Was it all a bad idea? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
A long-time friend of mine said he wanted to see me write book reviews of books I enjoyed. (And not just enjoyed laughing at how bad they are.) Fair enough. You all need to know about good books as well. Thus, I am pausing the current book review to do one entry on a book I highly encourage you all to read, The Case Against The Sexual Revolution.
As of my writing this blog, the book is fairly new being published in 2022. I had checked to see if transgenderism was a big thing when she wrote the book. Apparently, it was and still is.
So much in my copy of this book is highlighted and I am going to let some fellow students borrow it, both of them with an interest in this area. Let’s start this by listing her chapter titles.
Sex must be taken seriously.
Men and women are different.
Some desires are bad.
Loveless sex is not empowering.
Consent is not enough.
Violence is not love.
People are not products.
Marriage is good.
Conclusion: Listen to your mother.
I found it interesting that for someone like myself, all of those seem like common sense statements.
I have seen leftists argue against each of these in one way or another.
Let’s start with that first one. How many times have we heard something like “It’s no big deal. It’s just sex.” Anytime someone says, “It’s just sex”, they are not taking it seriously. She starts this off with comparing Marilyn Monroe who underneath it all did not like being treated like an object, with Hugh Hefner who lived his life treating women like objects. In speaking of the idea of sexual freedom, Perry says “Why do so many women desire a kind of sexual freedom that obviously serves male interests?” (p. 8) She later says that women have switched one form of female submission for another, but called the latter liberation. (20)
Having a chapter about men and women being different can be seen as heresy by many on the left today. That being said, the transgender movement has taken on a sort of quasi-religious touch to it. If the body is all there is, then it makes no sense to say you are in the wrong body. There has to be some aspect of the person that is not material in the viewpoint in order to make that aspect align with the body by the mutilation of the body.
In this chapter, Perry has several statistics on how men and women are physically and psychologically different. She says that for many this is common sense, but alas, common sense is not that common today. Men and women approach sex and behave sexually in very different ways and it’s a mistake to think that those ways should be the same for both sexes.
Some desires are bad points to some cases of people such as pedophiles. In many ways, what they desire is spoken of openly and no one seems to blink at all about it. We have an idea that if we strongly desire something, that something is good. Nope. Not at all. We think it is good, no doubt, but that does not mean that it is.
The chapter on loveless sex looks at the hook-up culture today. “Hook-up culture is a terrible deal for women and yet has been presented by liberal feminism as a form of liberation. A truly feminist project would demand that, in the straight dating world, it should be men, not women, who adjust their sexual appetites.” (p. 79)
Once again, I marvel at how it is women think they are embracing this and sticking it to the patriarchy. If you are giving men free sex without requiring any commitment from them or responsibility, you are not hurting them, at least not in a way they think they are being hurt. You are teaching them to use you.
Now in the long run, I do think this hurts men seeing as they do avoid responsibility and fatherhood, but that is not the goal of the feminists. The feminists want to avoid responsibility and motherhood often as well. In an irony, feminists wanting to say they are superior are treating the common masculine approach as if it was the ideal.
Perry also says being desired is not the same as being held in high esteem. A man might want to sleep with a woman because he thinks she’s hot, but he will not want to have children with her. He’s just using her for his own sexual gratification.
The chapter on consent is not enough is a huge stab at the porn industry. Perry outright says on p. 113 that there is no good reason to use porn. Pornography has damaged the viewpoint of sex by men and women both. There are plenty of men who struggle with even being able to perform sexually due to porn use and younger and younger men are needing medications for ED.
In some of my apps, I am sure I see an ad about an app for dating where women tell you what they want, and the first lady talking looks like she’s being choked at the same time. Naturally, this brings to mind the subject of the chapter on violence, Fifty Shades of Grey. Perry is quite troubled with how many women loved this book and has said that if a man can remain aroused while beating you, stay away from him.
People are not products deals with the idea of “sex work.” Treating sex this way makes it just a commodity for trade and ultimately, it makes it be people for trade. Again, this benefits men. Men go to the women not for the idea that they love them, but for what they can get out of them.
Finally, marriage is good. This presents the problems the pill presented for society with the incredible line that “When motherhood became a biological choice for women, fatherhood became a social choice for men.” (p. 167) Men are enabled to shirk their responsibility in raising children and then ultimately, the state becomes the surrogate husband. Perry writes about what her grandmother said about the thesis of the whole book as well. “Women have been conned.” (p. 181)
She also writes about the problems of easy divorce. Making divorce easier was done, no doubt, with a lot of good intentions, but it has made everything worse. I fully agree with this speaking as a divorced man who struggles with fears of rejection and problems of trust still today.
Perry longs for there to be some technology that can enable men and women that encourages men to avoid short-term thinking, for women to be stable and protected, and for children to be raised. She then says such a technology exists. It is clunky sometimes and does fail at times, but it’s here. It’s called monogamous marriage. (p. 181)
This book is phenomenal. It is one that I think every thinker in this field should interact with. Perry is a refreshing voice in this world.
Oh. Did I mention she’s neither conservative nor a Christian? Must have slipped my mind.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)