June 08, 2022

Why the sexual revolution has been a disaster for women today - but a gift for men

I think the lady below has a point but I also think she may be overgeneralizing. Female instincts still run strong and will be a strong influence on relationships.  Some men do indeed find it easy to find new girlfriends.  I did myself for much of my life.  But not all men are in that boat.  The incels are testimony to that.

The things  that influence female pairing decisions are as old as the hills.  Women still like a strong and decisive man who is also kind to them.  And looks are a huge factor too.  The successfully promiscuous men described below will very largely be a small good-looking minority.  I did not have that advantage but my rare combination of uncrushable self-confidence and high IQ was nearly as good.

So I think society is not as sick as she thinks.  Women still have a lot of choices and exercise them energetically

When Emma Watson, the film star and women’s rights campaigner, was criticised for showing her breasts on the cover of Vanity Fair, she hit back by asserting ‘feminism is about giving women choice.

It’s about freedom’. For liberal feminists like her that might be true.

But for many other women — perhaps a sizeable majority — that freedom has spectacularly backfired. It has turned out to be a lie and a con.

Rather than women being emancipated sexually, in the digital age we have become a society in thrall to the worst of male sexuality.

For younger women in particular, today’s sexual culture is destructive, divorcing love and commitment from sex and favouring one-night stands, casual ‘hook-ups’ and ‘friends with benefits’ arrangements.

Worse still, it pressures them into promiscuity, bombards them with violent pornography and tells them to enjoy being humiliated and assaulted in bed. 

Dating apps such as Tinder turn people into products in a sexual marketplace that encourages users to browse the available merchandise and select their preferred options from the comfort of their homes, with very little effort and no intimacy whatsoever.

One male user described the voracious appetite that the apps encourage: ‘You’re always prowling. 

'In a bar you might have two or three girls to choose from but online you can swipe a couple of hundred a day and set up two or three Tinder dates a week and, chances are, sleeping with all of them. 'You could rack up 100 girls you’ve slept with in a year.’

Another user compares Tinder to an online food delivery service —‘but you’re ordering a person’. He saw no harm in scrolling through would-be sexual partners in the same way as we scroll through any other kinds of consumables.

In reality, once you permit the idea that people can be products, everything is corroded.

I used to believe the liberal narrative that this free-and-easy attitude to sex was unalloyed progress. 

As a younger woman, I conformed to liberal feminist ideas that saw nothing wrong in porn, bondage, sadomasochism and hook-up culture. Women were just expressing the same casual and adventurous approach to sex as men did.

I let go of these beliefs after working at a rape crisis centre, where I witnessed the reality of male violence up close.

It made me realise that the sexual revolution has not freed all of us, but it has freed some of us, selectively and at a price.

Believe me, I’m not anti-liberal and I don’t reject the desire for freedom. 

I recognise that with the right tools, freedom from the constraints imposed on women by our societies and our bodies now becomes increasingly possible.

Don’t want to have children in your 20s or 30s? Freeze your eggs. Called away on a work trip post-partum? FedEx your breast milk to your newborn. Want to continue working full-time without interruption? Employ a nanny or a surrogate who can bear your child.

But I am critical of any ideology that fails to balance freedom against other values. 

Liberal feminists see having sex ‘like a man’ as an obvious route by which women can free themselves from old-fashioned expectations of chastity and obedience.

If you believe there is nothing wrong in instrumentalising other people in pursuit of your own sexual gratification, then this makes sense.

And if you believe that men and women are both physically and psychologically much the same, save for a few hang-ups absorbed from a sex-negative culture, then why wouldn’t you want women to have access to the kind of sexual fun that men have always had.

I don’t doubt that there are some women who genuinely enjoy casual sex and who decide, having weighed the risks and benefits, that it is in their best interests to pursue it.   

What I question is the claim that a culture of casual sex is of benefit to women as a group.

What is being ignored is the basic fact that men and women are not the same. 

Physically, almost all women are weaker than almost all men. Men can out-run women as well as out-punch them.

Psychologically too, men and women are wired differently. On average, men want casual sex more often than women do, and women want committed monogamy more often than men do.

In other words, there are a lot more super-horny men out there than super-horny women, and a lot more super-not-horny women than super-not-horny men. 

Yet casual, hook-up culture which treats men and women as the same in their sexual appetites is now the norm among today’s adolescents and young adults.

Sexual behaviour outside of traditional committed romantic relationships has become increasingly typical and socially acceptable. 

Although it is possible for young women to opt out, research suggests that only a minority do so.

On our university campuses the gospel of sexual hedonism is openly preached. 

The prevailing culture is a terrible deal for women. It demands that they suppress their natural instincts in order to match male sexuality and thus meet the male demand for no-strings sex.

And yet this prevailing hook-up culture is endorsed by feminists as a form of liberation.

Meanwhile, we scoff at the past, believing we have inevitably progressed from those Neanderthal days of the 1950s when a home economics book offered tips to housewives on ‘how to look after your husband’.

The housewife was advised that, when her husband got home from work, she should have dinner on the table, her apron off and a ribbon in her hair, and that she should always make sure to let her husband ‘talk first’.

This was ridiculed on social media when it was put online in 2016. How reactionary, how stupid and backward! 

But then take a look at a small sample of Cosmopolitan magazine guides published within the last decade: ‘30 ways to please a man’, ‘20 ways to turn on your man’, or ‘42 things to do with a naked man’.

In what sense are these guides not encouraging precisely the same degree of focus on male desires, except in this case it is sexual pleasure rather than domestic comfort? 

Women are still expected to please men and to make it look effortless.

We have smoothly transitioned from one form of feminine subservience to another, but we pretend that this one is liberation.

Liberal ideology flatters women by telling us our desires are good and that we can find meaning in satisfying them, whatever the cost. I propose an alternative sexual culture that recognises other human beings as real people, invested with real value and dignity.

For a start, women need to avoid courting danger. 

Most feminists dislike this suggestion, believing that women should not be expected to be the ones who modify their behaviour. 

Every now and again, a police force will launch a campaign on rape prevention, with posters advising women to stick together on nights out, to keep their friends safe and so on.

Invariably these efforts invite a feminist backlash. 

They see this as victim blaming, when it’s the rapists the police should be concentrating on. Which is true. 

But here’s the point: rapists don’t care what feminists have to say.

They are men who are aroused by violence and unable to control their impulses when presented with a suitable victim and a suitable set of circumstances — a victim who is drunk, high, or otherwise vulnerable, the absence of witnesses and no fear of legal or social repercussions.

Young women aged between 13 and 25 are prime targets, which is why if you wanted to design the perfect environment for the would-be rapist, you couldn’t do much better than a party or nightclub filled with young women who are wearing high heels (limiting mobility) and drinking or taking drugs (limiting awareness).

So my advice to young women has to be this: avoid putting yourself in a situation where you are alone with a man you don’t know or a man who gives you a bad feeling in your gut.

He is almost certainly stronger and faster than you, which means the only thing standing between you and rape is that man’s self-control. 

I have no doubt that, in this free-and-easy, sleeping-around sexual climate, vulnerable young women need to be cautious for their own protection. 

My advice to them is this: only have sex with a man if you think he would make a good father to your children.

Not because you necessarily intend to have children with him, but because this is a good rule of thumb in deciding whether he’s worthy of your trust.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10862331/Why-sexual-revolution-disaster-women-Feminist-Louise-Perry-sparks-fierce-debate.html

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