The second sexual revolution, moral panic, and the evasion of teenage sexual subjectivity

Across much of the Anglophone West, the 1960s played host to a moral panic over the sexual behaviour of young people. Claims of rapidly rising rates of premarital sexual experimentation, teenage pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases filled media reports and prompted government, community, and medical action. This article examines an Australian response to this crisis of teen sex. It argues that despite the widespread cultural acknowledgement of teenage sexual subjectivity and practice, the figure of the sexual adolescent was placed under erasure.