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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Reform’s Danny Kruger criticises UK’s ‘totally unregulated sexual economy’

125 replies

SerendipityJane · 02/03/2026 15:00

Reform’s Danny Kruger criticises UK’s ‘totally unregulated sexual economy’
Former Conservative laments divorce changes and says Reform UK will pursue policies to boost birthrate

The UK is “suffering from having a totally unregulated sexual economy”, the Reform MP Danny Kruger has said, and he indicated he expected the party to have a “limited but important role” in resetting sexual culture.

Kruger said Reform UK had a “pronatalist ambition” and would seek policies to encourage people to have more children, including exploring changes to the tax system to make payments based on households rather than individuals.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/24/reform-danny-kruger-uk-totally-unregulated-sexual-economy

Reform’s Danny Kruger criticises UK’s ‘totally unregulated sexual economy’

Former Conservative laments divorce changes and says Reform UK will pursue policies to boost birthrate

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/24/reform-danny-kruger-uk-totally-unregulated-sexual-economy

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TempestTost · 03/03/2026 22:35

CharlotteRumpling · 03/03/2026 11:33

Suella needs to suck up to Reform and somehow get everyone to forget that she is a half- Hindu child of immigrants. It was ever thus. Brown people have to try to out Reform Reform to get into government and the best way to do it is to chuck themselves and their parents under the bus.

Women's rights? I mean, every single woman in my community is a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer or an accountant. My mum had a masters in the 60s! All financially independent. They have better women's rights than the teen dropouts gaming all day and heading for low paid careers.
But yes, of course, multiculturism has failed.

Does Kruger have any ideas on how to make deadbeat dads pay for the kids they had? The whole of MN is filled with posts by abandoned mums who get no maintenance.

You seem to be having a hard time talking about things without some kind of personal identification. Maybe they don't mean what you assume about "multiculturalism has failed." Maybe they aren't talking about the people in your community, but women who are not seen outside of the home, or allowed to learn English, or are shipped to the UK to marry their cousins.?

Trevor Phillips made a film about the idea that multiculturalism had failed which came to almost the exact same conclusion, that his intent in shaping those policies under Blair had not worked out how he had intended at all.

Do you feel he also is throwing his brown family under the bus in order to get a seat at the table? Which is frankly quite a patronising idea. Or is it ok for him?

Carla786 · 03/03/2026 22:46

Shortshriftandlethal · 03/03/2026 08:22

My point was that reproduction is one of the basic and human instinctive drives - regardless of whether all people do so or not.

Look at the increasing number of dogs (and cats) there are now..... as people/couples seek to nurture and create a semblance of family life.

Edited

Strange....if couples can afford to keep a dog to fulfil their nurturing instinct, with vet bills skyrocketing, have they delayed children or decided against for financial reasons or something else? If they feel the drive to nurture kids why aren't they having a baby?

Carla786 · 03/03/2026 22:50

CharlotteRumpling · 03/03/2026 10:44

There's a whole community of people who have a regulated sexual economy: long marriages, almost zero teen pregnancies, dads that stick around, no multiple fathers. I belong to one such.
But that's the community Suella Braverman has scapegoated as " a failure of multiculturism".
So I guess Reform only wants strong white families.

Edited

Is your family South Asian Muslim? I get if you don't want to give more detail.

Carla786 · 03/03/2026 22:50

TempestTost · 03/03/2026 10:46

You are probably right about the numbers, but again, the reasons are imo differernt. Among the professional classes it's more about later starts to childbearing and demands of continuing a career. (And there is a subset here of families where the mother stops working and they will often have more kids. Maybe younger too, but these families are able and willing to have one salary.)

Families like this might most benefit from something like social changes around education and career where it is more acceptable for families to have a non-standard career progression, maybe even have a family earlier and a later career start. Also potentially changes to things like how pensions and benefits are managed.

The working class families are suffering from lack of affordability, and they are the ones that could potentially really benefit from taxing families rather than individuals. They can't typically afford to do things like hire in a lot of extra childcare or cleaners etc, and so it's often more manageable if one or both parents can reduce work hours, and tax changes like that would be really beneficial.

Good post

Keepingthingsinteresting · 03/03/2026 22:51

Niminy · 02/03/2026 17:51

I think 'sexual economy' here is actually a metaphor. Think of it like this:

How is male sexual desire to be channelled in a way that produces the best outcomes for girls and women, and for society as a whole? a) by removing any incentive for men to commit to lasting relationships with women and encouraging a view of sexuality as purely transactional; or b) using access to sex as the price of commitment to a woman and supporting her children?

It's not that I think there is an either/or choice between these two -- rather that they are two ends of a continuum. But looking around, it seems to me we are nearer the first than the second. Consequence- and commitment-free sex is viewed as an unproblematic good, satisfaction of desire becomes a moral virtue, and we see the results: pornsick men, 'body count', booty calls and girls made to give into unpleasant and dangerous sexual practices, young people not forming relationships, and collapsing birth rate. That is what Kruger means by an 'unregulated sexual economy'.

Granted there are bad marriages and violent and abusive men, of course that is true. But it is also true, on a population level, that marriage makes people (both men and women) happier and healthier, and that children born to married parents do better across all measures. That is what Kruger means by a 'regulated sexual economy'.

Whether getting people to move from one end of the spectrum to the other is within the power of any government is a moot question. But I admire him for asking it.

Yet another way to blame women for the reprehensible behaviour of men. You are essentially positing that women should not “allow” sex without marriage and if they do it is their own fault what happens. Women clearly aren’t allowed to want or enjoy sex, so back to the ‘lie back and think of England’ trope.

Also of you are going to make sweeping statements please cite your sources. It has long been shown by research that whilst marriage improves satisfaction and longevity in men it decreases it in women- marriage “costs” women years of their life and frankly given that even many “good” men seem to require just as much looking after as children it’s easy to see why that is the case.

Basically all of this is distraction tactics to draw attention away from Reform’s core goal of putting women back in (what they see) as their place and they hope that by throwing out enough statements that a sufficient number of people are too stupid to see through them.

Carla786 · 03/03/2026 22:52

persephonia · 03/03/2026 11:28

Also to be fair the birth rate in second and third generation families tends to fall to the average UK levels even if divorce rates etc don't change. (This is also true for Muslim families and other religious groups). So while there are probably lots of benefits to stable 2 parent families they won't bolster the birth rate.

Sorry that was @CharlotteRumpling

Edited

Good point

Carla786 · 03/03/2026 22:56

Keepingthingsinteresting · 03/03/2026 22:51

Yet another way to blame women for the reprehensible behaviour of men. You are essentially positing that women should not “allow” sex without marriage and if they do it is their own fault what happens. Women clearly aren’t allowed to want or enjoy sex, so back to the ‘lie back and think of England’ trope.

Also of you are going to make sweeping statements please cite your sources. It has long been shown by research that whilst marriage improves satisfaction and longevity in men it decreases it in women- marriage “costs” women years of their life and frankly given that even many “good” men seem to require just as much looking after as children it’s easy to see why that is the case.

Basically all of this is distraction tactics to draw attention away from Reform’s core goal of putting women back in (what they see) as their place and they hope that by throwing out enough statements that a sufficient number of people are too stupid to see through them.

'has long been shown by research that whilst marriage improves satisfaction and longevity in men it decreases it in women'-

Re married women being less happy, if you mean Paul Dolan's study, this has been re examined and found incorrect.

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/is_marriage_really_bad_for_womens_happiness

Married women do generally poll as happier, as do married men.

Is Marriage Really Bad for Women’s Happiness?

Paul Dolan claims that women might be happier if they stay single. What does the research say?

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/is_marriage_really_bad_for_womens_happiness

Carla786 · 03/03/2026 23:18

Keepingthingsinteresting · 03/03/2026 22:51

Yet another way to blame women for the reprehensible behaviour of men. You are essentially positing that women should not “allow” sex without marriage and if they do it is their own fault what happens. Women clearly aren’t allowed to want or enjoy sex, so back to the ‘lie back and think of England’ trope.

Also of you are going to make sweeping statements please cite your sources. It has long been shown by research that whilst marriage improves satisfaction and longevity in men it decreases it in women- marriage “costs” women years of their life and frankly given that even many “good” men seem to require just as much looking after as children it’s easy to see why that is the case.

Basically all of this is distraction tactics to draw attention away from Reform’s core goal of putting women back in (what they see) as their place and they hope that by throwing out enough statements that a sufficient number of people are too stupid to see through them.

Re married women living shorter lives, most studies show both married men and married women tend to live longer, not shorter, lives.

Here's just one:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-demographic-economics/article/effect-of-marital-status-on-life-expectancy-is-cohabitation-as-protective-as-marriage/5B6B9B86C737AE3F095CF3781023F458

The effect of marital status on life expectancy: Is cohabitation as protective as marriage? | Journal of Demographic Economics | Cambridge Core

The effect of marital status on life expectancy: Is cohabitation as protective as marriage? - Volume 89 Issue 3

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-demographic-economics/article/effect-of-marital-status-on-life-expectancy-is-cohabitation-as-protective-as-marriage/5B6B9B86C737AE3F095CF3781023F458

Keepingthingsinteresting · 03/03/2026 23:18

Carla786 · 03/03/2026 22:56

'has long been shown by research that whilst marriage improves satisfaction and longevity in men it decreases it in women'-

Re married women being less happy, if you mean Paul Dolan's study, this has been re examined and found incorrect.

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/is_marriage_really_bad_for_womens_happiness

Married women do generally poll as happier, as do married men.

That’s not quite what the article says, it talks about nuance. The line that jumps out at me is “Marriage doesn’t make you happy,” says Harvard psychology professor and happiness expert Daniel Gilbert. “Happy marriages make you happy.”, I.e. marriage for its own sake is not as you suggest the key to happiness, and I would think ‘trapping’ men in marriages as the price for sex is unlikely to make a marriage happy.

Additionally a 2 minute google pulls up a more recent paper. Take a look at figure one and the summaries beneath which clearly show getting married makes women happy, but over time that effect is not sustained. Reading on there is nuance but the same point that it is the quality of the relationship that is important and women suffer in bad or mediocre relationships in a way that men don’t. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8888778/

Happy, Healthy and Wedded? How the Transition to Marriage Affects Mental and Physical Health - PMC

Decades of research have documented the apparent health benefits of marriage, but the dynamics of how health may change across the transition to marriage are not fully understood. In two studies, we compared being unmarried or married on several ...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8888778/

Carla786 · 03/03/2026 23:22

Keepingthingsinteresting · 03/03/2026 23:18

That’s not quite what the article says, it talks about nuance. The line that jumps out at me is “Marriage doesn’t make you happy,” says Harvard psychology professor and happiness expert Daniel Gilbert. “Happy marriages make you happy.”, I.e. marriage for its own sake is not as you suggest the key to happiness, and I would think ‘trapping’ men in marriages as the price for sex is unlikely to make a marriage happy.

Additionally a 2 minute google pulls up a more recent paper. Take a look at figure one and the summaries beneath which clearly show getting married makes women happy, but over time that effect is not sustained. Reading on there is nuance but the same point that it is the quality of the relationship that is important and women suffer in bad or mediocre relationships in a way that men don’t. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8888778/

Edited

Thank you, this is fascinating. I definitely agree a bad marriage may affect women more often..

This is a stereotype and obviously crude, but the idea that men marry for sex, emotional support & housework does have a grain of truth. Most men want a lot more, but men tend to have more difficulty finding those things if not in a relationship, so being married generally means they're getting those things. Thus men, even if bored/unhappy, are less likely to divorce because it will be more likely to leave they with a lower baseline. A divorced woman will often have close friends to turn to, be able to rely on herself for housework etc

GallantKumquat · 03/03/2026 23:25

I'm inclined to welcome Kruger's entry into to the debate even when I disagree with his prescription.

There IS a 'neoliberal', 'globalist' perspective on population. It goes somewhat like this: The world is (or was up until 20 years ago) experiencing population growth at an unsustainable rate that if unchecked will rapidly lead (once again) to large-scale famines, death, and genocidal resource wars of existential necessity. In a world armed with nuclear weapons this is a recipe for catastrophe. Therefore world wide population control is an urgent necessity. But fortunately population is not hard for humans to control: access to birth control, education, urbanisation, elimination of poverty and expansion of middle class affluence are enough to not only halt uncontrolled growth but set it into reverse. This rather unexpected development (from a Malthusianism perspective) is something that we should all be grateful for as it brings prosperity into alignment with sustainability. Within this frame, our current job (as wealthy countries) is to help developing countries achieve a sustained upward trajectory of affluence, and to absorb the current excess population that already exists on the planet. At some point in the future it might, if everything goes well, be necessary to collectively worry about over-all declining world population and develop strategies to target a long term stable population and introduce measures to boost population in order to keep humanity stable. But there's no need to worry about that now as there is plenty of population in the world.

This has all been tacitly agreed to by elites, but is rarely fully articulated and the public has never been given a chance to vote on it. Kruger is essentially saying that it's not Britain's job to absorb excess population from the rest of the world: it's destabilising, costly, and being used as device to manipulate the domestic political environment.

(Unstated) What's more it's not necessary, developing countries are perfectly able to achieve prosperity without exporting their population, and once they've achieved it their own demographic crises will disappear. In fact allowing them to export their population very possibly makes them reluctant to implement the changes necessary for their own prosperity.

As I said, I disagree with Kruger. My opinion is more aligned with the neoliberal globalists. But it's not beyond the pale - it's a conversation that should be had and people do have a right to vote on it.

trumpisvomitous · 03/03/2026 23:30

Good luck with that you ducking twits in reform, no other countries have been able to increase their birth rate.

persephonia · 04/03/2026 00:51

Carla786 · 03/03/2026 22:56

'has long been shown by research that whilst marriage improves satisfaction and longevity in men it decreases it in women'-

Re married women being less happy, if you mean Paul Dolan's study, this has been re examined and found incorrect.

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/is_marriage_really_bad_for_womens_happiness

Married women do generally poll as happier, as do married men.

I suspect happily married women are happier. I think marriage and/or babies to those that want those things. Cats to those that don't.

LeftBoobGoneRogue · 04/03/2026 01:05

Hagelslag · 02/03/2026 15:15

Wait, I thought they were worried about overcrowding on their little island? Now they want more people?

They only want the right sort of people.

BendoftheBeginning · 04/03/2026 06:48

TempestTost · 03/03/2026 22:35

You seem to be having a hard time talking about things without some kind of personal identification. Maybe they don't mean what you assume about "multiculturalism has failed." Maybe they aren't talking about the people in your community, but women who are not seen outside of the home, or allowed to learn English, or are shipped to the UK to marry their cousins.?

Trevor Phillips made a film about the idea that multiculturalism had failed which came to almost the exact same conclusion, that his intent in shaping those policies under Blair had not worked out how he had intended at all.

Do you feel he also is throwing his brown family under the bus in order to get a seat at the table? Which is frankly quite a patronising idea. Or is it ok for him?

Reform doesn’t apply nuance when it comes to policy. When they talk about deporting immigrants with Indefinite Leave to Remain, they mean ALL of them, not “just the ones who’ve settled here but are then found to be committing crimes.”

Assuming that when they talk about any group that they really only mean a dysfunctional subsection of them is absurdly generous. They are generalising for a reason.

Shortshriftandlethal · 04/03/2026 07:32

Carla786 · 03/03/2026 22:46

Strange....if couples can afford to keep a dog to fulfil their nurturing instinct, with vet bills skyrocketing, have they delayed children or decided against for financial reasons or something else? If they feel the drive to nurture kids why aren't they having a baby?

Edited

Because the trend ( more amongst the middle classes) has been to get established in a career first ( including women) and not even think about having children until your thirties, by which time it seems too costly and it is never the right time. Plus ideas around over-population are in wide circulation as another reason to not have children.

The trend has also been towards getting a dog ( or cat) to act as a binding, joint project between partners. This escalated during covid - when people were far more home based and, I think, that buried instinctive voice, started whispering.
It is also no secret that people are now infantilising their pets; giving them human names, talking to them like children, dressing them up, and calling them 'fur babies'.

Additup · 04/03/2026 08:09

persephonia · 03/03/2026 00:57

If Mat Godwin wants to point the finger at anyone for having casual sex he needs to point it at his own generation. The boomers had more sex than generation Z who are actually more thoughtful about partners and ethics (they also get criticised for this of course.) "Hookup culture" was largely a response to the introduction of the smartphone and the boom in dating apps and it's already started to die of.

What he is referring to really is the common online trope that 20% of the men are "getting" 80% of the women leaving the rest with none. This then tips into some quite unpleasant tropes about sexually promiscuous women sleeping with the bad boys in their twenties and then either being left single mothers or alone and full of regrets in their 30s as their eggs either and die. Whilst if they had only picked the (self insert) nice guy when young and hot all would have been well.
It's.not true. And it's based more on male insecurities (everyone else is getting sex except them; women are being slutty with other men when they should be slutty with them) than reality. It comes from a place of insecurity or innexperience rather than malice generally. But some men who should know better have really fallen for the pseudo-scientific nonsense. And Godwin is one of them. (Actually I don't know if it's pseudo-science or pseudo-economics since lot of it's based on a weird sort of economic theory/buzzwords that don't really fit with the real world).

Matt Goodwin is in his mid 40s so please stop with your boomer nonsense.

BendoftheBeginning · 04/03/2026 08:15

Additup · 04/03/2026 08:09

Matt Goodwin is in his mid 40s so please stop with your boomer nonsense.

I am amused that the main message you took from that was the “mis-generationing,” rather than addressing the point that Reform and Goodwin are harkening back to the birthrate of a very distant past when women had no agency at all, birth deaths and fatal childhood illnesses were high, and many marriages were miserable.

Additup · 04/03/2026 08:18

BendoftheBeginning · 04/03/2026 08:15

I am amused that the main message you took from that was the “mis-generationing,” rather than addressing the point that Reform and Goodwin are harkening back to the birthrate of a very distant past when women had no agency at all, birth deaths and fatal childhood illnesses were high, and many marriages were miserable.

I agree with almost everything else you said but felt your message was undermined by not only using the pejorative term 'boomer' but using it so incorrectly 😁

BendoftheBeginning · 04/03/2026 08:22

Additup · 04/03/2026 08:18

I agree with almost everything else you said but felt your message was undermined by not only using the pejorative term 'boomer' but using it so incorrectly 😁

You are not replying to the person who called Goodwin a boomer. Which rather undermines you.

Additup · 04/03/2026 08:27

BendoftheBeginning · 04/03/2026 08:22

You are not replying to the person who called Goodwin a boomer. Which rather undermines you.

Don't be a dick, it was an honest mistake.

persephonia · 04/03/2026 09:21

Additup · 04/03/2026 08:18

I agree with almost everything else you said but felt your message was undermined by not only using the pejorative term 'boomer' but using it so incorrectly 😁

Not a perjorative. I genuinely thought he was older than he was. Only mid 40s? He's Gen X I guess then. My apologies to the boomers. Ok, but my general point still stands. The Baby boomers (descriptive not a perjorative) were at the forefront of the sexual revolution. GenerationZ as young people are generally less promiscuous than the generations before, more health conscious, less likely to drink to excess etc. So talking about them like they need reigning in sexually is weird and untrue.

I. My defence not many people would Reese Mog was younger than Kylie Minogue. Some politicians seem to cultivate a certain image.

persephonia · 04/03/2026 09:23

Boomer wasn't meant to be a perjorative. I know "OK Boomer" is, but boomers just refers to those born in the post WW2 baby boom. Which presumably men like Godwin want to replicate.

TheywontletmehavethenameIwant · 04/03/2026 13:35

At 40 I'd have thought he was a Millennial.

WhatsConfusingYouIsTheNatureOfMyGame · 04/03/2026 13:39

Google says Dec 81, so 44. Elder millennial/Xennial cusp.

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