Social Conservatism is Closer to Sexual Neocons

The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, by Louise Perry (Polity: August 2022), 200 pages.

Among the remarkable things about The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry, set to hit shelves tomorrow, is that it’s not much of a case against the sexual revolution at all. You would expect Perry’s book, given its title, to tell the story of the sexual revolution and engage with its intellectual underpinnings. It also proposes a superior, more moral, alternative sexual ethics. Perry does not do any of these things. Perry’s inability or unwillingness to offer a philosophical foundation for her Neoconservative Sexual Ethics weakens her critiques and stops disaffected Liberals from jumping the fence.

Perry’s book is decent, but not enough. The main message of her book is that the sexual revolution in so many ways was a failure. Modern feminism is condemned for its inability to recognize the differences between women and men, as well as the male sexual desire at the expense of women. It also destroys the support systems that made meaningful relationships possible such monogamy and prohibitions on promiscuity. She also acknowledges that sexual morality must be a political issue: When sex is allowed before marriage, it is a problem for women. Freedom to choose is an illusion when the cultural and political order favors certain options.

But Perry refuses to address the political issues she has identified. Perry’s book is largely wasted space. She relitigates #MeToo lawsuits against Armie Hammer, Aziz Ansari and dedicates a whole chapter to BDSM. She balks when it comes to cultural and political hot topics. Even though procreation was the original purpose of marriage, she refuses to admit it (despite hinting that this used to be the institution’s greatest justification). This would also exclude the same-sex couple. Perry also claims that the welfare state has been ineffectual as a “back-up husband,” breaking down families and forcing women into work, but she doesn’t think it is necessary to curb this because Perry knows that such an approach would be detrimental to her ability to help other couples.

Perry’s book on sexual morality is more interesting as it is for its cultural context. Perry views herself as a feminist who injects some reality into an movement that has gone from reality to terrible effect. For example, many academic feminists believe that there is no difference between women and men, and all differences are a result socialization. Liberal feminists cannot speak consistently on matters that impact women, like male-on-female aggression. Perry, a real women’s advocate who has worked to dismantle the “rough-sex defense” in the U.K., cannot afford such an unreal, luxury belief.

Perry clearly finds herself in an analogous position to Irving Kristol. However, she doesn’t name him.

Perry clearly feels she is in a position similar to Irving Kristol’s, though Perry does not name him.

Perry is not the only one who practices sexual neoconservatism. Perry is just one example of liberal denial in the face left’s denials of reality. Her books are a sign of growing numbers of liberals committed to individual liberty in the public realm, but who recognize that unmitigated freedom, understood as the freeing of an individual from all authority, deprives life of its contents and leads to a totalitarian, paternalistic state. Tocquevillian liberals see “intermediary institutions” as being able to tutor individuals and protect their personal freedom against the state.

In classical liberalism individual rights and freedoms were a way to protect individuals from state tyranny. They allow them to follow their consciences, which are formed by private associations. Progressive modification of liberalism, which is actually the demise of liberalism, involves extending “freedom” down by policecing private associations or, more precisely, replacing them with state moral authority.

This is not hyperbole. It is what early progressive reformers said about their project. One glance at the Biden administration’s approach to Title IX is enough to convince anyone that such a social project is still underway. Gender ideology, critical race theory at schools and universities and sexual morality all are issues that drive liberals to right. This is not because they are trying to reinitiate old prejudices as often claimed but because liberals defend individual rights against the state.

Perry’s book shows the beauty and limits of the liberal position.

Perry’s book shows both the attractiveness and limitations of the liberal position.

She rejects liberal-progressive views of individuals as independent entities that exist independently from long-term community ties. She writes that modern contraception allows us to artificially extend that young adult state, creating the illusion of independence being our permanent state. It’s not, it’s just a temporary blip that some people will never have. We were born dependent and will become dependent once again when we reach our “second childhood”.

“How are we all free?” she said. We should ask ourselves, “How do we promote both the well-being of men and women?” Because these two groups often have conflicting interests ?'”

Perry’s attempts to answer this question are too vague. She sometimes uses nature as her example, as she says that sexual liberalism is a threat to the natural desire of a female to be able have more long-term partners. Sometimes she points out that nature should be opposed, as she does when she suggests we must police the male natural desire to have multiple short-term partners.

If nature and moral intuition cannot be used as the foundation of sexual morality, then what? Perry proposes Perry as a solution to the problem of “virtue”, which she does not define. She stops at

.

I can’t pretend that this is an easy issue to resolve, because “How should we behave sexually?” This is just another way to ask “How should I behave?” Despite millennia worth of work, there is no way to agree on the right answer. Here is my contribution. We must treat sexual partners with respect… Virtues should be pricked above desire.

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Perry has nothing to offer on this topic. Perry’s final and complete stance on the subject of sexual morality states that one should exist. It is tormenting that this lengthy book condemning liberated homosexuality should be ended with the most tiniest relativist platitudes.

It would be nice if someone could bring the issue of sexual behavior closer to us, as someone who has written a book about sexual morality. Perry may be able to help us in this regard. The Case Against the Sexual Revolution contains many good arguments against the promiscuous jungle we have inherited. Young women (especially those who have learned the hard ways), are her primary target audience, and they would certainly be benefited from the expose she provides to modernity’s sexual realities that others ignore. Despite a coherent intellectual view on sexuality, such a view is not compatible with the current political legacy of the sexual revolution.

I cheer on the sexual Neocons. Full-throated social conservatism is still the most attractive option until they are able to pick up the book’s story and create a program for resistance to the dictatorial denial of the sexual truth.