A Radical Break with a Puritanical Past: The Dutch Case

Abstract

The sexual revolution in the Netherlands took place, as elsewhere, over an extended period of time. Several dates can be indicated but the apex was undoubtedly in the late 1960s and early 1970s. AIDS definitively put an end to the era of hope and sexual optimism. Some historians point to its beginning in the immediate post-war years when the Dutch witnessed a short phase of erotic openness after the German occupation (1940–1945). Others place it in the late 1950s and early 1960s when the dark and oppressive cover of religious morality — both Protestant and Catholic — was removed and spectacularly so by the Christians themselves. Yet this opening was more than the removal of something negative; it was also an explosion of a liberating sexual energy into the public arena. In this revolution, the Netherlands arguably experienced the most radical change of all Western nations. It had been one of the more conservative European states before 1960 and after this time became well known as a tolerant and free country. Important changes of the 1960s included liberation of heterosexuality from bonds of wedding and reproduction, especially for women. A growing acceptance of extramarital sex eroded marriage. Both heterosexuality and homosexuality radically changed in the way they were perceived and experienced.1