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A week ago, in the context of a discussion on some NYT article, @2rafa commented that “there is an unstated (on the progressive side) premise among all people that casual sex is a bad deal for women and devalues or dishonors them in some way”. It generated a few replies but basically no further discussion, even though I’m sure it’s worthy of further discussion, and here’s why: as far as I’m aware, it’s certainly not the case that progressives had this attitude from the beginning of the Sexual Revolution, which is what the context is here. Obviously they used to have a different view in general, but sometime along the way, they changed their minds, because things turned sour, essentially.
Before continuing I think it’s important to qualify, as 2rafa also did, that other ideological groups also share this basic view, but the two main differences are that right-wingers tend to state this view openly, whereas progs are usually reluctant to do so, and that they do so on religious and moralistic grounds, whereas progs concentrate on women’s individual long-term interests, not on any other considerations.
So anyway, I said to myself: surely these people, being progressives, believe that the Sexual Revolution, while a laudable event, went haywire at some point, and didn’t bear the fruits it was supposed to. And I can tell that this is a relatively widespread view, because I can see it expressed in various online venues all the time, not just this forum.
What went wrong then? What did the Sexual Revolution basically promise to average progressive women, and why did that turn out to be a lie?
I’d argue that the more or less unstated promise of the Sexual Revolution to young single women was that: a) they will be sexually free without inviting social shame i.e. normalized sexual experimentation and promiscuity on their part will not have an unfavorable long-term effect on men’s attitudes towards them, and women will not sexually shame one another anymore b) they will be able to leave their constrictive gender roles to the extent they see fit, but this will not lead to social issues and anomie because men will be willing to fill those roles instead i.e. men will have no problem becoming stay-at-home dads, nurses, kindergarteners, doing housework etc.
And none of that turned out to be true.
Am I correct in this assessment?
Most people totally immersed in the mores of the sexual revolution will never be able to entertain the notion that those mores harmed them. They may look around them, at their peers, and see the damage. But their own decisions will always be above reproach, because SLAY QUEEN!!
It gets particularly bad when the consequences are just manifestly obvious to everyone except them. Among the moms at my daughter's school, it's a fucking train wreck. Even only getting their side of the stories, it's a horror show. One woman can't hold down a job, can't hold down an address, and was in some sort of situationship with the guy she was staying with. All she had to do was not also fuck the felon ex partner/father of her daughter while she fucked the guy she was living with, and she couldn't do it. Cause nobody can tell her what to do. So then she was homeless again. Cause it's not like felon baby daddy had a place she could stay.
Then there is the woman who shameless adopts every upper class luxury belief she can, which coincidentally enables her to adopt an uninvolved wine mom poly lifestyle. She wonders why the other moms don't like her, when she casually drops lines like "It's really hard for me to not fuck my kid's friend's dads". And it's not like her kids are thriving either. All her children have some pretty significant developmental delays which signal neglect IMHO.
Oh, and local to me, an actual, no joke, camwhore ran for a state legislature seat. When it came out that she was having sex on a camwhore site for money, she started threatening to sue people for distributing revenge porn. Keep in mind, this was content, free content publicly available, that she produced and distributed herself. Naturally all the liberal local news outlets took her claims about it being revenge porn at face value, and hid in the middle of the article in a throw away line that she had, in fact, been a camwhore. The rest of all the articles implies by omission and the constant use of "revenge porn" that these were private videos illegally obtained and distributed.
The flip landscape for men couldn't be more stark. Men cut in half by divorce, parental alienation, jail if they can't afford the blood from a stone the court mandates for them. And the response is always "Well, if you didn't want to have kids, you shouldn't have had sex." Consequences for men are the one thing conservatives and liberals seem able to agree on.
Yes, and? Men and women are different, so the "landscapes" will be different.
And what's wrong with responding to men that way?
Along with pretty most any stable, settled society I've heard of. Maybe the reason so many people, across time and space, ideologies and political affiliations, all come to agree on this point is because they're converging upon reality?
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Reminds me of an actual case from a previous job. Woman is shacked up with and has baby by guy who is not, let us say, a sterling citizen. He gets sent to jail. She immediately takes up with his father and gets pregnant by him. Everybody in the office was going "Yeah, that's gonna be interesting when he gets out". No wonder incest porn is a growing trend; that's some "my kid's half-sibling is also my half-sibling, which also means they're siblings and nephew/uncle as well" brain twisting going on there.
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