Why the sexual revolution has been a disaster for women

[MalagaNights]

I wonder what people's thoughts are on this article?

I've been thinking about this for a while, reflecting on my own views and experiences when younger and many of the threads I see on here now, from younger women unhappy with dating or fwb situations, or men who won't commit.

It's interesting she uses the line about sex having become separate from reproduction, which is something I've heard the USA right wing commentators make.

While the pill and access to abortion have undoubtedly allowed women expanded opportunity because we can now control our reproductive choices, do we need to recognise some of the negative aspects of this in our relationships with men which has led to a hypersexualising of women and lack of men's responsibility around sex?

I'd be interested in people's perspectives on this.

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

Really interesting thread with some great posts, especially international perspectives from @user1477391263

I do think with regard to abortion there needs to be much more discussion of men's responsibility here. There was an article I saw some time ago (from an American conservative Christian iirc) which basically said something along the lines that all men were responsible for abortion and if they would treat sex as a serious risk of conceiving a child and expect to be responsible for that child there would be no need for abortion.

With abortion rights under attack not just in the USA , also Poland (any other places?) it's noticeable how many men want a say in abortion but don't take any responsibility for their part in it. Argument about abortion shouldn't just be focused on a woman's right to choose imo. Men can and should choose not to create unwanted children.

Also thanks for fascinating family history @Discovereads , your poor Grandmother.

I had the great pleasure and privilege of meeting a wonderful lady aged 101 a few years ago. She had opened the first family planning clinic where she lived in a northern town just after the war. She said she was shunned and people would cross the street when that saw her but the women would then secretly seek her out. She was very up to date on current contraceptive choices, saying how wonderful they are and bemoaning that in her day all they had was the Dutch cap, men hated it and would rip it out she said.

She attributed her up to date knowledge on many areas to reading The Times daily ever since the 40's though she thought it had gone downhill somewhat in recent years.

Although only a few years ago our meeting was before the current trans issues, I can hardly imagine what she'd have to say about that.

I despair for girls now. My teen DD told me I was old the other day because all women like choking these days. I said I bet they don't. She said she wouldn't but she's unusual😟

@AdamRyan

That is so concerning. Are you aware of WeCantConsentToThis?

You may find some useful information on their (distressing) website suitable for discussion with your DD.

I bought a selection of their T shirts and gifted to both my daughters and some of their friends and DD's boyfriend. They all loved them and wear them. I figured it could help start useful discussions and spread the word.

https://wecantconsenttothis.uk/

The support system doesn’t have to come from men or marriage though. It’s not single parenthood itself that creates worse outcomes, its the lack of resources. Things like free childcare, flexible working and yes, a more inclusive concept of what family is will all have a huge impact. Also, its not like kids weren’t born out of wedlock in the past but in some places, eg Ireland, they were forcibly separated from their mothers and adopted to respectable people. In no way can that be seen as a better solution.

As for the abortion thing, most research shows that women do not take it lightly, yet it’s still necessary. Why does it help to talk about it as a universally tragic event when that is not the case for all women?

Read the relationships board for the kind of relationships many women are having with men, oftentimes because they think that is what happiness is (kids and a man). Men do and always have treated women like total shit behind closed doors and the difference is just that we hear more about it these days. For people to be nostalgic of the past or think that these hardcore conservative values are good for women in some way is nonsense. People like Louise Perry (middle class, educated, attractive) may have landed a nice man who does take care of her but statistically that will not happen for every woman or even most women. For many women, a man makes her life worse not better. Far better to encourage women to be financially independent and not put up with shit (which is what people in the past did).

My grandmother thought marriage was the most important thing a woman could do. She was married to my granddad for 45 years until she died. No word of a joke, they loathed each other and every moment was spent low-level bickering and slagging the other off. Idk whether that sounds like a happy life to some but it doesn’t to me. She’d convinced herself it was the only life though and hated that younger women had other ideas.

So if Louise Perry wants to play haply conservative families, go for it but she doesn’t have to imagine that what she has is what all women aspire to.

any suggestion that women be taught ways to stay safer becomes 'victim blaming', so you're supposed to send your daughter out into the world without ever telling her to avoid dark streets or drunk men or whatever because she ought not to have to worry about violent/abusive males.

Exactly. No one says you shouldn’t encourage kids to cycle safely because that’s victim-blaming if they’re hit by a car, or it’s encouraging motorists to drive dangerously.

which basically said something along the lines that all men were responsible for abortion and if they would treat sex as a serious risk of conceiving a child and expect to be responsible for that child there would be no need for abortion.

total utter bullshit. What about abortion for reasons of fetal disability, the mother’s physical or mental health and because the mother just doesn’t feel ready to have a child or indeed want a child ever? The idea that these poor women all secretly desperately want the baby they are aborting and it’s just cos of a lack of good Christian values is such a load of shite that I don’t know where to begin. There will and should ALWAYS be a need for abortion, no matter how men behave.

I haven’t read the article but on the face of the title no I don’t think it could ever be something that shouldn’t have happened

There’s still major issues for women to be addressed though

any suggestion that women be taught ways to stay safer becomes 'victim blaming', so you're supposed to send your daughter out into the world without ever telling her to avoid dark streets or drunk men or whatever because she ought not to have to worry about violent/abusive males.

Stranger rapes are extremely uncommon. Most forms of rape and sexual abuse take place in the context of some form of relationship between victim and perpetrator. Often a LTR or marriage. Have you read the threads where someone’s DH has sex with their wife when she is asleep for instance? So telling women they shouldn’t go out dressed provocatively won’t even protect them. It really is just pure victim blaming.

'Avoid dark alleys because you might run into trouble' is fine. 'If you weren't in a dark alley, you'd be fine' is victim blaming. It's a fine line with phrasing.

I don't think giving advice is always blaming, like if we publicise signs of domestic abuse. It doesn't mean those who've been in abusive relationships are stupid or asking for it.

More help is never a bad thing, more about the way it's said and more importantly, the response after what has happened.

I agree on the issue of rape - we should alert women to the danger (and difficulties with gathering evidence) AND increase penalties and prosecutions for rape. The latter involves higher taxes and funding for police and prison systems.

“Far better to encourage women to be financially independent and not put up with shit (which is what people in the past did).”

To be fair, @GCandproud, a better title for the book would have been “Don’t Put Up with Shit” shit meaning strangulation, anal sex, unwanted sex, rough sex and crap FWB pseudo-relationships that would once have been called wasting a young girl’s time.

To be fair, @GCandproud, a better title for the book would have been “Don’t Put Up with Shit” shit meaning strangulation, anal sex, unwanted sex, rough sex and crap FWB pseudo-relationships that would once have been called wasting a young girl’s time.

Oh, I love this!

I think this is the side of LP's argument that I have zero quarrels with. "Polyamorous" crap can get in the bin with all the other stuff you mention, too.

I'm watching the monkeypox stuff being covered on Twitter and elsewhere, and I'm fascinated by the extent to which it apparently isn't OK to question the idea of male promiscuity. We just had COVID--women were forced to give birth alone, and leave toddlers dumped in front of TVs all day while working; our kids have sustained serious emotional, development, physical and educational harm from a lot of measures that were brought in, and we were all expected to just suck it up. And yet, in the case of monkeypox, it seems like public health people and general commentators are having huge difficulty even hinting that men should refrain from casual sex with a bunch of strangers, chemsex, buying and selling sex, Grindr and so on. It's making me really pissed off. I think LP is right to talk about a lot of the stuff she's discussing.

I think the area where I would probably part company with LP is the topic of divorce.

She's said a lot of things suggestive of the idea that divorce is rarely actually necessary, as if most divorces occur due to someone deciding to walk away from a perfectly good marriage to pursue a romantic lust or be with a new "soulmate" or "find themselves" etc. You know, this kind of self-indulgent thing:
www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/opinion/divorce-children.html

Divorce is one of those things where if you ask people "Is it too easy to get divorced?" they say "Oh yes, for sure! In our society we make it too easy to walk away from marriages! People just throw away good marriages for the most trivial reasons!"

But then if you ask them "So, among the divorces that you have personally known, did you think these were necessary?" they go quiet and have a think and say "Oh...um. Well, yes.... if I'm honest....well, all the divorces among people I know... well, yeah, we were all quite relieved when they called it quits. Their marriages were making themselves and everyone else miserable."

All the divorces that I know of are either:
a) Two decent people with an unresolvable incompatability (real life case study: she was 32 and wanted to get on with having children; he was 25 and wanted to spend a few years doing working in South America and having childfree adventures first. Had they stayed together, it would have ended in tears. She remarried and now has two lovely children).
b) One partner, usually the guy, is a shit and is a bad spouse and parent. Doesn't do anything approaching their fair share of childcare and housework, doesn't care, or is callous, does stuff that endangers the children, or is financially irresponsible, or is addicted to gaming or gambling or whatever or smokes weed, or cheats multiple times.

Please don't misunderstand me. I would LOVE it if it were the case that most divorces are about people being silly and walking away from perfectly good marriages, because that would suggest that divorce is largely a solveable problem; encourage people to have realistic expectations of marriage and improve marriage counselling, and we could get rid of most divorce! It would be awesome.

But looking at the divorces I've actually known, I don't think that's really the case, do you?

I think the awkward truth is that "A significant minority of all male human beings basically have personality traits that mean that they will never be able to be a good spouse or parent."

Which suggests that in a society where there is free choice, where women are not forced to stay in miserable marriages (through either divorce being legally impossible, divorce being very heavily stigmatized, or women being financially trapped), the divorce rate will probably never be below a certain level and a significant minority of marriages will always end in divorce--unless such marriages are avoided in the first place by more people remaining single throughout their lives (as we see in Japan, with its high rate of singles).

That's kind of a depressing thought, but I don't really have any answers to this problem.

I certainly do know that the "answer" is not to emotionally pressure women into staying in wretched marriages with horrible men, for the same of social stability/lower divorce rates/fewer children having stepfathers.

She's said a lot of things suggestive of the idea that divorce is rarely actually necessary, as if most divorces occur due to someone deciding to walk away from a perfectly good marriage to pursue a romantic lust or be with a new "soulmate" or "find themselves" etc. You know, this kind of self-indulgent thing:

But surely no one should sacrifice their one life to remain in a relationship they don't want to be.
My parents were coward who didn’t get divorced when they should have, made all of us miserable.
We’re not meant to be lifelong commitments.
If we were, we’d just be. And everyone would be content and healthy, including potential kids.
In reality most relationships a pretty miserable.
We should abolish amatonormativity society.

Oh no, sorry user1477391263, your comment just went on and on, I didn’t realise.

Sorry, my comment was a bit long, wasn't it? I got a bit carried away.

I found it interesting @user1477391263 and thanks for reviving this thread. I agree with you. The thing is there’s no perfect system in which nobody suffers, but even if a substantial number of divorces are for trivial reasons, the downsides of making divorce difficult aren’t really acceptable. I have hardly ever known both sides of a divorcing couple.
The trouble is that whilst her analysis of problems at a societal level is good, her only solutions are for individual women to change their behaviour.
Thinking about it, the title really is quite a problem because it will put off a lot of potential readers. It also doesn’t really reflect the content. She’s not saying women were better off before, just that we are judging the past in ways that are unrealistic and unreasonable whilst overlooking huge problems in the present.

Totally fine, no worries.
I did enjoy reading all (after I realised I was being hasty with my comment😅).

Great Post user, and agree re: divorce.
I'd also add in a lot of cases I know of, the reasons for the divorce are things people might want to keep private. Use of sex workers, sexual abuse, coercive control etc...

I think the awkward truth is that "A significant minority of all male human beings basically have personality traits that mean that they will never be able to be a good spouse or parent.

Agree with this. You'll get called a man hater though.

I totally agree user and believe me I’m no fan of polygamy or chocking or any such bullshit either but I dislike the frankly smug married vibe I am getting from LP. Like you, I know of divorces where the behaviour from one spouse has been quite abusive, including a man who had an affair while his DW was having treatment for breast cancer. Yet, she’s supposed to accept that and not throw away her (shit) marriage? My mum’s best friend gave up work to raise two kids with SEN and at 48, her DH announced that he was shagging his 27 yo secretary and that they could stay married but it would be an open relationship. My mums friend is now 60s, no pension beyond state one and lives a very frugal life due to what she gave up while her wanker ex is doing quite nicely. I know people who have put up with physical and emotional abuse and their DHs neglecting the DC. Women faced this shit in the past too but it was just that there was no realistic way out.

LP seems to posit men as the answer to women’s problems but I don’t think it is. There are many many men who do more harm than good in the family context and having them around is teaching children that this sort of relationship is okay/normal and that you should put up with utter shit rather than being on your own.

With divorce, I don't know that it is so much that many are for trivial reasons, though some are the result of people who marry for trivial reasons. Although I do know personally of divorces where one partner wanted to "find herself" or in another case the husband decided his sexuality was "poly" and he needed to live authentically, and that kind of thing.

Often it's more a matter of whether divorce could have been avoided by a different approach earlier on. The people I mentioned above, for example, were selfish. And maybe they always would be, some people are, but I think we could ask, what if they had grown up in a society that didn't see individual fulfillment so much as following your bliss as living up to your commitments and responsibilities?

I don't think it's the case at all that the problems for kids associated with families without two parents are all about material conditions. As far as material conditions, there are things besides family that can help with that, but it's less effective overall. The state just doesn't have the same kinds of capacities to help in a concrete way, often what happens is they provide the means to pay for help and that is nothing like the same thing. But the downside of state support for single parents is that we know where it's introduced it increases single parent families significantly, this is pretty well documented, so that in looking to alliviate the problem it seems to inadvertently increase the it. That's the kind of paradox that comes with social change quite often and makes social policy development very difficult.

It seems that before we had reliable contraception societies generally developed so that children were protected and the biological parents of the majority of children were formally committed to each other. It seems that we are creating a new form of society where the safety and well being of children isn't a priority. Anxiety and depression in the Zoomer generation has measurably increased from the previous generation. Yes its due to social media, but also lack of community and often lack of stability in their home life. Its now the norm that all adults focus on what pleases them personally; how this effects the next generation barely registers. Previous generations would probably not believe that we are conducting psychological experiments on our children where we make live action porn available 24/7 and at the same time Zoomers are found to be lonlier than the elderly. Unending social norms for sex and relationships is creating a lonlier, more atomized society where we are not prioritizing the healthy socialization of children.

This article is so silly. Marilyn Monroe and Emma Watson are not feminist icons and the sexual revolution is not the same as feminism!

I don't think it's the case at all that the problems for kids associated with families without two parents are all about material conditions

I don’t fully agree with this but I do think that social stigma also plays into it, ie SP families are seen as “lesser” so kids may suffer from that. But I do think material conditions are the absolute key because it is socioeconomic background, not number of parents, that determines how well kids do in school etc. You also miss the point that having separated or divorced parents who share the care of their children means that those kids do have two parents, just that they don’t live together.

But the downside of state support for single parents is that we know where it's introduced it increases single parent families significantly, this is pretty well documented, so that in looking to alliviate the problem it seems to inadvertently increase the it. That's the kind of paradox that comes with social change quite often and makes social policy development very difficult.

Explain, without using (socially constructed) ideas that two-parent families are inherently better than one, why that is a bad thing though? Material support gives options to people who would otherwise feel they needed to stay in a relationship they were not happy in (perhaps an abusive one). It’s not a paradox unless you have decided from the outset that there is something inherently bad about being raised by one person rather than two.

Even if people get divorced for what you call trivial reasons, why should they remain married to someone who doesn’t make them happy? For whom are they staying married? It’s well known that kids absolutely don’t thrive if unhappy parents stick it out for their sakes. Or is it for the other spouse? Again, that doesn’t seem a good reason. Why should someone who is not happy stay in a relationship with another adult for life because they promised to? With nearly all other contracts, there is always an option to get out of them if they no longer suit us and there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be for marriage.

It seems that before we had reliable contraception societies generally developed so that children were protected and the biological parents of the majority of children were formally committed to each other. It seems that we are creating a new form of society where the safety and well being of children isn't a priority

The safety and well-being of children has never historically been a priority and it is a fantasy that it was. It was only at the end of the 19th century that child labour began to be outlawed for instance or that child abuse began to be taken seriously. We have way more protections for children now than there were in the past, when the state took little interest in what went on behind closed doors. Feminists helped push for the laws we have now, for instance domestic abuse protection in civil courts and refuges for women and children who are at risk from violence in their home.
I think a lot of people have a very rose tinted idea of what things were like in the past when many women and children were trapped in situations from which there was no escape and nobody else was interested because it was seen as a private matter. Things are infinitely better now for both.

Great thread - so many interesting posts & such an important topic.

@GCAndProud :

“The support system doesn’t have to come from men or marriage though. It’s not single parenthood itself that creates worse outcomes, its the lack of resources. Things like free childcare, flexible working and yes, a more inclusive concept of what family is”

This to me is exactly the message from the Patriarchy - encouraging us all to look elsewhere for the solution to improving womens lives & choices because it can’t just be mens responsibility to take up that workload. It’s a very popular message that is sold as being modern & progressive- peddled by western governments- which are still very much a patriarchy. I think @MalagaNights sums it up perfectly in one of her early posts:

“I think our expectations of men have decreased as our 'freedom' has increased and the resulting lack of responsibility from men is devastating for women, particularly mother's and our children”.

I don’t think Shame is a bad thing as it is a collective way of society steering choices for better. Agree very much that the ‘freedom’ that we now have is actually just freedom for men. I still think the old truths remain for the vast majority of women - but we aren’t allowed to acknowledge them because it’s not politically correct or modern-minded to do so. x