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The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century is a 216-page, August, 2022 book published by Polity Press. Author Louise Perry is a beautiful British journalist, activist against sexual violence, wife and mother. Case has received very positive reviews from professional reviewers as well as Amazon readers. Phyllis Chesler, for example, wrote “Perry has written the most radical feminist challenge to a failed liberal feminism.” Helen Joyce wrote, “Brilliantly conceived and written, this highly original book is an urgent call for a sexual counter-revolution.” And Rachel Cook wrote, “It may turn out to be one of the most important feminist books of its time.” As of this writing, Case has almost seven hundred Amazon reviews, with an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 possible stars. I had some problems with this book, but there is an audience for whom Case is just about perfect. More on that, below.
The book depicts itself, as the title announces, as a coherent argument against the sexual revolution. That revolution is exemplified by the birth control pill, more widespread pornography and its acceptance, LGBT liberation, hookup culture, easier divorce, and legal abortion and attempts to legalize prostitution.
In the past, those arguing against the sexual revolution might cite religion and the concept of sexual sin as their foundation for behavior. Perry makes clear that her book is no friend of “patriarchal religious systems,” which she dismisses, very briefly, as “unwelcome phenomena,” whose “ancient religious codes were formulated” in a world unlike our own. “Imitating the past cannot teach us how to live in the twenty-first century.” Perry acknowledges that “religious commitment” can protect some women from sexual disaster, but “religious commitment” is only for a tiny minority. Clearly, her targeted audience is a member of the rapidly rising “none” group who identifies with no religion. She must, therefore, find a reason other than religion to recommend a rejection of what she sees as the downside to the sexual revolution. I think Perry’s proposed, new ethical foundation falls short of the ordnance necessary to defeat the enemy at which Perry is really aiming.
This reader did not experience Case as it is titled and marketed. The book hops from topic to topic far too rapidly and in far too disorganized a fashion to make a coherent case against the sexual revolution. The Marquis de Sade, websites where Johns posts reviews of prostitutes, Sex and the City episodes, are all very interesting, but to me diverse, briefly mentioned anecdotes never gelled. Child pornography, prostitution, sadomasochistic sex, and hookup culture are hefty topics. They deserve deeper treatment than they receive here.
Much of the material Perry cites is disturbing and I often needed to stop reading. A skilled author can present troubling material in such a way that the book becomes a page-turner, rather than a turn-off. Perry tosses out merely icky or deeply heartbreaking factoids and just moves on, perhaps assuming that her reader is so jaded by the over-stimulation of wall-to-wall extreme media that, say, accounts of the skeletons of newborn babies as a reliable marker of archaeological digs of brothels, or mention of BBC celebrity Jimmy Saville’s sexual abuse of over a thousand child victims, won’t disturb that reader.
Perry opens with a grotesque image of the ancient Hugh Hefner, fortified by Viagra, vainly struggling to ejaculate, even though he is surrounded by Playboy playmates shouting obscene encouragement. His sheets are stained and there is dog poop on the carpet. And then there’s the vivid image of Marilyn Monroe repeatedly being “scraped out” after yet another alleged abortion.
Perry doesn’t incorporate either of these hideous tableaux to advance a larger argument. She doesn’t have to. The queasy, mournful mood the images evoke are the entire point. Perry is in fact performing a religious act with these images. One of the themes of Catholic and other religious iconography is human decay. Medieval Sheela-na-gig carvings on Catholic churches offered graphic depictions of female genitalia, so graphic that they make you shudder. The Sheela-na-gig’s sexual cavity is less a site of pleasure than the open grave where the most seductive human forms eventually putrefy and are annihilated. The beautiful and powerful Biblical Whore of Babylon is arrayed in purple and scarlet, gold, gems, and pearls, but she is filthy and corrupt. Skulls, sagging breasts, toothless mouths, bulging eyes, appear in religious art from India to Chartres.
The point of such art was to hammer home to the audience: “You may be young and pretty now and sex may be so seductive you can’t resist. Just remember how grisly things can end up if done badly. You have an immortal soul. Take care of that while you scratch your sexual itch.”
Perry includes lyrics from “Cold Blow and the Rainy Night,” and “The Greenwood Side.” These traditional folk ballads convey the same message as the above-cited artworks and Bible verses that warn the young about the downside of sex. Sex is seductive but if indulged in outside of social norms it can be followed by punishing shame, regret, and even, for the woman, death by starvation when abandoned by her lover and the father of her baby. Even worse, she might burn forever in Hell for killing her illegitimate child. Perry, in her Hefner and Monroe anecdotes, and in the rest of her book, whether she likes it or not, is playing the role of a preacher.
Perry was telling this reader things she’s heard many times before, from writers who devoted more concentration to each feature she addresses. David M. Buss, for example, did a better job arguing for a universal, cross-cultural male sexuality that is honed by evolution. In his 1994 book The Evolution Of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating, Buss argues against those who insist that attractiveness is relative and changes from era to era and place to place. Buss cites numerous examples to argue that throughout human history, all over the world, physical attractiveness is more important to men than it is to women, and physical attractiveness is assessed according to criteria like youth, symmetry, proportionality, and clarity. Lizzo, in short, Buss might argue, would not be physically attractive to most men.
Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population by Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer in 2005 better addresses how societies have assessed female versus male value. Wendy Shalit’s 1999 book A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue took on the sexual revolution over twenty years ago, and other works, inspired by Shalit, followed. There are even, in Perry’s book, echoes of the 1995 sensation, The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider.
What all the above books have in common with Perry’s is this. They all argue that in spite of cultural changes brought about by the sexual revolution, there are certain aspects of human sexuality that are hard-wired. Those who invest in attempts to change hard-wired aspects of human sexuality risk not only heartbreak, but deadly danger.
Many authors, in many works and disciplines, have repeatedly pointed out that sex is an evolutionary strategy for the reproduction of life. For any of us to be here, our ancestors had to have reproduced successfully, in spite of all the odds against doing so. Nature, not nurture, decrees that sexual reproduction is more of an investment for women than it is for men. Men can, theoretically, father a child every time they ejaculate. Women, on the other hand, have a much smaller number of gametes, and they must invest a vastly greater amount of time and energy into producing viable offspring that survive to adulthood. Women, therefore, are evolutionarily primed to seek long-term relationships with economically productive and supportive partners. Around the world, women care less than men do about their partner being young or attractive. They want a stable, devoted man who can bring home the bacon.
Men, on the other hand, are more likely than women to prefer brief, no-commitment sex with numerous partners. When the sexual revolution insisted that women should be more like men and should satisfy themselves with brief, shallow sexual contact, it was asking women to meet the needs of men, not women. Demanding that women attempt to become more masculine hurt women.
I didn’t believe that Perry’s book was in fact a case against the sexual revolution. Sure, she insists it is, but, again, ancient brothels found in archaeological digs, impoverished, naked, child sex slaves forced, by the British, to service imperial personnel in Raj-era India, and the eighteenth-century Marquis de Sade, significantly pre-date the sexual revolution. Rather, I think Perry is taking aim at an impregnable target: male lust. Women are not exempt from Perry’s condemnation. While men are driven by lust to commit vile and even deadly acts, women are too weak, and too eager to please, to resist men. Perry writes about men callously using women sexually, hurting and even killing women for sexual thrills. But she also writes about women working hard to attract and remain with men who abuse women, because women are evolutionarily primed to prioritize relationship with a man.
The kind of casual sex advanced by the sexual revolution hurts women and men both, Perry argues. It hurts women most directly. It hurts men less directly. Before the sexual revolution, men had to become real men before they could attract a mate, a mate who would provide them with that which they most desired, regular sex. Without that requirement, males do not now fully grow into manhood, or into their best selves.
As I was reading about things I wish I had never heard of, like a current sexual fad of men choking women, I urged myself on by promising myself that the author was going to conclude with a solution. Indeed, she does. “Marriage Is Good,” she reports. Monogamous marriage “till death do us part,” including the parenting of children, is the ideal.
I felt cheated. Perry had already told me that, given demographic realities, past mistakes that can’t be fixed, and differences between the sexes, many women will never marry, and many marriages will go south, thanks to abusive or dysfunctional men, leaving divorced women who, she assures us, will probably never remarry. She has spent several chapters hammering away at what a dangerous force male lust is, and how societies have tried to deal with surplus male lust that isn’t satisfied even by marriage. The prostituting of young, poor, desperate, defenseless women and girls, and even boys, is one societal solution to excess male lust. The other is rape. The men who never marry, or who are too dysfunctional to fulfill the role of husband, will, presumably, in Perry’s ideal society of successful monogamous marriages, continue to exploit prostitutes and to commit rapes. Perry’s solution did not lighten my mood.
Finally, Perry never musters the authority to add clout to her suggestions. Again, she’s already dismissed religion as “patriarchal” and followed only by fringe tribes still among hip, modern, atheists. She’s titling at one gigantic windmill: male lust, and a lesser windmill, female desperation to find, please, and keep a man. Perry mentions prostitute review sites. I visited the site Perry mentions. In one review, a fifty-year-old man criticizes a teenage prostitute for not being warm to him. Would a man that insensitive be moved by anything Perry says? No.
Perry describes how harmful porn addiction is to addicts. As is usual with addiction, addicts exhaust their abused body parts, in this case, their genitals, as well as their neurons and their limbic systems to the point where pleasure is gone but addiction remains, and normal functioning is handicapped or even impossible. Will any porn addict stop visiting porn sites because Perry reminded him that porn actresses are abused, cheated, and thrown away? I can’t see that happening.
The forces that may have once kept male lust in check are weakened. Some feared Hell. Others feared the neighbors or the law. Perry offers no force that can effectively replace them. Her best weapon is science, research, and “studies show.” Studies show that children who grow up with both biological parents in the home do better on a variety of measures. Research of online discussion forums reveals that women feel used and depressed after hookups, even if they have consented. Medicine insists that there is no “safe” way for a man to choke a woman during sex. If a man feels driven by lust and his own sadism to choke a woman during sex, is he really going to listen to the scientific consensus that he could do permanent damage to the woman? Probably not. By the way, I’m revealing my own Puritanical, retro values by calling “choking” by its name. Advocates like to call it “breath play.”
Perry argues that the sexual revolution’s salvific ritual is the granting of consent. If people say “yes” to a given sex act, that sex act is sanctioned. Perry insists that consent is worthless. Some acts are wrong even if the actors give consent. She tosses out thought experiments. What if a man kills a chicken, has sex with the corpse, and then eats the chicken. Is that an ethical act? For me the more urgent question is, how does a human have sex with a dead chicken? And please don’t answer that. Take it further. What if a human being consents to being killed, and, later, the subject of necrophilia and cannibalism? The person consented to this; if consent sanctions all, one does not have a basis for judgment. Perry implies that she condemns such behavior, but, again, she offers no reason why she has the authority to render that judgment.
A more common dilemma: women who consent to being subjected to choking and other forms of sadomasochist sex. Perry says that sexual violence has become more common given that sadomasochism is increasingly popular in online porn. Porn addiction demands more and more extreme stimuli, in the same way that substance abusers graduate from painkillers to heroin to fentanyl (to death). Pin-up type art is no longer enough to satisfy a porn addict. He needs a gang rape and a snuff film. And, since he has seen it on video, he feels entitled to perform it in real life. And some women consent.
Validation of sadomasochism is not limited to porn. Roxane Gay is a New York Times columnist and best-selling author. She has promoted sadomasochism. Millions of other women have voted for sadomasochism when they buy the Fifty Shades of Grey books. Perry’s argument that the internet is largely responsible for sadomasochistic sex is questionable. E.M. Hull’s The Sheik sold a million copies a hundred years ago and inspired two hugely popular Rudolph Valentino movies. Gone with the Wind, another publishing and cinematic sensation, also featured a soft-core rape scene.
Perry is correct, though, in pointing out that women who indulge in such fantasies don’t read them as many men do. Women fantasize that a man’s sadomasochistic acts are a sign of deep love and devotion. In the popular fantasies, from The Sheik to Fifty Shades, the sadistic man eventually drops his sadism and humbly and even tearfully confesses how desperately he loves and needs the woman he’s been bruising. The woman ends as the dominant partner. The man needs her.
Real life sadomasochism does not live up to the Sheik fantasy. Perry mentions John Broadhurst, an older multimillionaire who beat his younger lover, Natalie Connolly, extensively during a sadomasochistic session. In addition to the other injuries Connolly sustained, she apparently bled to death via her vagina. Broadhurst argued that his lover consented to sadomasochistic sex. His defense resulted in a brief prison sentence of twenty-two months for raping a woman to death. Perry relies on our gut-level aversion to verify her condemnation of women’s consent to participate in sadomasochism. Gut-level aversion is not enough. There are people who feel a profound aversion to eating Brussels sprouts. That aversion is no foundation for a value system.
While writing Case, Perry says, she realized that “I needed to offer readers some real guidance on how to live.” Her writing is replete with value judgments. “Liberal ideology flatters us by telling us that our desires are good and that we can find meaning in satisfying them, whatever the cost.” “There is a darkness within human sexuality, mostly, but not exclusively, within men.” “There is no good reason to use porn.” It’s not possible “to use porn ethically.” Indeed, she titles a chapter “Some Desires are Bad.” “Unwanted sex is worse than sexual frustration … it should be men, not women, who adjust their sexual appetites.” Her impulse is a religious one. Her authorities, “recent studies report,” “gut” reactions, and “moral intuition” are not.
That our desires are not good, and that meaning is not found in satisfying desire, that there is even such a thing as “worse” sex or that anyone “should” adjust their sexual appetite are all religious messages. “I am going to propose an alternative form of sexual culture – one that recognizes other human beings as … invested with value and dignity.” “We should treat our sexual partners with dignity. We should not regard other people as merely body parts to be enjoyed.” Men, as the stronger sex, should practice “chivalry.” Men and women should “navigate a virtuous path.”
Why? Perry not only never answers this question, she never asks it. Once you toss out those “patriarchal religious systems,” those “unwelcome phenomena,” Judaism and Christianity, and turn to purely materialist atheism, from what well do you draw the concept of human value and dignity? The Judeo-Christian tradition cites Genesis 1:26-31 for its authority on the value and dignity of each human being.
Perry assumes that she has the authority to tell men that their desires are not good, and to tell women that they can’t think for themselves. Women not only volunteer for sadomasochistic sex, they also regularly choose and return to garden variety domestic abusers. By what authority does Perry tell these people that she feels better than they feel, and that she thinks better than they think? Women who ask their sexual partner to hurt them as part of sadomasochism are, Perry says, “mentally ill.” By what authority does she say that? She doesn’t say. She just horrifies the reader again, and relies on horror to sell her point. “Almost all men can kill almost all women with their bare hands … and that matters.” Solution? “Avoid putting yourself in a situation where you are alone with a man … who gives you a bad feeling in your gut.” Again, the Brussels sprouts solution. If something repulses you, it is bad. Perry acknowledges that our desires can be bad for us; but so can our aversions. And both desires and aversions can be blind as bats – hormonally addled, teenage bats. We need a better solution than gut-level reactions.
Interestingly, to buttress her anti-desire stance, Perry cites G. K. Chesterton, a Catholic apologist. In his 1929 book The Thing, Chesterton offered a brilliant defense of conservatism. “In the matter of reforming things,” Chesterton wrote, “there is one plain and simple principle … Let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.'” Perry cites this passage specifically in relation to the taboo against having sex with chicken corpses, and, also, against pedophilia.
Perry insists that the concept of “consent” is especially destructive when applied to adults having sex with children. Children cannot consent to sex. Murkier waters flood the mind when considering porn that depicts pedophilia. Internet star Belle Delphine is an adult, but she pretends to be a child being raped by a kidnapper. This is bad, Perry says. How do we know Delphine’s porn is bad? “Moral intuition” Perry says. Again, the gut is supposed to inform our ethics. Perry must know that Delphine and other porn stars makes a very lucrative living because many people’s “guts” and “intuition” drive them toward child pornography.
Perry can’t escape the Judeo-Christian tradition. Perry mentions Josephine Butler, a devout Christian feminist and campaigner against child prostitution. In addition to her activism, Butler took prostitutes into her home and nursed them as they died of VD. Butler is such a saintly figure she is the subject of at least two stained glass windows (here and here).
Gender studies professor Alison Phipps bashed women like Butler in a 2020 university press book, labeling such folk “nineteenth century vice fighters” and “Christian moralists.” Perry says, “the religious inflection of Victorian moralizing is anathema to a determinedly secular contemporary feminist movement. Josephine Butler was a Christian, and her faith was the key driving force in her work. Although she was both a slavery abolitionist and an early supporter of women’s suffrage … she is condemned.”
Post the sexual revolution, it is uncool to condemn prostitution. “Sex work” is above condemnation. Even when the prostitute is, as in Butler’s day, a twelve-year-old Indian girl sold by her parents into sexual slavery to British troops. Perry condemns support for prostitution as a “luxury belief,” using a term coined by Rob Henderson. Luxury beliefs “confer status on the rich at very little cost while taking a toll on the poor.”
I had my problems with this book, but I am not its intended audience. I think The Case Against the Sexual Revolution would make a great gift for a young, conventionally educated, Western woman. Girls who have gone to schools that have taught them that girls can become boys and boys can become girls and that “if it feels good, do it,” girls who might not know any of the facts that Perry introduces, might have their minds, and their behaviors, shaken by this book. And that would be a good thing.
Danusha Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery
What’s with the box of tissues in that graphic? For most teenage boys of my era, it went hand in hand (no pun) with a magazine that comes (no pun) in a brown paper wrapper.
“It is significant that the Church’s most ferocious wrath was reserved not for fornication but for masturbation. It is through masturbation that a human being first discovers the sensual potential of his or her own body; moreover, it is an entirely “selfish” act, in that it is performed solely for the benefit of the person involved. It is the act through which many an individual first encounters the possibility of an ecstasy entirely different from the ecstasy promised by religion.” – Nathaniel Branden, “The Psychology of Romantic Love”
Gee, THX, I have a feeling you haven’t discovered your potential yet. Have a good session.
Although what you write is funny, the messages on the sides of the box pretty much rule out the teenage boys.
But I admit I laughed.
This book seems like a good survey of the damage wrought by the sexual revolution but fails to articulate the best and strongest alternative namely physical intimacy between man and woman in a normal marriage
Exactly. Covenant sex instead of consent sex. Consent sex is fraught with so many issues that speak of its problematic nature.
Yes. As Hebrews 13:4 says: “Let marriage be honorable among all, and let the marriage bed be without defilement,+ for God will judge sexually immoral people and adulterers”
The standard is there, in the Bible. It is inspired by the Creator of marriage, and he knows how it works.
Patriarchal religious systems, so-called, are not in any way ‘imitations of the past’ as false-speaking feminists and all leftists would love to deceive…
Patriarchy is in and of the essence of God Almighty Himself–it is obvious and eternal truth… Reticence toward this very simple, blessed, glorious, and fundamental reality is a disposition of distrust and distaste toward God Himself…
“The point of such art was to hammer home to the audience: “You may be young and pretty now and sex may be so seductive you can’t resist. Just remember how grisly things can end up if done badly. You have an immortal soul. Take care of that while you scratch your sexual itch.”
If you really have an immortal soul then venereal disease and death don’t ultimately matter. If all you have to do is say the magic words “I accept Jesus as my savior” and you are granted forgiveness for all your sins, and all your mistakes and sins are magically repaired, and you are granted eternal life, then life, disease, pain and death are ultimately not serious matters at all.
It is because we have fragile and mortal bodies that venereal disease, and all disease (spiritual and physical), is a serious matter. It is because we only have one, mortal, life to live, and we are not magically granted second chances, no mistakes or sins can be magically repaired, that this one and only life matters so crucially, so painfully if we fail, so joyously beautiful if we achieve our rational values and rational happiness….
Hello again THX. You summarise part of the article above in this way: “You have an immortal soul. Take care of that while you scratch your sexual itch.””
But please please be aware that the Bible clearly says that we do not have an immortal soul. In a famous poem, Philip Larkin called the world’s religions
“That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die.”
In contrast, the Bible tells us that we are souls, and we can and do die. Ezekiel 18:4 says, clearly and simply: “The soul that is sinning – it itself will die”. It is not immortal, we are not immortal.
We are all born damaged and dying – through no fault of our own – and so we do not last very long before we die and return to the dust of the ground from which we were created.
I am very aware of this, being well past my sell-by date.
The hope that the Bible holds out is that there can be an awakening from the dreamless sleep of death. When the dead next open their eyes, they will open them in the restored earthly paradise, here on this lovely planet.
“Your dead will live.
My corpses will rise up.
Awake and shout joyfully,
You residents in the dust!
For your dew is as the dew of the morning,
And the earth will let those powerless in death come to life.”
Isaiah 26:19
It will be such a joyful awakening when it comes.
Dear Sue, I’m not interested in a magical utopia in an eternal afterlife and neither are you. Neither are most contemporary, modern, American Christians or Jews. Of course modern Jews and Christians pay lip service to all of it, hedging their bets, just in case.
Oh but how the modern, secularized, Judeo-Christian and the modern, secularized, Muslim too, loves his modern, creature comforts and worldly technology. Like movies, television, the internet, radio, abundant, inexpensive food, abundant inexpensive clothing, all the marvels of this-world capitalism. Above all modern medicine which postpones having to go to Heaven. But why postpone having to go to Heaven? They have one foot invested in all the glory and happiness of life on earth and one foot invested in Heaven —- but deep inside their hearts they live by their true conviction, “Heaven and selfless sacrifice can wait, life on earth ain’t too bad at all, personal happiness is wonderful and possible here.”
“It is not mere death that the morality of sacrifice holds out to you as an ideal, but death by slow torture.
Do not remind me that it pertains only to this life on earth. I am concerned with no other. Neither are you.” – John Galt, “Atlas Shrugged”
Dear THX – Thanks again for replying. But the thing is that, as a Christian, I am not hoping to go to heaven. What I am hoping for is to “inherit the earth” as Jesus promised, and to live forever on this lovely planet. I hope you will, I hope Dr, Goska will, I hope we all will. If the Bible is the inspired word of our Creator, as its writers, all Jewish, claim, then it benefits us right here and now. I have found my life so much happier, so much more peaceful, since i began to study and be taught how to apply God’s word, with the congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses – which I have been doing for over 30 years now.
As our Creator himself says:
“If only you would pay attention to my commandments!
Then your peace would become just like a river
And your righteousness like the waves of the sea.”
Those words are either true or they are not. I have found them to be true.
Would you be prepared to think about it?
It is because we only have one, mortal, life to live that people need and believe in Jesus.
And I thank God I won’t be seeing you there. At this point your sins are unforgivable.
And you will never achieve rational values and rational happiness because you are so profoundly unhappy.
“It is because we only have one, mortal, life to live that people need and believe in Jesus.”
I agree. The fear, terror, and pain of death is one of the major reasons that magical-thinking religion will probably never disappear. The fear of self-reliance (our metaphysical aloneness) is another. The fear that our mistakes and sins can never be repaired or justifiably forgiven is yet another. That we are all born magical thinkers and magical thinking is our default mode is yet another.
The complete acceptance of reality can be hard and painful, it isn’t for everyone. Just like Objectivism isn’t for everyone, just for those who can accept and handle all the facts of reality.
There will probably never be a time where any society is populated 100% by Objectivists, not even close to that at all. That’s not how Objectivism is going to work. What needs to happen is for the atheists and the agnostics to discover and convert to Objectivism. In today’s America that’s about 15 to 20% of the population, that’s sufficient to reach a tipping point for Objectivism to become the dominant and guiding philosophy of the culture.
People will never accept your version of reality. People are hardwired to believe in a higher power.
Definitely not atheists or agnostics though. But if that is what you truly believe perhaps you should find some atheist and agnostic websites to spew your gibberish instead if coming here and insulting us. This is basically a conservative site.
We can already see how progressives behave, especially when the DOJ is going after Catholics and accusing them of being terrorists. They accuse parents who go to school board meetings of the same thing. And the people on these school boards are hard core leftist atheists.
Do you really think those atheists will simply adopt your approach and just have seminars where everyone sits around and listens to you?
Good luck. You are definitely living inside your own little fantasy bubble. They are the people you need to convert. Not us. And what happens when they stop listening to you?
Continued…
Why should avoiding pain and misery matter so crucially to YOU? Because it is YOU, living YOUR life, who will have to go through YOUR pain and misery in YOUR mortal and thoroughly conditional life, not some supernatural God in some magical, unconditional, eternal dimension. Why should YOUR happiness matter so crucially to YOU? Because it is YOU who will experience this happiness if YOU achieve it, in YOUR one and only life, here on earth.
You will never know any happiness, because you only spread misery and division.
Thank you, Professor, for a perceptive analysis and review. The sexual revolution, fostered largely by abortion and the birth control pill, has not brought happiness and fulfillment, but instead misery, suffering, broken families, fatherlessness. Whatever one believes about the truth of religion, the wisdom of the Judeo-Christian teachings leads to healthier, happier families and human flourishing.
The principles of Genesis 1: 26-31 that we are not mere animals, but created in the image of God and created male and female, are central. Sex is about children and continuing the human family. Children are a heritage of the Lord and his reward. Psalms 127:3 . It is good to remember and respect these precepts. They are wise.
I agree with you! But sex is also for pleasure, comfort and joy. Song of Solomon is an entire book about this. Sarah wonders if she will again “have pleasure” even though she and Abraham are old (Genesis 18:12). Isaac showing “endearment” or “sporting” with Rebekah (Genesis 26:8). Men exempt from war for one year in order to “cheer up” their wives at home (Deuteronomy 24:5). There are many other examples.
People who do not know scripture think sex is limited to procreation. Procreation is unmistakably important and the only way by which to continue the species, but God gave us more than mere mechanical reproduction in sex.
“People who do not know scripture…”
And what makes you think you know it? And that your interpretation of scripture is the objective truth? Christians persecuted and killed each other for centuries over this issue.
That’s why we have so many sects, branches, and denominations of Christianity. And one of the major reasons why the Founders separated Church and State, because no Christian can prove, objectively, that his interpretation of scripture is the objective truth.
And what makes you think you know scripture beyond the lightweight smorgasbord of those things you can ridicule. And then you get upset when you are ridiculed.
Thanks. I also agree with you. What I wrote was not intended to be exhaustive or comprehensive.
My previous posting was directed at Kynarion.
Yes. I thought as much. Some people believe Christians think sex should be limited to procreation and it is a terrible lie. I was just thinking of those people.
Thanks for wading through the descriptions of things that I don’t even want to know about in order to provide this review. (I even skimmed over parts of the review when I sensed that something horrible and new–to me–was coming up.) Instead of dismissing religious moral strictures as patriarchal, the author would be wise to wonder if religion–specifically Christianity–wasn’t on to something, and for better reasons than those she came up with.
The choice between Christian ascetism and Pagan hedonism is a false dichotomy, it is no choice at all if the achievement of rational, healthy, happiness and rational, healthy, romantic love is your goal. Because health and happiness should be your actual, real, goals IF life — biological life on earth as a rational being as opposed to a disembodied ghost in a mystical after-death — is the standard of your rational, healthy, moral code.
On many philosophical points and metaphysical claims Christianity (like Judaism and Islam) does not lead to healthy, romantic love, or a healthy pride and self-esteem but just the opposite.
As just one example how can the doctrine of Original Sin and the Fall of Man, if taken seriously produce healthy pride and self-esteem in man or woman? It cannot, does not, and historically did not. You cannot believe in romantic love unless you believe that man is his own supreme value and life on earth is a value in itself, not the means for atonement and salvation. Romantic love as a widely accepted standard for marriage came to be accepted as the norm only in the 19th century, and only in the West, when Christianity was on the wane, when it had lost its death grip on the West.
“The concept of romantic love as a widely accepted cultural value and as the ideal basis of marriage was a product of the nineteenth century.” ― Nathaniel Branden, “The Psychology of Romantic Love”
Obviously few are reading and no one is agreeing with you on this pile of anti-Christian word salad.
I haven’t been able to figure out how old you are, but at your end I hope you will repeat the words of Ayn Rand, “What was it all for?” when you realize you made no difference and basically wasted your life living in your head posing as an intellectual.
I haven’t been able to figure out why you’re so obsessed with me, trying to find out my identity, stalking me all over the internet, trying to get me banned here at FPM and at the Geller Report, insulting my mother, replying with an insult to every single one of my comments even when they do not mention Objectivism or religion, saving and archiving all my comments and then reposting them, and threatening to sue me for some alleged defamation of character.
But I don’t take it personally because I’ve seen you do the same thing with “Sumsrent” and ferociously attacking anyone who doesn’t bend to your will. You’re one strange, obsessive-compulsive dude.
Your soul is the soul of a Leftist but Christianity is Leftism it leads to the tyranny of theocracy.
By the way, it seems you never realized it, but you and “Felix 1999”, did get me banned at the Geller Report for about a year, until a new moderator came along. I can and have left comments again at the Geller Report. Pamela Geller is a huge fan of Ayn Rand, but you know that, don’t you.
I am obsessed with bullies, liars and people who can’t acknowledge that their philosophy border on religion. I am obsessed with spammers like you who feel they have the right to insult Christians and Jews.
You and the crazy Christian did try to defame me. You just weren’t worth the expense and effort to sue.
You do take everything personally as can be seen by some of your posts including this one. You are as thin skinned as they come. This site is not a debating society at Harvard. That little dressing down you got from the mods a few weeks back proves it. But obviously you learned nothing. You are still spamming us.
My soul is my soul. It is my business. Not yours to make stupid comments on. You are the Leftist and if you actually did get that 20% to agree with you and have Objectivism become the guiding principle it wouldn’t take long for you to be shoved aside and some charismatic totalitarian take over.
As for Geller I don’t go there anymore. The whole “pick out the this bus and that stoplight” feature before you can comment is irritating. Basically you end up in a loop a lot of the time. But I can only imagine the reception you get there. It’s a conservative site as well. And Geller does not push the Objectivist shtick like you do. Interesting, I only left that site a few months ago and I didn’t seen your warblings.
Just know this, you will fail. And at some point you will say “What was it all for?”
This is a very thoughtful essay and yes, the main victims of the sexual revolution—which admittedly had some good points–are women…and of course, children.
As if men who are taught that sex should be divorced from love, that it’s ok to be a sexually mindless brute, don’t suffer painful consequences too?
Mindless, valueless, hedonistic, sex diminishes, degrades, and corrupts all involved, men and women alike, but we choose not to see it that way. Traditional standards view the common man as an expendable, mindless, brute like Stanley Kowalski. Only a few, elite, men can rise above their innate Stanley Kowalski it seems, where does that idea come from I wonder, maybe the Christian priesthood? St. Augustine?
One of the best. eye-opening, books about men I have ever read is “The Myth of Male Power: Why Men are the Disposable Sex” by Warren Farrell, you should give it a read.
Men are taught by NURTURE not nature. Women too, but to a lesser degree.
Nobody anywhere seems prepared to ask the question about male sexual perversion, every single child abuser was abused as a child. Every social worker knows this.
That is why society needs a God given morality.
The philosophers may have been abused too.
You can’t have an infinite regression of pedophiles, perverts, and rapists. Evil and corruption have to start somewhere by individual choice.
It stands to reason that there are pedophiles, perverts, and rapists who had normal childhoods but chose to become evil. Just as it it stands to reason that there are people who were abused as children who became normal, loving, caring, nurturing human beings precisely because they experienced evil firsthand and chose to reject it.
Oh God, not more homework. Not another book to read. Thanks I won’t be curling up on the couch to read that one either.
You know what….you read too much.
Oh yeah, I like Stanley Kowalski. He is the only one in that simpering play who knows who he is.
But you, you probably have never had mindless, valueless, hedonistic sex. Have you even ever had just fun sex? Have you ever had sex for that matter? Or does it always have to be fraught with deeeeeep meaning.
Consent is the term always forming the sticky wicket of modern sexual relationships. The Harvey Weinstein rape trials turned upon this very issue and caused much analytical thinking about the problematic nature of “consent.”
What, exactly constitutes consent? If the default in modern hookup culture is “yes,” then how much resistance to sex means “no”? The following short article addresses why consent is not and never can be enough. I found it to be the best thinking on the topic:
What do you suggest in place of personal, individual, consent for having or not having sex? A forced contract for having sex?
How about celibacy, should consent be necessary, or should celibacy be forced? Prior to the 20th century there were young women forced into the nunnery by their parents.
Shouldn’t a marriage contract require personal consent too or should the parents and the rabbi, priest, or imam force children into an arranged marriage against their will?
Covenant marriage. No contractual marriage. Covenants are unilateral and without condition or termination. Christian marriage is solemnized by the mutual exchange of covenants given by man and woman to one another in the sight of God Who ordains, witnesses and sustains marriage.
Contracts are bi-lateral and contain conditions, the fulfillment of which is subject to breach. Covenants are unlilateral and without conditions, therefore not subject to breach.
I am not surprised that you don’t understand marriage and relationships in the Judeo-Christian Western world.
You ask if there ought to be a forced contract for having sex. Yes, there ought to be. And while we’re at it, why not invite all of your family and friends to witness and celebrate the signing of the contract, after which you can dance the night away and have nice dinner?
The American way of life is individual rights, private property rights (which begin with ownership of one’s life, body, choices, and mind), and the personal, individual, pursuit of happiness, in other words Laissez-Faire Capitalism.
The American way of life is NOT religious collectivism forcing the individual to obey the collective theocracy.
The American way of life is based on OBJECTIVE and natural law not on Mosaic law, Christian law, Sharia, or any subjective, unprovable, supernatural authority.
I have not much too add, given the concise comments above so I just want to thank Dr. Goska for her in-depth review (and all of her others articles, which always have something to bring to the table).
I would be thrilled if you could have them (Dr. Goska’s articles on FP) read in a podcast format. Not just for my own sake, but for the sake of all those listeners who are harder to reach by written publications.
What a great idea!
Like not, or not, the Right cant continue to think it can somehow truck with feminism yet win any culture war. Paul Watson was once King, or maybe Prince, of MGTOW. He’s here at FPM now. Dust him off, wheel him out and use him to mobilize the disaffected–which is exactly how PJ Media drummed up its early audience by using…Paul Watson and “Dr. Helen”. Let’s see what happens then.
I could hardly read this essay and don’t want to read the book reviewed here. Too upsetting in an already upset world.
However, I wish to thank the author and/ or whoever finally stated what my belief is (and I’m old enough to have perspective). The sexual revolution pretended to free women but actually served men’s sexual desires and patterns. It didn’t bring happiness or security to women and their children. I’ve waited for someone to agree with me. It’s one of those very obvious points one did not feel allowed to make.
So, thanks
(And yes, without religion as a foundation. Judaism most specifically, none of matters between men and women can make happy sense).
So many things wrong with the book I am winded at the start.
To say the wisdom of the past is irrelevant to the present world really bothered me. The present world is not so different from the past, but some leftists seem to be unaware of the undercurrents in our world operating below their level of perception.
Women also are very powerful, with the way they talk, more powerful than men, who give them a free ride through life. Basically by a gigantic con. Women are like a collective entity, constant chit-chatting passing information around of all kinds, some of which can be used against men. Such as false accusations. Beware of false accusations from a women.
I share your annoyance with those who think modernity does not need the wisdom of the past. Human nature has not changed. Our desires, needs, hopes, fears etc. have not changed. The past is really the future in another form, hence the old adage about ignorant people doomed to repeat history.
Your second paragraph is a common complaint because both women and men often become degraded in their own ways under degenerate societal pressures. Women, needing men but being weaker on some fronts, will employ the classic tactics of the weak to get what they want. They also have the “golden box” which enslaves so many men, but is much less powerful in the hookup culture. Manipulation, deception, passive aggression – these tactics are more common in the female. I have struggled mightily to help my sons see through their legerdemain. It is so hard to be cynical when you are young!
Fortunately, there are still strong, beautiful Proverbs 31 women and men who understand their value.
“ Will any porn addict stop visiting porn sites because Perry reminded him that porn actresses are abused, cheated, and thrown away? I can’t see that happening.”
No, they’re in denial because they have been nurtured by it, their desire gets satisfied for a while but then they need MORE and more variation.
Nurture seems to be infinitely more influential in male behaviour than nature.
This gives a woman the opportunity to write a book about how men caused her problems not feminists and they were probably white men too.
Your comment makes me think. The men who will not give up porn because of the actors’ degradation probably have their own, preferred competing explanation that involves personal fantasy.
Very much like the modern world in which the digital fake world replaces the analog real world. An Olympic multiple-gold medal winner named Bruce can become Kaitlyn.
A carefully written, informative, and (IMO) fair review.
While I share Goska’s concern. I find it odd that she keeps describing the horrors of a hedonistic lifestyle & says consequences can’t motivate a virtuous life nor a meaningful relationship. That’s not my experience. My secular acquaintances rejected hedonism, vice, and living-in-the-moment. Few don’t.
I also notice that many who had religious training also didn’t heed the word. Many believed that they will be forgiven as long as they ultimately accepted Jesus, as if they knew Augustine’s famous paraphrase “give me virtue but not just yet.”
The key is found in Aristotle’s Ethics. The Philosopher says that knowledge alone won’t make one virtuous. Character has to be cultivated over years by a repetitive process of thought and practice. It’s not a question of “what should I do?” but “who shall I be?” Identity determines actions. Building character determines what one can and will do.
Jason P, You are exactly right about Aristotle and human behavior, both religious and secular.
And I have heard and laughed at the Augustine quote about wanting future virtue so that he might enjoy the pleasures of sin for another season (the man had a long and storied relationship with sexual sin)!
Yes, it is true – you can believe God and have little to no works of righteousness and still be saved (like the thief on the cross). There is a saying, and I cannot remember the author, but it is true:
“Faith alone saves, but the faith that saves is not alone.”
In other words, your saving faith WILL be accompanied by works that attest to you and to the world of your status. These works are not mustered up against the will, but proceed naturally from a renewed heart that desires to do what pleases God. The difference between a regenerate and unregenerate heart is made manifest by works.
So without transcendence there is no fixed point to determine what is good or bad. There’s vague feelings and words that are but remnants of transcendence. Same goes for every other area of human activity not just sex. Transcendence does not have to mean catholicism but it has to be something outside this world. If we all blobs of molecules there’s no meaning.
A rational moral code defining good and evil does not transcend reality — it is based on reality. The reality of human nature, our natural means of surviving and flourishing, which is our capacity to reason. There is nothing vague about the requirements for human survival, love, and happiness on earth. The requirements are very real, strict, and demanding.
You can’t just WISH to a transcendent superpower and have food fall from the sky to feed you. You can’t just wish to fall in love to a transcendent superpower and the love of your life magically falls from the sky to love you unconditionally.
Nope.
https://www.prageru.com/video/is-evil-rational
I’ve seen this anti-reason Prager video about 6 times. It’s pure, unabashed, shameless, sophistry. He does not even offer an objective and precise definition of reason and yet he proceeds to attack it. Sophistry is easy and inevitable when you begin your argument without offering objective and precise definitions. What is faith precisely? What is reason precisely?
As Ms. Rand rightly stated, no mind is better than the precision of its concepts.
“Taking Ideas Seriously: Ayn Rand’s Editorial Precision”
Word salad. It is in the nature of reality that we can make people slaves or kill them with no reason. Why is that bad? How does it come out of “reason”?
Well said. Thank you for posting.
Thank you, Dr. Goska, for reading this book so that your readers don’t have to. It sounds like an illogical romp through the dark side.