The politics of sexual liberation / by Sue Wills.

Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney.

Degree awarded 1982; thesis submitted 1981.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Sydney, 1982.

Includes bibliographical references.

Part One. Political activism. -- Chapter 1. The Sydney sexual liberation movements 1969-1972 -- Chapter 2. The Sydney sexual liberation movements and the CIBA-GEIGY Symposium -- Chapter 3. Methodological considerations -- -- Interface -- -- Part Two. Political science. -- Chapter 4. The models -- Chapter 5. Model testing -- Chapter 6. Concluding remarks.

"The Politics of Liberation" is divided into two major parts which I have called Political Activism and Political Science. Between them is the Interface the place where, according to dictionary definitions of that term, interaction occurs between two separate systems or processes. In some senses it is probably more accurate to say that the two parts of the thesis collide rather than interact and the whole thesis can read like two separate pieces of work. This was not deliberate but rather the logical consequence of allowing two quite distinct approaches to research to work themselves out not merely in the content of the thesis but in the form that the two parts took. In both parts of the thesis I have allowed the subject matter I was researching to determine the way in which it was presented and to that extent the thesis as a whole adopts a feminist approach. What makes the two parts of the thesis read so differently is that in allowing the social science models discussed in the second part to determine the way in which their content (and intent) is conveyed their strong masculine bias contrasts much more strongly with the first part of the thesis than if such an approach were adopted in presenting the data in the first part as well. Political Activism contains a reconstruction of the activities of the Sydney Sexual Liberation Movements and their interactions with each other and the wider community during the period 1969-1973. It does not separate out the private from the public and treat only of the public. Both are included as equally important. It is argued in the second part of the thesis that the social sciences, or at the very least the three models used, do require different things of the data, not merely from an account written for future activists but from each other. The second part of the thesis, Political Science, in content and in form typifies the agentic approach, the patriarchal intellectual tradition. In it the three models used are first presented. Thus what may appear to be a thesis at war with itself is a concrete demonstration of two approaches to the social sciences in collision and of the consequences of adopting an agentic approach, for an integral part of that approach is not merely the manipulation of sets of data drawn from the real world but the manipulation of the world from which the data are drawn. The interpretations of the Sexual Liberation Movements offered by the psychiatrists at the CIBA-GEIGY Symposium and their attempts to redefine as 'symptoms of adolescent identity crises' the behaviour of the movement activists who tried to disrupt its proceedings and hence to deny the legitimacy of their protests is a very good example of the reality manipulation that is characteristic of the agentic approach: in the case of the psychiatrists it is obvious; in that of the social science models discussed it is more subtle, but manipulation nonetheless.