In reply to Postmanpat:
> (In reply to Gordon Stainforth)
> Regarding the routine molestation (as opposed to assault) of older women, I genuinely wonder whether this thing went on to this extent before the sixties or whether the moral confusion of the era enabled it?
I think you'd find (if you could go back and see) that it's always gone on since the year dot.
In Victorian times (for example) attitudes towards rape and the molestation of servants and women from lower down in the social orders were awfull, even if unspokenly so, there are some written accounts of crowds gathering to watch women being raped in the street and not doing anything other than cheer/jeer.
In the 60s contraception ment women found it more difficult to have 'no' taken for an answer than before it, but compared to earlier times things had improved I think, and things like morality are often subjective when it comes to looking at an era in time and what is happening in a society.
I think Caitlin Moran said something interesting once about witches and women being more commonly thought to have special powers, which was that in times past when feudal landowners could rape women and cast families out of thier homes, saying that a curse would be put upon them if the didn't desist was probably the only power many women had at the time.
I'm not too sure if the 60s have been responsible for any changes in attitudes for the worse towards women when (IIRC) femenism started then as well.
Tim