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ABSTRACT
Despite the much-touted ‘sexual revolution’, during the 1960s-70s, at the time most Western education systems avoided sex education. This article identifies contradictory discourses about sex as manifested in two distinct cultural expressions that co-occurred in those years in the UK. The first represented mainstream social conservatism – in the form of short sex education films produced for schools and colleges. The second, more radical alternative was the British-Australian underground magazine Oz, which expressed the sexual freedom of the counterculture. Both are discussed from the perspective of visual cultural history as competing agents of sex education – one reproducing the conservative paradigm, and the other aiming to dismantle it. While the films took a biomedical and preventive attitude to sex and embodied a patriarchal heteronormative approach , Oz supported sexual freedom and shattered taboos about such issues as abortion and sexual diversity, as well as celebrated women’s sexuality. Nevertheless, male-dominant culture was also reflected on its pages, particularly in gratuitous images of female nudity. Despite this visual sexism, the article highlights the magazine as a countercultural entertainment medium educating for sexual pleasure and offering a creative, nonconformist perspective on sex that was way ahead of its time, and also of our own.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Oz (Sydney 1963–1969; London 1967–1973) published 90 issues, 48 of them in London. Four years after its founding in Australia, two of the founders, Richard Neville and cartoonist Martin Sharp, moved to the UK, and since then its British version became better known. Issues of London Oz issues are accessible in the online archives of the University of Wollongong, Australia at https://archivesonline.uow.edu.au/nodes/view/3495/
2. M. Cole, Growing Up, Global Films, in association with the Institute for Sex Education and Research, 1971.
3. Learning to Live, Eothen Films, Britain. Sponsored by the London Foundation for Marriage and funded by the London Rubber Company, 1964 https://archive.org/details/LearningToLive
4. In his autobiography, Neville (Citation2009) addresses the sexism of that time, and in the Introduction, he states that he regrets nothing he has done during that period, but that he is still shocked by his own sexism.
5. Love Now, Pay Later, Granada TV, 1973. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/lovenowpaylater
6. Venereal Diseases is part of a three-film series called Twentieth Century Focus, on dangers: smoking, drugs and VD.
7. Iyer and Aggleton (Citation2015, 7) quote from a 1963 article from Health Education Journal saying that self-discipline in sexual matters is a necessity just like moderation in eating or in alcohol consumption. A committee established by the British Medical Association in 1959 to study VD concluded that reasons for their significant spread were the influx of Black immigrants, homosexuality and growing promiscuity among young people. Accordingly, a key motivation for sex education in schools was to warn young people against the health consequences of ‘promiscuity’ (Hampshire Citation2005, 95).
8. ‘Ave You Got a Male Assistant Please Miss?, Oxford Polytechnic, 1973. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWEyjBT2I-I
9. The Least You Can Do, Granada TV, 1975. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rEi3pqeXK0
10. Baddeley, W. H., Don’t be Like Brenda. Hugh Baddeley Productions, 1973.
11. According to Neville (Citation2009, 26–27), this issue featured an anonymous interview with a gynaecologist who performed illegal abortions, as well as with women who have had abortions, which enraged several readers, and led to a boycott by some advertisers and threats by the property owners to stop renting out the Oz offices.