Hooking Up

Was it all just a con? Were women conned by the sexual revolution and feminism into engaging in sexual behaviors they did not want?

Now, writing in the Wall Street Journal, Louise Perry suggests that the sexual revolution has hurt women. We add that the unholy alliance between said revolution and feminism is the true culprit.

Was it not feminism that told women to overcome modesty and to have sex like men. Apparently, this meant, whether they wanted it or not. 

Feminists created a culture where, as Heather Mac Donald astutely argued, the default was no longer No. In the new modern era the default is Yes. 

Women who do not wish to drop to their knees in the frat house rest room will find themselves rejected by certain members of the male species. Yet, as Perry points out, hooking up is so pervasive that it is not a grand challenge for any man to find someone who will do whatever.

In the West, hookup culture is normative among adolescents and young adults. Although it is possible for young women to opt out, research suggests that only a minority do. Absent some kind of religious commitment, this is now the “normal” route presented to girls as they become sexually active. And hookup culture demands that women suppress their natural instincts in order to match male sexuality and thus meet the male demand for no-strings sex.

This fails to consider the differences between male and female sexuality.

As Perry points out, the calculus of procreation makes it that men are more indiscriminate about what they do with whom. Women are more discerning and require more of a commitment. 

As Donald Symons argued cogently in his book, The Evolution of Human Sexuality, the best way to define the difference between male and female sexual behaviors is to see how men and women behave sexually when the other sex is not involved.

In that case, women will opt for relationships over orgasmic frequency. And men, especially those of the gay persuasion, will prefer to hook up.

In truth, the sexual revolution and feminism have turned modern women into gay men. Without their having to undergo a transition.

Of course, many hookups involve what one may call foolproof contraception. Yet, Perry argues that women whose hookups involve intercourse, do not enjoy the experience.

Yet studies consistently find that following hookups, women are more likely than men to experience regret, low self-esteem and mental distress. Female pleasure is rare during casual sex. Men in casual relationships are just not as good at bringing women to orgasm in comparison with men in committed relationships: In first-time hookups, only 10% of women orgasm, compared with 68% of women in long-term relationships. These figures don’t suggest a generation of women reveling in sexual liberation. Instead, a lot of women seem to be having unpleasant sex out of a sense of obligation.

One should emphasize that when we read the studies showing that today’s young women are suffering from considerable mental health issues, we should understand that one part of the problem is the way they have been living their burgeoning sexuality.

If this does not represent stealth misogyny the term has no meaning.

One feels some considerable sympathy for the women who have gotten caught up in this vortex. And yet, given that this new culture was produced by women who roundly repudiate traditional culture, and especially the patriarchy, men do not need to feel responsible for the mess.

If you’re a young woman launched into a sexual culture that is fundamentally not geared toward protecting your safety or well-being, in which you are considered valuable only in a very narrow, physical sense, and if your basic options seem to be either hooking up or celibacy, then a comforting myth of “agency” can be attractive. 

Too many young women today ignore the fact that men are generally much better suited to emotionless sex and find it much easier to regard their sexual partners as disposable.

If you wander back in time to a day when women associated sexual congress with marriage, you will find yourself thinking some highly inconvenient thoughts. The old marriage ceremony, the one that involved consummation, was based on the quaint notion that a woman would not have procreative sex until her suitor vowed to commit himself to her, and did so in an elaborate public ceremony. 

The marital commitment was not for the evening or even the weekend. It was for life. 

So, time have changed. No woman today would long survive in the dating market, Perry tells us, if she observed the same standards. 

And yet, wherever did we get the idea that the woman who awaited a firm public commitment was being oppressed by the patriarchy while a woman who happily retired to the rest room to have sex involving foolproof contraception is liberated.

Which one is a tool of the patriarchy? Which one is so anxious about receiving male attention that she will do just about anything to please a man.

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