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Department of History

Sex and Permissiveness

How did sexuality become an object of knowledge in twentieth-century Britain? This week investigates the mid-century (and specifically the 1960s) flurry of interest in sexuality as a social phenomenon, from academic studies through to media interest, and across a variety of groups who were the targets of research.

For preparation this week, please try to examine at least one secondary reading, one primary reading and one of the audio-visual sources. However, you are are also more than welcome to substitute the Mass Observation materials for the primary sources.

Seminar questions

  • What did contemporary social scientists who investigated matters relating to sexuality hope to achieve by doing so? What was their object of analysis and who were their subjects?
  • Were such productions confined to academic social science and what might the presence of other groups carrying out 'sex surveys' reveal about interest in sexuality as a subject of study?
  • What broader cultural, social, economic and political shifts undergirded the phenomena being studied and influenced the people involved? Are changes over time observable in the surveys?
  • Can reusing this material illuminate otherwise invisible identities and practices?
  • Was this research always emancipatory for the groups concerned? Does it have the potential to be more emancipatory in its re-use by historians?

Secondary reading

  • Adrian Bingham, Family Newspapers? Sex, private life, and the British popular press, 1918-1978 (Oxford: OUP, 2009), chapter 3, 'Surveying sexual attitudes and behaviour', pp. 97-124 [e-book]
  • Hannah Charnock, '"How far should we go?": adolescent sexual activity and understandings of the sexual life cycle in postwar Britain', Journal of the History of Sexuality, 32:3 (2023), pp. 245-268 [link]
  • Liz Stanley, Sex Surveyed, 1949-1994: from Mass-Observation's 'Little Kinsey' to the National Survey and Hite Reports (London: Taylor & Francis, 1995), chapter 5, 'Theorising while appearing not to? Ideas and the British sex survey', pp. 58-64 [not available as an e-book, but there is a physical copy in the Library collections: HQ21.S6249]

Primary sources

Gordon Westwood, A Minority: a report on the life of the male homosexual in Great Britain (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1960)

(This book is not available in the Library. However, I own a personal copy and will be happy to provide access/scans if anyone wishes to read the other chapters for assessment.)

Michael Schofield, The Sexual Behaviour of Young People (London: Longmans, 1965)

(The remainder of the volume is available as a physical item in the Library, HQ27.S26)

Michael Schofield, Sociological Aspects of Homosexuality: a comparative study of three types of homosexual (London: Longmans, 1965)

(The remainder of the volume is available as a physical item in the Library, HQ76.S36)

Peter Willmott, The Adolescent Boys of East London (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966)

(The remainder of the volume is available as a physical item in the Library, HC1415.W4)

Geoffrey Gorer, Exploring English Character (London: Cresset Press, 1955)

Geoffrey Gorer, Sex and Marriage in England Today: a study of the views and experience of the under-45s (London: Nelson, 1971)

Audio-visual sources

Two episodes of the BBC Man Alive documentary strand, broadcast during parliamentary debates around what became the 1967 Sexual Offences Act (decriminalising same-sex relations between men aged 21 and over in private). Each episode lasts around 30 minutes:

CW: Discussions of mental health, suicide and violence; homophobic language and attitudes

Additionally, there are the three Man Alive episodes dealing with marital breakdown and divorce:

All of these are also available (along with other episodes from Man Alive) on the BBC iPlayer.

New Society dossier

Mervyn Harris, 'The Dilly boys', 6 April 1972 [PDF]

Lionel James, 'On the game' [sex work], 24 May 1973 [PDF]

Michael Schofield, 'Why is homosexuality still something to hide?', 15 February 1979 [PDF]

Mass Observation

In the 1937 MO, there are a host of resources on this topic in the digitised collection.

For MOP, there is material spread across a number of directives, including: Spring 1987 ('HIV and AIDS'), Summer 1990 ('Close Relationships'), Autumn 1991 ('Women and Men'), Spring 1998 ('Having an Affair'), Autumn 2000 ('Gays and Lesbians in the Family'), Summer 2001 ('Courting and Dating') and Autumn 2005 ('Sex')

Further reading

Charlotte Greenhalgh, 'Love in later life: old age, marriage and social research in mid-twentieth-century Britain', in Alana Harris and Timothy Jones (eds), Love and Romance in Britain, 1918-1970 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 144-160

Matt Houlbrook, Queer London: perils and pleasures in the sexual metropolis, 1918-1957 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)

Katherine A. Hubbard, 'Lesbian community and activism in Britain, 1940s-1970s: an interview with Cynthia Reid', Journal of Homosexuality, 70:4 (2023), pp. 565-586

Claire Langhamer, The English in Love: the intimate story of an emotional revolution (Oxford: OUP, 2013)

Peter Mandler, 'Being his own rabbit: Geoffrey Gorer and English culture', in Claire V.J. Griffiths, James J. Nott and William Whyte (eds), Classes, Cultures, and Politics: essays on British history for Ross McKibbin (Oxford: OUP, 2011), pp. 192-208

Michael Schofield, The Sexual Behaviour of Young Adults: a follow-up study to the Sexual Behaviour of Young People (London: Allen Lane, 1973)

Helen Smith, Masculinity, Class and Same-Sex Desire in Industrial England, 1895-1957 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)

Further primary sources

Alfred Kinsey, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1948) [available as a Library e-book]

Alfred Kinsey, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1953) [as above]

Kaye Wellings, Sexual Behaviour in Britain: the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1994) [Library physical collection]

Late Night Line-Up, BBC Two, 14 June 1967 [a studio discussion on the Man Alive documentaries]

Victim (dir. Basil Dearden, 1961) [trailer] [drama about a barrister who confronts a blackmail gang targeting homosexual men - the first UK film to 'openly' invoke homosexuality]

Black and white still. A close up of Angela Huth (left) a young woman with medium-length light-coloured hair, looking pensively and resting her head on her left hand. Her interviewee is on the right, with her back to the camera. She has short, wavy hair and a light-coloured jumper. The interview takes place in the interviewee's living room and the background features a set of display shelves with books and indistinct family ornaments and photographs.

Still from Man Alive episode 'Consenting Adults 2. The Women', BBC Two, 14 June 1967. Angela Huth interviews an unnamed lesbian about her life.