Very interesting read on American soldiers' influence in the British sex revolution during WWII

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-1899423,00.html

12/12/2005 10:19:36 AM

12/12/2005 10:21:45 AM

Paragraph 11!

12/12/2005 10:23:45 AM

^hahaahah

Quote :

"The statistics are astounding. In pre-war Britain, most petitions for divorce alleging adultery were filed by women. By the end of the war, two out of every three applications were filed by husbands against their wives, and there were five times as many divorce petitions in 1945 as there were in 1939. Not unconnected is the fact that, of the 5.3m British infants delivered between 1939 and 1945, more than one-third were illegitimate. Their mothers belonged to every age group and every section of society."

12/12/2005 10:24:27 AM

My favorite quote, by far, is this:

Quote :

" Waaf girls in their dashing air-force kit, who were known as "pilots' cockpits" because of their access to airmen"

Although i'd wager that it had more to do with the Airmen's access to said 'cockpits.'

12/12/2005 10:27:56 AM

holy shit

Quote :

"One would have to slam the door in their faces to keep them out." Inevitably, there were cases of rape. Eight American servicemen were hanged for it during the course of the war."

12/12/2005 10:31:16 AM

that was an awesome article

someone needs to make a war movie out of that!

12/12/2005 10:47:50 AM

Quote :

"Under a regulation known as Paragraph 11, servicewomen who got pregnant were demobbed and could not re-enlist. So any woman wanting a quick release could stand outside the men's sleeping quarters at night and yell "Paragraph 11!" whereupon every effort would be made to oblige her. Even so, venereal disease (VD) and illegitimate birth rates in the women's armed forces were much lower, and sometimes half their equivalent in the civilian population."

damn

Quote :

"The BBC was not about to enlighten them. Its first director-general, Lord Reith, did not allow any divorced person to work for the corporation. Meanwhile, churches preached that fornication was a sin. "Promiscuous" girls, many of whom had become pregnant through sheer ignorance, could still be dispatched to the workhouse to have their babies, or be locked away in an asylum under the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. Sex-education books insisted on chastity before marriage. As for the sex, a 1921 manual explained reproduction through an illustrated discussion of "the male and female parts in primrose and vegetable marrow"."

good thing that's all changed

http://www.actupny.org/reports/frist_ethics.html

Quote :

"Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, who is a physician, insists on being addressed as Dr. Frist. But his misstatements on ABC News’ “This Week” last Sunday (December 5th, 2004) about HIV and AIDS caused the Liberal Oasis Web site to claim that Frist is in violation of the American Medical Association’s Code of Medical Ethics that require doctors to “be honest in all professional interactions” and “make relevant information available to the public.” ABC’s George Stephanopolous, questioning Frist about the inaccuracies in many abstinence-only sex education curricula that were brought to light this week by California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, asked whether “tears and sweat can transmit HIV.” Frist first said, “I don’t know,” then later said, “You can get the virus in tears and sweat. But in terms of the degree of infecting somebody, it would be very hard.” The Centers for Disease Control Web site says, “Contact with saliva, tears, or sweat has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV,” though it does say, “HIV has been found in saliva and tears in very low quantities from some AIDS patients.” It is never present in sweat. Frist also asserted that condoms have a “15 percent failure rate.” When used properly, the failure rate is actually, at worst, only between 2 and 3 percent."

[Edited on December 12, 2005 at 11:35 AM. Reason : ,]

12/12/2005 11:31:42 AM

Americas the standard in the world for many things.

12/12/2005 11:32:48 AM

Quote :

"Not until early 1943 were supplies of American condoms made readily available to GIs and distributed free under a US War Department ruling. "I'm told that we've got 30,000 rubbers in the supply room," one US sergeant barked at his men at reveille. "I want you people to do something about this." Thereafter, contraceptives littered the landscape. In London streets, used condoms could be, and were, collected by the basketful, the detritus of quick, unseen encounters. They were strewn like confetti on roadsides, around GI camps and in shop doorways; they hung on hedgerows and littered churchyards and bus stops. GIs inflated the rubbers like balloons and dropped them in rivers to float past girls lying on the bank. It all suggests that a Canadian soldier was not exaggerating when he wrote: "We were going to open a Second Front. Everyone knew that, and that a lot of men were going to die . . . I won't describe the scenes or the sounds of Hyde Park or Green Park at dusk and after dark . . . You can just imagine a vast battlefield of sex.""

12/12/2005 11:50:13 AM