A Review of Louise Perry's The Case Against The Sexual Revolution
Are we now living through the consequences of a deregulated sexual marketplace and where do dating apps fit in?
'The Sexual Revolution' began in the 1960s as a popular movement away from a family-centred reproductive model to a sexual system based on female emancipation and greater bodily autonomy. Over half a century on, its effects have resulted in a culture where sex is a dominant theme but also commodified and ultimately somewhat devalued. Liberal feminism, the driving ideology behind the sexual revolution, has seemingly won out, having destigmatised the taboo of sex and made it both more inclusive and empowering.
But according to Louise Perry, this has been a bad thing, especially for women. Her core argument is that the sexual revolution has produced a small minority of male winners, in contrast to a majority of losers who include virtually all women and most men. In her view, the liberal feminist framework, which preaches the idea that women should view sex more like men, fails to acknowledge the sexual difference between men and women, and does not equip women with the necessary tools to deal with sex's consequences, both biological and emotional.
At the beginning of the book, Perry states: ‘’If the old quip tells us that a “conservative is just a liberal who has been mugged by reality,” then I suppose, at least in my case, that a post-liberal feminist is just a liberal feminist who has witnessed the reality of male violence up close.” The author is referring to her experience of working in a rape crisis centre. Whilst many women today are likely to see themselves as liberal feminists, Perry cautiously self-identifies as a 'carceral feminist' (known as a type of feminist that advocates for enhancing and increasing prison sentences for crimes of sexual violence).
With her blunt titles (see 'men and women are different', 'consent is not enough' and 'marriage is good'), Perry is unafraid to be forthright with difficult issues. The irony of the Sexual Revolution is that in ending the taboo of sex, it has arguably now become more taboo to critique many of its (mostly) contemporary aspects, such as porn, kinks and polyamory.
Perry charts the rise of Only Fans as a platform that allows 'creators' (overwhelmingly women) to earn money by giving 'users' (overwhelmingly men) subscription access to online content, most of which is pornographic. Citing a blogger's analysis of the Only Fans model, the distribution of income across the platform is highly unequal, with the top 1% of the creators making a third of the money. In economic terms, using the Gini coefficient, this would make Only Fans more unequal than South Africa, the least equal country in the world. The median creator only attracts thirty subscribers but finds themselves as equally publicly exposed as their more successful counterparts. Not only that but, according to Perry, it naturally damages creators’ long-term relationship prospects since a potential suitor wouldn’t look fondly on an Only Fans account, even if they may not admit this up front.
Readers of the book will quickly realise that it's aimed at women, and younger women in particular. If anything, and despite her claim to be a carceral feminist, Perry lets men off the hook, reserving her ire for liberal feminists. But beyond the 'listen to your mother' and 'what I wish I told my younger self' tone, there are takes on an accessible topic that are intensely thought-provoking.
The strength of Perry's arguments are how they link the Sexual Revolution to the bigger picture of liberalism itself and a capitalist way of life. Drawing on Patrick Deeney's description of economic liberalism and social liberalism as intertwined, with a liberal cultural elite working hand in hand, Perry notes that post-liberals are not only critical of the external constraints placed on individuals (such as location, family and traditions) but also a free market ideology that seeks to free individuals from these restrictions in order to maximise their ability to work and consume. "Of course the factory owner supports free marketisation, and of course his wage slave disagrees - the pike and the minnow have different economic interests. This is also true in the sexual marketplace, which was once strictly regulated but has now been made (mostly) free". By comparing the sexual marketplace to the wider economy, Perry emphasises that "the classes are not the workers and the bourgeoisie but rather men and women - or, more precisely, the group of people who have done particularly well out of the free marketisation of sex are men high in the personality trait that psychologists call 'sociosexuality': the desire for sexual variety." As such, the natural result of a deregulated sexual marketplace is an uneven spread of sexual partners, between the sociosexual group and the remainder.
The Sexual Revolution has developed in several ways. According to Perry, this began with the Playboy era, followed by the proliferation of pornography in video form and then cultural embodiments of liberal feminism such as Carrie Bradshaw in 'Sex in the City'. An overlooked feature of Perry's characterisation of the Sexual Revolution is the advent of dating apps, which is presumably put down to her non-use, although later in the book she explicitly recommends not using them.
When the book was published, towards the end of 2022, the world of dating had become hugely digitalised. Previously, most people would meet future partners via friends or work and the concept of dating apps (or simply "the apps") was either not taken seriously or stigmatised as something self-respecting people wouldn't sign up to. The past decade or so, sped up by the consequences of Covid lockdowns, has led to a remarkable transformation in how we (at least in the UK and North America) approach meeting people in search of a romantic connection. An estimated 40% of new relationships in the US now begin online. In the UK, it is projected that over half of relationships now formed will have been started from a digital connection, compared to only 19% between 2005 and 2014. The idea is simple: you create a profile and begin interacting with other users by swiping or tapping 'like' according to whether you want to match with that person or not. In essence, the process is distilled into a methodically crude activity where human instinct dictates the desire for connection, typically via the selection of extrinsic qualities such as physical appearance over more intrinsic values and traits. The result is a Hobbesian free-for-all set within a fully deregulated sexual marketplace which has been brought about via the championing of liberal feminism, as critiqued by Perry.
Whilst Perry does not address the ubiquity of dating apps, she outlines how the pre-app world was better at self-regulation. Before dating apps, the more traditional methods of meeting potential new partners were backed up by a system of self-regulating forces. For example, if you were dating within a friendship group, word would get out if someone had behaved poorly in an emotional or sexual sense and as a result person would gain a bad reputation in that circle. Similarly, predacious advances in the workplace would be monitored by fellow employees and, before long, gossip would travel round, warding others off. In an era preceding workplace romances and incestuous friendship groups, reputations were forged along familial or communitarian lines. Becoming persona non-grata in a small village would have had ruinous consequences. In the world of the apps, however, such a lack of key information is absent. So, behind an eye-catching profile could lie someone whose intentions and track-record are not so benign. Admittedly, dating apps have features which enable users to report profiles which may have engaged in problematic behaviour, but when no mutual connections are involved, hiding behind anonymity is easier and in some cases the damage may have already been done. Also, the reported user could change their details to create a new profile or simply move to a different app (much easier than changing friendship groups, jobs or places of residence). In this sense, dating apps exist in a world of imperfect information, where a lack of transparency can have negative consequences for both sides. Unlike the review system for, hotels, businesses, or even workplaces, which may not be perfect and potentially susceptible to manipulation, a rating or reputation is likely to give a good steering on their quality of service, the world of modern dating, which is characterised by a race to the bottom, simply has no equivalent or feedback mechanism, resulting in imperfect information and oftentimes misaligned outcomes.
If a lack of regulating forces in the dating marketplace is a feature that mirrors our economically liberal way of life, the accumulation of goods (ie. sexual partners) over time is another parallel aspect that merits close inspection. Orion Taraban, a US-based psychologist who regularly posts content to YouTube, uses a brutally reductive pair of analogies to theorise that men are likely to view sexual relationships in the way they treat money, whereas women are likely to approach a potential relationship as they would a job. Or as a social media and dating influencer put it, men are more like stockbrokers, whilst women taken on the role of venture capitalists (short term vs. long term). This level of transactionality certainly may not be romantic, but it can be a useful framework to analyse where society may be heading following the Sexual Revolution and the deregulation of a sexual marketplace dominated by dating apps. Using Taraban's analogy, men are happy to accumulate sexual partners if they are able to, because not doing so would be like turning down free money. This is the mentality behind the sociosexual men who Perry heralded as the main winners of the Sexual Revolution.
In the ultra competitive world of the dating apps, the accumulation of many hook-ups by a few men is to some extent borne out by recent data. According to a study in 2022, the percentage of ‘sexless’ men (defined as those not having had sex within the past twelve months) is close to a third - ten percentage points higher than women at 18%. Assuming an equal spread of men and women along heterosexual lines and honest answers in the study, such figures could be put down to the fact that some women may be simultaneously counting the same man as a sexual partner. If not, then it may be explained by a scenario whereby some men are able to acquire a new sexual partner more quickly. If society is becoming more polygamous, the apparent popularity of the hypermasculine ex-kickboxer and pimp Andrew Tate among his often young and impressionable male followers begins to make more sense. Tate's boasts of maintaining multiple female adorers is the logical conclusion of the continuation of a deregulated sexual marketplace where the boundaries of winners and losers have become further entrenched. Using an economic metaphor of the capitalist age, Tate is an oligarch who hogs human resources at the expense of others. In a society like ours, corporations have grown ever larger, and the individuals who hold their capital have grown richer.
Similarly, the phenomenon of the ‘pick-up artist’ gained popularity during the era of the Sexual Revolution. Known as a person (normally male) who seeks to find multiple sexual partners, their metric for success is by its nature rooted in the goal of accumulation - ie. quantity over quality. Dating apps, too, map and record our progress in terms of the number of likes and matches, and their spread, too, is naturally unequal since users are sorted according to their perceived value in the sexual marketplace. Whilst not precluding the right to have sex, in its attempt to spread the prevalence of sex as an activity, the Sexual Revolution has bred resentment among the have-nots, giving rise to polarisation along both male and female lines.
Much of this disillusionment tends to occupy corners of the internet in anonymous forums. Among these is ‘Men Going Their Own Way’, which counts 66,000 subscribers on Reddit. The movement which envisages a society without women makes more sense when viewed as a quest for communitarian support in an increasingly atomised society. The group’s female equivalent, with approximately ten times fewer members, describes itself as ‘a community of women supporting other women who wish to live independently from men and relationships with them). But while such sentiments have traditionally been limited to the fringe, might they be seeping into the mainstream?
A February 2023 article in The Guardian by Martha Gill, which after recognising the falling birth rates in the Western world, offered a radical solution. She suggested incentivising women to raise children by themselves. In many instances, women have begun to out-earn their male counterparts by their 30s and finding the right man has, according to Gill, become much harder. The solution, which is unlikely to suit single men, the overworked single mother, or the prospective children, is further evidence of the polarisation caused by the fallout from the Sexual Revolution.
Perhaps the weakness of Perry's book is her relative lack of solutions compared with its explanation of how we got to where we are. The final chapter is dedicated to re-endorsing the importance of marriage and emphasises the value of monogamy. Despite its historical track-record, an overly enforced version would take away the gains of the Sexual Revolution that most can agree are still desired and progressive. Beyond these traditional macro solutions lie a number of overly-simplistic micro-solutions - 'stop watching porn', 'don't use dating apps' etc, and if 'consent is not always enough', how do you intervene in a private setting to judicate and authorise sex? Nobody wants a ‘bedroom ombudsman’. It's also not clear what 'carceral feminism' looks like in practice, both in a legal and societal sense.
Nevertheless, Louise Perry's fresh thinking on a topic that is a cornerstone of humanity is welcome. The effects of the Sexual Revolution, of course, do not suit everyone - but all of us are now seemingly stuck in its post-liberal fallout.