In this page I write a lot more about Louise Perry's book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. In my blog post I commented on the passages in the book that refer to prostitution (the subject of this blog). Now on this blog page I comment on other aspects of sexuality in the book.
Louise Perry does what she accuses other people of doing. She accuses modern society of influencing people to behave in a particular way. It isn't true that people today have to conform, but she wants people to conform to her standards.
It has never been easier to be a non-conformist than today. Whether it is sex, drugs, alcohol or diet. A young woman going to university who doesn't want to drink will find others who share her preferences. In the past, in the 1950s, anyone who was teetotal or vegetarian was regarded as an eccentric. Most people, or at least most men, smoked. Every suburban semi had its drinks trolley with its gin and sherry.
At the end of the book (page 189) Perry tell us of a TikTok video where a young woman (Abby) states that she will no longer be getting drunk at night and ending up in the beds of strangers. As if that is what most women do. "Would I let her be a late-night, drunk second option?" Perry is a great believer in marriage but you can be someone's second option as a marriage partner just as you can be someone's second option for casual sex.
If you don't want to get drunk, then don't get drunk. Lots of people don't get drunk. I don't get drunk. But don't make a song and dance about it because then it's not about your personal choices but about what you think all women should be doing or not doing. If you don't want to have casual sex, don't do it. If you wanted to you could claim some obscure sexual orientation or gender identity: you could even say that you are a Radical Feminist Lesbian. Some women enjoy it and some don't; not all women are the same.
Who are these women who will go home with a man, get into bed with him, and go along with sex even though they hadn't expected or wanted it? (page 12: "Besides, we were already in bed, and this is what people in bed do.") Who are these women who will go home with a man and then give him oral sex just to be obliging? (page 67: "Eventually, at his request, she gave him a blowjob.") And what are their phone numbers? Because I've never met any.
Perry says that women find it difficult to say no. But I have met plenty of women who not only have no problem in saying no but who will try to get a man dismissed from his job while they are at it.
Years ago I listened to a late-night radio show about business. There were two male presenters and they were talking to a woman who was an leading expert on finance. She had advised the Obama government. At the end of the discussion she was asked if she had ever experiences sexual harassment in the workplace. It was in the news at the time.
She thought for a second then said that a man had said to her "Would you like to come back to my room?" It must have been at a residential conference or something. He wasn't her boss. She said she got him sacked from his job and that she pursued a vendetta against him and gleefully stated that she must have cost him a million dollars over the years.
There is nothing wrong with a man saying to a woman "Would you like to come back to my room?". Many marriages are the result of a woman going back to a man's room. Even if it is just for casual sex, there is nothing wrong with that.
It isn't a problem in society if a man says something suggestive to a woman. A woman can say no if she doesn't want to go back to his room. What they are trying to do is to make men afraid to say anything suggestive. They don't want women to go back to men's rooms. They don't want women to have that choice. They don't like casual sex and have decided to believe that women are harmed by it.
"It's true that women are fed up with sexual violence and harassment; but it is also true that what this culture considers "normal" sexual behaviour is often harmful to women, and that we want that to stop, too. page 13 quote of Jessica Valenti.
I have heard that high status women don't get abused in the workplace, because abuse is about power. Well, that would depend on what you mean by abuse. If you think a man asking a woman back to his room is abuse then sometimes they do. (page 23: "workplace sexual harassment ... is almost never perpetrated by junior men against more senior women.")
This is what I think about when I am told that every woman has had an experience of abuse. Not only is this example trivial, it is her who was the abuser. In pursuing her vendetta over the years she was trying to wreck his life. How is that different from a man wrecking a woman's life?
There are two paragraphs from Perry's book which are key to understanding her point of view.
At the end of the book (page 189) Perry tell us of a TikTok video where a young woman (Abby) states that she will no longer be getting drunk at night and ending up in the beds of strangers. As if that is what most women do. "Would I let her be a late-night, drunk second option?" Perry is a great believer in marriage but you can be someone's second option as a marriage partner just as you can be someone's second option for casual sex.
If you don't want to get drunk, then don't get drunk. Lots of people don't get drunk. I don't get drunk. But don't make a song and dance about it because then it's not about your personal choices but about what you think all women should be doing or not doing. If you don't want to have casual sex, don't do it. If you wanted to you could claim some obscure sexual orientation or gender identity: you could even say that you are a Radical Feminist Lesbian. Some women enjoy it and some don't; not all women are the same.
Who are these women who will go home with a man, get into bed with him, and go along with sex even though they hadn't expected or wanted it? (page 12: "Besides, we were already in bed, and this is what people in bed do.") Who are these women who will go home with a man and then give him oral sex just to be obliging? (page 67: "Eventually, at his request, she gave him a blowjob.") And what are their phone numbers? Because I've never met any.
Perry says that women find it difficult to say no. But I have met plenty of women who not only have no problem in saying no but who will try to get a man dismissed from his job while they are at it.
Years ago I listened to a late-night radio show about business. There were two male presenters and they were talking to a woman who was an leading expert on finance. She had advised the Obama government. At the end of the discussion she was asked if she had ever experiences sexual harassment in the workplace. It was in the news at the time.
She thought for a second then said that a man had said to her "Would you like to come back to my room?" It must have been at a residential conference or something. He wasn't her boss. She said she got him sacked from his job and that she pursued a vendetta against him and gleefully stated that she must have cost him a million dollars over the years.
There is nothing wrong with a man saying to a woman "Would you like to come back to my room?". Many marriages are the result of a woman going back to a man's room. Even if it is just for casual sex, there is nothing wrong with that.
It isn't a problem in society if a man says something suggestive to a woman. A woman can say no if she doesn't want to go back to his room. What they are trying to do is to make men afraid to say anything suggestive. They don't want women to go back to men's rooms. They don't want women to have that choice. They don't like casual sex and have decided to believe that women are harmed by it.
"It's true that women are fed up with sexual violence and harassment; but it is also true that what this culture considers "normal" sexual behaviour is often harmful to women, and that we want that to stop, too. page 13 quote of Jessica Valenti.
I have heard that high status women don't get abused in the workplace, because abuse is about power. Well, that would depend on what you mean by abuse. If you think a man asking a woman back to his room is abuse then sometimes they do. (page 23: "workplace sexual harassment ... is almost never perpetrated by junior men against more senior women.")
This is what I think about when I am told that every woman has had an experience of abuse. Not only is this example trivial, it is her who was the abuser. In pursuing her vendetta over the years she was trying to wreck his life. How is that different from a man wrecking a woman's life?
There are two paragraphs from Perry's book which are key to understanding her point of view.
(Chapter 1 page 13 Sex Must Be Taken Seriously)
"There was an intuitive recognition that asking for sex from an employee is not at all the same as asking them to do overtime or make coffee. I've made plenty of coffees for employers in the past, despite the fact that coffee-making wasn't included in my job description, and I'm sure most readers will have done the same. But, while it might sometimes be annoying to receive this request, no worker who makes coffee for their boss will expect to end up dependent on drugs or alcohol as a consequence. No one will expect to become pregnant or acquire a disease that causes infertility. No one will expect to suffer from PTSD or other mental illness. No one will expect to become incapable of having healthy intimate relationships for the rest of her life. Everyone knows that having sex is not the same as making coffee, and when an ideology of sexual disenchantment demands that we pretend otherwise the result can be a distressing form of cognitive dissonance."
Nobody is saying that being forced to have sex is the same as being forced to make coffee. What we are saying is that sexual coercion and non-sexual coercion are not different in nature. Sex is not so different from other activities. She shouldn't be comparing the worst of one thing with the least worst of another thing.
When it comes to non-sexual slavery, there are historical forms such as cutting sugar cane or picking cotton. There are also modern forms. In all forms the victim might have suffered PTSD or other mental illness. Or physical illness. If they survived.
I don't like the way that she implies that sex workers are more likely to become drug addicts or alcoholics. Or that they are more likely to become pregnant or get an STI. Or that they are more likely to acquire PTSD or a mental illness. Or that they can't relate to others in a normal way. Where is the evidence for these beliefs? There seems to be a relationship between crack and heroin addiction, street-based prostitution, and PTSD. I would like to know what this is, and what causes what, but it doesn't help when some people use what little evidence there is to promote their own puritanical agenda.
Is she talking about sex workers? They are the ones who supposedly all have PTSD. Or is she talking about women who have been raped? Or is she talking about women who have been asked for sex by their boss? She seems to jumbling all these up together. And she seems to think that women who are offered sex but not marriage are also exploited.
(Chapter 8 page 182 Marriage Is Good).
"A monogamous marriage system is successful in part because it pushes men away from cad mode, particularly when pre-marital sex is also prohibited. Under these circumstances, if a man wants to have sex in a way that's socially acceptable, he has to make himself marriageable, which means holding down a good job and setting up a household suitable for the raising of children. He has to tame himself, in other words. Fatherhood then has a further taming effect, even at the biochemical level: when men are involved in the care of their young children, their testosterone levels drop, alongside their aggression and sex drive. A society composed of tamed men is a better society to live in, for men, for women and for children."
So if a man wants to have sex he has to hold down a good job. 'Good' means well paid as opposed to something that will make him happy. He has to hand over money. Sex for money.
Men are expected to give up pornography and masturbation. In Perry's mind this will make them more inclined to get married and have children. To my mind, sexual frustration is the worst reason for getting married. In the past men and women got married young, often to someone unsuitable.
Sexually frustrated and sexually inexperienced people tend to be obsessed by sex. When I was younger I was obsessed. It might sound like I am now because I am always writing about it but I am much less preoccupied. It would have been nice if there had been a number of young women in my youth who were just as much interested in indulging curiosity and overcoming inhibitions and frustrations as I was. It was pornography and prostitution that helped with that.
You have to ask who will like this book. Social conservatives, Christian Evangelicals and Radical Feminists. This book marks the even closer coming together of these elements. Anyone who is against Pornography, Prostitution and Promiscuity gets the support of the Radical Feminists, even though Perry contradicts many of their supposed core values.
This book will be popular in America where religion is stronger. What people don't realise is that when people in communities influenced by religion go off the rails then they really go off the rails. Drunken rampant sex is more common there than in liberal communities. Think about the film The Graduate where the older 50s generation were big drinkers and were always having affairs.
It's interesting that the people with the problems in her book come from America. Kacey Jordan, Linda Lovelace, Vanessa Belmond and Jenna Jameson the porn stars and Abby the TikTok star. America is a violent and exploitative society, supposedly liberal but backwards in its attitudes in many ways. Many of these women seem to have become Evangelical Christians: they have gone from one extreme to the other.
It is also interesting that she mentions the teenage girls in Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford and Oxford who were gang raped (page 94) but doesn't mention that their attackers were from a community which has been bypassed by the sexual revolution and where sex outside of marriage is forbidden. It is forbidden by their religion but that doesn't stop them.
It is also interesting that she mentions the teenage girls in Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford and Oxford who were gang raped (page 94) but doesn't mention that their attackers were from a community which has been bypassed by the sexual revolution and where sex outside of marriage is forbidden. It is forbidden by their religion but that doesn't stop them.
There is some confusion in the book about the word 'carceral'. Being non-carceral doesn't mean that you think that rapists should not be imprisoned. It means that you don't think certain things can be cured by giving the police more powers and putting more people in prison. If alcohol, drugs and prostitution are social problems, they won't be helped by a bigger prison population. In the case of drug addiction, this will be helped by rehab, housing and benefits. Legalization and providing opiates to addicts should be considered.
There are anarchists who don't believe in prisons but I am not an anarchist. Anarchists aren't numerous, but they know that they can gain influence by joining popular campaigns. They will join environmental movements but they are not helping because they annoy people instead of persuading them. Radical Feminists and Evangelicals are minorities and they know they can gain influence by joining campaigns like Me Too. They will say it's about violence and harassment but it should also be about consensual sex: Radical Feminists such as Andrea Dworkin (quoted in the book) don't want men and women having sex and Evangelicals don't want them having sex outside marriage.
If I go on holiday and meet three strangers, I might have a game of chess with one, a game of tennis with another, and sex with the third. Yet it is only with the third that I would be accused of treating people as 'disposable' or 'fungible'. If you already believe that sex is inherently different from any other recreational activity, that sex belongs in a long-term relationship, then that would make sense. But to anyone else, like myself, who don't believe that then using words like disposable and fungible don't make sense. It doesn't convince anyone. She is preaching to the converted (in more ways than one: many of her supporters will be Christian Evangelicals or Catholics).
Perry has tried to explain why she thinks that sex is different on page 13 and fails because she is unfairly comparing the worst form of one thing (sexual coercion) with the least worst form of another (non-sexual coercion).
If I liked any one of these three people, I might choose to have a long-term friendship or relationship with that person. We meet many people, and choose not to begin a friendship or relationship with most of them. That does not mean that we don't treat them with respect, or that we are not considerate of their needs, or that we would not say hello to them if we saw them in the street.
If I liked any one of these three people, I might choose to have a long-term friendship or relationship with that person. We meet many people, and choose not to begin a friendship or relationship with most of them. That does not mean that we don't treat them with respect, or that we are not considerate of their needs, or that we would not say hello to them if we saw them in the street.
Perry believes that women are less interested in sex and more interested in children than men. It seems though that when women have money they act the same as men. About a hundred years ago there were many women who were promiscuous (or 'wanton' in the language of the time) and who rarely saw their children - handing them over to nannies.
For example Enid Lindeman, Daisy Fellowes, Pamela Digby, Edwina Mountbatten, Doris Delevingne, Diana Cooper and Thelma Furness. Promiscuity didn't have to wait till the invention of the Pill. Not if you're an heiress.
Just as promiscuity and handing over childcare to professionals is nothing new, so too there is nothing new in brothels. Brothels didn't begin in the 1960s sexual revolution. Brothels were more common in the past than today. In Liverpool there were many more brothels in the past, it seems that the police started closing them in the 2010s. In Soho prostitutes stood on the streets until 1957.
However the principle of Chesterton's fence doesn't apply to brothels and Red Light Districts as far as people like Perry are concerned. She wants to clear them away. She doesn't feel that she has to 'come back and tell me that you do see the use of it' before she eliminates them. That is double standards.
"If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."
Although there are fewer brothels in Liverpool today, that doesn't mean that there are fewer prostitutes. There are many women who work alone from flats. I'm sure that Perry wants to clear them away too but that's not so easy. Women could work together for safety and companionship. Now they can't.
"Chesterton points out that the person who doesn't understand the purpose of a social institution is the last person who should be allowed to reform it. The world is big and dynamic--so much so that literally no one is capable of fully understanding it or predicting how its systems might respond to change. The parable of 'Chesterton's Fence' ought to encourage caution in would-be reformers, because there is such a thing as society, and it is more complex than any of us can fathom."
This has never made much sense. Sometimes a social institution doesn't have a purpose. A purpose cannot be found, no matter how much you think about it. So, according to Perry, you cannot remove it. Would it not be better for people like Perry to think about the purpose? In any case, it is wrong to apply double standards, to say that marriage cannot be swept away but prostitution should be - even though you don't see the purpose of it. Nobody is trying to abolish marriage anyway.
People are not products. I agree with that. As I have said in many places on this blog, I have never bought a woman. I have bought a service. Prostitutes offer a service, like millions of other people.
Some people will say that things like surrogacy, asking for sex in return for somewhere to live, and aid workers paying prostitutes are morally wrong. Most people would say that surrogacy isn't wrong in itself but in some circumstances can be. If a man offers a professional prostitute somewhere to live in return for regular sex I don't believe that to be wrong. If he offers a homeless woman the same thing that would be wrong. I wouldn't offer a woman money for sex if she was desperate for money or it wasn't her chosen method of making money.
If an aid worker refuses to help people until he has received a bribe or until he has received sex that is obviously wrong. If he sees a woman standing on a street corner in a dirty sari offering sex for money then it would be wrong for him to accept (although that doesn't really help her). If however an aid worker is relaxing after work in a bar and a 20 year old woman sits next to him and explains that she's at university and this is how she chooses to make the money she needs for that then it's different. She doesn't want to do waitressing or bar work, she can earn more money in less time, more time for studying and more time for fun.
You could say that this would make prostitution different from any other type of work. It doesn't though, nobody should work in a job to which they are temperamentally unsuited. If someone is unemployed or homeless they might have to accept work in a factory or an office. Someone who abhors violence though should never have to join the armed forces. Someone who is an animal lover should never have to work in an abattoir.
There's a curious analogy used in the chapter about pornography. There is something called ethical porn but Perry is against it. She quotes feminist Sarah Ditum: it's like "putting a chicken in your back garden and claiming you've fixed factory farming". If someone refuses to buy eggs from factory farms and instead eats eggs only from their own back garden, is that not a good thing? At the very least they have absolved themselves from cruelty to animals, and set a good example for others to follow. The development of free-range egg production is one of the ways to solve the problem of factory farming.
There are some vegans who would want everyone to stop eating eggs and chicken. Others realize that they can choose not to eat eggs or chicken, vegetarians can choose not to eat chicken and most other people can choose not to eat eggs or chicken from factory farms. They are not trying to stop everyone from enjoying eggs and chicken. They realise that is not practical no matter how much they are disgusted by people eating dead animals.
I can choose to go to a brothel owned by organised crime or a brothel owned by the sex workers themselves. Just as importantly I can choose to support a legal system where brothels are illegal but still exist or a system where everyone but the sex workers go out of business. What I can't do is wave a magic wand and make it all go away, and I wouldn't want to do that anyway.
"Not a single one of us needs to watch porn ever again. The sexual liberation narrative tells you to keep going; I’m telling you that you have an obligation to stop" (p. 113).
This just shows more than anything that she is making up a narrative where people are told what to do by the sexual revolution when it is her that wants to tell us all what to do. The 'sexual liberation narrative' doesn't tell us to 'keep going' with pornography. It tells us that we have a choice.
Far from everyone having to watch it, so many people have never even seen pornography. If they had they wouldn't say the stupidest things about it. They tell us that women in pornography don't have pubic hair. That's not true, you just have to look at it once to see that it's not true. They say teenage boys and young men are disgusted by pubic hair because they have never seen it.
They say that most pornography involves strangling. We are told that there are boys who try to strangle a girl on their first date because they think that's normal. Yet they would only think it was normal if all or the majority of pornography involved strangling. That is not the truth. There will be boys and men who have violent impulses but pornography can't be used as an excuse for them. They will say 'Don't blame me, I thought it was normal' but I don't believe them.
It isn't true that the only alternatives for young women at university are hook up culture or celibacy. Many marriages have come from meeting someone at university. "... if your only options seem to be either hooking up or strict celibacy, then a comforting myth of 'agency' can be attractive". page 84.
On page 52 she writes about female students who 'don't want to have sex before marriage'. She writes that in modern society they are at a 'competitive disadvantage' and have little option other than to only date men who also don't want to have sex before marriage.
These young women can meet men who share their beliefs, but that isn't good enough for Perry. All men must be made to conform to their ideals. If there aren't enough men who also don't want sex before marriage then other men must be made to conform.
"The abstinent young woman must either be tremendously attractive, in order to out-compete her more permissive peers, or she must be happy to restrict her dating pool only to those men who are as unusual as she is. Being eccentric carries costs."
What is wrong with people dating others who share their values? If you are a young female student who doesn't want to have sex before marriage do you really want to date men who don't share your values but have been forced to be celibate? Or forced to pretend to be celibate? Don't expect others to share your eccentricity if they are not inclined to do so: that is as much true for celibacy as it is for sado-masochism.
Or maybe some of these virgins would quite like a bit of sado-masochism, it might enable them to keep their virginity until their big night while having some kind of expression of sexual desire. They don't call it sado-masochism now though do they, they call it BDSM, call me old-fashioned.
Perry seems to think that society should be restructured to suit these virgins and that men should not have sex before marriage whether that's what they want or not. What most men want doesn't matter, or what most women want either.
She thinks that this is what women ought to want, and it would be good for men too. She is expecting everyone to conform. Yet she accuses the sexual revolution of forcing people to conform.
I think that women in today's society have got it about right. They will have had several boyfriends before they get married. From that they will come to understand more about men and what it is that they want from a relationship. They are more likely to end up with someone compatible. They won't stay in a relationship or marriage if it is making them unhappy. They don't want to be dependent on a man for money, although they know sometimes compromises will have to be made.
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