Has the sexual revolution backfired? | Louise Perry — Transcript

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1. 0:00- I used to be completely sold
2. 0:01on the standard narrative about the sexual revolution-
3. 0:03that it was an unambiguously good thing.
4. 0:06I started to question that,
5. 0:08I suppose initially at university.
6. 0:09I had those little dominoes starting to tumble
7. 0:11at about that time, although I wouldn't have expected
8. 0:13that it would end with me writing a book called
9. 0:15"The Case Against the Sexual Revolution".
10. 0:19The phrase that I often hear is:
11. 0:21"We don't wanna go back to the 1950s do we?"
12. 0:23Or the "Handmaid's Tale" is obviously hovering
13. 0:26in the background as this fearsome threat
14. 0:29if we question any of the sexual liberation narrative.
15. 0:32I don't think it's a binary choice:
16. 0:34There's a lot of space in-between the two extremes
17. 0:37of complete permissiveness and theocracy.
18. 0:41The problem is that sex-positive feminism,
19. 0:43in practice, gets put to the purpose
20. 0:46of basically excusing all kinds of really quite abusive,
21. 0:50really quite grim sexual practices,
22. 0:54and ends up being this kind of ideology
23. 0:56that's just lying in wait to justify any manner
24. 0:59of power imbalance in sexual relationships.
25. 1:03We're making decisions within an incentive structure
26. 1:06which has a path of least resistance,
27. 1:07and the path of least resistance currently
28. 1:09is all about viewing having sex,
29. 1:12like a man, as aspirational.
30. 1:13It doesn't have to be, though.
31. 1:14It is possible to make different choices,
32. 1:16and I think, increasingly, there are more
33. 1:18and more young women who are doing that,
34. 1:21and are waking up to the downsides of sexual liberation.
35. 1:24I'm Louise Perry.
36. 1:26I'm a journalist and author, and my book is called
37. 1:28"The Case Against the Sexual Revolution:
38. 1:31A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century."
39. 1:40If you look at human history, there does tend to be a bit
40. 1:42of a rollercoaster effect with sexual culture
41. 1:45in that you will have periods of greater permissiveness,
42. 1:48periods of greater restriction, kind of alternating.
43. 1:51The difference, I think, with our sexual revolution
44. 1:54is that ours stuck, and I think the reason
45. 1:57that ours stuck is because of 'the Pill.'
46. 2:01That suspends female fertility and does so
47. 2:05in a way that women can control, and that is invisible.
48. 2:08That was so radical, and it came
49. 2:09along as well with all sorts of changes to the economy.
50. 2:12Things like washing machines, central heating,
51. 2:14microwaves, nappies, tampons,
52. 2:17all the things associated with modern domestic life
53. 2:20that our ancestors didn't have access to.
54. 2:22All of this means that it's now become a lot easier
55. 2:24for modern women to live like men,
56. 2:27to imitate traditionally masculine roles, whether that be
57. 2:31in professional life or in terms of sexuality.
58. 2:33What we've seen, I think,
59. 2:36is that the new social incentives are dragging
60. 2:40that female bell curve towards the male bell curve,
61. 2:44encouraging women to imitate male sexuality
62. 2:47and to be more eager to have casual sex,
63. 2:51to be more interested in watching porn,
64. 2:52to be more sexually experimental, and so on.
65. 2:55For some women, that's fine, that's a good result.
66. 2:57For a lot of women, what you hear
67. 2:59is this sometimes slightly non-specific sense
68. 3:03of dissatisfaction and distress.
69. 3:05We are now in a sexual culture where women feel
70. 3:09like they don't have much option
71. 3:10except to imitate male sexuality;
72. 3:13that it's actually seen as
73. 3:14being a rite of passage
74. 3:15to go through a period of hooking up
75. 3:17and having emotionless sex,
76. 3:18and trying to have sex like a man.
77. 3:19This is the phrase that's used in the first-ever episode
78. 3:21of "Sex and the City" where the protagonist
79. 3:23in the first episode has sex with an ex-boyfriend
80. 3:26and she's complete conscious
81. 3:28of the fact that this is emotion-free.
82. 3:29She says in the voiceover:
83. 3:31- 'I realized that I'd done it.
84. 3:33I just had sex like a man.
85. 3:34I left feeling powerful, potent, and incredibly alive.'
86. 3:39- So this is held up as being aspirational,
87. 3:41and I think that that's a social culture that really
88. 3:43doesn't serve young women's interests.
89. 3:49Right up until the Pill's invention, having sex
90. 3:51is probably the most consequential thing a woman can do.
91. 3:55You have more than nine months of pregnancy,
92. 3:56a dangerous and difficult labor,
93. 3:58many years of infant care, including breastfeeding.
94. 4:01The consequences for women are enormous,
95. 4:04and so of course, it makes sense in that context
96. 4:07that women would've evolved to be much pickier.
97. 4:10A slightly controversial point that I make
98. 4:13in the book is a chapter called
99. 4:16'Men and Women are Different.'
100. 4:17The reality for our species is
101. 4:18that only one half can get pregnant,
102. 4:20the other half can do the impregnating,
103. 4:22and that half the population who can get pregnant is
104. 4:25also smaller and physically weaker than the other half,
105. 4:29which has profound social implications.
106. 4:31Most men can kill most women
107. 4:33with their bare hands, but not vice versa.
108. 4:36Men can, on average, punch with
109. 4:39about twice the amount of force that women can,
110. 4:42and bench press with twice the amount of force.
111. 4:44And then there are also the psychological differences:
112. 4:47There's a trait that psychologists call 'sociosexuality'
113. 4:50which is not quite the same as sex drive;
114. 4:53it's your interest in sexual variety.
115. 4:55So someone who has unrestricted sociosexuality
116. 4:57is going to be more interested in watching porn,
117. 5:01experimenting with kinks, and having casual sex.
118. 5:04So on dating apps, what you'll see is
119. 5:06that women are tending to cluster
120. 5:08toward the most desirable men: the richest, the handsomest.
121. 5:11Those men can have a different date
122. 5:13with a different woman every day of the week,
123. 5:15assemble these kind of digital harems.
124. 5:18In a system where some people are inherently more powerful
125. 5:21than others, if they are granted more freedom,
126. 5:24there is the risk that they will use that greater freedom
127. 5:27to exploit people who are weaker than them.
128. 5:30There's a phrase from the socialist historian, R.H. Tawney,
129. 5:33"Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows."
130. 5:35Now he was talking about economics,
131. 5:37but I think that we should be understanding sexual culture
132. 5:40in the same way.
133. 5:42Someone low in sociosexuality is gonna be much more focused
134. 5:45on monogamy and commitment, is gonna be much more
135. 5:47reluctant to jump into bed with someone they've just met.
136. 5:51I don't think anyone watching will be surprised to hear
137. 5:52that men are higher on average in sociosexuality
138. 5:56than are women, with lots of outliers, obviously.
139. 5:59But you know, if you're talking at the population level
140. 6:01we're talking about millions or billions of people,
141. 6:03you have what I call the 'sociosexuality gap,'
142. 6:06where you have at the population level,
143. 6:08you have a lot more men who are eager
144. 6:10to jump into bed with women and there
145. 6:12aren't enough women who actually want to do it.
146. 6:14How do you bridge that sociosexuality gap?
147. 6:17Various cultures have come up with different solutions.
148. 6:19One solution for this is prostitution,
149. 6:22where you basically have a class of poor women
150. 6:24who are reserved for the purpose of absorbing
151. 6:27all of that excess male sexual energy.
152. 6:29I don't accept that.
153. 6:30It does a terrible wrong to those women
154. 6:33to basically have a class of women
155. 6:34who are reserved for that purpose.
156. 6:36I also think that the current culture where you
157. 6:39see all women being encouraged to sort of be dragged up
158. 6:42towards the male standard,
159. 6:43is also clearly leading to distress.
160. 6:45I think, fundamentally, a feminist claim is that
161. 6:47having unwanted sex is worse than being sexually frustrated.
162. 6:52So I think that a feminist project,
163. 6:55a truly feminist project,
164. 6:57shouldn't try and persuade women to be more like men.
165. 7:01To have sex like men,
166. 7:03it should actually be focused on persuading men
167. 7:06to have sex more like women.
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