I Can't Get No Satisfaction: Female Sexuality in the Sixties

 

A quick glance at the discography of the revered English rock band The Rolling Stones shows that they were never the ones to toe the line when it came to their extremely topical and anti-conservative lyrics. From Paint it Black and its bleak description of grief-bound sorrow to the apocalyptic nature of Gimme Shelter. It is especially prevalent in Sympathy For The Devil, in which lead singer Mick Jagger proclaims himself as the devil – the architect of many of humanity’s bloodiest and most tragic events.

It’s of no surprise then, that their hit song (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction caused quite a bit of upset with listeners. Released in 1965, the main narrative of the song is of a man who is tiring of the monotonous commercial life that he is living: ‘and the man comes on the radio and he’s telling me more and more about some useless information supposed to fire my imagination’.[1] If you could see his eyes in the recording booth, you can imagine a rock star like Jagger rolling them at the prospect of such a menial life. More prominently though, the third verse of the song starts to become more sexually oriented, and one line went almost entirely over critics’ heads: ‘Baby, better come back later this week, ‘cause you see I’m on a losing streak’[2] This line, spoken from the perspective of a woman, was revealed by Jagger to be a euphemism for menstruation.[3] Jagger’s explanation of the line emphatically summarised the changing views on such taboo topics like female sexual desires and menstruation: ‘It’s just life. It’s what happens to girls’.[4] Even today, I have to imagine songs referencing menstruation, even subtly, would be questionably received by radio stations.

The titular song is perfect to describe the emerging female sexual discourse that was beginning to emerge in the Sixties. However, the study of sex as an experience of pleasure and not simply reproduction started years before this. In 1948, Alfred Kinsey published his first report Sexual Behavior in Human Males, and a female study followed five years later. Kinsey was a biologist whose specialty resided in the study of gall wasps, not sexuality.[5] He met much opposition in his attempt to forward these studies, notably from academics who equated sex education with moral education, and condemned masturbation and premarital sex.[6] Kinsey’s research was extensive; there were 18,000 interviews, 8,000 of which he conducted himself.[7] With regards to the study of female sexuality, Kinsey pioneered the debunking of female asexuality, one of the most controversial aspects of his research. His research revealed that over 75 per cent of women had experienced orgasm after one year of marriage, 25 per cent had orgasmed before the age of fifteen, and 64 per cent before marriage entirely.[8] 

Alfred Kinsey

Kinsey’s efforts to demystify female sexuality in the 40s and 50s paved the way for the second-wave feminist movements of the Sixties, who could use his evidence to create their own self-agency and encouraged further studies of sexuality, without the backlash Kinsey face in his own day. To this end, it wasn’t just men who were wanting satisfaction, but women too.

-- Liam McKerral

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[1] The Rolling Stones, ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’, Track 7 on Out of Our Heads, Andrew Loog Oldham, 1965, Digital

[2] Ibid.

[3] TIME, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll: Going to Pot’, 01 July 1966, http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,835889-2,00.html (Last Accessed 18 March 2021)

[4] Ibid.

[5] Vern L. Bullough, ‘Alfred Kinsey and the Kinsey report: Historical overview and lasting contributions’ The Journal of Sex Research¸ Vol. 35, No. 2 (1998) pp. 127-131 (p. 128)

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., p. 129

[8] Ibid., p. 130