In last week's post, we noted Perry's argument that the "liberation" of the sexual revolution largely favors men, who typically score higher on measures of sociosexuality (i.e., an openness to sex with strangers, desiring multiple sexual partners, and an interest in uncommitted sex). By "favors men" Perry means that a woman's natural desire for sex to be meaningful--connected to intimacy and love--has to be suppressed in order to meet the standards of hook-up culture, where sex is "just sex," devoid of any intimate, loving connection.
In this world, should a young woman ever develop "feelings" about her sexual partner, should she get emotionally "attached" or--horror of horrors--fall in love, well, that young lady is branded as clingy, needy, and "crazy." The mandate is clear: young women need to numb their feelings if they want to participate in the current sexual marketplace.
In fact, as Perry goes on to describe, this is precisely the sort of sexual advice that young women are receiving from magazines, sex guides, and advice columns. Perry observes:
A more depressing pop-feminist genre comes at the sociosexuality gap from a different angle, advising women to work on overcoming their perfectly normal and healthy preference for intimacy and commitment in sexual relationships. Guides with titles such as 'Here's what to do if you start "catching feelings"', 'How to bio-hack your brain to have sex without getting emotionally attached' and 'How to have casual sex without getting emotionally attached' advise readers to, for instance, avoid making eye contact with their partners during sex, in an effort to avoid 'making an intimate connection'. Readers are also advised to take cocaine or methamphetamines before sex to dull the dopamine response, but to avoid alcohol, since for women (but, tellingly, not men) this seems to increase 'the likelihood they will bond prematurely'. All sorts of innovative methods of dissociation are advised, for example: 'Another way to prevent the intimate association between your fuck buddy and the heightened activity in your brain's reward center is to consciously focus your thoughts on another person during sex.' These guides are all carefully phrased to present the problem as gender-neutral, but research on male and female attitudes toward casual sex, combined with what we know about the sociosexuality gap, makes clear that what is really happening here is that it is overwhelmingly women who are being advised to emotionally cripple themselves in order to gratify men.
Research suggests that women possess higher levels of the hormone oxytocin than men, the hormone that gained its first recognition as "the maternal hormone," given its role in childbirth and breastfeeding, but is now more broadly called "the love hormone" related its role in facilitating intimacy, bonding, emotional connection, affection and trust in both men and women. So when a sex guide describes how to "bio-hack your brain" to enjoy casual sex, that's a legit description. The sexual revolution is asking us, mainly women, to behave in ways that cut across our embodiment, asking us to sever connections with the hormonal systems that have evolved (via evolution, the gift of God, or both at the same time) to promote intimacy, trust, and love in sexual relations.
To be clear, I'm not rushing here, as a Christian, to trumpet the victory of the traditional Christian sexual ethic, which prioritizes love over orgasm, over the sexual revolution. My question here comes from being a psychologist. Specifically, what are the physical and mental health consequences of a sexual culture where the hormonally-based longings of body and soul are consistently suppressed and mortified? This can't be a recipe for mental and physical health.
Does that mean that sex needs to be restricted to marriage? Listen, I'll let you make your own call about that. I'm not a culture warrior. I want to traffic more in wisdom than moral absolutes. My point here is simply to note that the longing to connect sex with love isn't the product of evangelical purity culture. The desire to connect sex to love comes from your body. And I think we should listen to the wisdom of the body.
When a young woman falls in love with her sexual partner, she's not crazy. And a culture that calls her crazy and trains her to "bio-hack" her brain during sex is deeply broken.
