I know many people born in 1961 – they are my contemporaries and friends. It doesn’t seem so long ago. Their lives and experiences seem modern to me. They don’t seem old: certainly, none of them have problems working their iPhones. And yet, 60 years is aeons ago when it comes to feminism and gender relations.
In 1961, a woman might be barred from a university position post-marriage if unable to show medical evidence of a hysterectomy. A gay man was coyly, whisperingly, described as a “friend of Dorothy” (and might lose his job if word got out). And a stunned albatross on a ship’s deck was far less of an ill omen than the insulting presence of a woman on board an expedition to Antarctica.
