Popular Sexual Cultures in Western Europe (1930s to the Present)

Abstract

This article begins with general considerations about popular sexual beliefs and cultures in Europe since the 1930s. Then it shows how state interventionism, conservative family values, and commercial eroticization shaped the sexual culture during the late 1930s until the early 1960s. The ‘sexual revolution’ from the mid-1960s to 1980s is discussed in different aspects between liberalization of sexual mores and new forms of sexualization and regulation. Since the 1980s the western European culture is highly sexualized. Sex thereby has become a consumer product between negotiation, risk, and virtualization. After the sexual liberalization of the 1960s and 1970s and the gender revolution of the 1980s, the 1990s saw a radical change in relationship culture – matrimony decreased and long-term cohabiting partnership rose. The preferred sexual relationship is now one in which both partners communicate on an equal basis.