Nona Willis Aronowitz

Could secular feminism and some kind of religion converge in a Sexual Revolution rethink?

Could secular feminism and some kind of religion converge in a Sexual Revolution rethink?

Attention journalists: Here are some chapter headings from the latest advice book on sex:

“Men and Women Are Different”

“Some Desires Are Bad”

“Loveless Sex Is Not Empowering”

“Violence Is Not Love”

“People Are Not Products”

“Marriage Is Good”

“Sex Must Be Taken Seriously”

“Listen to Your Mother”

To which geezers in The Guy’s swiftly passing generation can only respond with something that, today, would be #DUH.”

Yet Americans who’ve grown up since the blitz of the 1960s Sexual Revolution have been immersed in a culture that promotes and expects commitment-free hook-ups and casual sex, even very early in a relationship.

Turns out women feel disheartened, dishonored and coerced by this supposed “freedom,” and have good reason to be, says Britain’s Louise Perry in her spirited book “The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century” (Polity Press). She assails so-called “liberal feminism” for routinely handing countless women a raw deal.

Her preachments will be routine common sense for folks who resist fierce cultural pressure and remain guided by religious teachings of the past few thousand years.

What might especially intrigue reporters is that Perry, a fellow journalist with the Daily Mail and the New Statesman and an anti-rape crusader, makes a thoroughly secularized case that nonetheless coincides at many points with a religious tradition toward which she expresses zero trace of fondness.


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