The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century by Louise Perry

The promise of the sexual revolution was that it would improve women’s lives. But this contrasts with the waves of unhappiness that are prevalent for many women (including feeling “crazy and miserable” from hormonal birth control, in her words).

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“I don’t believe that the last sixty years or so should be understood as a period of exclusive progress or exclusive decline, because the sexual revolution has not freed all of us, but it has freed some of us, and selectively, and at a price. Which is exactly what we should expect from any social change ‘that is vast’, as this one certainly is.”

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“Feminism needs to rediscover the mother, in every sense. Until we do, each individual woman will have to learn on her own the lie of the promise of sexual liberation – the lie that tells us, as Andrea Dworkin phrased it, that ‘fucking per se is freedom per se.’ It was a lie all along. It’s time, at last, to say so.”

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She argues that the biggest losers of the sexual revolution have been poorer women. Hyper-liberalism has emphasised individual freedom/choice above everything else. While the reality is that parenting is the opposite of a hedonistic lifestyle. Modern feminism finds it impossible to rationalise motherhood, even though female bodies have evolved to care for and breastfeed their babies.

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“And from this they derive the false belief that women are still suffering only because the sexual liberation project of the 1960s is unfinished, rather than because it was always inherently flawed. Thus they prescribe more and more freedom and are continually surprised when their prescription doesn’t cure the disease.”

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The dividing line of sacred is the differing concepts of freedom. Are post-Christian feminists sawing off the branch that they are sitting on?

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“Post-liberals such as Deneen draw attention to the costs of social liberalism, a political project that seeks to free individuals from the external constraints placed on us by location, family, religion, tradition, and even (and most relevant to feminists) the human body. In that sense, they are in agreement with many social conservatives. But post-liberals are also critical of the other side of the liberal coin: a free market ideology that seeks to free individuals from all of these constraints in order to maximise their ability to work and to consume. The atomised worker with no commitment to any place or person is the worker best able to respond quickly to the demands of the market.”

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“If we voice no objection to the principle of ‘sex sells’, then we can hardly complain when our public spaces are saturated with hyper-sexuality and we find ourselves scrolling through would-be sexual partners on a dating app in the same way we scroll through any other kind of consumable. Once you permit the idea that people can be products, everything is corroded.”

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“Despite the often valiant efforts of single mothers, the data clearly shows that, on average, children without fathers at home do not do as well as other children… Fatherlessness is associated with higher incarceration rates for boys, higher rates of teen pregnancy for girls, and a greater likelihood of emotional and behavioural problems for both sexes.”

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“As Lenore Weitzman concludes, from her study of divorce in California: ‘For most women and children, divorce means precipitous downward mobility – both economically and socially. The reduction in income brings residential moves and inferior housing, drastically diminished or nonexistent funds for recreation and leisure, and intense pressures due to inadequate time and money… My friend Mason Hartman compares the modern state to a kind of ‘back-up husband’. If called upon, it will feed you, house you, and protect you from violence, but it won’t do so especially well. And the state will offer no warmth or companionship alongside these basic necessities.”

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Perry is the presenter of Maiden Mother Matriarch podcast, which reflects the practical importance of women in society (in contrast to claims of domination by “the patriarchy”). She claims that current elites are over-represented by people who are mildy autistic, homosexual, childless, and high in IQ. They have no concept of noblesse oblige.

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“I am a ‘progress’ apostate: I do not believe that there is any such thing as the gradual, inevitable marching towards the good that Martin Luther King Junior so famously described as the ‘arc of the moral universe’ bending towards justice. Every social change has trade-offs, which are obscured by a simplistic narrative that leaves no space for complexity.”

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“it’s no coincidence that most of the feminists who opposed marriage never had children… If you value freedom above all else, then you must reject motherhood, since this is a state of being that limits a woman’s freedom in almost every possible way – not only during pregnancy but also for the rest of her life, since she will always have obligations to her children, and they will always have obligations to her.”

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“Older people are dismissed by snobbish twenty-first-century liberals as not only foolish and uninteresting but also (far worse) as ‘problematic’. While in most cultures the elderly are regarded as sources of wisdom, and thus granted particular respect, in the modern West they are more likely to be disregarded and condescended to, shut away in nursing homes and assumed to be of no use to anyone.”

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She says that about 90% of the feedback on her book has been positive and encouraging. Her views on relationships are strongly in favour of reinforcing marriage as the most important social institution:

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“Holding off on having sex for at least the first few months is therefore a good vetting strategy for several reasons… Liberal feminism has valorised having sex ‘like a man’ as a route to women’s liberation. But we will never be able to have sex like men, because we will never be men… I’d also like to live in a world in which women can do whatever they want, without fear of what men might do to them. But we don’t live in that world.”

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“The task for practically minded feminists, then, is to deter men from cad mode. Our current sexual culture does not do that, but it could. In order to change the incentive structure, we would need a technology that discourages short-termism in male sexual behaviour, protects the economic interests of mothers, and creates a stable environment for the raising of children. And we do already have such a technology, even if it is old, clunky and prone to periodic failure. It’s called monogamous marriage… When monogamy is imposed on a society, it tends to become richer. It has lower rates of both child abuse and domestic violence, since conflict between co-wives tends to generate both. Birth rates and crime rates both fall, which encourages economic development, and wealthy men, denied the opportunity to devote their resources to acquiring more wives, instead invest elsewhere: in property, businesses, employees, and other productive endeavours.”

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“The institution of marriage, as it once was, is now more or less dead… Before the 1970s, the vast majority of Americans got married and stayed married, regardless of family income. Now, of those Americans in the top-third income bracket, 64 per cent are in an intact marriage, meaning they have only married once and are still in their first marriage. In contrast, only 24 per cent of Americans in the lower-third income bracket are in an intact marriage. A durable marriage is fast becoming a luxury of the upper classes.”

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“Most modern divorces are not a consequence of domestic abuse – most involve a couple growing apart, falling out of love, and trying for a fresh start. But, in many of these cases, the promise of happier alternative relationships remains unfulfilled, particularly for women, who are more likely than men to remain permanently single following divorce. What’s more, between a third and a half of divorced people in the UK report in surveys that they regret their decision to divorce.”

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“And, in a culture of high divorce rates, even those marriages that last risk being undermined. When marriage vows are no longer truly binding, couples seem to become less confident in their relationships. One study by the American economist Betsey Stevenson, for instance, found that marital investment declined in the wake of no-fault divorce laws… When marriage became impermanent, the institution as a whole was changed, and with it much else. I doubt very much that any of the well-meaning reformers of the 1960s ever envisioned such an outcome.”

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Independence is not the default for humans. Monogamy has fewer costs than alternatives, particularly for vulnerable people. It’s not possible for the State to replace husbands/fathers (with formal childcare, government payments, etc). The post WWII rejection of Christianity was accompanied by atheist optimism that society was becoming more enlightened. But it has not been progress overall, just a shuffling of trade-offs.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5jRm5EqDkw