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Has the sexual revolution helped women? Or has it failed them? That was the issue onstage in downtown Los Angeles last week when four so-called “female titans” met to debate. The Free Press hosted, with Bari Weiss moderating.
The debaters included Claire Boucher, the musician who goes by “Grimes,” and podcast host Sarah Haider, who were advocates. On the other side were British author Louise Perry, author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution; and “Red Scare” podcast host Anna Khachiyan.
Prior to the debate, Bari Weiss had asked the debate attendees to vote on their phones whether or not they thought the revolution had succeeded. Fifty-six percent voted yes, it succeeded for women; 44% voted no. But that doesn’t surprise me; my guess is that most of the people attending weren’t even born at the time of this social upheaval. They never experienced life in the “before times.”
Psychologist Rob Henderson, who attended, noted that the debate description included this question:
The sexual revolution promised liberation. Fifty years on, we ask: has it delivered?
Henderson said that the obvious answer is yes; however, he added that “many people conflate liberation (freedom) with happiness.”
The revolution has unquestionably increased freedom. But it also made people less happy. Many people, though, anticipated that greater freedom would necessarily bring greater happiness.
Sadly the world doesn’t work that way.
And, being a Cambridge-trained psychologist, Henderson brought receipts:
Henderson added: Another study found that women are most likely to be sexually satisfied in a long-term committed relationship.
Ironically, Grimes, who praised the “complementary social technology” that the sexual revolution has brought — such as birth control and dating apps — found herself in a conundrum brought by the very revolution she lauded.
“Grimes – Øyafestivalen 2013” by NRK P3 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Grimes had once dated Elon Musk, and had three children with him. But in late 2022, when she was pregnant with her third child with Musk, she learned that her (former) friend and Neuralink director Shivon Zilis had twins via IVF with him.
According to Musk biographer Walter Isaacson, Grimes was “outraged.”
And yet she argued that the sexual revolution has been a success for women. Go figure.
Last year British author Louise Perry wrote in The Free Press that “The Sexual Revolution Shackled My Generation.” But her younger self believed in its promises of freedom:
Of course freedom is the goal, I thought. What women need is the freedom to behave as men have always behaved, enjoying all the pleasures of casual sex, porn, BDSM, and indeed any other sexual delight that the human mind can dream up. As long as everyone is consenting, what’s the problem?
But she would now agree with Rob Henderson’s take that those who most benefit from the revolution are men — not women. Perry wrote:
The new sexual culture isn’t so much about the liberation of women, as so many feminists would have us believe, but the adaptation of women to the expectations of a familiar character: Don Juan, Casanova, or, more recently, Hugh Hefner.
Or monsters like Andrew Tate, whom Tucker Carlson recently extolled in an interview as an example of “masculine excellence.” Tate, who has also said:
I think you need a wife, and you need hoes. You need multiple women so they can f*** off and do women s*** … Women are the true currency of ballers. F*** money, it’s women.
Men like Andrew Tate result from a generation of women who believe that the sexual revolution has liberated them from chastity and restraint. But as the Russian-British philosopher Isaiah Berlin warned:
Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings throughout many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs.
Henderson noted that during the debate, no one asked if the kids were alright.
Nobody asked whether the sexual revolution failed children. People already know the answer.
The sexual revolution gave rise to new laws and cultural norms that made divorce and remarriage and single parenthood and casual no-strings sex easier. This was not without cost.
Once again, he brought receipts as to the deleterious effect that the sexual revolution has had upon children:
Relative to Baby Boomers, who were raised in intact families by the Greatest and Silent generations, Gen Z and Millennials, who were raised by divorced (or single parent) Boomers and Gen Xers are twice as likely to have had 4 or more adverse childhood experiences before the age of 18 (e.g., abuse, neglect, severe household dysfunction).
He added that between 1950 and 1995, the suicide rate among teens from 15 to 19 had more than quadrupled.
Finally, this. It’s stunning:
If the U.S. had the same level of family stability today as 1960, the country would have 750,000 fewer children repeating grades, 500,000 fewer acts of teenage delinquency, 600,000 fewer kids receiving therapy, 70,000 fewer suicide attempts every year.
I’ve personally seen the results of the sexual revolution and the single-parent household.
From 1992-2009, I worked as a speech pathologist in an urban school district in Kansas City. The public elementary school I served was white-majority, but at the time it had a large African-American population — about 35% if I recall correctly. (Latino families had not yet moved into that area of the city.)
I found that the race of the child didn’t matter when it came to behavior. What mattered was whether or not a father was in their life, preferably in the home. In fact, the kids I recall who had been diagnosed with oppositional-defiant disorder were white boys from dysfunctional homes.
The worst example I personally knew of was that of a nine-year-old boy from another city. He burned his mother’s house down after setting his bedroom on fire. Once again — no father in the home, only a mother who thought that shacking up with a guy she met in a bar was perfectly okay. Until he found another younger woman in a bar …
No, the kids are not alright.
Spectator writer Bridget Phetasy, upon reading Louise Perry’s book about the sexual revolution, wrote that the “freedom” it promised failed her, too:
I’m grateful for the ability to control my reproductive cycle and make my own money. But that freedom has come at a price. The dark side of the sexual revolution is that even though it liberated women, unyoking sex from consequences has primarily benefited men.
What then, is personal freedom? It’s not, as Janis Joplin cynically sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.”
In my opinion the most profound definition of freedom came from the late great Pope John Paul II, who said:
Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.
Featured image: “Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), The Kiss (Lovers), 1907–1908” by Tulip Hysteria / Go to albums is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.
Hate_me says: No one ever gives credit where it’s due – Kris Kristofferson wrote “Me and Bobby McGee.” Roger Miller first recorded it, and it had been covered many times before Janis Joplin’s excellent version.
Tangent aside, it seems all of these issues stem from the decline in traditional religious values…. I say this as someone who can appreciate those values while being unable to truly reconcile my own experiences/observations with any devout religious community. I’m merely ambivalent (though I support those communities’ right to their devotion), far too many young people are now raised to be openly hostile to religion.
GWB says: It’s not “religion” to which they’re opposed.
It’s Christianity.
Progressivism is a religion, itself. But it’s how they framed the argument so they could work unopposed to subvert America.
Hate_me says: They hate Judaism, too.
Progressivism has religious-like traits, I’d even call it a cult – but it’s only figuratively a religion.
370H55V I/me/mine says: The canard that the sexual revolution has been a great deal for men has been tenaciously holding on since Midge Decter first advanced it in her anti-feminist screed “The New Chastity” back in 1972.
I’d really like to know how to square the bravado of hordes of women bragging about their notch counts with the emergence of an equally huge community of young incel men. The only conclusion that one can draw from those numbers is that the sexual revolution has brought us a situation where fewer and fewer of “alpha males” are having more and more sex.
Well, OK, that’s actually the way it works in the state of nature, but in human societies there are second order effects. It wasn’t that long ago that incel men could still count on getting a good white collar job with which they could support a family, unencumbered by female competition for the same positions. It wasn’t that long ago that the beta male who made the effort to find a mate would be rebuffed (sometimes with ridicule), but at least could move on with his life. Today he runs the risk of a Title IX inquisition or worse if the object of his desire is “traumatized” and feels “unsafe” or “uncomfortable”.
Huge numbers of such young men are a powder keg for society, and it will be increasingly difficult to keep the lid on.
GWB says: It’s the inevitable result of trying to upend the order of creation.
Ironically, it’s also how islamic cultures seem to work….
GWB says: The revolution has unquestionably increased freedom.
And this demonstrates how language obfuscates things. What really increased was license, not actual freedom. Actual freedom, as traditionally understood, involves responsibility. That difference is one of the Christian concepts that allowed the freedom we enjoyed in the America that was. Bending the definition of freedom to be “whatever I want, without consequence” was one of the first wins against America.
Grimes had once dated Elon Musk, and had three children with him.
Oh dear, no. Once again language has been tortured to death.
NO. She did not “date” Musk. She was shacking up with him. She was his (in a better age) common law wife. (I don’t know of any better way to “present yourself as married” than to have THREE children together while cohabiting.)
enjoying all the pleasures of casual sex
Left off that bit is the “without consequences” part. But it certainly is implied.
Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings throughout many centuries
Not really. What has been desired is freedom from constraint and a standing at least on par with whatever social strata is above you. Liberty without order (responsibility) is just libertine. Power on par with others is not equality – at least not real equality, under the law. One of the problems with progressivism is hopeful, dreamy statements like that that do not grasp or take into account human nature.
And, if you look honestly at feminism throughout the last 100 years, you will see the difference – it has much less often been about ordered liberty and equality under the law than about libertine attitudes and power to climb above men in stead of equality under the law.
This was not without cost.
But Progressives deny any cost associated with their “freedoms.” Otherwise they haven’t achieved true “freedom” – freedom from consequences.
Finally, this. It’s stunning:
Well, no, it’s numbers pulled out of thin air. There is absolutely no way you can quantify those things based on a “if things had never changed” and no look at all the other things that also changed. It’s bad, but numbers are not something you can realistically use here.
No, the kids are not alright.
Huh. Almost like morals matter, or something. Who’d have thunk it? (I mean, besides almost 2,000 years of Christianity, which built Western Civilization?)
GWB says: unyoking sex from consequences has primarily benefited men
And I’m going to state an inflammatory thing here….
The reason for this is the Curse.
Yes, the Curse laid on Eve in the Garden, when she ate of the Tree: Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.*
A lot of the old morality was to actually protect women from the consequences of that curse. Laws surrounding marriage placed the woman where she was protected, in a world where brute strength mattered a lot more than brain power. Feminists had lived in a safe world (comparatively speaking) long enough they calculated they could do without that protection.** And they never considered the consequences not related to physical protection – lack of support, being different from men, etc. So, they demanded a world where the government would be their protection (not realizing they were still under the Curse, which made that inevitable) – without understanding how awful of a partner any government is.
(* Some translations have “toward your husband, and he shall”. Either way works when you understand the Curse is the second part. You don’t get your own freedom.)
(** Ironically, the one thing that actually provides some measure of physical equality with men – firearms – is one of the things feminists so very often deride and want to take away from everyone. Well, everyone except The Man under whose rule they desire to live: the government. Anyone else see the inevitability and the irony of that?)
All-in-all, a good post, Kim.
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