Teenage Female Sexuality in the Early 1960s

For my series The Development of Baby's Political Rebellion, I have been using a sociology book, published in 1971, titled Twelve to Sixteen: Early Adolescence. (I still am writing that series.)

Book Cover

One of the book's articles, written by John H. Gagnon, is titled "The Creation of the Sexual in Early Adolescence".

This article includes some relevant statistics about masturbation by young women in the USA. According to studies conducted by Alfred Kinsey during the years 1938-1948, the percentage who had masturbated to orgasm by age 15 was 20% and by age 20 was 33%. According to another study, conducted in the year 1967 among female college students, average age 18, the percentages were as follows:

Twice a week or more = 17%

Ever to once a month = 23%

Never = 60%

This 1967 study roughly captures the cohort of Baby Houseman, who turned 18 in about the year 1964.

For comparison, the 1967 found the following rates for male college students, average age 18.:

Twice a week or more = 77%

Ever to once a month = 12%

Never = 11%

It's quite likely that Baby Houseman, as a college student, practically never masturbated to orgasm. Among 18-year-old female college students, 60% never did so at all, and 23% did so no more than once a month.

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In his article, Gagnon elaborates (emphasis added):

The general absence of masturbation among women is, when contrasted with the male experience, commonly explained in one of three ways. It is assumed that ....

1) masturbation is universal and that females repress their memories or it,

2) or that women's sexual drive is more inhibited or repressed than that of men,

3) or that the sexual drive itself is biologically weaker among women.

These kinds of interpretation seem to be ill-founded and led to endless confusions and misunderstandings about female sexuality. ....

The lack of an upsurge in adolescence among females indicates that there is less of a break between the nonsexual training experiences of childhood and the experiences of early adolescence for females than for males. The future valued status of womanhood, with its comparatively narrow commitments to wifehood and child-rearing seems more or less continuous with earlier experiences in gender training.

Gender-linked training in submissiveness and lack of aggression toward parents link to similar roles that are experienced of female adults with reference to husbands. Girls are trained to occupy essentially reactive roles, roles in which they are to be scheduled by the behavior of others, including their future children. ....

For boys there is achievement, fear, aggression, and normative violation to attach to bodily manipulation; for the girls only a modest sense of anxiety unlinked to more powerful motivations.

In my own words, young women felt that they should remain passive sexually and wait for their husbands to provide any orgasms that they ever might experience. It was males' job to make all the female orgasms happen, and if young women wanted orgasms, then they better get married to capable husbands.

That was a pretty good arrangement. Young women got married by about age 21 (the average marriage age in 1963) and then still had plenty of years in their twenties and afterwards to enjoy lots of orgasms provided by their husbands.

Click on the graph to enlarge it

That's generally how young women of the early 1960s -- for example, Baby Houseman -- perceived their orgasm situation.  That's why most young women figured that they better not masturbate before marriage.

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My previous article titled How far did Baby and Johnny go sexually? included the following passage and graph.

The following chart from the book Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, published in 1953, indicates that less than 40% of Jewish women under the age of 20 ever had masturbated to orgasm.

In 1953, fewer than 40% of Jewish women
under the age of 20 had masturbated to orgasm.

..... The following table from the same book Sexual Behavior compares female and male enjoyment of petting in 1953.

Female responses to petting in the middle column.
Male responses in the right column.
(Click to enlarge)

I summarize the table in my own words as follows:

* Petting provided erotic satisfaction 1) sometimes to 83% of females and 2) usually to 91% of males.

* Petting caused orgasm 1) sometimes in 39% of females and 2) sometimes in 31% of males. However, if the males did not orgasm during the petting, then "many" [i.e. practically all] of them masturbated to orgasm afterwards. By contrast, if the females did not orgasm during petting, then only 35% of them masturbated to orgasm afterwards.

* Petting without orgasm caused "nervous disturbance" to 51% of females and to "many" [i.e. practically all] males. If the males did not orgasm during petting, then they could not relax until they masturbated to orgasm afterwards. In contrast, if the females did not orgasm during orgasm, then about half of them naturally relaxed rather soon.

* Petting was the source of first erotic arousal for 34% of females, but rarely for males (whose first source is masturbation). Petting caused the first orgasm in 24% of females, but in practically no males (who long before any petting had masturbated to their first orgasms.) 

The only disappointment that Baby might have felt after her no-orgasm-for-her dry-humping with Johnny was that he did not declare that he loved her. ....

She masturbated him manually to orgasm several times. That was interesting and fun for her, and she loved doing it. ....

She felt sexually aroused, but she was afraid to become so aroused that she might lose control of the situation and go too far. Therefore she was determined to keep her panties on and to prevent him from touching her naked pubic area and from fondling her to more intense sexual arousal.

They both were happy to stay within these sexual limits. He was satisfied with her hand jobs and did not pressure her toward oral sex. She was satisfied by her non-orgasmic sexual pleasure and by the fun of giving him as many orgasms as she could with her hands. She still was happy, satisfied and thrilled. She figured also that if she sexually exhausted him, then he would not stray to other women for awhile.

She felt safe from disease and pregnancy. He did not have to worry that she might get pregnant.

That's the way it was in 1963.