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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.
I'm going to repeat my question from the last thread: Who has actually switched? From my perspective it looks like one group of people (including me) wants less promiscuity while another group (not including me) is worried about the "sex recession". "The right" is far too broad a brush, big coalitions will inherently contain contradictions (see also: US Muslims and US Jews both supporting Democrats).
I think the phenomenon is fundamentally real, but I'd rephrase it as such:
20-40 years ago, average middle-aged people of conservative temperament were concerned that teenagers were hanging out together too much, drinking, playing in arcades, hanging out in malls and parks, being up to no good, getting tempted into casual sex by raunchy stuff they see on the TV.
Today, those same people, now elderly, plus currently middle-aged people of the same basic conservative temperament, are concerned that teenagers aren't getting outside enough, don't hang out together, don't hit on each other, don't form romantic relationships, don't even party and generally spend way too much time online.
Humans are fickle like that.
Or they want something in the middle? They want young people to date, get married, and start a family. They don't want them to have unprotected sex with tons of strangers, or to be isolated at home with no contact. That seems pretty reasonable...
Pretty much, yes.
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Who's one person who was contained in both groups? Like, I'm not discounting that some people might have shifted, but I honestly can't think of even one.
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