Meaning of free-lover | Babel Free

Examples

“The list is a long and sobering one and includes anyone whose presence or beliefs ran contrary to the established order—labor leaders, Communists, free-thinkers, free-lovers, Socialists, Okies, you name it.”

“A man enters a drugstore seeking a remedy for a persistent erection. “What can you give me for it?” he asks the woman behind the counter, with some embarrassment. “My sister and I will give you the store and two hundred dollars,” she says, “but that’s our best offer.” […] According to historian Mari Jo Buhle in Feminism and its Discontents, such jokes were among the popular responses to the sexual emancipation of women at the turn of the century, when [Sigmund] Freud’s acknowledgement of female sexual passion reinforced the utopian vision of feminist free-lovers.”

“Twenty-first-century American conservatives are seldom confused with 19th-century enthusiasts of “free love.” But when the U.S. Supreme Court recently heard arguments about same-sex marriage, conservative opponents of such marriages bemoaned a spreading tendency that the old free-lovers and some of their radical contemporaries warned about more than 150 years ago.”

CEFR level