The Triratna Story by Vajragupta

6 Trouble with Angels n In the ‘counterculture’ of the 1960s and 1970s out of which the FWBO arose, everything that seemed ‘normal’ and conventional was turned upside down as people sought freedom in political, psychological, sexual, and artistic spheres. Traditional ideas were thrown up in the air, and nowhere more significantly than with the changing roles of men and women and the emergence of feminism. Forty years later, it is easy to take the current status quo for granted and to forget how hugely men’s and women’s roles in society have changed in the past few decades.

Women had agitated for political equality – the right to vote – in earlier decades, but in the late 1960s, the women’s movement re-emerged. They campaigned for equal pay, employment rights, and other legislative changes. They also argued that ‘the personal is political’ and challenged the roles that men and women ascribed to each other. The 1960s and 1970s were also a time of sexual experimentation, contraception becoming more widely available, the beginnings of gay and lesbian liberation, ideas of ‘free love’, and questioning of the dynamics of the nuclear family.

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