The undermining of traditional ethics in the sexual revolution brings more harm than good and results in children being the greatest “losers,” a British feminist has argued.
Louise Perry, journalist and author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, told the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference on Nov. 1 that most women are not the winners in the sexual liberation, but rather some individual men.
Ms. Perry, who is the director of The Other Half, a London-based feminist think tank, told the panel that while the rejection of traditional sexual norms is at the core of the sexual revolution, it was traditions that were the “experiments that worked.”
“The idea that we can just throw them out the window and have one very simple rule, which is that everyone should be able to consent. And then apart from that, you sort of make it up as you go along,” she said.
“What we have found, having rejected the sexual norms of the past, is that they were there for a reason.”
The British author also noted that children lose out the most because of the sexual revolution, pointing to the high rates of fatherlessness. She added that traditional sexual ethics fostered a “good culture” that encourages people to “make decisions that are good for us long-term and also good for our descendants.”
‘Transhumanist Revolution’
The sentiment was echoed by British columnist and author of the book Feminism Against Progress, Mary Harrington, who argued that technological development was the foundation of an “illusion” where people could escape traditional sexual norms by trying to “flatten the fundamental differences between the sexes.”She compared this process to a “trans humanist revolution.”
“Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, we’ve been using technology to overcome the apparent limits of the human condition,” Ms. Harrington told the panel.
“The sexual revolution is distinctive because that was the point at which we turned those technologies inward to the human body, you know, in that sense, I see the sexual revolution more accurately as the transhumanist revolution.
“That was the 90s; we were 50 years into the transhumanist revolution. And we’ve been we’ve been living in that world for all of that time.”
The British writer argued that while technological advances seemed to have led to increased freedom in gendered relations, they didn’t necessarily lead to human flourishing.
“I would challenge everybody here to think to try and think as concretely as possible about what we really mean when we say progress,” she said.
“Do we just mean more freedom underwritten by technology?
“Because I would put it to you, based on the evidence from the sexual revolution 50 years of transhumanist revolution, that it comes with as many downsides as costs.”
Ms. Harrington noted that the challenge people face now is to grapple with technological advances and “reorder those technologies to human flourishing rather than to their individual liberties.”
