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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’ll sign in with @Goodguy and @Gillitrut: this isn’t a framing I’ve heard from progressives. Support for the Sexual Revolution is almost orthogonal to complaints about abuse or privilege. Women’s lib remains quite popular up until the point where it affects one’s own sisters or daughters. That’s a difference in risk tolerance.
Honestly, “the Revolution hasn’t gone far enough” isn’t something I see much in general. If I’m feeling optimistic, I’d say that’s because the Soviet “fifty Stalins” gave us pretty good antibodies. At the very least I think it’s recognized as a weak argument. We’re in an age of post-post-irony, and full-throated endorsement of anything is, uh, “cringe.”
Again, I'm not a bit surprised that you haven't heard it from them - after all, 2rafa was describing unstated views. On my part, I've seen self-proclaimed progressives state such views, but only online.
To add to this, I think the unstated nature of it is not only that they don't state it out loud, they don't state it in their own conscious thinking, because their brains have protections in place against consciously thinking such things, regardless of what they believe. This isn't a particularly progressive thing though, it's just a universal human thing that acts on all aspects of life, not just sexuality or politics, and it's the rare human who can even notice when they do this, much less actually combat it.
But it's pretty easy to conclude this based on seeing the way the consent framework gets awkwardly shoved into any cases where a woman is dissatisfied with some episode of casual sex - or more broadly the patriarchy oppression/oppressed framework gets awkwardly shoved in where women are dissatisfied with a life that's filled with casual sex - that whatever they're getting at is something that's shaped very similarly to whatever the religious conservatives are getting at with their talk about "honor" and "disgrace" and whatnot.
But that's not true. The highly online world is not representative of reality. In the broader world, even progressive women only bring up consent after a woman has dissatisfying sex a tiny fraction of the time.
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