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Notes -
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?
If we're going with unstated promises then I think it's far deeper than what you outlined here. The core of the Sexual Revolution was a nihilistic view that told young people generally that there was no greater power or value system out there to worry about. Do what you want, live for the moment, none of it matters anyway. Our technology has made us so great (birth control) and the world is so terrible (cold war) that really the best thing you can do is just live for your own momentary pleasure, and focus on that instead of anything more disciplined or serious.
I'm not trying to strawman here - this idea is genuinely the philosophical underpinning of the sexual revolution as far as I can tell. Driven by the rise in our technological prowess mostly, especially birth control and media technology.
I suspect that much of this drive to short term pleasure is also a means to blot out the repressed fear of death. Without a religious afterlife to buffer yourself against your own inevitable demise, I'd posit you have to play an increasingly intense shell game of managing that fear through other means.
I wonder how much WWII and penicillin contributed to that; I don't think that it was any accident that we saw things getting a bit more conservative when AIDS started being concerning for straight people. Imagine what our mores would be like if we had no effective tests or treatments for AIDS. Syphilis was more or less the semi-diet AIDS of its day.
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