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

I don't think anyone said we would want children because we are oppressed into thinking we do.

The point is traditional marriage/children is detrimental to women. They end up undervalued and largely invisible while men get time to themselves to do the "important" stuff.

I think that's largely unarguable?

If women could choose and have work/family life set up around what suits them, I think the world would look very different.

I’ll come back when I have read the article but it seems a very short sighted argument to say that the sexual revolution has harmed women, if that is it. The sexual revolution has (I hope) permanently destabilised the patriarchy, which IMO is why it’s fighting back so hard at the moment. I don’t mind if men wanting sexual pleasure and experimentation for themselves was the catalyst for it in the 1960s, or if it was a societal reaction to WW2 and the post war years, whatever the social forces behind it I think the end points have been better overall for women than where they started.

Children are no longer given away because of the shame of being born illegitimate. Women are no longer forced to bear children they don’t want or can’t look after. Women can pursue paid work outside the home. Same sex couples can live and work and start families just as anyone else can. People of both sexes aren’t trapped in loveless marriages any more. Women are no longer found unmarriageable if they have any kind of sexual history. All of these are basic rights in any decent society.

So obviously yes there are huge numbers of issues to sort out and we are all greatly challenged by those, and young men are still being encouraged to be the next generation of sexists by toxic masculinity and internalised misogyny, it’s everywhere. That needs to be tackled.

But I would never turn the clock back because I believe my grandmother and my aunts and my mother when they told me exactly how horrendous life was for women in the past. It still is exactly like that in all sorts of ways for women all over the world and right now things are going backwards in much worse ways for women in some countries like Afghanistan. I think we’re bloody lucky to live where we do in the time that we do and to be able to have these debates.

@Malahaha

I really don’t think anyone cares that much if you have kids or husbands.
Women have always been pressured to have those and deeply shamed if they didn’t.
Even more so if they didn’t want them.
So your rant about people sneering at you for having those, are all in your head.
There is no reason to have (even more) voices or movements (feminist or not) to tell women to get married and have kids, plenty of those already.

@Slothtoes

I donn’t think anyone is denying what has done in the past.

The problem is more that now we have this sex obsessed society:

You must hook-up.

Porn is everywhere, it’s only getting more violent.

Violents sex, so called kink and bdsm.
You’re a prude/frigid/boring if you don’t want it

Lot of prude, vanilla and virgin shaming going on these days.

Women hurt and killed from ’sex game gone wrong’

Women still seen as less than if they don’t have a man or kids. Even worse if they don’t want to.
And this was my main issue with the article, seems she hasn’t moved on from the 50’s and still thinks this is what all women want (must want).

I wish I could have edited this quote to remove the bit YOU quoted.

I really only wanted to respond to this:
The point is traditional marriage/children is detrimental to women. They end up undervalued and largely invisible while men get time to themselves to do the "important" stuff.
I think that's largely unarguable?

No, it's not unarguable. It's possible to have a "traditional marriage" and end up far from invisible but valued and cherished and treated in a most respected manner not only by your husband but people outside your marriage; people saying "she is the core of the family" or "she is the real strength in that marriage".

This is because largely, women who have faith in themselves and their core values, who know that motherhood is a mighty force and who understand their value to the family, are never doormats. I know scores of families where that is the case: where it is the wife, even if she never held a leading position in a job outside the home, is clearly and obviously the head of the household. Even if she is not earning money. Only a few weeks ago I spent some time with friends of such a marriage: the husband is English, and a dear, introspective beautiful person and his wife is Indian, Parsi, and was never "anything more" than a housewife. Yet there is no question which of the two is the leader. It's her word that counts.

The problem is that feminism has unwittingly adopted traditional male values such as earning potential, leadership, aggression, being on top, etc as the only values worth striving for. This is why you look down on women who have chosen traditional roles. Why you disparage them as being invisible -- why YOU undervalue them. When perhaps they value themselves more than you ever could, and don't need your valuation to know their worth.

When we as women understand our own, less visible, strengths, believe me we become invincible. Just not in the way the world admires. As I said, I know scores of such marriages, mostly from so-called third world countries.

I am indeed quiet, and perhaps invisible to some very shallow people, but I have never been weak or a doormat and I know exactly what I want and how to arrive at that point and what to do to get there. So are many women I know, friends, family members.

Stop putting women into boxes. There's more than one way to arrive at our full worth. And stop ticking the boxes as to what makes a feminist. It all depends on the individual woman, whether she is cowed and bent by marriage and roles, or can stand up for herself in whatever role she finds herself. If people calling themselves feminists think she is lesser for the path she has chosen then so be it.

(btw I did read the article and agree with every word of it. It gave words to something I've always felt.)

The whole thread just sounds like the 60 and up aunts at the dinner table making sure the young girls know their place and get husband’s and kids. And not be dangerous women who actually lives their lives.

Not all of us! I think this thread has just attracted more than its fair share of faux nostalgia freaks.

Children are no longer given away because of the shame of being born illegitimate. Women are no longer forced to bear children they don’t want or can’t look after. Women can pursue paid work outside the home. Same sex couples can live and work and start families just as anyone else can. People of both sexes aren’t trapped in loveless marriages any more. Women are no longer found unmarriageable if they have any kind of sexual history. All of these are basic rights in any decent society.

Exactly.

Fine if the marriage lasts. What if the oh so empowered woman who has never worked outside the home gets unceremoniously dumped by her husband when she is mid-50s? What if her husband dies? Taking on a tradwife role these days comes with a big financial risk (almost 50/50 whether the marriage will last) that many of them omit to mention when they try to argue that it’s the right way for women to live.

No, it's not unarguable. It's possible to have a "traditional marriage" and end up far from invisible but valued and cherished and treated in a most respected manner not only by your husband but people outside your marriage; people saying "she is the core of the family" or "she is the real strength in that marriage".
That's your experience but not necessarily the experience of many married women.

I don't want to be "the leader". And I don't want to be the core or the strength. I want my relationship to be a partnership of equals. And I want to have value in and of myself, just not in my context as a wife or mother.

The problem is that feminism has unwittingly adopted traditional male values such as earning potential, leadership, aggression, being on top, etc as the only values worth striving for. Why you disparage them as being invisible -- why YOU undervalue them. When perhaps they value themselves more than you ever could, and don't need your valuation to know their worth.
Society has adopted traditional male values- indeed that's pretty much the definition of patriarchy. Feminists have not. Personally I don't undervalue any woman based on their choices and I don't disparage them. My point is that society runs on the invisible and free work of women - raising children, most of the housework, caring for elderly etc and this is largely undervalued by society not by me.

Do you want to engage with my point of what the world would look like if it was set up to adopt "female values"? I think it would be very different.

his wife is Indian, Parsi, and was never "anything more" than a housewife. Yet there is no question which of the two is the leader. It's her word that counts.

My parents are in a highly successful marriage like this, and it all works fine as long as the husband is a nice person, stays being a nice person, continues to be alive, healthy and able to earn, and so on and so forth.

It all tends to go tits-up if the husband dies or becomes disabled/long-term sick and unable to work, if he becomes an unpleasant person as he gets older, if he starts sleeping with his PA, if he dumps his wife for a younger model as she ages etc.

I've seen enough examples of the above among my parents' generation that I've always insisted on keeping a basic level of financial independence.

wanted to raise them myself

All women who are mothers raise their own children. It's not something that ceases to be the case because you use some daycare.

Fine if the marriage lasts. What if the oh so empowered woman who has never worked outside the home gets unceremoniously dumped by her husband when she is mid-50s? What if her husband dies? Taking on a tradwife role these days comes with a big financial risk (almost 50/50 whether the marriage will last) that many of them omit to mention when they try to argue that it’s the right way for women to live.

That's why it would be good for us to fight for better conditions for women who choose those traditional roles, to ensure the wife does not lose out.
My husband was German and he had been married before. His first wife had had a traditional role, raising two children at home. The marriage fell apart before he met me, but the German government has safety nets in place for such women. For one, there is a really good tax incentive for the partner who stays at home to raise children, so two jobs are not necessary.

Secondly, the parent at home (usually the woman) gets to build up pension benefits; when they retire, the ex-husband gets to pay his ex-wife a good chunk of his pension. In our case, over €1000 of his pension went to his ex-wife, an addition to her own pension. It's a pity that system isn't more available in other countries. It's a good one.

There is no right or wrong way for women/wives to live. For me personally, it was my choice to raise my kids; having been raised by a working mother since I was a baby; I was determined that my kids would have a mum at home, and I would have done that no matter what. I was not afraid of being dumped, and I can't imagine going into a marriage with that at the back of my mind. But that's just me. And I would have certainly been able to take care of myself if he HAD left me. I'm aware that not every woman is in a position to do so; but isn't that a reason for our governments to put in place safety nets, such as the one in Germany? It's also the case there that all fathers HAVE to pay for their children and their (non-working) mothers in the case of illegitimacy or divorce. This is strictly enforced, if necessary by court and automatic deductions from their salaries. It's the only system I know, so perhaps that's why I'm more blasé about it!

It's a travesty when mothers who would rather be at home raising their kids are forced for financial reasons to go into the workplace. And it's a travesty that it's considered feminism to believe that that's the only way; that we don't instead fight for women who would choose differently and instead disparage them as being 50's housewives.

I suppose the term "full time" is missing from that sentence. The younger the child, the more essential the mother's presence.

The whole thread just sounds like the 60 and up aunts at the dinner table making sure the young girls know their place and get husband’s and kids. And not be dangerous women who actually lives their lives.

Ageist, perhaps?

I've heard it said that people, women especially, become more conservative (small c) as they grow older, and this is certainly the case for me. This is not because you become a narrow-minded old aunty at the dinner table. It's because time and perspective have given you a different view to the one you had as a free-wheeling 20-year-old -- in my case, a bell-bottomed hippie who travelled three continents over three years with just a backpack and a thumb stuck out.
As you grow older you get to appreciate the virtues of stability, and you recognise how the vast majority of men not only have little else but sex on their mind when they want to be friends with you, but know all the tricks on how to take advantage of a girl's good nature. That's why we try to warn them; be alert! Don't listen!

The sexual revolution for men was as if a hundred birthdays and Chrismases happened all at once. Young women managed to enjoy it for a while but sooner or later saw through the farce. I'm sure there are loads of women who don't reject the sexual encounters of their youth but for quite a few, they were damaging and it took a lot of effort to heal the damage done == in particular when it came to trusting men. In fact, distrust of men in general seems to be exactly what we've all learnt.

One can see that right here on this thread. Instead, I would certainly be that granny who'd warn to be extremely discriminating when it comes to men. Very few are worthy of being husbands and fathers. I don't have a high opinion of men in general. But I've been lucky enough to know several men of first-class character, who are not dick-led and selfish. A decent man, for instance, would be one who, even if he and his wife divorced, would ensure that ex-wife and kids financially well looked after -- who would never abandon them to penury. We need higher standards for men.

My parents are in a highly successful marriage like this, and it all works fine as long as the husband is a nice person, stays being a nice person, continues to be alive, healthy and able to earn, and so on and so forth.

It all tends to go tits-up if the husband dies or becomes disabled/long-term sick and unable to work, if he becomes an unpleasant person as he gets older, if he starts sleeping with his PA, if he dumps his wife for a younger model as she ages etc.

More than a nice person, he needs to be a decent, responsible person. Choose wisely!
As for "alive, healthy, able to earn" -- there are ways to insure against such adverse events.

I've seen enough examples of the above among my parents' generation that I've always insisted on keeping a basic level of financial independence.

I would not, and did not, exchange financial independence (ie day job) for time with my children. The latter is irreplaceable.

@AllAloneInThisHouse
I really don’t think anyone cares that much if you have kids or husbands.
Women have always been pressured to have those and deeply shamed if they didn’t.
Even more so if they didn’t want them.
So your rant about people sneering at you for having those, are all in your head.
There is no reason to have (even more) voices or movements (feminist or not) to tell women to get married and have kids, plenty of those already.

How is it "all in my head" when an ex-colleague informs me that my brain will get rusty if I look after my own young children?
And where have I told women to get married and have kids?
I've always been about being able to choose, and choose wisely. Some women should not marry and/or have kids. I've never advocated for everyone to marry and have kids; just that if that's what a woman wants, leave her alone and stop sticking disparaging labels on her.

It's a lot older than that. There are plenty of "porn" paintings hanging in arts galleries, plus "porn" sculptures". Not to mention "porn" in cave drawings, tombs, and even 2000+ year old buildings with "phallic" pillars. It's been around as long as humans!

Porn has really only taken off in a big way in the last 10-15 years. Back then it was Playboy centre-pages and magazines with women with their legs open. A teenage boy would get off on such "filth" and it would make his day.

Now, that mag would be scorned. It's hard core movies with real actors doing real stuff. It's dick pics sent to your gf and she has to send one back. It's choking and girls having to shave their genitals and having to like anal and s&m and slapping and God only knows what else -- and at an ever younger age, and that's cool. It's internet and tiktok and sharing of your gf's genitals and of you cuming in her mouth, and she has to enjoy it to be cool.

The old definition of porn is baby-play. Rattles and teddy-bears.

I have a 12 year old granddaughter who thinks she is non-binary. She is on tiktok chatting with adult men. Nothing I or my son can do to stop it as her mum wants her to be free. I don't know if she's ever watched porn (she lives in a different country) and gets mad at any old-fashioned advice but if not, it's just a matter of time. She also gets mad at any critique of trans. So we stick to safe topics.

At her age I was into ponies and Enid Blyton. It might be identifying as an old aunt to say this -- but I prefer the old way.

I don’t mind women who (no matter the age) warn other women about men.

My problem is the insisting that women must want/have a boufriend/husband/sex/marriage/kids.

I mean if you have figures out men ain’t shit, it would be better just to advise to stay away from them (I know - won’t work) but at least be the voice of reason and support them to have other aspirations than just desperately seeking for male approval.

And stop bullying single/childfree women, or thinking that they are less than the traditional women.

Send too soon.

We need more women to support women to be independent, as in free from men - less male centic.
Men will always want women to build their self-esteem/ worth/ life around them.

@Malahaha

Porn has really only taken off in a big way in the last 10-15 years. Back then it was Playboy centre-pages and magazines with women with their legs open. A teenage boy would get off on such "filth" and it would make his day.

It's certainly easier to access these days due to the internet, but it was still widely available back in the 70s, not just "tame" stuff either, but hard core "under the counter" magazines and video cassettes (and before then it was cine films!). I was at secondary school in the 70s and there was lots of hard core porn magazines/video cassettes being handed around the classrooms - not much different at all to what is available online today.

Yes, the "top shelf" porno mags were pretty tame, but there was A LOT more widely available in those days from less than reputable sources, which of course got passed around from older siblings to younger ones and then around the school.

@AllAloneInThisHouse

I don’t mind women who (no matter the age) warn other women about men.
My problem is the insisting that women must want/have a boufriend/husband/sex/marriage/kids.

I've never said anything of the kind, so no problem with me there! Just let the women who want these things -- have them, without name-calling.

I mean if you have figures out men ain’t shit, it would be better just to advise to stay away from them (I know - won’t work) but at least be the voice of reason and support them to have other aspirations than just desperately seeking for male approval.

That is my advice too, 100%, and has always been. If I could have my way I'd see the shitty men completely ignored by women; no sex, no smiles, no blow jobs, no nothing!
Ain't gonna happen, I know. It's what I've said on this thread from the start: my way is if you want a husband and kids, then look for a man capable of being a responsible husband and father. Wheat from the chaff, and all that.

And stop bullying single/childfree women, or thinking that they are less than the traditional women.

I've never bullied women or thought they are less for whatever path they choose. I just don't want traditional women bullied or disparaged.

@Badbadbunny

It's certainly easier to access these days due to the internet, but it was still widely available back in the 70s, not just "tame" stuff either, but hard core "under the counter" magazines and video cassettes (and before then it was cine films!). I was at secondary school in the 70s and there was lots of hard core porn magazines/video cassettes being handed around the classrooms - not much different at all to what is available online today.
Yes, the "top shelf" porno mags were pretty tame, but there was A LOT more widely available in those days from less than reputable sources, which of course got passed around from older siblings to younger ones and then around the school.

Sure, and I remember the "adult rooms" at Blockbuster. But before that. Before even VHS. When we were teenagers.

It simply wasn't accessible to normal teen boys, even if it existed. It doesn't make sense to argue that porn has always been around. Never as accessible as it is today, and never even a fraction as vulgar and violent. (OK, I'm assuming that last bit as I've never watched even tame porn myself.) And never as accessible to such young children.

I remember at (boarding) school, as 11 years olds, we had a "naughty" novel and we'd giggle at words like "breast" and about kissing. We thought that was so very, very daring!

As a poster said above. The sexual revolution is not the same as feminism.
I’m all for effective contraception available to the married and unmarried alike. I’m all for the choice to have a safe abortion and the freedom to divorce. These things were worth fighting for.
However, since it related mainly to sex outside marriage, it doesn’t seem to me that the sexual revolution played a huge role in reducing women’s dependence on or dominance by men.
Rates of fertility fell slowly throughout most of the 19th century and then quickly between about 1880 and 1935. This was the main factor, combined with improved material conditions, that led to significantly increasing rates of maternal employment in the 1950s and afterwards. I don’t think that British women were unwillingly having ten children and being told by the medical profession that this was their duty to God in the decade (or two, or three?) before the sexual revolution if we are taking the sexual revolution to begin in 1960. There were accidents and modern contraception made life easier, but attitudes had already changed.
Just as fertility was falling slowly from the nineteenth century, so universities and professions were very opening up to women. Local education authorities provided equal numbers of grammar school places to girls and boys following the 1944 Education Act so women’s participation in the workforce was being taken seriously. We don’t owe everything to the sexual revolution.
With the social churn going on at the time, it’s easy to lump 1970s legislation such as Equal Pay and the Sex Discrimination Act in with the sexual revolution, but they seem to be in the spirit of earlier radical feminism such as the fight for the vote (votes for women and chastity for men! as they said).
With adoptions rising through the sixties, it’s easy to see that the sexual revolution had an immediate downside for a lot of women.
The main problem I see is that whilst it reduced the stigma of illegitimacy, the sexual revolution didn’t provide a viable alternative to marriage for most women.
A woman today living with her partner without marriage is usually worse off than if she were married. She may not necessarily be worse off than a married woman in the 1950s so I can see why some people are outraged by the idea that things were better in the past. I don’t think that things were better in the past, but I do think that the changes in social norms around sex haven’t been entirely beneficial to women and that a less relaxed attitude to sex in feminism thinking might be a good idea.

Such an interesting discussion. Sorry to be so late to the table.

Just my experiences : another child of the early 50’s here. I don’t recognise the picture of easy access to hardcore and violent pornography in the 60s portrayed by another poster. In my experience ( middle class, prosperous, liberal/ educated area) it was limited to smutty rhymes and the Penthouse centre fold. When I was a child, we used to be amazed and fascinated by the naked breasts in the National Geographic magazine. The penis covers never made the press.

Although most girls in my teenage years had boyfriends, there was very little full intercourse, plenty of what would be described as heavy petting, the majority stopping short of male ejaculation. Sex , even of this limited nature was pretty much confined to couples, though, you had a boyfriend, then you went through the numbers ( yes, there was a scale) with him. I never heard of anyone of our age having sex with a casual pick up . There was one teenage pregnancy in my school in seven years.

of course, the reason was as much as anything that we were terrified of getting pregnant. We were commonly told that it meant your life was ‘over’. You would not finish your education, you would end up ‘ working in Woolworths’ , not the desired career path for a grammar school girl.

At University, most men wanted a girlfriend, if anything there was more pressure from men to have a steady relationship than from women. This might have been partly because there was a major imbalance between the sexes at my University, something like six men to one woman. So a girlfriend was a bit of a trophy? The pill had arrived by then, so sex was a lot more widespread, but still mainly between ‘couples’.

Of course, once you were into the working world, sexual predation was much more widespread. Secretaries ( yes, even quite junior people had them,) were widely regarded as legitimate prey by male executives, although even in the 70’s & 80s , it was ‘affairs’ rather than ‘ hook ups’. There was some element of continuity and emotional involvement. That is what strikes me (from my total non involvement in the dating scene since my marriage in 1982) as the big difference: the embrace of the zipless fuck by girls and men alike. I am prepared to say that I do not believe that this is the most desirable or enjoyable way of living, and it does not seem to provide a stable and supportive environment for the raising of children.

I don’t think that the sexual revolution was as important in the progression of women’s full citizenship as the greatly increased survival of childbirth. A priest I was friendly with once said to me ‘ it was very noticeable, in the 50’s we stopped burying young women’. That really was a game changer.

I find the idea of going back to life before the sexual revolution absolutely unthinkable.

But of course it suited the patriarchy! Feminism is only just started, it's not done.

Re the 70s and 80s- I think I was so sexualised at an early age. Seems odd to say it now with the pornification of society but I just feel we were bombarded with sex in mainstream culture in the 70s and 80s. I don't feel my teenage daughters have had the same pressure to kiss boys or have a boyfriend at a young age. DD1 is 16 and hardly any of her friends have had a boyfriend or girlfriend yet.