Subtitle: Desexualization in American Life
Author: Charles Winick

 

Publisher: Pegasus
City: New York
Year: 1968

 

This book explores the radically new forms of sexuality emerging in America since World War II.  According to the author, sexual identity and the polarization of the masculine and feminine have become so strangely blurred that a neuter role of the sexes has come to dominate our self-awareness.

“Men and women in the United States,” explains Professor Winick, “have undergone so profound a flattening of sexual identity that they can properly be described as ‘New People.’ … they have taken over; they are the authorities when it comes to setting the tone of our living… one hardly notices the invasion because it has been so widespread and successful… We have failed to recognize them; they are, in fact, invisible.  They are ourselves.”

Professor Winick brings into perspective the nature and the consequences of this shift in American life and its social expressions.  Food, drink, and tobacco have become blander, male dominance of leisure activity has become a casualty of the times, and clothing reflects our blurring of sex and age roles.

Ranging from the ambi-sexual names given to our children to role reversals among male and femal adults, Professor Winick analyzes all aspects of popular culture – food, drink, clothing, furniture, architecture, and the major performing arts.

When age and sex differences become so bleached that we seem to be contradicting basic biological patterns, says Professor Winick, there is reason to question our society’s ability to achieve goals, and perhaps even survive.

Charles E. Winick is Professor of Anthropology and Sociology as the City University on New York.

1 arts and the man

• Movers and Shakers
• Beyond “June-Moon” to “Hound Dog” and “Boots”
• One Million Guitars
• Pas d’Elegance
• “Hot” to “Cool” and the “New Thing”
• After Scarlett O’Hara
• Art and Artist

2 the hero unhorsed

• Brunnhilde without Siegfried
• Matinee Idols, Exuent Omnes
• Orpheus among the Maenads
• The Celluoid Gender
• Liberace:  Television’s Matinee Idol
• Have Chum, Will Travel

3 fun and games

• Annie Got His Gun
• Beyond the Nineteenth Hole
• “Beware of the Owner”
• The Shape of Things That Go

4 the country of the bland

• Muted Sprits and Devitalized Vittles
• But a Good Cigar Is a Smoke

5 inner and outer space

• The Beige Epoch
• Grand Rapids and After
• Cities of the Plain

6 childhood, a journey with new maps

• From Dick and Jane to Leslie and Tane
• Barbie as Baby Doll
• Sleeping Beauty Wakes Up
• Playing and Wearing Roles

7 costume and custom:  the vanishing difference

• Dear Sir or Madam, As the Case May Be
• Fine Birds and Fine Feathers
• The Sweet Smell of Success?
• The RIngs on His Fingers
• The Shoe on the Other Foot
• Vive la Difference

8 men, women, and other minority groups

• Dagwood and Blondie
• Marriage for Moderns
• The Godiva Principle
• Rites of Passage, Hail and Farewell

9 the seventh veil

• Love in Runes
• The Troubadour’s Farewell
• The Age of Tiresias
• Sex Nouveay
• Pleasure versus Propogation Sex
• The Prudent Amorists

10 the way of the neuter

• The Past as Prologue
• Adam and Eve and the Fruit
• One Plus One Equals Zero

acknowledgements
notes

Online Resources
OpenLibrary
Archive.org
Google Books
Project Gutenberg
Wikipedia (book or author)
WorldCat
LibraryThing
GoodReads

(sample illustrations, cited edition preferably)

“The Sound of Music… became the highest grossing film ever released, perhaps because it is a woman’s picture that provides a quintessential Oedipal story.”

“Several interview studies have established that the most typical American fans of Bond are men who tend to alienation, impotence, hostility toward women, and passivity, with fantasies of violence.”

“Over 2,300,000 wives earn more than their husbands…”