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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?
I disagree that this is about moral value, or even specific to sex.
Instead, I think people are unhappy because they've noticed that time has passed. They haven't built the life they imagined. And they're starting to notice doors closing to them, simply because of the march of time.
This feels like a betrayal because society "promised" them that the opportunities of youth would always be open to them. People were free to dabble at different life paths for as long as they liked. There would always be time to choose later.
The key quote, for me, is from Sylvia Plath:
Plath's idea is that all of the options are good. They're just mutually-exclusive. Picking one means giving up on the rest, if only because people only have so many hours in a day, and only so many years in each season of our life.
Society's lie was that women never had to pick one option. They could do it all. They could devote themselves to a career AND build a warm home with kids. They just had to do the career first and the kids could come later. They could spend decades dating AND enjoy a life-shaping marriage. They just had to do the dating first and the commitment would come later.
The problem is simply that humans are mortal. Time passes. We age. Options go away.
The anger we're seeing now is that women who wanted to raise families put it off. This is probably partly because commitment is scary, and partly because every major outlet in society has spent the last 20 decade celebrating women-with-careers and single women.
I'll certainly agree that a woman in her mid-30s faces a tough dating market, especially if she wants to have kids in the near future. But I think it has relatively little to do with the number of partners, and simply has to do with the ticking of a biological clock, and the pool of partners.
To show why I think this is "Time" and not "Number of Partners," imagine 3 similarly-attractive female friends. One traveled and worked an intense job; she'd have a one-night-stand every couple months. Another did serial dating; her relationships lasted 2 or 3 years a piece. The third married; she and her husband had a happy, if childless, marriage until he died tragically a few years ago.
Assuming the women are now 35, the first woman might have had 90 partners (a one-night-stand every couple months, over 15 years), the second woman would have around 6 partners (a new boyfriend every 2 or 3 years, for 15 years), and the third would have had 1 partner. This is vastly different dating experience.
If "Number of Partners" mattered, I'd expect them to have very different experiences when they all started their search for a potential husband. While there might be small differences, I think they'd all find the dating market to be pretty challenging and certainly harder than it was when they were starting out in their 20s. So, time seems like the most important thing.
Some people just lost the roll of the dice after freezing their eggs.
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