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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?
As long as you can frame this as something done by men to women you can sell this to progressives without issue.
Sex is something men-as-class want to acquire from women-as-class at the lowest price possible; therefore, merely seeking to buy it (incentive: for the lowest price, or seeking the best value [beauty, youth, new
inbox] for that price) inherently devalues all sex (and why women treat other women putting sex on sale as harshly as they do, and why women-as-class treat men the way they do should they fail to begin their negotiations with the concept the price is infinite).In other words, it's the "if you have to ask, you can't afford it, get out of my shop/no lowballers, I know what I got" disgust emotion trigger- you don't have to sell this to progressives, they already know it intuitively.
This isn't unique to sex, of course- all market goods work this way (when a seller prices a good to move, it means other sellers will be left out unless they "devalue" [from their perspective] what they think that good is worth.
When feminists say "porn is exploitative" and "all sex is rape", this dynamic is what they're getting at- the former because it means that women for whom having sex is a job [that pays a wage] now have to compete with free. Just like how moving industry to China devalues the average American man because now he has to compete with slave labor. "All sex is rape" is just a specific version of the general "all work is slavery", which is why the former emerged from the latter (and why the two often go hand-in-hand).
This doesn't ring true at all. Many of those feminists are against sex work too.
It seems more based on on the very conservative idea that women need friendship, support and other things from their partner, which require a lot of effort from the man, but that porn teaches men that they can get sex from women without providing these things. Not: "she had sex with me because I put a lot of effort into the relationship", but: "here's your pizza, sex?"
Should have been slightly more clear on what I mean by "a job that pays a wage", since what you've said is exactly what I meant:
Yes, these are the wages. The work is sex and the other things men need from their partner.
Relationships are ultimately transactional, even though it's at least slightly offensive to acknowledge that fact, as the more a relationship is treated this way by its participants the less likely it is to survive. (One only need look at marriage vows: through an economic lens they are a contract by both parties that says "I hereby disclaim the right to find a better match if for any reason this transaction should become unbalanced by internal or external circumstances".)
And in doing so, porn drives down the market price for sex (from "she had sex with me because I put a major amount of labor in and/or signed a contract saying I'd never back out, since virginity doesn't grow back" to "30 minutes or it's free"). So does sex work, for the same reasons- plus it puts an explicit price on sex, which heavily disadvantages sellers who benefit from price discrimination, and that requires the price for sex to be illegible to work properly.
(It's not just porn and sex work that affects the market price for sex, of course- at a population level, marital rape laws are an effort to get better working conditions, age of consent and public decency laws are an effort to impose a higher minimum wage, and ex post facto rape laws work the same way as consumer protection laws do, and all of those powers can be used and abused in the same ways. Sure, things can be much different at an individual level, but microeconomics and macroeconomics are two different fields for the same reason.)
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