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Notes -
In last week’s thread, @greyenlightenment made the following observation regarding the evergreen subject of the sex recession:
It's interesting how some on the right has shifted from decrying how there is too much promiscuity (pre-2021 or so), to now from a trad-perspective decrying how young people are not having enough sex and lowered fertility rates.
As far as I can tell, this almost counts as a recurring theme among online leftists (not that I consider @greyenlightenment to be one in particular), one that serves as an ideological cudgel and also as a short cautionary tale with a “careful what you wish for” message. But I certainly don’t think it’s baseless, which is the other reason I think it merits more discussion here.
I happen to have vague memories of various conservative arguments I encountered after discovering Townhall and other similar right-wing sites in the early 2000s, and one thing they definitely liked to address regarding sexual mores was the embarrassingly high teenage pregnancy rate in the US. Well, I’m no sociologist but I suspect this statistical anomaly was and is(?) largely explained by the presence of large African-American and Latino ethnic minorities, plus the presence of large numbers of Scots-Irish with low impulse control, but of course mainstream conservatives were not going to point that out, opting instead to use this as a lame argument against encroaching sexual licentiousness or something.
Other than this, I’d not say it was too much promiscuity as such that conservatives decried, to the extent they even bothered, but the apparent push to normalize and sanitize female promiscuity in pop culture. I specifically remember the 2004 romantic comedy The Girl Next Door, for example, because multiple conservative commentators pointed out that its depiction of a supposedly average porn actress living the dream without suffering any social or psychological consequences of her career choice is misleading at best. There was also Sex in the City as well, obviously.
Anyway, this was all a long time ago, and I only brought up these two off the top of my head to encourage others here to bring up similar memories of their own.
On a different note, I don’t think it’s difficult to see how and why poking fun at old conservative fogeys this way is rather dishonest. After all, yes, surely they are happy to see teenage pregnancy rates and STD rates falling, for example, but they also surely never wanted any of this to happen as a consequence of social atomization and the overall atrophy of socializing itself, which is something that clearly contradicts conservative ideals.
Also, let’s not forget that teenage delinquency in general was generally seen as a big problem back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and not just by conservatives. Back then it was obviously very difficult to foresee a future where average parents actually wished that their teenage children went outside and hanged out at the park, the mall or the arcade.
In the dissident circles I travel in, I've seen the phrase "sex positive traditionalist" as an alternative to both progressive sexual attitudes and to sex-negative conservative attitudes. The sex-positive-traditionalist would rather men and women not be promiscuous, we would rather see people only have sex in marriage and to have children. However, this view differs from the "purity culture" conservatives of the 00's. That culture -- especially the more wordly moderately conservative Christians and the more worldy Catholics -- told teens to wait until marriage but then put their kids on the college->grad school->career track at the expense of the marriage track. They would also encourage very long engagements. Following such a plan forced adherents to either be very sex negative, they would have to wait for a long time to get married and have sex, or, more likely, the kids would get tired of waiting and drop the religion. Whereas a "sex positive traditionalist" would prioritize early marriage over going to college.
Specifically in terms of Catholic pastoral care, "sex positive traditionalism" would mean giving long-dating or cohabitating couples a shotgun marriage and telling them to go forth and make babies, rather than telling them to move out of the same apartment and live chastely for a year as they go through a lengthy "pre-cana" process.
The sex-positive-traditionalist is also very pro sex within marriage, believing in that there is moral an obligation to perform the "marital act", even when one spouse perhaps has not been feeling it for a few days. Whereas the contemporary progressive is horrified at the idea that a married woman be pressured into sex or have some obligation to give sex.
I just want to point out that long engagements, and overly long periods of dating, are not seen positively within catholic moral doctrine. ‘Sex negative traditionalism’ wasn’t rooted in the religion.
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And, moreover, it meant that conservative Christians had to regard their sexuality (not just sex, but also masturbation, thinking about sex, being attracted to someone etc.) as dangerous for a large chunk of their lives - in the case of Catholic priests or monks/nuns, their whole lives. That naturally attracts people who tend to be frightened, ashamed, or otherwise maladjusted with their sexuality. They won't be all of the community, but they'll be a big chunk of it.
This reached an extreme in some cases (I have a gay ex-Catholic monk friend and he said that being in the Catholic clergy was a never-ending banquet of repressed or de facto open lovers for him; it was very hard for him to come across a straight monk) but it's an issue even in Christian youth groups, unless they go heavily down the early marriage route to provide an outlet for divinely approved sexual urges. The well-adjusted evangelicals/devout Catholics that I knew growing up were all married by the time that they left university at 22, even if they didn't have children until later.
I should hope so!
Glad to see that someone got the innuendo!
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I laughed out loud on the train platform, thanks.
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This is more or less how I hope to raise my own children. It'd be nice if there was a catchier name though.
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