movement has not put people off
watching sex scenes. “I really feel for
actors. Who would have thought 20
years ago that signing up to be an actor
would mean basically signing up to be a
porn star?” The difference, of course, is
that the sex isn’t real, but Perry doesn’t
back down. “From what I’ve heard it’s
not far off. And it clearly is sometimes a
source of distress for actors and an
opportunity for sex pests.”
Perry is right that Hollywood has a
huge sexual harassment problem —
#MeToo has shown us that. But
wouldn’t censoring films and TV
shows, like the wildly popular Normal
People, for instance, remove the oppor-
tunity for women to express their own
sexual desires? Reading Perry’s book it
can be easy to forget that women enjoyPerry believes rapists are
born, not made, linking
the crime to biology
Louise Perry ’I get called vanilla
and frigid, but that doesn’t sting’sex at all. “I find the ‘women have
desire too’ thing a bit boring,” she says.
“We’ve been banging on about it for 70
years... That battle has been won.”
And yet Perry is clearly uncomforta-
ble with the darker side of female sexu-
ality. The erotic bestsellers women are
reading today — Fifty Shades of Grey for
mums, and Sarah J Maas’s sexy fantasy
fiction for their daughters — are heavily
focused on BDSM, which Perry believes
is little more than abuse. She helped to
found the campaign group We Can’t
Consent to This, which aims to eradi-
cate the use of “rough sex” defences to
the killing or harming of women.
Perry is eloquent, empathetic — and
very persuasive. I was surprised to find
myself agreeing with her on most
things: porn is clearly a dangerous,chapter, entitled Marriage Is Good, and
I bristled.
Perry argues that while it is impor-
tant to have divorce as an option for
people in terrible, abusive marriages,
the easy availability of divorce under
any circumstances has killed off the
institution of marriage — and that’s bad
news for women. She has a piece of
simple advice for the young women
reading her book: “Get married. And
do your best to stay married.”
What happened to decades of femi-
nist work to ensure marriage was not
the only option? Why would you tell
young women to get married, rather
than, say, pursue careers? “This idea
that marriage is inherently oppressive to
women I don’t think is true,” Perry says.
In her book she races through
statistics highlighting the benefits of
marriage: almost half of divorced peo-
ple in the UK regret it, fatherless boys
are more likely to go to prison, and
fatherless girls are more likely to
become pregnant in their teens. She
even lauds the hidden benefits of shot-
gun marriages and the stigma around
single motherhood. “In an era without
contraception,” Perry writes, “a prohi-
bition on sex before marriage served
female, not male, interests.” I’m not
sure how Ireland’s mother and baby
homes, for example, which locked up
unmarried mothers and removed their
children, served female interests. Perry
nods. “What haunts me is: do we have
to choose between Magdalene laun-
dries and PornHub?”
Neither system is good, on that we
agree. But the alternative isn’t clear, and
for Perry that question has become
even more personal. She had her first
child while writing the book. Has that
altered her perspective? “Yes, to the
extent that I had a baby boy. It made me
think a bit more about the way that men
are harmed by this culture.”
The Case Against the Sexual Revolu-
tion is unapologetically focused on
improving women’s health and happi-
ness. Will it work? The tide does seem
to be turning in our attitudes. Young
people are having less sex; they’re wor-
ried about age gaps and power imbal-
ances in their relationships; and a
recent BBC documentary on Mary
Whitehouse even asked if she was
ahead of her time. Perry may have pre-
dicted a new age of sexual puritanism,
and perhaps it will make us happier.
But I don’t think I’ll be following all of
her rules: can’t there be room for a little
bit of fun as well? cThe Case Against the Sexual Revolution is
published on Friday by Polity at £14.99WHITEHOUSE, BUT...
exploitative industry; prostitution isn’t
just a normal job (or else why would we
be so outraged by landlords asking for
sex as payment?); and hook-up culture
has practically no benefits for women
(only 10 per cent of women orgasm
during a one-night stand; no prizes for
guessing that figure is much higher
among men). Then I got to the final29 May 2022 11