Is there anything left to say about the sexual revolution?
There is if you are the intrepid Louise Perry, who has taken on the unenviable but crucial task of teaching the next generation of men and women some lessons about biology, mating strategies, and the limits of personal freedom.
In A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century, Perry offers a young adult adaptation of her excellent 2022 book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. She dedicates the book to “the women who learned it the hard way,” among whom she includes herself, and she hopes to spare a new generation of women from doing the same.
In brief, pithy chapters, Perry outlines persistent fallacies about the sexual revolution, including the idea that the contraceptive pill, access to abortion, and freedom from supposedly restrictive norms about sex out of wedlock would liberate women. The revolution in morals did bring new freedoms, she concedes, but they were not enjoyed equally. “The sexual revolution has not, in fact, freed all of us,” Perry writes. “It has freed some of us, at a price. Which is exactly what we should expect from such a massive change.” She argues that it is past time we set aside the popular narrative about the sexual revolution, which sees it “as a story only of progress.”
Central to Perry’s argument is the quietly radical acknowledgment of differences between the sexes. The longstanding feminist message that, when it comes to sex, girls can do anything boys can do, is dangerously simplistic. “I accept the fact that men and women are different,” Perry writes. “They have different goals and interests. Those differences aren’t going away.”
These differences, moreover, spring from biological realities that feminism has either ignored or attempted to replace with specious claims: “Liberal feminism promises women freedom,” Perry writes. “But female biology imposes, in reality, limits on that freedom. Women get pregnant, and being pregnant and having children is not compatible with complete freedom.”
Perry acknowledges exceptions to such generalizations; there are women who don’t want children, for example. Yet her generalizations offer a useful way to engage in necessary moral reasoning about the impacts of tectonic changes in behavior and morals. The sexual revolution promised freedom from a great many things in theory (old-fashioned shame, for one) but for whom did it offer more liberation in practice?
Perry argues that it is men, not women, who gained the most. One of the most powerful sections of the book examines the realities of the 21st century sexual marketplace. As Perry describes the insistence that we accept any and all sexual practices, no matter how extreme, she notes, “The evidence shows that sex acts that have become much more socially acceptable over the last sixty years are acts that men are much more likely to enjoy.” She cites prostitution, pornography consumption, and male promiscuity as examples.
Perry questions whether a culture of casual sex—where the expectation is that most women will engage in (if not enjoy) commitment-free hookups—is of benefit to women. Her verdict is certain: It is not. “Hook-up culture demands that women suppress their natural instincts in order to match male sexuality and thus meet the male demand for no-strings sex,” she argues.
Plenty of data and anecdotal evidence support her claim; what doesn’t is the mainstream feminist message urging women to embrace this new world. “Liberal feminism prizes having sex ‘like a man’ as a route to women’s liberation. But we will never be able to have sex like men, because we will never be men, despite modern contraception and other technology giving us the illusion of sameness,” she observes. The cultural pressure for women to be seen as sexually available has become so extreme that women who express a perfectly normal desire for something other than meaningless sex have had to fetishize that impulse by calling themselves “demisexual.”
This has led too many women into dangerous situations with men. In her discussion of rape, for example, Perry criticizes as wrongheaded the feminist message that rape is really about power and patriarchy, not sex. This represents a misunderstanding of potential male aggression—and fails to acknowledge the realities of evolutionary psychology and human biology. Perry has spent years helping victims of sexual assault; she finds it misguided in the extreme to pretend that women aren’t significantly physically weaker than men, and that women should take that into account when putting themselves in situations with men whom they don’t know (especially when alcohol and drugs might be involved). Her frustration with feminists who simply repeat the claim that rape is bad without offering concrete solutions to protect women is palpable. “Yes, rape is bad. We know that. Now let’s actually do something about it.”
She also has harsh words for so-called feminists who champion prostitution as a viable career path and who hide behind euphemisms such as “sex work.” Feminists who defend the decriminalization of sex work aren’t helping women; they are helping men who prey on vulnerable women. Perry offers plenty of blunt messages for young men as well, particularly about the corrosive effects of pornography. “The porn generation are having less sex, and the sex they are having is also worse. It’s less intimate, less satisfying, and less meaningful.” Her message is clear: Stop.
There is, perhaps, no better example of our mass “sexual disenchantment”—a phrase she borrows from the Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium—than the many men addicted to porn and the legions of women who pretend to be happy with casual sex or “friends with benefits” arrangements. This should not be the new normal; it represents “the stripping away of the idea that sex is ‘special,’ that it means something important and unique.”
Perry urges young women to reclaim that sense of importance about sex. How? She makes a surprisingly persuasive case for a bit more sexual repression, as opposed to insisting that sex be seen as in need of constant boundary-pushing and no limitations. “Sexual repression is a blunt instrument, but it is not one we can do away with altogether, as the errors of the 1970s show,” she writes.
We also need a new moral framework that can help young people navigate the complexity of sexual relationships, Perry says. She sketches one out for us that contains a great deal of forgotten wisdom while still acknowledging modern challenges: “We have to start by stating the obvious. Sex must be taken seriously. Men and women are different. Not all desires are good. Consent is not enough. Violence is not love. Loveless sex is not empowering. People are not products. Marriage is good. Above all, listen to your mother.”
She advocates treating partners with dignity rather than as objectified body parts (such as in pornography); prioritizing virtue over desire; and self-control, with a healthy sprinkling of the possibility of shame when we act thoughtlessly on our desires. “Most of the advice I offer would have seemed like common sense until very recently,” Perry concedes. “It’s the sort of advice that your grandmother would think was very obvious. It is, however, advice that I know I often ignored.”
The book includes a defense of marriage as the best institution for allowing women, men, and children to flourish, but not to turn modern women back into 1950s-style housewives. “The critics of marriage are right to say that it has historically been used by men to control women. They’re also right to point out that most marriages do not live up to a romantic ideal,” Perry writes. “The marriage system that prevailed in the West up until recently was not perfect. It wasn’t easy for most people, since it demanded high levels of tolerance and self-control. Where the critics go wrong is in arguing that there is any better system. There isn’t.”
Nor is there any longer an excuse to believe the outdated feminist message about sexual liberation. As Perry correctly notes, for generations, feminists have argued “for more and more freedom and are continually surprised when the cure they support doesn’t cure the disease.” Perry, by contrast, offers common sense wisdom that will surely help young women form a better understanding of what healthy sexual connection within flourishing relationships should look like. Let’s hope her efforts succeed. Her sharp and important book urges us to answer a difficult question: If the sexual revolution was such a success, why did it devour so many of its children?
A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century: The Young Adult Adaptation of ‘The Case Against the Sexual Revolution’
by Louise Perry
Polity, 176 pp., $14.95 (paperback)
Christine Rosen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World.
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