Louise Perry's politics — the same idea of Victorian-era law, women should be vigilant & in control of the situation
"the sexual revolution shackled my generation" - Louise Perry
"emotional lag"
post-1960s — then in 1980s "liberated women" (backlash)
old feelings associated w/ old norms
lagged about 20 years behind reality
Some things happening now
→ questions of laboring victims under patriarchy & whether casual sex is destroying society
pg. 10: Hera Cook's book "The Long Sexual Revolution"
→ growing use of birth control in 1700s
Eva Illouz — "Consuming the Romantic Ideal"
marketing, consumerist motifs & romance symbiosis in media
think tanks team up w/ Insta & TikTok.
“The fizzy allure of influencers solidifying into actual influence”
trad wives are also sex dolls — why?
Marilyn French's book "The Women's Room" / "The War Against Women"
politics & think tanks — women's rights get eroded through family-interest coded words
pg. 24: There's an inconsistency w/ people who want freedom (right-wing) for money-making but not for sex
libertarians in the strict sense would agree w/ both, but others say that markets & sex are different (power, harm)
historically right were for sexual freedom while left was skeptical of unregulated markets & sex industry and hookup culture. Now right sees sex marketized culture as bad, but now left & right are both suspicious of sexual freedom married to markets
It started out as free expression in the classical liberal John Stuart Mill sense, but now been taken over by sexual reactionaries using “anti-cancellation" rhetoric
Not about open expression, just being against sexual liberalization
Real free-speech movement would defend right to make porn
Millian tradition = state shouldn't interfere w/ individual choices that don't harm others.
freedom is freedom
Thatcherism was socially conservative while being economically libertarian, even though it doesn't have to be that way logically
The left thinks that free markets are exploitative
A consistency problem
Money-making power bleeds into sexual freedom
individual liberty & economic freedom line up
Also women who are free sexually also export that liberty to money-making
Being allowed to act as individualistic desires, "unnatural," selfish women — are full beings & more to give, unlike mandatory motherhood
It used to be enlightened self-interest before politicians severed connection between individual freedom & the collective good
John Stuart Mill argued that self-interest helped social progress
pg. 27: Marilyn French: "the circularity of women's problems" — feminist reactionaries in line w/ post-1970s feminist-conservative backlash (men are out of control!!)
Strimpel has same frustration that Harriet Taylor Mill had in 19th century
Harriet Taylor Mill: "liberty of choice"
"Enfranchisement of Women" book
only near-complete liberty of choice & now they are saying it is capitalist patriarchy
Taylor Mill's line is similar to reactionary feminism & the "natural"
1970's — a strand of feminism called "difference feminism", mothering, potential & reproductive characteristics requires a rewriting of society
A couple of soft spots: "Enfranchisement of Women" has something crossed out/underlined right after it that I couldn't recover, and "reactionary feminism" is my best guess at that word. Happy to zoom in if you want to verify either.
Susan Faludi's "Stiffed"
Currently trans rights issues are linked w/i post-1960s "insanity" regarding gender. They now think that casual sex and transgenderism are linked (also why there is a lot of media noise on the issue). But this is about identity politics not a failure of liberalism
Identity politics is Marxist
the feminist right thinks that history is everything after the period of defending biology's realness.
To them, it's all about rejecting reality
Views on motherhood change because cultural climate, political & religiously vogue. Right now, illiberal.
pg. 46: 250-year history of sexual change
1970s & 1980s — pill helped men b/c women couldn't say no
pg. 47: debates in 1890s — started argument that contraceptive technology makes women solely responsible for pregnancy. They also said that contraceptives makes sexual pleasure rational, scientific — WHAT???
pg. 47: Mary Harrington's stupid quote — why say this???
Harrington & humanism argument?
Sexual revolution happened when birth control became safe, not widespread. Misses the point.
1800's-1900's — men had more sex knowledge, but now it's women's issue?
pg. 47: how is sex worse?
Playboy & others reduced it to access & fleshly pleasure
MeToo highlighted link between feminist men & pathetic, coercive behavior. Abuse does not undermine value of sexual liberty or means to row back protections of sexual freedom.
pg. 52: Susan Faludi says science doesn't align w/ hormonal contraception stories. What does it say?
pg. 53 Authors need animals to explain human behavior & it went from pop anthropology to sociobiology
Sociobiology as response to feminist's desire for equality & justifies male dominance
If a woman says she enjoys casual sex, told she is lying to herself (because of sociobiology?)
They say there is a bell curve
and they bring this up to attack the idea that gender norms are not a function of biology
description, not an analysis?
Perry loves these bell curves
hard sciences are hard sciences but sociobiology, developmental psychology... studies get cherry-picked
left: biology isn't real right: natural women's role
Right — obsessed w/ testosterone, no interest in female hormones & insists on "hardwiring" (even though there is brain plasticity & norm variability)
Lines up with Victorians writing about "hysteria" — proper sphere
feminist right says women are not suited to casual sex, based on "hardwiring" & so it must be bad for them & all its effects. It's paternalistic
reactionary feminists & manosphere both obsess about nature
Perry thinks the book “Against Our Will" rewrites biological urges in feminist terms (but this really highlights cultural effect)
rape is not motivated by male lust as evolutionary psychologists think (it's about power & violence)
What are their findings against the sexual revolution?
humans co-direct our own evolution & evolutionary psychology doesn’t bounce ideas of other fields like genetics, cognitive neuroscience, etc. So outdated, so why are feminists & the podcasts I like consulting it?
"The 7 sins of evolutionary psychology" by Jaak Panksepp
Pg. 61: the authors view is that it should not be accepted? Why? Because of linguistics?
Cordelia Fine "Delusions of Gender" says biologist Angus Bateman's research was cherry-picked from his fruit fly study (only graphs five and six) even though in the whole study benefits of females having multiple sex partners were shown
Biology as destiny? Why do they want a clear cut template & boxes for life?
"Socialization Theory" — there are no innate differences between men & women ↳ psychological
Perry thinks rape is still out there because of this?
Rebecca Jordan-Young book "Brain Storm"
2000s — dominated by Peasean evolutionary biology and wrote lots of books about sex differences
Both can be true in women, desire for love & desire for casual sex
pg. 65: study that shows association between non-married sex partners & marriage rates is temporary?
Pre-enlightenment period believed that women were more lustful than men b/c of less rationality, but in 150 years that common idea flipped
Jordan-Young doesn't believe that there are sex differences, just that science hyper-fixates
pg. 67: take apart the construct. What is a construct? What is it that people believe is hardwired?
Strimpel thinks neoliberalism is great for women
Neoliberalism is not what its critics are saying it is. Hayek & Friedman both believed that economic freedom is a pre-requisite for a good life, not wealth maximizing
Critics believe that careerism, as well as motherhood, is a patriarchal capitalist concept b/c its within a neoliberal system
“Market forces" is one of the three forces that have shaped women's lives, along w/ medical developments & liberalization
Both Tracy Clark-Flory & Christine Emba believe we need to eradicate casual sex & that the sex revolution was a failure (I believe that it just hasn't been enough time to see)!
Tracy Clark-Flory in her memoir believes that this individualistic commercial feminism discards collective solution & she doesn't like that all the responsibility is on the women
there's a link between liberal markets, women as economic agents, & women's rights
Women were never exclusively confined to the home, but work was limited to marginal, unskilled, & poorly paid work
I decided I am a capitalist & not afraid of making money.
The problem isn't women working while mothering or being crushed by capitalism
pg. 80: The problem was combo of poverty, not believing women were capable, and a market that was over & under regulated
the patriarchal continuum which Judith Bennett came up with illustrated that when women were so successful in industries, they were eventually banned
pg. 84: The patriarchy is collectivist — it's the socialistic society that fits to replace itself instead of an individual autonomous one
The true definition by Hayek & Friedman: economics should be liberal & capitalist, w/i also a limited democracy & modest welfare state
Strimpel believes that the neoliberal ideology framework/theory is not what people are actually thinking about when they are making self-directed choices. They are not symptoms of false consciousness like many say and it’s patronizing. Just making trade offs, it enacting a hidden ideology. People aren’t thinking of themselves as "human capital"
Agency, not ideology
Ellsberg & Newport are more in line w/ Strimpel. It's not ideology, practical advice
Sociologist Arlie Hochschild came up w/ "emotional labor" concept!
OnlyFans income, pole dancing etc. is just serving the market. Strimpel thinks this framing is too total
Hochschild believes that feminism has been taken by the market
Old feminism: collective movement
New feminism: dating apps, activism
feminism's energy channeled into individual market transactions instead
Strimpel says that Hochschild's argument is persuasive but pushes back at the idea that all things listed as female empowerment is repression
The maximalist version: Not all monetization is victimhood
She critiques market-driven sexual culture that doesn't abandon female agency idea
the Greeks had a collectivist vision!
At first, socialism had theocratic roots
post-1960s, the personal became political
Since the 1960s, there's been angst towards many among feminists
pg. 96: what evidence is there that it's good to make money for women within regulated but liberal markets?
left-wing completism = until the whole system is changed, nobody will be free
Pg. 97: Capitalism helps the climate? Or is it just communist & socialistic societies that harm the climate b/c of tragedy of the commons — when property is communally owned, it is abused
pg. 97: Soviet production ethic thinks that nature is to be exploited & Strimpel thinks this would extend to the socialistic attitude towards women & women's bodies
Women are accused of false consciousness when they want reward for hard work & freedom & riches b/c these women have not eradicated female injustice & committed sin of selfishness. Apparently, choice feminism is a sin b/c it is selfish.
Agency is number one for me.
the left doesn't like neoliberalism b/c of the commodification of intimacy markets instead of home (both left & right think this environment is better). Left also doesn't like that the economic system pressures women into downgrading motherhood in favor of ambition and careerism!
I agree w/ the ‘lean in’ Sheryl Sandberg
The real issue is lacking understanding of how reproduction is so flexible & how statistics are being manipulated
Both left & right think surrogacy is sinful. For progressives, it’s paternalistic because, hello, bodily autonomy argument???
General unease about marketized systems
left talks a lot about reproductive pain & IVF gone wrong
Social media promotes underachievement & more bleak stories, disempowering
Confessional social media content like "get ready with me" “what I eat in a day” is imitation of real 2nd wave consciousness-raising (this modern version is self-focused rather than outward)
becomes a solipsistic rabbit hole — blots out real-world offers, binary thinking where bodies & biology are everything!
Addictive disempowerment, not self-expression
Her proposed antidote to the passive scroll → active/perform cycle is flow
An umbrella problem in disempowering approach to women's bodies & dislike of neoliberalism presents women as objectified & preyed upon by patriarchy & capitalism
It's fear of violence, objectification, trauma, advantage-taking, to be a female is to be afraid & to be physically ill-equipped.
Women are dangerous to themselves & to other women b/c of patriarchy & capitalism.
Louise Perry thinks that women are asking for sexual coercion & rape if a woman wants to be able to do anything she likes. Their solution is to correct men not to rape. But the solution is to embolden women
Progressive phrase "not your job"
It's a choice to emphasize women's physical vulnerabilities
Narrative of weakness enhances victimhood feeling
sex education & cultural messaging trains kids to see danger in unexpected sexual advances — interpretative framework shift, not reality
Strimpel cites a 2020 study saying no correlation between porn access & sexual violence starting in the 1970s. but the study does show a weak link for violent porn, not non-violent porn (a study she does mention in the footnotes I want to look up)
Radical feminists have expanded on Kant's idea of objectification as consequence of non-marital sex (b/c a person is cast aside after)
For these feminists, it is a totalizing phenomenon instead of just unromantic intercourse.
One of the most interesting points she makes in the book is that dating apps and digital spaces can be sites of agency, not just exploitation. This can coexist
tech infrastructure is sexist
the old script is the "commodification" framing
in online sexual norms — this idea of women must be chaste no longer applies here b/c anonymity of apps removes social cost of promiscuity (this is liberating!)
swiping/choosing/rejecting is form of female-associated empowerment & women have more power b/c their gaze is more important
Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" is a women-infused w/ machine to frame a woman alone w/ phone, technologically mediated freedom is self-directed, unjudged, moving fluidly from fantasy & reality
consumption as private fantasy
new tools of consumer agency, coexist not contradictory when the algorithmic culture also objectifies women structurally
It's Rousseauean thinking that we are born to experience injustice & that it is inescapable if we believe the narrative that objectification suffuses all our interactions
Bindel latches on to sexual violence being the primary issue
hookup culture is choice culture
People hate it when women have sexual choice — progressives included, for both Bonnie Blue types, Sandberg types. What's so bad with selling yourself out or selling yourself?
Views about promiscuity used to be taken by moralists in 1700s & 1800s
Trad wives, trad femmes, post liberals, right-wing populists react to contraceptive tech and the past moralists reacted to ideas
Some philosophers & poets even thought that women were just as entitled to have multiple sex partners! Like who?!
pg. 144: Mary Wollstonecraft believed that sexual norms killed women's intellectual & moral development??? How?
Pg. 145: Historian Faramerz Dabhoiwala "The Origins of Sex" talks about the past culture — society needed chaste women because men were acting up?? Wow!
1800s political & sexual climate reminds me of the climate today w/ a fear of the customs of the lower classes, due to spreading poverty, urbanization
1st wave feminist activism focused on purity
My own opinion: believe that porn-filled brain men just aren't focused on female pleasure & I despise that!
First wave feminist activists made eradicating prostitutes their aim even though years earlier feminists used to be laissez-faire & anti-statist regarding sex and morality, but in the 1880s & 1890s, the movement changed w/ this purity push
Lucy Bland says this happened because they wanted to overturn laws that privileged men but punished women
Bland says that they actually just wanted a social conservatism moment. Government was politically & socially volatile, so lower class cultures needed to be reigned in
Social purity feminists attacked this campaign through the lens of philanthropy & religiosity & then back to anti-immorality sex activism.
The very poor needed the arm of the state to straighten them out
Women making "unhealthy" choices about her own body is so much better than the unhealthiness of modesty
Very surprising claim that post-liberal feminists believe that the pill made sex less hot? Why is despising contraception such a trend? They think transactional sex is not hot?
Most of history illustrates a society that sees everything wrong stemming from "sinful" sex
Women live in "Tinder terror" & constant fear of "unhealthy" sex & too weak to go on bad dates
Nancy Jo Sales thinks dating apps are rape culture!?
Apps maximize choice & is the only way right now
hookup culture is so loaded right now
If a politics that sees women as free agents shouldn't believe that they didn't have a choice because of the "system" (which is tech bros and capitalism)
1990s — feminism became a feminism of fear & victimhood instead of courage & exploration that the second wave was, but b/c there was confusion about whether “date rape" happened in casual relationships, discussions in the 1980s turned to universal male predatoriness
We have three powers about what happens on a date:
verbal
physical
perspective — embrace, reject, or frame situation outside of narrative
Responses to their sexual experiences of the 1960s was different than the trauma-aware analysis. Sociologist Massimo Perinelli says [that] it is a myth that the sex revolution was a tool of domination — women's role as agents in the '60s has been erased & now the narrative is more domination & victimization
now — harm & disapproval
60s — lacked language of repudiation, trauma language
The disapproval lens obscures agency in the same way that earlier feminist history obscured women's active role in revolution
fear was still real but the sex rev didn't cause it, just the response. Choice existing alongside this very real fear is a stringer version of agency argument
In 1980's, sex-positive feminists wanted reinvention of experience from victim narrative/false consciousness. Two camps — one sex work empowering, the other camp said the stigmatization was hurting it so the industry needs regulation (stigma-free regulation)
"Sex positivity" led to "raunch culture" early 2000s Levy
Strimpel agrees with Levy but says new tech is better and is used for more complicated reasons
"paid sex" doesn't have to be violation
I agree with Cindy Gallop, even when I was learning about Robert Jensen’s views
I like the concept of SexTech!
If you don’t like how people use money, other than UBI, housing, healthcare, education
Doesn’t matter if OnlyFans content is moral or not. Being miserable by promiscuous life is better than alternative
Why does this generation think neoliberalism is bad?
Why is marriage so important for pro-natalists?
Mary Harrington — atomized, lonely, and morally sick people with a false idea of freedom and being selfish is the worst in her imagination, not actually what happens
Sacha Roseneil “The Tenacity of the Couple-Norm”
“Marriage has been dead” phrase since the 40s!
late 70’s - Thatcher was painted as the one trailblazing a “hyper-individualism” which meant that morality was just individual choice & preference & moderns couldn’t blame family
I am ok w/ “hyper-individualism”!
Susan Faludi “Backlash” big discourse in 1980s & 1990s on benefits of marriage (happens whenever women are earning more & have more sexual freedom)
historian Terri Chettiar “psychopoliticization” pushed marriage not partisan agenda (but for strength of state) b/c miserable marriages were bad for business & to maintain male-breadwinner model
men wanted women to go back into the home in late 1940s
Divorce isn’t all bad as Bridget Phetasy believes
Why does Perry stress bell curves??
What is blanket illiberalism?
Bell curve for divorce even
Why would a singleness norm be so awful? It would be a better world for women.
Marriage hurts the quality of women’s sex life
Conjugal decline has more to do with necessary macro social changes than rise of lawlessness & selfishness
Resurgence in communal women-only living projects, some urban-based
Pg. 200: erosion of social order more to do w/ economy rather than studies
shift in structures towards sex is so rich w/ potential that we are only starting to see benefits & now people are only focusing on side effect problems
pg. 204: Study showing older mom children are healthier w/ better language skills
Marriage faces competition now just like the rise of cohabitation in the 1920s & that it is healthy b/c it forces marriage to a drive up standards — better matched (this is very interesting, a pure capitalist argument, and I want to dive into this more)
Pg. 205: Why is the solution not tech like Mary Harrington keeps saying?
Policies to help women work while raising kids b/c many are economically inactive b/c they say this crisis will cause labor shortages
pg. 208: 40 yr old women’s fertility rate is greater than those under 20 — study
When things go well, women have fewer babies
Shani Silver “A Single Revolution”
Single is more fun than marriage, but Silver wants it to be equal to coupledom, but it’s actually more fun. And it’s more fun to be a single mom.
Single mothers who used a donor are getting financial support from childcare & family without having to compromise & fight. This is luxurious!
The welfare scrounger of the 70s & 80s has just been updated by women becoming single mothers or wanting to be in charge, according to this reactionary movement
Pg. 217: They don’t like that they are smug while asking for handouts & being selfish. Is it really selfish & self-destructive?
your 40s is when you are in a prime position to truly enjoy a partnered relationship
It’s fine that no effort is being expended to find men!
pg. 209: Smaller number of women equals better men? How?
Market dynamics argument — when the pool of women willing to date shrinks, the scarcity shifts leverage towards women & men work to attract a choosier pool (deeper dive!)
fewer women → more competition → upward pressure on what men bring & in whom they value
new interest in different kinds of relationship with different kinds of women, including ambitious, instead of hotness, brainy
mass take-up of single-by-choice motherhood would be progress for dating market’s gender dynamics
pg. 220-221: goes over practicalities of having a baby through assisted repro.
best age to have baby is forty plus