The Growing Feminist Rejection of the Sexual Revolution

Some left-wing feminists are starting to challenge the narrative of the sexual revolution, recognizing that it was, in fact, disastrous for women.

Gen Z may not be taking the morning-after pill as frequently as their elders think they should. So, the morning-after pill is getting a rebrand. You can learn all about it on TikTok, of course. Here comes the newly branded “Julie.”

“Julie” co-founder Amanda E.J. Morrison says, “What we heard from women is that there is a second walk of shame.” The first, of course, is walking home the following day in last night’s clothes after a night of loveless hook-up action. The second walk of shame is heading in your soiled clothes over to the drug store to buy the morning-after pill to ensure the meaninglessness of last night.

“Julie” will be sold in 4,500 Walmart stores and will cost $42.44. To appeal to the kids, it will come in a bright blue box with pink lettering! They are advertising on TikTok so it would be “fun and shareable.” The “Julie” comms director says, “We know that…our target patient is really spending most of their time on TikTok.” [Emphasis added.] A new ad on TikTok was viewed 5 million times.

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You may suspect that “Julie” is named after “Julia,” who starred in the Barack Obama campaign ad that showed a single young woman who took the state as her husband throughout her meaningless life and how wonderful it was.

Here we are 60 years into the sexual revolution; could a rebrand be necessary because its younger “beneficiaries” are wising up?

British writer Louise Perry hopes so. Perry is a feminist, a woman of the Left, and a columnist at the leftwing Guardian. Her new book, “The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century,” is a broadside against the plethora of leftwing sexual shibboleths.

She does not believe in “progress.” She believes men and women are different physically, emotionally, sexually, and in practically every way. She believes in monogamous man-woman marriage. She argues against pornography. She argues against prostitution. She believes the sexual revolution has been an unmitigated disaster for women.

Perry says from the advent of the pill, and the IUD and other devices in Hugh Hefner’s fevered dreams, came “…an entirely new creature in the world: the apparently fertile young woman whose fertility had in fact been put on hold. She changed everything.”

Perry used to believe in feminist ideas about porn, BDSM, hook-up culture, evolutionary psychology, and the sex trade. However, her views changed because of her life experiences and her time after college working at a rape crisis center.

Sexual disenchantment is the heart of the problem, according to Perry. “This is the idea that sex is nothing more than a leisure activity, invested with meaning only if the participants choose to give it meaning. Proponents of this idea argue that sex has no intrinsic specialness.” It is like every other social interaction. So, hop to it. There is no reason any longer to say no. Such an ideology has only ever served the interests of Hefner, and eventually Harvey Weinstein, and, frankly, every rutting teen and twenty-something boy let loose on the girls at Big State U.

Perry takes the radical view that sex should be taken seriously. Why is that? Because men and women are different. And sex results in pregnancy, the burden of which women may carry alone. 

Put aside the obvious physical differences—almost all men are bigger and stronger and faster than nearly all women—and consider “sociosexuality.” This refers to different tastes and desires regarding sex and relationships. Those who score low on this measure tend to desire monogamy, prolonged courtship, and heavy emotional investment in long-term relationships. Conversely, those who score high “are considered more unrestricted in meeting orientation, they tend toward promiscuity, are quick to have sex, and experience lower levels of romantic relationship closeness.”

Psychologist David Schmitt studied male and female “sociosexuality” across 48 countries and “found large sex differences to be ‘a cultural universal.’” Do I need to say which sex is which? The bottom line is that women do not much care for hook-up culture. Oh sure, they bravely try to be like men. But they eventually discover that they do not care for casual sex. One study, however, demonstrated that almost all men would say yes to sex offered by a beautiful stranger. Do you want a glimpse into unrestrained male libido? Look at the homosexual community.

Bridget Phetasy is a sort-of conservative columnist and podcaster who writes for The Spectator World. She used to write for Playboy.

In a recent issue, she wrote, “Unlike many other people who have read and reviewed [Louise] Perry’s work, reading her book wouldn’t be some academic exercise in contemplating how liberal feminism has let women down. It wouldn’t be evaluating what those poor sluts over there have endured in the wake of the sexual revolution. Reading her book was personal. I’m one of those sluts.”

Of the dozens of men Phetasy has had sex with, at least the ones she can remember, she can only think of a handful she does not regret. She says most of these casual encounters left her feeling “empty and demoralized. And worthless.” As an adolescent, she internalized one of the big lies of the sexual revolution, “that loveless sex is empowering.” She says, “I basked in the girl-power flow of that delusion for decades, weaponizing my sexuality while convincing myself I was full of the divine feminine.”

As Perry describes, Phetasy says her mantras were either career or relationship, not both; intimacy is creepy; motherhood and children are a trap; sex is about power.  

Phetasy hit rock bottom one night when her “on-again, off-again lover” texted, “Goodnight baby, I love you,” but quickly followed with, “Wrong person.” How do you come back from that? You realize right then that you are as disposable as a piece of Kleenex, which is essentially what you’ve been. So, you clean up your act and move forward.

But notice how all of this is bad for men, whose natural inclinations tend to the promiscuous and who need women as guardrails. Throw in pornography, most of which is violent, and you have men treating women like dirt. This is good for no one.

There is nothing especially new for Christian conservatives in Louise Perry’s book. We have known these true things all along. Indeed, Paul VI foretold much of this in the encyclical Humanae Vitae.

What is remarkable is that a card-carrying left-of-center feminist like Perry is saying these things. She is coming under severe fire from the sexual Left. She does not back down. She doubles down. Imagine, she says things like women should not go drinking with men they do not know. Such claims fly in the face of the feminist claim that women should be able to do anything they want at any time. Above all, Perry is a realist.

Perry is not with us on everything. She is okay with homosexual marriage. She is okay with abortion. In fact, she is fearful traditionalists will lead the counter-revolution and that this might lead to such outrages as banning abortion. Still, though, she is so good on monogamous marriage, excellent on pornography, and she is the scourge of the sexual revolution. One of the more interesting things she points out is that there have been two sexual revolutions, the one going on now, and the one the early Christians led against Roman licentiousness. 

The makers of the new, hip morning-after pill “Julie” need to read this book and be reminded it is called the “walk of shame” for a very good reason.

[Image Credit: Shutterstock]

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