Sex in the Heartland (review)

Beth Bailey provides a close examination of the emergence and impact of the sexual revolution in the heartland of America. Rather than exploring the East or West coasts, Bailey turns instead to the university-dominated town of Lawrence, Kansas to examine the on-the-ground dynamics of sexual and social change. While the patterns she finds might not be as radical as those that developed in the centers of the feminist and gay liberation movements, her findings might ultimately prove more important for considering the impact of the sexual revolution across American society. If there was a sexual revolution, and Bailey argues that there was, then assessing the process of change and the impact of a revolution of cultural norms in places such as Kansas remains necessary to understanding what that revolution meant for the majority of Americans.

In some ways, Bailey’s book seems to document a story of growing sexual opportunities, particularly given the shift from dorm curfew policies and panty raids to coed dorms and widely-available birth control. However, as Bailey makes clear, the linear narrative is both true and untrue; while opportunities for sexual experimentation increased, this development took place within larger public arguments that presented no single over-riding pattern. For example, models for interpreting male/male desire based consecutively on morality, psychiatry, Kinsey Report-inspired pragmatism, and gay rights allowed for the emergence of gay sexuality as a legitimate form of desire. However, the shift in models created as many problems as it solved. The shift to a psychiatric model, for example, created a coercive mental health regime that stigmatized and penalized, rather than treated. Kinsey-inspired pragmatism allowed for a wider variation in sexual practice but did little to transform public space or rhetoric. Even the gay rights movement condoned certain forms of desire and condemned others. Bailey documents similar tensions around emergence of the Pill as a system of birth control. The struggles between feminists who were concerned with women’s health and a local doctor who was concerned with population growth make it clear that while opportunities increased for women to control their own fertility, this shift served purposes unrelated to sexual liberation. Bailey’s concern with the many positions, arguments, and individuals involved in changing sexual norms nuance any simple linear process that posit a shift from repression to liberation. Her treatment of these complicated issues makes fascinating reading.

Bailey sets up the emergence of the sexual revolution with discussions of town and gown politics before World War II, the growth of the University during the war, and the establishment of gender and sexual norms in the post-war years. She then explores the sexual revolution in a series of chapters on the 1960s and 1970s that look at sexual rhetoric in student protests, the emergence of a gay liberation movement in Lawrence, and the rise of feminism in the local context. Finally, Bailey assesses student challenges to sexual and gendered inequality through a discussion of co-educational student housing. While co-ed dorms sound like a dated issue with limited relevance to current concerns about sexuality, Bailey uses the issue to demonstrate the emergence of a commonplace language and ethos of sexual change. Its limits as a continuing issue demonstrates the depth to which these concerns have reached a resolution.

Bailey does a particularly good job of weaving together general trends and specific examples. Her sources include personal letters from civic leaders and college administrators, policies and cases from various university deans, local and national newspapers, journals geared for colleges, Health Department Records, social services records, and interviews. From this diverse collection of sources, Bailey creates order by focusing on cases of high visibility for the KU population. In the process, she explores the motivations of a various individuals, the ways they chose to proceed, and the impact on Lawrence. Doctors, school administrators, community leaders, students, teachers, local crackpots, and drifters changed patterns of sexual behavior even as these individuals interacted with the ideas emerging from activists and the...