The Case Against the Sexual Revolution

Megan, if your listeners don't know her, I think that they will be extremely interested in what she has to say. She's out of the UK. Yeah, I know her, I've had her on. Yeah, you've had her on. She's flying in from the UK. Her book is called The Case Against the Sexual Revolution and she is joined with certainly not a conservative, Anna Katchian, one of the hosts of the podcast Red Scare.

Bondage, domination or discipline and sadomasochism. Although I kind of prefer to just call it sadomasochism, which is the slightly more old fashioned term, but I think actually tells you what it is in the way that the acronym disguises.

It has become insanely mainstream. I have a chapter on it in my book, the extent to which it has just gone from being a really niche, initially really an element of gay male subculture, and then it moves towards straight sexual culture. And then it with online porn at the turn of the century, it just suddenly becomes incredibly mainstream to the extent now that things like strangulation porn is now on the front page of every porn site in the world in a way that it never used to be.

I dedicated my book to, so this is basically the first line when you open it, to the women who learned it the hard way.

Women fail to recognize too often that being desired is not the same thing as being held in high esteem.

The whole essence of the sexual revolution is about encouraging women to be more like men in every way, including to have sex like men, to try and imitate male sexuality, to be more casual, to be more emotionless in sexual attachments and so on.

Bondage, domination or discipline and sadomasochism. Although I kind of prefer to just call it sadomasochism, which is the slightly more old fashioned term, but I think actually tells you what it is in the way that the acronym disguises. Someone's going to hurt you.

It has become insanely mainstream. I have a chapter on it in my book, the extent to which it has just gone from being a really niche, initially really an element of gay male subculture, and then it moves towards straight sexual culture. And then it with online porn at the turn of the century, it just suddenly becomes incredibly mainstream to the extent now that things like strangulation porn is now on the front page of every porn site in the world in a way that it never used to be.

Women fail to recognize too often that being desired is not the same thing as being held in high esteem.

I dedicated my book to, so this is basically the first line when you open it, to the women who learned it the hard way.

People are not products.

when Louise Perry wrote her book about the the case against sexual revolution it really put a frame around what I'd been trying to express

one person you need to get on your podcast is Louise Perry so she wrote the case against the sexual revolution

I wrote a book called The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. I'm generally critical of the sexual revolution and porn.

Louise Perry wrote this amazing book called The Case Against the Sexual Revolution.

And my argument is it's had so much more of a profound effect than we tend to acknowledge. Because the fact that it's women who bear children is so, so, so socially important, in terms of our ability to work, our economic vulnerabilities, our ability to participate in politics, all of this. And the pill is just this like enormous game changer, where suddenly it's a choice.

The trade-offs are normally in other areas of life, like, well, like we have massively falling birth rates and there are political and economic problems arising from that. That's not just downstream with the pill, but the pill is a really big part of our story.

I think that it is shifted towards, and you be careful here, because I don't want to, I don't, what I don't want to say is that the sexual revolution has been fabulous for men in general. I think that a lot of men have not done well by it.

But I think in general that the really big winners from the sexual revolution have been a small subset of men. So what I write about in the book as the Hugh Hefner's of the world. Massive sexual appetites and are attractive and can basically have as many women as they want. Don't have to get married to them because Christianity has faded away. Don't have to worry about unwanted pregnancies because of the pill, you know. So they've had a ball.

I think that there is some important average differences between men and women psychologically. Not least, I mean that's not just what I think, like the data is, I think, unimpeachable on this. And not least when it comes to sexuality.

Her recent book is The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, published in 2022.

You wrote a rather controversial book recently. Let's talk about the book.

I was interested today, I was going through your book again and I noticed once again that you started with the story of Marilyn Monroe and Hugh Hefner.

So one of the things that people who are watching and listening might be interested in knowing is that people pursue different mating strategies so to speak.

And so I think it is an open question to what degree can sex just be, you know, fun and fancy free, and also it's an open question to what degree aren't women just now the same as men?

It's a story about the triumph of the playboy. This is the crux of her book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, which has just been adapted for young adults.

In 2022, she wrote for the Free Press, quote, The sexual revolution isn't only a story of women freed from the burdens of chastity and motherhood.