019t think there is anything \nparticularly wrong about hitting a woman\u2013although I don\u2019t recommend \ndoing it in the same way that you\u2019d hit a man. An openhanded slap is \njustified\u2013if all other alternatives fail and there has been plenty of \nwarning. If a woman is a bitch, or hysterical, or bloody-minded \ncontinually, then I\u2019d do it. I think a man has to be slightly advanced, \nahead of the woman. I really do\u2013by virtue of the way a man is built, if \nnothing else. But I wouldn\u2019t call myself sadistic. I think one of the \nappeals that Bond has for women, however, is that he is decisive, cruel \neven. By their nature women aren\u2019t decisive\u2013\u201cShall I wear this? Shall I \nwear that?\u201d\u2013and along comes a man who is absolutely sure of everything \nand he\u2019s a godsend. And, of course, Bond is never in love with a girl \nand that helps. He always does what he wants, and women like that. It \nexplains why so many women are crazy about men who don\u2019t give a rap for \nthem.
That came more than 20 years after the publication of Generation of Vipers, a popular and influential 1942 nonfiction book on how baleful but widespread trends of women in positions of influence or control over men in the name of morals and propriety -\u00a0\u201cmomism\u201d were turning us into a cosseted, failed, unworthy nation.