T
he sexual revolution of the
1960s has long been seen as
bringing liberation for women.
Suddenly they could prioritise
careers over a family, choose
who they wanted to sleep with
— and when, if ever, they had children.
Perhaps most of all, it made sex fun.
Louise Perry doesn’t see it that way.
In her book The Case Against the Sexual
Revolution she sets out to convince
young women that these freedoms have
hidden costs, and that they should
recover the almost extinct values of
chastity, dignity and self-control.
Her mission is to make women — and
men — “happier and saner people”. To
do this she believes we need to reject
our hook-up culture, which normalises
sleeping with a new person every week,
stop watching porn and choking each
other in bed, quit pretending that prosti-
tution is a job like any other, and
re-establish marriage as a serious, life-
long commitment.
It’s a combination of beliefs that will
outrage almost everyone. Radical femi-
nists, the old-guard 1960s firebrands,
will agree with her on porn, but be
aghast by the chapter on marriage;
social conservatives will love the mar-
riage chapter, but bristle at Perry’s
approval of abortion; the new genera-
tion of liberal feminists, who have
known nothing but sexual freedom,
may well despise it all.
When I meet the 30-year-old writer,
though, she seems calm about the tor-
rent of criticism she’s about to face. “In
the earlier stages of writing I had that
feeling of walking on eggshells and
being worried I’d piss off everyone...
But in the end I just wrote what I
thought was true.”
The Case Against the Sexual Revolu-
tion is explicitly directed towards
young women who have grown up in a
world of PornHub, OnlyFans and Tin-
der; 21st-century sexual freedom has
not been liberating for them at all, but
instead benefited men, Perry believes.
She provides a list of 11 rules for young
women in the epilogue, including: “Getdrunk or high in private and with
female friends rather than in public or
in mixed company”; “Avoid being
alone with men [you] don’t know”;
“Hold off on having sex with a new boy-
friend for at least a few months”;
“Don’t use dating apps”; and “Only
have sex with a man if you think he
would make a good father to your chil-
dren”. I can almost hear the cries of
outrage from my female friends.
Perry didn’t always hold such con-
servative beliefs. The New Statesman
columnist went to the School of Orien-
tal and African Studies in London,INTERVIEW
Britain’s most radical university, where
she gained a degree in women’s stud-
ies. To begin with she conformed with
the standard feminist views of her
peers: porn is great, BDSM is fun, sex
work is work. But then she started vol-
unteering for the National Rape Crisis
Helpline. “That was a turning point,”
she tells me. All the feminist theory she
was studying had “no relevance...
there was nothing in there about sexual
violence, it didn’t map on to reality.”
Now Perry is offending both liberal
and radical feminists with her belief
that rapists are born, not made. She
links the crime back to biology, reject-
ing the prevailing view that our sexist
culture encourages men to rape. Evolu-
tionary theory, she explains, shows
that rape confers a selection advantage
on men, giving them more opportuni-
ties to pass on their genes. In other
words sexual violence is rational. It’s
no coincidence, she says, that women
are most likely to be raped between the
ages of 12 and 30 — their fertile years.
That’s a horrifying thought. But,
bringing together various surveys, Perry
reckons about 10 per cent of men are
actual rapists, and about a third of men
exist in a grey area where they would
consider rape if they knew they could
get away with it. A scary figure, but she
reminds us that it also means that two
thirds of men would not consider rape.
How to deal with the ones who do?
Perry, whose husband is a police
officer, is very clear: prison — for life, if
needs be. When it comes to preven-
tion, Perry thinks consent workshops,
which teach young people how to
check that their partner really wants to
have sex, are useless. “If we think that
the problem is young men being really
horny and larger and more aggressive
than young women, then things like
gender-neutral bathrooms in school
are the stupidest things ever.”
Perry also wants to turn back the
clock on casual sex, pornography, sex
scenes on TV and prostitution. Natu-
rally her mission draws comparisons to
a certain conservative activist who
from the 1960s onwards started trying
to get sex off our screens, but was also
virulently homophobic. “I’m not Mary
Whitehouse,” she says laughing, and
she’s not. Perry isn’t religious or homo-
phobic, and besides, she looks nothinglike Whitehouse. “I get called vanilla
and frigid, but that doesn’t sting.”
When questioned on specifics, how-
ever, Perry’s views about on-screen sex
are not that different to those of the
evangelical Whitehouse. We are being
exposed to more and more explicit
content in our everyday lives — every-
thing from lingerie and perfume
adverts to Fifty Shades of Grey — and
this deadens our responses to actual
sex, she argues, destroying our roman-
tic relationships.
Should we ban it, then? She pauses.
“I’m not sure if I want to bring back the
old classification board... but either
you have centralised censorship or you
have a free market, and the free market
is producing this horror show.”
Perry is dismayed that the #MeTooLouise Perry is a women’s studies graduate from our most
radical university and a New Statesman columnist. So why is
she urging women to switch off porn and get married?
LAURA HACKETT
INTERVIEW
The battle for the heart of feminism
is heating up, sparking a publishing
boom in books from all corners of
the movement.Women Don’t Owe You Pretty
by Florence Given
This is peak liberal feminism — all
self-love. You don’t need armpit hair
to be a feminist, Given says, but you
should check your “pretty privilege”,
which she admits she has in spades.Trans by Helen Joyce
Joyce studies the impact of trans
activism and ideology on schools,
hospitals, workplaces and laws from
a gender-critical perspective.The Transgender Issue
by Shon Faye
Faye outlines the problems faced
by trans people in housing,
healthcare, education and the
prison system. Her solution? Abolish
prisons, the police and capitalism.The Ethical Stripper
by Stacey Clare
Clare reveals the horrors of the
sex industry today — where dancers
pay to work — but argues for its
complete legalisation.Material Girls by Kathleen Stock
Stock raises concerns about trans
children making permanent
changes to their bodies in this
rigorous academic book.A FEMINIST READING LIST
TOM STOCKILLI’M NOT THE NEW MARY
10 29 May 2022