Age of Youth in Argentina

by Valeria Manzano

  At the start of the 1960s, however, young women and men expressed remarkably different concerns about sex when they had the chance of speaking publicly. For example, 520 youths age seventeen to twenty-three who were students at the University of Buenos Aires—who would later be identified as the “vanguard” in terms of sexual attitudes—took part in workshops on “youth psycho-sexual problems” during the winter break of 1959.72 The students discussed premarital sex, masturbation, homosexuality, frigidity, and contraception. The psychologist and the educator who coordinated the workshops reported that students showed a mix of “anguish and interest.” Moreover, they stated that students lacked sexual information and could “barely relate sex with love.” They attested that only 5 percent of the students enrolled had “incorporated sexual intercourse to their affective relations” and underscored that most young women refused to do so “because of cultural tradition and fears of pregnancy.” The experts concluded that the students displayed a “traumatic” relationship to their own sexuality and were pushing “for change and sex education.”73 Secondary school students also cried out for discussion of sexuality and accurate information. In 1960, for example, boys and girls taking part in roundtables and conferences concurred that they were not receiving “sex education at home,” and one girl argued that she did not think her mother was “a suitable candidate to talk to.”74

  Sexologists, doctors, and psychologists intended to meet and carve out the youth demand for sex education by combining scientific discourse and morality tales, exemplified in the initiatives carried out by the Catholic progressive monthly Nuestros Hijos and by the pediatrician Florencio Escardó and his wife, the psychologist Eva Giberti. The experts for Nuestros Hijos tried to explain to parents how to convey sexual knowledge to their children. The doctors explained, for instance, the glandular changes taking place during puberty, suggesting that they were distressful but unavoidable and normal. Parents were called to distinguish between pathology—like homosexuality, an “illness based on infantile crises” that merited treatment—and “normalcy,” like masturbation.75 Nuestros Hijos endorsed a single standard of continence for both women and men. While doctors believed that keeping this standard was harder for men, they acknowledged that young women also needed to be educated to choose continence; otherwise they would see continence as “repression,” while “organizing orgies in their heads.”76 Escardó and Giberti, for their part, also emphasized the “glandular changes of puberty” and worked to normalize youth sexuality.77 Furthermore, although both praised the importance of “healthy” sexuality within marriage (meaning that both partners should reach orgasm), they saw premarital sex as undesirable. Escardó even discouraged the practices that were known as petting in the United States, because they incited psychic imbalances. “It is a family responsibility,” he wrote, “to teach girls the difference between a superficial touch on the face and insistent touch of the pubis or the breasts.”78 Thus Escardó and Giberti made young women responsible for setting limits on premarital sex, and mothers responsible for keeping tabs on their sexual behavior.

  Despite the experts’ efforts to make parents the transmitters of “enlightened” sexual information, by the mid-1960s there had been limited results. In 1964, Dr. Mauricio Knobel—a psychoanalyst who later became the most authoritative voice in adolescent analysis—conducted a survey of boys and girls ages eleven to thirteen, in public and private schools, to find out their level of knowledge about menstruation. Most girls responded with references to pain and suffering to the question “What do you know about menstruation?” and only a few focused on biological processes. The same was true when asked, “What is the purpose of menstruation?” While just a few girls related it to “development,” boys were the only ones who connected menstruation to “reproduction.” Likewise, he noted that boys got information from friends, whereas girls only listed their mothers as sources. Knobel concluded that parents—and chiefly mothers—“keep transmitting distorted values and taboos.”79 Giberti reached similar findings after a survey conducted of 420 adolescents receiving psychological treatment at a public hospital. She found that mothers said “the truth” about pregnancy, but provided idiosyncratic information on menstruation, mostly revolving around taboos such as “not taking showers.” Meanwhile, the majority of the girls surveyed did not relate menstruation to the possibility of getting pregnant.80 The picture Knobel and Giberti painted about girls’ lack of accurate sexual information was worrying, mainly as they both recognized the spread of a new sexual attitude.

  The new attitude toward premarital sex emerged gradually among youth throughout the 1960s. The erosion of the “taboo of female virginity” was at the core of the revamp of sexual mores, and it touched upon the sexual perceptions and ideals of young women and men alike. The rising public acceptance of premarital sex destabilized the double standard prescribing female virginity before marriage at the same time it tolerated—and expected—male sexual experience before marriage. Perhaps in an attempt to preserve their assumed sexual prerogatives, many young men showed anxieties vis-à-vis potential promiscuity. Interviewed about their attitudes regarding premarital sex, eight out of ten university students approved of having sex with their girlfriends, yet many wanted to ensure that they were the “first” and to be certain that the girls were not “having sex for fun,” as a secondary school student put it.81 Even counterculture organizers Miguel Grinberg and Juan Carlos Kreimer, while celebrating the association of sex with love, feared the “sport-like attitude towards sex” that they said was generalized among girls.82 Few would concur with Ezequiel, age twenty-three, who in a roundtable stated, “sexual relations do not necessarily need to be related to love.” His assertion proved, perhaps, ahead of its time. Meanwhile his peers at the roundtable agreed that virginity was “overvalued” and that premarital sex could take place within a loving relationship, which would be “doubled if the partners showed sexual compatibility,” as one woman put it.83

  A discourse centered on love, affection, and responsibility allowed many young women and men to create a new outlook on sex and, in doing so, begin to erode the “taboo of virginity.” This new attitude crystallized in the late 1960s. In 1969, for example, a survey conducted by Análisis to determine “how youths love each other” noted that 57 percent of those from twenty to twenty-five years old did not think that “virginity” was important. Likewise, 67 percent of the men and 57 percent of the women approved of premarital sex; while 19 percent and 13 percent, respectively, thought that it was dependent “on the relation.” The survey noted also that the rate of approval of premarital sex was higher among middle- and working-class youths, particularly those who held secondary or university diplomas.84 In fact, the approval rating among the Argentine youths resembled those registered in other countries. Similar surveys showed that in France 70 percent of young men and 65 percent of women approved of premarital sex in 1970, while 55 percent of both sexes approved in Spain.85 The awareness of a global transformation of attitudes toward premarital sex figured prominently in the ways some young women articulated their opinions. Interviewed by La Bella Gente—one of the first youth magazines—six girls who approved of premarital sex related their acceptance to an “international trend” toward “liberalized attitudes,” as one office clerk, age seventeen, put it. These girls, like most young people in the 1960s, emphasized that sex should not be disengaged from love, and that love should end in “a marriage devoid of sexual taboos.” While the girls identified themselves as Catholic, all agreed that sex was no longer a “sin.”86

  The Catholic family groups and Catholic spokespeople in the media responded to this new attitude by cautioning young women against it and by sexualizing marriage. The endorsement of the notion of marriage as a site where partners might achieve true sexual satisfaction was not new to Catholic groups: already in the 1950s, Nuestros Hijos advised young readers to read sexology books to prepare “for a perfect body communion” once married.87 In 1967 the Christian Fa
mily Movement went a step further: after lobbying the church’s hierarchy to make prenuptial courses mandatory for couples pursuing religious marriages, it passed a syllabus that required discussion of “the delights of sex.”88 Yet these Catholic groups and spokespeople publicly condemned premarital intercourse. Beginning in the mid-1960s, the women’s magazine Para Ti and lifestyle magazine Siete Días hired priests to answer letters. They chose to answer letters written by girls who had premarital sex and subsequently experienced “troubles,” such as being left by their boyfriends. The priests replied that these young women were “used” by men, who then chose virgins for marriage.89 Other “troubles” were pregnancy and abortion, and the priests warned those who “went to doctors” of the moral and legal consequences of their actions.90 By responding to these selected letters, priests focused on the fears that surely concerned many young women.

  In the 1960s, many young women continued to fear unwanted pregnancies because they did not have access to contraception despite the active public debate over contraceptives. Secondary school and college students voiced their concerns about sex in a series of workshops in 1967: out-of-wedlock pregnancies ranked first, often in association with abortion. Some girls like Laura, age sixteen, asked about “How the Pill works.”91 In fact, largely triggered by global concerns over the birth control pill and, later, by Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968)—endorsing periodic abstinence as the only approved method of family planning—the press took on contraception, including descriptions of how devices and techniques worked.92 Information about contraceptives was available, but their use was limited and uneven. Access to contraceptives was, and is, class-based. Among married couples, reliance on condoms and coitus interruptus (withdrawal) prevailed throughout the 1960s. The birth control pill, meanwhile, was restricted to upper-middle-class women.93 Most women probably worried about possible side-effects and the cost. The use of the Pill, according to surveys in pharmacies, was restricted to adult women and only “a few students came to get it,” as one pharmacist noted.94 Thus, although young women surely had the chance to learn how the pill worked and knew that it was reliable, they—like their peers in the United States, Italy, or Chile—had limited access to it.95 If they wanted to have sex, they depended on their partners to avoid pregnancy.

  How extensive was the practice of premarital sexual intercourse in the 1960s? Although data on sexual behavior are inconsistent, there are threads of evidence that suggest it probably increased with a growing public tolerance toward premarital sex. It bears noting that, as scholars have shown, the incidence of premarital and extramarital sex, chiefly among the working classes, was high throughout the twentieth century. This was shown by the high rate of out-of-wedlock births, which was 26 percent of the total in 1960.96 As surveys with middle-class young women showed, more and more of them dared to have intercourse before getting married. One survey conducted of 207 recently married couples in 1967 found that 14 percent had had premarital sex. In addition, in a survey she conducted from 1965 to 1968 of 420 unmarried youth, Dr. Giberti found that 18 percent of girls had had sexual intercourse.97 As one doctor noted in 1970, the practice was not generalized: within “not intellectualized” sectors, he argued, it was more limited than within the “intellectualized” ones. In 1969, one survey carried out among female college students showed that 80 percent had “lost their virginity.”98

  In addition to the inconsistent survey data, one other piece of evidence points to the spread of extramarital and premarital sexual intercourse: the boom of room-by-the-hour hotels. Unlike the United States and countries where a campus culture existed, both middle- and working-class youths in Argentina usually lived with their parents until they married or began to “cohabitate.”99 Most young people lacked private places or even cars, and the room-by-the-hour hotels, or albergues transitorios, were the only places where many young people could go to have uninterrupted sexual liaisons. In 1960 the City Council of Buenos Aires passed a new regulation allowing hotel owners to offer “rooms per hour” to couples “of both sexes.”100 This and subsequent regulations specified that the albergues transitorios must be located at least one hundred meters from schools and churches and could not publicize their services on billboards or in pamphlets, in response to complaints of conservative groups.101 The transitory hotels proved a success: in 1960, 169 hotels turned into “per-hour” hotels; the figure jumped to 420 in 1965 and 769 in 1967. When asked about the demand for their flourishing business, hotel owners and employees indicated that their clientele was composed of two strands: adults who went “after office hours, around 6:00 to 8:00 P.M.” and “scores of young, dating couples,” who went mostly late at night.102

  Finally, other evidence suggests that women engaged more frequently in premarital sex and helped “legalize” its practice: in 1965, Congress and the Senate passed Law 16688, which made a prenuptial medical certificate mandatory for women. Legislators presented the plan as an extension of the antivenereal prophylaxis law 12331 passed in 1936. Framed in a eugenic paradigm that conceived of venereal diseases as hereditary and damaging to the future of the “race,” in 1936 legislators approved the creation of a medical system for the prevention and treatment of venereal diseases. They also abolished legalized prostitution and prescribed a prenuptial medical certificate for men. The law focused on the male body as the potential carrier of venereal infections that the state would try to control. Only doctors at public hospitals and health centers could administer the blood test proving that men were healthy and thus authorizing them to marry.103 In 1936, legislators could not accept that women planning to marry could transmit venereal diseases: they were supposed to be virgins. In 1965, legislators used the same arguments centered on antivenereal prophylaxis that their peers had deployed thirty years before. UCR Senator César Abdala, for example, claimed, “Between 1953 and 1963, the rate of infections like syphilis and gonorrhea increased notably.”104 With no need for debate, legislators agreed that women would also be required to obtain a prenuptial medical certificate.

  Law 16688 implicitly recognized that women could have sex before marriage. In contrast to what happened with Law 12331 in 1936, this one did not incite debate among legal or medical experts. Newspapers barely even reported the news while some only noted that similar laws existed in other countries like the United States, Mexico, and Dominican Republic. Yet none editorialized on the subject.105 Only Confirmado conducted a survey of doctors and women regarding the prenuptial certificate. Commenting on the survey, the journalist pointed out that even those who opposed the law thought that “it legalized an obvious reality: women’s sexual liberation.” The journalist concluded ironically, “today, the image of the maiden awaiting the wedding night to offer her treasure to her chosen one is contradicted by the experience of doctors and sociologists.”106 Albeit exaggerated, the statement sheds light on the incipient normalization of premarital sex in Argentina’s public life, and young women were fueling this change.

  Young Women in early 1960s Argentina were literal and figurative protagonists in a series of major changes regarding sexuality, domestic ideals, and the ways in which patriarchal authority was understood and practiced. Rather than a linear path toward the expansion of horizons and opportunities for young women and the liberalization of sex mores, the changes in their life experiences followed a more sinuous route. The signs indicating that these life experiences would be markedly different from those of previous generations were subject to contention, expressing themselves in familial and broader cultural realms. The persistence of this contentiousness well into the 1960s showed how embattled the changes were and also made visible ongoing cultural dynamics that encouraged “modernizing” attitudes toward sexuality that had young women’s experiences at their core.

  Young women in the early 1960s questioned the premises of domesticity and patriarchal authority and, in doing so, “left home” as it was then known. Rather than self-aware, this questioning was eminently practical: by remaining
longer in education, fully participating in the labor market, and shaping mixed leisure activities, for example, young women helped extend the “legitimate” spheres for women’s actions. They created a span of time to experiment with jobs and careers as well as with new modes of courtship and sexuality. The gradual acceptance of premarital sex, in fact, further undermined the ideal of “domestic” femininity vis-à-vis sexual issues as well. Yet many young women faced daily battles when they dared to make decisions about careers, dating, or even weekend plans. Alongside increased educational, leisure, and sexual opportunities they found and carved out for themselves, many also confronted the persistence, and perhaps the reinforcement, of patriarchal authority at home. In practical ways, young women helped place patriarchal authority in the spotlight—chiefly in the discourse of advisers and psychologists—and began to erode its presumed naturalness.

  The perceived contention of patriarchal authority formed the crux of many familial and cultural dilemmas, which both preceded and informed the construction of a moral panic around the Penjerek case. This panic addressed an attempt to set limits on the movement “away from home.” While trying to reattract literal or imaginary runaway young women to the presumed safety of “home,” many of these actors further tried to turn “home” into a safeguard against the supposed Communist menace. In doing so, they linked young women’s changing life experiences to a broader disruption of societal order. The Penjerek case, though, was a doubly unsolved crime. First, on a literal level: we may never know who murdered Norma Penjerek and what happened to her. Second, the responses to her case constituted an effort to deal with ongoing cultural dynamics that set the conditions for the emergence of a new sexual attitude that complemented the symbolic movement “away from home” many young women experienced. In this vein, the Penjerek case acted as a watershed: it allowed us to see how deeply “conservative” discourses permeated Argentina’s culture, while simultaneously underscoring its shortcomings.