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2. In Memoriam In Memoriam In Memoriam In Memoriam In Memoriam D D D D Dark ark ark ark arkw w w w wa a a a av v v v ve e e e e H H H H Hiiiiippies ppies ppies ppies ppies Angela Carter through a Goth Lens American scholars of subcultures may be surprised to read, in ethnographic studies conducted in the United Kingdom, remarks like the following from a young woman whose appearance seems to mark her as Punk: “I started off, like, in the goth-hippy-type thing” (Muggleton, 121). While the category of hippie remains distinct from that of Punk in the U.S., as I shall discuss below, clearly in the U.K. Goth and hippie can overlap. And this overlap can serve as the launching point for a Deleuzian line of flight away from the mainstream concepts of youth currently dominating discourse on sexuality in America. As many of us remember well, we did not always live in a society terrified of sexual contact due to its perceived potential to damage women, adolescents , and children more than anything else possibly could. Feminists demonstrated little concern over protecting teens from consensual sex. Nor did feminism always take as its one of its most pressing problems eliminating the production and distribution of pornography. Instead feminist activists concentrated on eliminating unambiguous instances of violence against women and nonconsensual sex, and promoting the empowerment of women through equal financial and political opportunities. Many feminist projects aimed to protect children from poverty. Generally, whether they were feminists or not, most intelligent people considered the pollution that may yet destroy human life on Earth more of a threat to future generations than the possibility that children might see sexually explicit materials some might deem immoral, and acted accordingly, generally taking it upon themselves to instill in their offspring whatever values concerning sexuality they saw as necessary, but agitating for more public edu- 50 G G G G Go o o o ot t t t th’s h’s h’s h’s h’s D D D D Dark Empire ark Empire ark Empire ark Empire ark Empire cation about environmentalism. Moreover, people who cared about the immediate welfare of children did not always concentrate their energies on inflicting draconian punishments on adults who had consensual sexual relations with adolescents, but instead treated that issue with near indifference, preferring to focus on such problems as the United States’ amazingly high infant mortality rate and other threats that poverty posed to children, such as lack of food and basic health care. Likewise, for most feminists, sexual liberation of women did not always mean freeing women from pressure to engage in casual sex and helping them to enter into long-term monogamy. Nor did it mean convincing heterosexual men that all heterosexual women consider emotional intimacy an important component of every sexual relationship. Rather, feminists worked to make it possible for women to express their sexuality in a wide range of ways with the understanding that it is all right for us to want different things out of our sexual encounters. Throughout the sixties and seventies American culture had increasingly been viewed as sexually repressive, and there was a general confidence, as I discussed in chapter 1, that sexuality was a good that could heal many of the wounds the culture had caused. The priority changes that took place after the onset of the AIDS pandemic displaced that confidence. In fact, we might see the last two decades as having reversed the values connected to the public treatment of sexuality in the sixties and seventies. Now many feminists and other political liberals actively solicit government regulation, through educational institutions, medicine, and the judiciary, of consensual sexual practices . In the earlier period we rejected this. The priorities of the seventies, epitomized by the flowering of the sexual revolution during this period, arose out of the much broader cultural revolution of the sixties. And it is to that fertilely chaotic landscape that I now turn in order to demonstrate how familiarity with the current Goth subculture can enhance our understanding of the art products of the sixties, removing the web of myths that currently obscures some of the most interesting features of the sixties’ counterculture. Because the scope of this book will not allow me to discuss the entire range of sixties counterculture art products that can be better understood through a knowledge of Goth, I...

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