Sexuality is not a topic often covered by our website. However, on 23 September 2024, Mathias Corvinus Collegium and the XXI. Century Institute hosted a panel discussion on the sexual revolution of the 1960s, as part of their Identity as a Political Weapon event series, held 23–24 September at the famous Castle District of Budapest.
Historian and director for the XXI. Century Institute Dorottya Baczoni, fellow historian from the Institute for the Research of Communism Rajmund Fekete, historian of philosophy Gábor Megadja from the Századvég Institute, and visiting fellow at MCC Gábor Csepregi gathered to talk through the topic in front of a packed house. István Gulyás from the Hungarian public television M1 served as the moderator.
Mr Csepregi started the conversation with his personal memory of the sexual revolution of the late ‘60s, which he lived through in Canada. He said that among its negative consequences, the movement had positive effects as well. As he put it, more attention had started to be placed on the human body, thus more people started to exercise and take better care of their physique. ‘Sexuality is the language of the body,’ he proclaimed.
Ms Baczoni pointed out that 1968, the focal point of the sexual revolution, was also ‘the year of violence’ with mass rioting and high-profile political assassinations happening in the United States. The Prague Spring, the mass protests against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, also took place in 1968, she added. She described the year as ‘a condensed mixture, everyone sees whatever they want to see it in’.
‘Sexuality is the language of the body’
Mr Fekete went as far as to say that ‘in 1968, a new world was born;’ and drew parallels between that year and the years following World War I. He claimed in both periods of time, radical political groups started to emerge. He also stressed that these events went down in completely different manners in the capitalist West and the communist East. In the prosperous West, people ‘had nothing to rebel against but their own past,’ as he put it.
Mr Megadja talked about how even different nations and intellectuals of different nationalities reacted to the sexual revolution in different ways. He brought up the example of German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno of the Marxist Frankfurt School, who supported the new developments in theory. However, when his female students took their shirts off during one of his lectures, he called the police on them and had to go on a six-month sick leave to cope with the experience. Meanwhile, French intellectuals of the same vein had very different attitudes, some of whom even approved of having sexual relations with underage people from France’s overseas territories.
‘People give up their revolutionary ideas and aesthetics as they grow older’
Mr Csepregi took back the floor, pointing out that most of his hippie friends in Canada ended up dressing just like him, in suits and ties, 10–15 years after the great revolution. Ms Baczoni agreed that it is a common phenomenon that people give up their revolutionary ideas and aesthetics as they grow older. However, she also stressed that this does not mean that the sexual revolution has passed without any lasting effects, as it has created new norms that are present today in public discourse, fashion, and arts alike.
Mr Fekete went on to talk about what the ‘intellectual successors’ of the 1960s hippie movement, the left-wing intelligentsia, are doing today. According to him, they are attacking everything: God, family, history, and gender. Just like the communists did in the 20th century, they are trying to force a new identity on the people, he said. He also pointed out that when Lenin came into power in Russia in the 1910s, he too started with undermining the institutions of marriage and family. However, since those efforts eventually were proven unsuccessful, they were reversed under Stalin.
Mr Megadja also lamented the current state of affairs, saying that ‘the revolution of 1968 is turning out to be like the revolution of 1945 for Hungarians,’ as now many of the left-wing activists are a lot more restrictive about sex and sexuality than the average person. He called these people ‘neo-prudes’. He brought up the example of so-called ‘intimacy coordinators’ working on sets of films and television shows in America today, who are telling the actors what is okay and not okay during the shooting of a romantic scene.
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