Why do I feel a sense of sweet vindication in reading this? I get called crazy for saying the same thing (albeit in a decidedly different way). Maybe Margaret Wente gets called crazy too. I’ll never know. But it’s nice to see these thoughts in print in the Globe:
Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy sexual liberation as much as I’d hoped. Eventually, it occurred to me that it seemed to be working better for guys than it was for me. Men, I noticed, tended to agree that sex without meaning was pretty swell. Women tended to agree that sex without meaning was impossible. Although we approved of it in theory, we were all too susceptible to messy emotional entanglements. …
If men and women were equal in their sexual desires, we’d have a different conversation. But as that famous piece of doggerel goes, Hogamus higamus/ Men are polygamous;/ Higamus hogamus/ Women monogamous. The long history of civilization is in many ways a progressive effort to rein in the indiscriminate (and frequently destructive) sexual desires of men. This effort, no doubt, frustrates men, but it’s good for women and children, and also for society.
Besides, there’s something about monogamy that some long-married people have discovered (much to their surprise). It’s the same thing Dan Savage tells gay kids: It gets better.
To summarize: “Sexual liberation” liberates men and hurts women. That’s my view and I’m sticking to it. (I might add I also think it hurts men in a long term, societal sort of way, when men find themselves to be 40 and living wholly unfulfilling lives in the fast lane, or in the not-so-fast lane as the stats showing men living in mama’s basement will attest, but this is a short blog post and I won’t get into that here.)
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Although I agree with the gist of what you are saying, I wish you wouldn’t paint all men with the same brush. “Sexual liberation” liberates *some* men, namely those who think it is OK to treat women as disposable sex objects. It does nothing for those of us who believe that sex requires an a priori commitment and are willing to excercise the necessary level of self control. In fact, it makes life more difficult for us because we have to live in a world that is filled with women who are not willing to excercise that level of self control.
Fair enough, Dan. Point well made. Thank goodness for men like you! And I’m aware there are many of you. The sexual revolution did a number of both genders in so many ways.