Losing the Sexual Revolution

I surrender. What now?

Survivor of the Sexual Revolution

It is finally official. We have lost the sexual revolution.

What now?

For my generation, it was the great experiment, the great undertaking.

I was one of the first in my town to sign up when the revolution came around. As early as fourth grade, others students exclaimed in surprise when I wore a skirt because I wore pants so often, something that was still quite rare.

I was known to be more liberal, more of a “Women’s Libber” than many of my classmates.

I was chasing the proverbial cannons. I was cutting edge.

Cheerful soldier girl…having no idea what horrors were to come.

It was in college that I first saw the faint glimmering of the defeat that was to come, though I did not recognize it for what it was. I went to my first…and last Feminist meeting. I was so excited to go. I was a Feminist, right? A cutting-edge one, right?

I never went again.

Because it became clear during the meeting that the Feminists didn’t just want to be equal to men. They hated men.

I loved men.

I just wanted them to respect me.

Jump ahead some decades, and the world is in ruins. The battle is still raging, but the war is lost.

Because either we are going to surrender and admit that we were wrong, or there isn’t going to be any humanity left.

Watching all the peoples, around the globe, who bought into Feminism and Free Love stop reproducing is one of the greatest proofs of the existence of the Powers of Darkness I have ever seen.

Free Love, or more specifically, Free Sex has led to…No Sex.

I didn’t see that coming.

(Author R. A. Lafferty did. Huh.)

No sex. No children.

No children. No future.

None.

Armies of vat-raised fembots—they understand why fish don’t need bicycles

No matter how enticing your ideology is, a day will come when you are no longer here to promote it.

Unless they start growing children in labs, which is going to be its own kind of defeat. (I would have thought this was a joke a few years ago, but now it is disturbingly near.)

I look at the result, the lack of support for men, the misery of women, the unhappiness of children, and I throw up my hands and admit defeat.

I surrender.

But I find myself left wondering, what now?

How do we go back to a society that honors chastity and marriage?

How do we go forward to a society that honors these things and has respect for both sexes?

These musing came to the foreground recently, when I found myself in a discussion about a professor who had an affair with a student in the 1980s. I do not yet know the details of the real case, so nothing I say here is a reflection on that case—in any way. What follows is only some musings of my own as I struggle with the general subject of the Sexual Revolution, how to come to a ceasefire, and how best to rebuild.

Because nothing encapsulates the pitfalls of the Sexual Revolution better than a relationship between a high-status male (such as a professor) and a low-status female (such as one of his adoring students.)

On one hand, we have lost the sexual revolution. I think this means we must admit that vulnerable college-age girls do need protecting. A man in a position of authority, such as a professor, should not be taking advantage of the vulnerable nature of his charges.

It is an inappropriate and immoral thing to do.

On the other hand, I remember what it was like back then.

I remember the outrage and arrogance with which all of we college women objected to the very idea that we could not make up our own minds, that we did not have the “freedom” to carry on with a professor or whomever we wanted.

We believed we had total what is now called agency.

I certainly believed that.

Do you know who else believed he had total “agency”? Milo Yiannopolis.

Milo Yiannopolis was on top of the world. He could go anywhere. He could say anything.

Then, he couldn’t.

The comments that brought him down—and his fall was a personal blow to me because he was the only person within a wide circle of acquaintances of acquaintances, who actually had a mouthpiece to the outer world. When he fell, we lost the only voice we had—came when he made a comment about thirteen-year-olds being able to consent to sex.

Only the quote had been shared out of context.

Milo had been talking about himself, about the age at which he himself was seduced.

But like us college girls, he still believed when he said this that he had freely made a choice at thirteen, the same way an adult might.

Some years later, he found himself in a position to be protecting a sixteen-year-old boy, and he realized what a child this boy was and how wrong he had been when he thought he had been old enough to be an equal partner in the seduction, not a victim.

So I look back at my college days, and I think: maybe we did not have the wisdom we thought we did.

And yet…

We did think we had it. We did claim we did.

The college took us at our word. There was no rule saying such a thing was against the rules. In fact, when petitions were made to the school to request that the professors not be allowed to date students, they was refused.

So professor/student relationships were legal.

So were the professors in the wrong, under those circumstances, for dating the students?

It was not forbidden.

It was certainly still unwise.

Just to be clear, I am not talking of situations where students were raped or pressured or treated in some matter that was probably illegal even at the time. I am just talking of situations where a professor had an, at least, nominally consensual relationship with a student.

If professors were seducing students, and it was legal, what should our response when someone complains now?

Do we judge the situation by modern standards? Or do we take into consideration what was thought—for many of us, what we ourselves thought—at the time?

Do we show unwavering support for the victim?

Supporting victims is a good thing.

But what about cases where neither we nor the person themselves thought of the person as a victim at the time?

Does that change our stance?

Do we stand up for the professor who did not do anything that was not allowed at the time?

Does the fact that we now think he is wrong mean we should publically condemn him, or worse? Should men go be fired or go to prison for behaviors that we abhor now but cheered then?

These are weighty questions.

Whatever the answer…and I do not know what the answer is…I think the more pressing question is (since the matter of what happened in the past is out of our personal hands):

What should we do now?

Do we go back to chaperones?

Do we shame people who have sex outside of marriage? Arrest them?

Do we try to use praise rather than shame? (That was working to stop racism until around 2008.)

What do we do?

How can we find our way back from the battlefield?