We now reach Chapter 4 of Louise Perry's book The Case Agains the Sexual Revolution, a chapter entitled "Loveless Sex is Not Empowering." And a reading note: there's profanity in this post.
In this chapter, Perry is going to return to and dwell upon the sexual differences between men and women, using those differences to make criticisms about modern discourse and expectations about sex. We've already introduced and discussed some of these topics, but Chapter 4 is the deeper dive.
Perry begins Chapter 4 by describing how women today are now being asked to "have sex like men," and by that she means causal, meaningless sex, where the body of another person is simply used to achieve an orgasm. Casual, meaningless sex isn't masturbation exactly, but it's pretty close to masturbation in both its agenda and motivational profile.
Perry's description of "having sex like a man" comes from the first episode of Sex in the City, that agitprop for the sexual revolution, where the protagonist Carrie Bradshaw stops looking for "Mr. Right" and resolves to just start enjoying sex. That's what the sexual revolution is all about, right? So Carrie hooks up with an ex-boyfriend, accepting his offer of oral sex. Afterwards, she leaves before he can experience his own orgasm. Reflecting on that asymmetry, Carrie shares with the viewers her emancipatory insight: "As I began to get dressed, I realized that I'd done it. I'd just had sex like a man. I left feeling powerful, potent and incredibly alive. I felt like I owned this city. Nothing and no one could get in my way."
In describing Carrie Bradshaw, along other depictions of female sexual agency on TV, Perry describes how popular culture is placing before a generation of women the ideal of "having sex like a man" and what that entails:
[These female TV] protagonists demonstrate their sexual agency by having loveless, brusque sex with men they don't like. They show no regard for their partners' intimate lives and discard them immediately afterwards. The purpose of the encounter is both physical gratification [and] psychological gratification. They treat their partners as means, not ends, out of a desire for short-term pleasure. Thus it seems that what the phrase having sex 'like a man' really means, at least in these popular representations, is having sex like an arsehole.
Now, how did this trend come about? Perry goes on to describe how men have gotten away with this sort of behavior for generations. And not surprisingly, a lot of rage has built up. Justifiably so. Consequently, what is depicted on shows like Sex in the City is a sort of revenge fantasy. The girl is the one now using and discarding the guy. And no doubt, there's a thrill to seeing that play out onscreen. How's it feel, guys, when the shoe is on the other foot?
And yet, while a revenge fantasy has its gratifications, Kill Bill and The Count of Monte Cristo come to mind, revenge isn't the best foundation upon which to build a healthy sexual ethic. Becoming an asshole just isn't an effective way to bring more joy into your life.
And yet, "having sex like a man," and thereby getting back at men for generations of abuse, is precisely what many feminists encourage. Perry summarizes their argument:
[L]iberal feminism understands having sex 'like a man' as an obvious route by which women can free themselves from old-fashioned patriarchal expectations of chastity and obedience. If you believe that there is nothing wrong, per se, with instrumentalising other people in pursuit of your own sexual gratification, then this makes sense. And if you believe that men and women are both physically and psychologically much the same, save for a few hang-ups absorbed from a sex-negative culture, then why wouldn't you want women to have access to the kind of sexual fun that men have always enjoyed (the high-status ones, at least)? The position is purely reactive: since women have historically been punished for this kind of sexual behavior, liberation must surely mean not only an end to such punishment but also an endorsement of what was once forbidden: fucking back.
Again, given our long history of slut-shaming and scarlet lettering, we can admit to the cathartic pleasures in fucking back, imaginatively onscreen and in one's own personal life. Our double standards in regards to sexual shaming do need to be dismantled. Keen on many people's minds here is how these double standards create the noxious effects we find within evangelical purity culture.
And yet, using your body and emotional health to "fuck back" might not be a recipe for safety and health. Throwing your body and soul into the maw of hook up culture to advance the cause of female liberation might not lead you to happiness and wholeness. Perry describing the risks and costs of "having sex like men" upon young women:
[The] liberal feminist argument leads us to conclude that, if you are going to destroy the sexual double standard, then you must use your own body, and the bodies of other women, as a battering ram against the patriarchal edifice. The advice to young women is that you must 'fuck back' if you want to be a good feminist, and mostly it will turn out Ok--and when it doesn't? When a sexual encounter turns out to be 'not-ideal', or worse? Well then, we must fall back on liberal feminism's old standby: 'teach men not to rape.'
And the concerns here go beyond physical safety, how a young woman alone with a man might find her attempt at "fucking back" go sideways. Beyond physical risks there are also steep emotional costs in having loveless sex, costs that affect women, by and large, more than men. We'll turn to those costs as we go deeper into Chapter 4.
Today, then, just the conclusion that if the ethic of the sexual revolution means treating people as disposable and discardable, is it any wonder why modern sex is experienced as so unsafe and unsatisfying?
If we're telling our young people, both boys and girls, to have sex like assholes the outcomes here seem pretty predictable.
