Louise Perry’s book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution argues that sexual freedom or free love came at a cost. And the price was paid by women.
Ultimately, Louise believes the sexual revolution was great… for men. Women have been “conned” into believing that sex positivity and the idea of having a lot of casual sex and being able to have sex “like a man” is a good thing, when it really isn’t.
[I]t was completely rational for feminists of the second wave to look at what had come before, and the fact that women had been so restricted in terms of their lives in general but their sexual lives in particular, and to see the links with religion in particular, and to think, ‘Okay, this is our enemy, this is our problem. This is what we need to be fighting against.’ I think this has been particularly true in America, where the Christian Right is still a very fearsome enemy, less so in UK and Australia, and other parts of the world.
“The problem with doing that though is it presents a really simplistic view of history, and a really simplistic view of how complex social norms work. What we’ve then done is say, all these sexual norms of the past, it’s gotta go. Chivalry, it’s out. The idea of chastity, it’s gotta go. And all we end up left with – even the idea that sex shouldn’t mean anything, it’s got no special status whatsoever – what you end up with is the consent framework, which says that as long as you’re capable of consenting, and as long as everyone does, then it’s fine.
“The problem with that is there are so, so many examples where actually the consent is there, but actually, it’s not fine. For instance, it is so common now for young women who have grown up in this culture where this is completely normal, to feel under intense pressure to participate in hookup culture… There are loads of reasons why someone might consent to something, even if it’s not actually in their best interest, and even if it doesn’t actually make them happy.”
“Yes, maybe everyone’s consenting, but actually, is this a healthy sexual culture? I don’t think so. I mean, definitely not for girls, who are suffering all the risks associated with these encounters, which are sometimes violent, which do sometimes result in unwanted pregnancies. And they don’t even really want to do it.
“Things like the orgasm gap – women so rarely orgasm during one-night stands. They are so much more likely to orgasm in committed relationships. In fact, women are more likely to experience pain during sex in one-night stands than they are to experience an orgasm.”
Louise thinks that it is a mistake for women to think that if we behave like men, then somehow we benefit ourselves.
Source: Louise Perry: There’s no such thing as meaningless sex.