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I am sure this has been asked before, but why is it that these purported consequences of the 1970s sexual revolution have not shown up until the past 10-15 years? It really took 50 years to come to a head?
10-15 years lines up pretty precisely with the advent (or at least the widespread acceptance) of online dating and hookup apps. Dating and sex are commodities now, and the experience is significantly cheapened as a result.
And yet everyone is having significantly less sex today than 10 years ago.
Are you saying this contradicts the original theory? I can understand being surprised by this, but it isn't even that strange when you think about it for a moment.
I absolutely am saying that it contradicts the original theory. And it is strange if you think about it. Intuitively. it makes sense that easier access to sex through dating apps should make it more widespread.
It would make sense if men and women were looking for sex for the sake of sex with the same frequency, intensity, etc, and the only thing stopping them from getting it in the past, were those evil traditional sexual mores. This is the case with gay hookups, and you indeed see amounts of sex orders of magnitude beyond what straights can achieve. However, in the case of relations between men and women, the sexual mores performed a regulatory function (rather than a purely restrictive one), attempting to give the most amount of people at least some of what they want. But because men and women have different preferences, and are looking for different things, by abolishing the sexual mores, instead of "lifting restrictions on sex" all we accomplished was locking men and women into a defect-defect spiral, which resulted in less sex for everybody.
Describe this defect-defect spiral. Because to tell you the truth, I don't see it in my experiences, and it seems to be a post-hoc explanation for an unexpected outcome.
It used to be that if you got pregnant or impregnated someone, you were expected to become a couple and stay a couple. This meant that the man was forced to have a big stake in being a parent, but also was very rarely deprived of the father role (as part of an actual family, not the modern 'weekend father'). Nowadays, a man who impregnates a woman can never get the chance to be a father, or can easily be deprived of the father role when the woman splits up. So there is less reason nowadays for men to want to have children or to build themselves up to be a good father. Instead, a lot of guys prefer infinite adolescence. In turn, this means that women see a lack of men who make good fathers, and even go looking for sperm donors and intentionally become single moms.
Women traditionally 'groomed' promising men into being good providers/fathers/etc. The taboo on splitting up meant that the risk of marrying a rough diamond was offset by the benefits of getting a better husband than the woman could get otherwise. But the ease by which relationships can be ended, resulted in women being increasingly picky and only wanting the finished product, since a perfectly groomed husband can just trade her in. However, the lack of grooming by women means that many men miss out on becoming this finished product, so everyone suffers.
All the lies about men and women being equal, logically results in the conclusion that when men have different preferences from women, this is all just bad culture that they need to change. So in a way feminism was right when they coined the term 'the personal is political,' in that women increasingly politicize their relationships, and demand leftism in their mates, with the assumption that those men then share their preferences. However, this just drives men further into right-wing politics, who do allow them to be themselves, while women get in this spiral of blaming the right wing for their relationship issues.
It's just as likely that men who are forced to become fathers become inattentive or abusive fathers. Also, you are completely wrong on the fact that mot men don't want children; actually, more men want children than women do.
First of all, why the fuck is this arrangement good for men? Why do men need to be "groomed" into being better people by women? This is utterly toxic and manipulative; most men would take the modern arrangement. Also, again, it's just as likely that the "rough diamond" stays rough, and the women is stuck with an abuser.
I agree that women often politicize their relationships, but they don't blame the "right" for their relationship issues. They just blame men.
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