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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?
Where do you see this view expressed, that isn't at the very least "post-left"? My impression is that getting a progressive to acknowledge something went wrong with the Sexual Revolution is like nailing jello to a wall. Even if they agree that current sexual dynamics are unhealthy, they can't bring themselves to put the blame on the Sexual Revolution. It's still patriarchy, internalized misogyny, or what have you. The revolution has not gone far enough! If you admit things in the past might have been better in any regard, that would imply we might need to roll some things back, and be more careful with future changes - we can't have that!
IMO, it's not even that, it's "The Wall wasn't built to keep women locked in, it was built to keep men out". "Sexual freedom" isn't in women's interest because they aren't unrepentant coomers the way men are. If The Wall falls, it is women who will find themselves pressured to do things they don't want to do, not men (see also: my recent anecdote on the "third date is when you sleep with the guy" rule, and the post that provoked it). Gender roles are more tricky, but I think even there what I said applies. Sure, they might be restrictive, but at least half of the reason they were there was to give women a domain they can rule over according to their preferences, so they don't have to deal with men's bullshit.
Mainstream progressive (i.e. sex-positive) feminism is happy to acknowledge that women are not getting off on the casual sex available post Sexual Revolution - they just blame men for it rather than reconsidering whether the Sexual Revolution was a good idea.
I see this sort of attitude as being very common in progressive circles. The idea is always that our movement was failed, not that we failed. The idea that it is the responsibility of any particular political movement to adjust its messaging and political power plays to acclimate to the sociopolitical landscape that exists so that more people are convinced to join the cause and to help it just never seems to occur to them. The argument is always some variation of "We did everything right, it's just those damn XYZ people holding us back." Which strikes me as akin to a colonel saying "I did absolutely everything right when I ordered my men to rush that hill; those damn enemy combatants with their machine guns in bunkers are the ones at fault here."
You're not seeing it from a consequentalist standpoint, which is probably the one the people complaining that their movement was failed are taking. I think there's an important distinction because technically the people they accuse of holding them back aren't seen as enemy combatants in the context of making the world better. They might be adversaries in the context of getting a policy implemented internally, like that colonel might be a big fan of human wave style tactics while another colonel is arguing in favor of softening the enemy up with artillery, both arguing and trying to convince the brass of approving their preferred tactic, bickering and going as far as doing some political manuvering to try and edge out the other, but still fighting on the same side of the war. So their accusation is not that their tactic would have worked but for the enemy, but that they are being machine-gunned in the back by the other colonel who would be putting winning his small argument about tactics (disapproval of sexual liberty) over the overarching goal of winning the war (of making life better for everyone).
Whether the argument is accurate or not is different, but the accusation is of sabotage, not of facing resistance from the enemy.
No, it's because I'm seeing it from a consequentialist standpoint that I see the notion of one's sociopolitical movement as having been failed instead of being a failure as wrong and, to be honest, rather absurd. To wit:
Whether or not the accusation is of sabotage or resistance from the enemy, it doesn't change the fact that the colonel's soldiers are now dead, and the hill hasn't been taken. The colonel's job, in this metaphor, is do what it takes to take that hill, taking into account any obstacle that gets in the way, whether that be enemy combatants or sabotaging fellow colonels or incompetent underlings or anything else. If a colonel sends his men to rush a hill only to get shot in the back by people he assumed was friendly, then clearly that colonel failed due to believing that those people were friendly and wouldn't shoot his men in the back.
And in the realm of sexual sociopolitics, I'm rather skeptical that the progressives considered the conservatives to be people mostly on the same page and with similar ideas about what "victory" looked like, just with different ways to get there. From my experience as a progressive living around progressives, we tended to see conservatives, both in sexual matters and in others, to be closer to enemy combatants with very different - almost incomprehensible in its absurdity - ideas of what a good world looked like, than fellow-travelers who would sabotage us for just having some disagreements about the details. And, again, either way, if we only get 90% of the way there instead of 100% because of enemy combatants or sabotage that my movement didn't properly take into account and work around or defeat, and as a result we end up with a situation that's significantly worse than 100% (whether it's worse than 0% is another matter; it's certainly possible, and it's certainly true for some subsets of the population), then that's clearly the responsibility of my movement for failing to properly account for our adversaries, whether they're enemy combatants or sabotage.
If you zoom out far enough, sons and daughters living happy fulfilling lives is what everyone is after. At least, for people who invest themselves into social policy making with impacts on that kind of timescale. There isn't really any personal gain to be made, the people who pushed the changes that led to the current environment are by now too old to personally benefit from it.
My point is not that the colonel who cannot ever manage to implement his strategy is worthy, but that it's a fair complaint if another person ostensibly working for the same objective is actively making things worse for no other reason than to not see him succeed. If the other colonel really was shooting his country's troops in the back, pointing it out to the brass is not pitiful whining, it should be investigated and that colonel arrested and tried for treason. If, in progressives' mind, conservatives are making everyone live miserable lives for generations for no other reason than to spite progressives, they should make that case to the population as best they can so that the population rightly shuns conservatism. It's not argument I can see them making convincingly, but they absolutely should try it if they truly believe that conservatives are that nasty and petty.
Yes, they (we) should make that case as best as they can, and if and when that case fails to convince people to shun conservatism to the extent required to actually defeat conservatism, then that is a failure on their (our) part. And indeed, as best as I can tell, we have tried this method for decades at this point and have largely failed to convince people; we do convince individuals and groups here and there, but we also lose people due to the same methods, and for what we're discussing, we need massive net wins, not wins and losses mostly offsetting each other or even just a slightly higher win-rate than loss-rate. We weren't failed by a populace that didn't rightly listen to us in shunning conservatism, we failed the populace by not giving them the arguments that convince them of the truth of conservatives making everyone live miserable lives for generations for no other reason than to spite progressives.
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Indeed. Very obviously they will not even address the Sexual Revolution, as such. They will pin the blame on the male sense of entitlement, toxic masculinity, consumerist pop culture etc. But that's not the point.
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That's pretty much what I said, wasn't it?
It's not the Sexual Revolution that's to blame, it's the patriarchal toxic masculinity making men selfish in bed. Please don't look at the sex satisfaction by number of sexual partners surveys!
Also, while feminism will take the "orgasm gap" as a yet another convenient stick to beat men with, it's hardly the core issue even for sex-positive feminists.
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