Linnea Meyer, Harvard University; Christopher C. Hull, Georgetown University. "Evolution of the Revolution: Habermas, Foucault, & Sex Attitudes 1972-2004." Annual Meeting. Chicago, Ill.: Midwest Political Science Association, 2006.
Are changes in sexual attitudes and sex activity imposed by society’s power, or arrived at by collective action? In this paper, we analyze US trends in sexual beliefs and behavior from 1972-2004 to test Habermas and Foucault’s theories. We find that individual beliefs, not society’s beliefs, directly affect sex behavior. Specifically, we find, singles who support sex before marriage are about a third (32.7%) more likely to report having had sex in the last year, and those who oppose sex before marriage are about one fifth (20.2%) as likely to report sex. Yet American society’s overall support for sex before marriage in a given year does not directly affect singles’ sexual behavior. Most startlingly, we find that for every 1% increase in society’s support for sex outside marriage, individual support dropped by about 2.2% controlling for other factors, implying that Americans are “sexual rebels” – a finding in contrast to both Habermas and Foucault’s overall theories.
