Women and the Sexual Revolution

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As noted in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the “sexual marketplace, which was once strictly regulated… has now been made mostly free.” Going further, the reporter, Louise Perry, observes that, “In the West, hookup culture is normative among adolescents and young adults.” She adds:

“Today’s sexual culture… prefers to understand people as freewheeling, atomized individuals, all looking out for number one and all up for a good time. It assumes that if all sexual taboos were removed, we would all be liberated and capable of making entirely free choices about our sexual lives, sampling from a menu of delightful options made newly available by the sexual revolution.”

So how is that working out for women?

An increasing number of articles, based on conviction and research, are coming out with extremely counter-cultural titles, such as “How the Sexual Revolution Has Hurt Women” and “Porn Has Framed Our Lives and Normalised Sexual Abuse.”

Perry notes that studies are consistently finding that following hookups, “women are more likely than men to experience regret, low self-esteem and mental distress.” Soma Sara writes about a growing “rape culture” that encompasses

“the derogatory ways that boys spoke about women and girls, the bragging about sexual conquests, objectifying comments about female bodies, jokes about sexual harassment and sexual assault [and] slut shaming.”

Sara argues that this spectrum of behaviors and attitudes has the “cumulative effect of making actual sexual harassment, assault and rape permissible.” 

To prove her point, in 2020 she set up the “Everyone’s Invited” website as a platform for survivors to share their own experiences anonymously. It has already received more than 50,000 submissions. One post begins, “I was 12 when I was raped…”, another “I was sexually assaulted by a boy… after school.” The cumulative weight of reading the stories is heart-breaking.

There can be little doubt what is driving this. Sara, who is 23 years old, writes:

“Growing up, misogyny, sexual harassment and sexual abuse online was normalized amongst my peers; libraries of nudes of underage girls were shared on Google drives, being groped and grabbed at a party was normal, as were the unwanted advances, rape jokes, sexual bullying and unsolicited d*** picks…. There were exorbitant pressures on young girls to perform ‘hotness’ online.”

Her conclusion? “Porn was the wallpaper that framed our lives, normalizing it all.” She adds that hers has been a guinea pig generation, the first to grow up online.

Yes, but the broader context is that hers was the first generation to be raised in a fully “sexually liberated” culture that being online facilitated and exacerbated. As Perry writes:

“We can see this rapid shift in social mores through pop culture. In the 1955 movie ‘Rebel Without a Cause,’ the teenage protagonist Judy is called a ‘dirty tramp’ by her father for wearing lipstick. Compare this with the current TV hit “Euphoria,” in which teenage girls sell nudes online, are choked during sex and suffer the humiliation of seeing revenge porn shared around school. “Euphoria” is supposed to be daring, pushing at the boundaries of acceptability—but that was also true of ‘Rebel Without a Cause.’”

Of course, the sexual revolution has hurt men as well as women, but there can be little doubt that women have been the most victimized. Perry writes that while it is possible for young women to opt out, research suggests that only a small minority does: “Absent some kind of religious commitment, this is now the ‘normal’ route presented to girls as they become sexually active.”

Perhaps we should do a bit more on helping them make that “religious commitment.”

James Emery White

Sources

Louise Perry, “How the Sexual Revolution Has Hurt Women,” The Wall Street Journal, August 19, 2022, read online.

“Everyone’s Invited” created by Soma Sara, online here.

Rosa Silverman, “Everyone’s Invited Founder Soma Sara: ‘Porn has framed our lives and normalised sexual abuse’,” The Telegraph, August 26, 2022, read online.