Yes, and those hippies in the restaurant cartoon aren’t just protesting parasites, but promiscuous ones too. That’s a stereotype often historically applied by bigots to various ethnic minorities, including Polynesians (Brislin 106), Irish-Americans (Ross 55, 1996), African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and others. Incidentally, sociologists such as Jack Levin believe the bigot " . . . avoids painful truths about himself" (53) and that one aspect of bigotry is often a denial-and-projection process (something we'll discuss below). So those who feel ashamed of their sexuality tend to project those unseemly, "animalistic" qualities onto social scapegoats, often ethnic others. "Yeah, those people: they’re a bunch of lust-crazed perverts! I’m sure glad me and my kind aren’t like that."

So, you did so well with welfare bum; can you say, hippie chick? "Oh, yeah, she’s hot and, hey, those hippie chicks put out. Yeah, they believe in 'free love,' you know." To some extent the stereotype has probably been promoted, at least during the sixties and seventies, by Playboy. But the stereotype sometimes surfaces in more menacing form, partly because in society, that a woman is "loose" is often a rationalization for rape--"Hey, she’s a whore: she was asking for it." Consider this ugly passage from The Savage Nation:

Remember when all the hippies used to go over to Kabul, Afghanistan? The girls, who were sort of sluts, pretended they were holier than everyone else. They smelled of patchouli oil. . .
These chicks would go to Kabul, do drugs, sex, rock and roll. . . .
If you, as a religious [Afghani] person, saw women running around without underwear or brassieres, if you watched them get loaded in your cafes, and you saw that they were doing drugs, they were doing guys, and they were seducing your sons, what would you think? . . .
You’d say that these were the Jezebels of the West. . . .
As an Afghani, you wouldn’t have wanted your son to sleep with one of those girls from Berkeley who came over there. You’d be afraid she’d give him a disease and go home. Worse, the hippies didn’t even leave babies behind.
All they left was STDs . . . . (101-02)

And of course, hippie men are often seen as promiscuous too. There's probably a grain of truth to this: reportedly, many male hippie rock stars have been inveterate womanizers, groupies ever within grasp. The media, and often the stars themselves, publicize their “conquests,” creating a popular image. And all that talk about “love-ins”--well, yeah, basically the counterculture is a large mass of writhing, naked bodies. Listen to Savage:

The potheads on the left said, “Whatever you’re feeling, you should act out.” You know, “If it feels good, do it.”
If you’re feeling sexual, do it in the road.
If you feel like it, make it with a cow or a dog.
The pot-induced attitudes dredged up sexual perversion in people. Things that should have been suppressed by the norms of any sane society were drawn out of people . . . . (98)

Can you say polymorphous perversity? (Okay, now say it three times really fast!) So, is this actually a stereotype, or is it a reality? After all, the slogan "Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll!" seems to have been a countercultural battle cry, right?

First, let’s not assume the conventional sexual mores of the sixties and earlier are the standard hippie sexuality should be measured against. In America, at least, those mores were, and are, Calvinist and flesh-hating; thus, our “animal” nature has been seen as the opposite of our Godly capacity, and for much of "respectable" America, all sexuality has remained "dirty." For that matter, any enjoyment of any physical pleasure, any casting off of the hair shirt, has been seen by many Americans holding "traditional values" as sinful, a stepping stone on the path to moral and spiritual ruin.

This was a culture were women weren’t supposed to enjoy sex--ever--where a public display of pregnancy was frowned upon--"After all, you can’t get that way unless . . . ." This is a culture where in 1994, Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders was forced to resign after asserting masturbation was “a part of human sexuality” and should be discussed in sex-education classes. In 1995, conservative pundit George W. Will criticized the counterculture for “recreational use of . . . sex,” a stricture that would condemn even long-married couples having relations for any purpose other than procreation.

So, against this background, any open courting of pleasure, especially of sexual pleasure, smacks of Sodom and Gommorah, seems “dirty.” Yes, the counterculture’s valuing of sexuality is partly why “dirty hippies” are “dirty hippies.”

Secondly, the counterculture’s critics tend to romanticize the pre-sixties; yet, as writer Gary Sloan puts it, "The Good Old Days Weren’t":

In A Social History of the American Family, Arthur Calhoun notes that in several colonies between 1650 and 1657 "the extant record of fornication and adultery is appalling." . . . In Rhode Island in the 1700s, half the newlywed women were pregnant at the time of their marriage. Prostitution in the United States was so pandemic after the Civil War that in several cities, officials talked seriously of legalizing it. . . . Today [October 2000], proportionately more Americans marry than ever before. In the 1880s, the divorce rate in America exceeded that in all other industrialized countries. In the 1800s, there was one abortion for every six births. In the 1920s, one in four pregnancies ended in abortion.

So, there have always been divorces; there have always been promiscuous people; there have always been brothels; there have always been abortions; and although Sloan doesn’t specifically mention it, there have always been STD's.

Third, hippie promiscuity has tended to be exaggerated by a prurient media: it claims to be shocked, but somehow, fascinated by its own lurid imagination, it just can‘t stop gawking and gossiping. As countercultural cookbook author and commentator Lucy Horton notes, “It’s a delightful joke on the press, I think, that most rural ‘hippie communes’ should prove to be centered not on lurid sex or violent politics, but on food” (qtd. in Belasco 77).

Lastly, while sexual mores have changed somewhat since the sixties--and some of that change is probably attributable to the counterculture--the major change has been an acceptance of premarital sex and premarital cohabitation. That does not translate into an ongoing orgy; today, most hippies are probably no more or less promiscuous than members of other social groups. Many, perhaps most, are in monogamous relationships, often married, often parenting. So, no, the average male hippie is not a stereotypical groupie-groping rock star; the average female hippie is not, to use Savage's savage term, a "slut."

For those with lingering doubts, since celebrities may make good reference points, let’s consider two well-known and, I believe, countercultural couples. Hopefully, no one will be shocked if I classify actress, author and comedian Goldie Hawn as countercultural, and hippies usually partner with hippies. So, Hawn and Kirk Russell have been together for many years, have successfully raised a number of apparently healthy, happy children; though they’ve never been married, they have had a long-lasting, monogamous relationship as good or better than most. Then, there was the lengthy marriage of Paul and Linda McCartney--by all accounts a devoted, loving couple in an enduring monogamous relationship who created a successful family. Using current criteria for a “respectable” relationship, these countercultural couples would pass with flying colors, and for celebrity couples, their partnerships have been particularly exemplary.

Why, then, should hippie or countercultural bring to mind irresponsibly promiscuous individuals and not healthy, happy families? Let’s be fair here: Yes, the counterculture has valued sexuality. Yes, there have been and probably are wildly promiscuous hippies, but to assume they're the norm is to stereotype.

(Incidentally, the aforementioned tendency by bigots to deny their own sexuality and then project it onto ethnic minorities may explain much of the Clinton Presidency: As we saw above, neoconservatives tend to see the Clintons as hippie, as cultural others. Why the fixation--fetish, really--with President Clinton's sexual behavior that figured so prominently in his impeachment? Well, if bigots (often authoritarian-personality types, as we’ll see below) tend to view hippies much the way they do other ethnic minorities, then they likely have a deep-seated need to see allegedly hippie Bill Clinton as particularly lustful and lewd--“Yes, it’s the hippies who are like that; it’s not us decent, God-fearing real Americans.” Of course during the time of Clinton's indiscretions, several prominent conservatives were found to be committing adultery and "fornication”: Indiana senator Birch Bayh, hippie hater and hippie baiter Rep. Newt Gingrich, and eventually drug warrior and former New York Mayor Rudolph Guliani. Every one of them was a pious moralizer who, as was Republican strategy, publicly claimed to be repulsed by President Clinton’s lack of morality, particularly his sexual morality; every one of them was, by the same standards, guilty. But the right’s moral outrage was reserved exclusively for “countercultural” Bill Clinton and his appalling "lack of character." So, that double-standard may have been, partly at least, an expression of ethnic prejudice.)