Sexual ＂Liberation＂ Is NOT Empowering Or Fulfilling - My Interview With Louise Perry
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Summary
In this episode, I interview Louise Perry, the author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, a book we read for Book Club, and she answers your questions. I'm so excited to have Louise on the show and can't wait to share this episode with you all.
Transcript
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Hello Classic Crew and welcome to today's video where I'm sharing a preview of a
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special episode of my podcast, Classically Ever After.
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If you are new to my channel, here we talk about classic living and traditional values
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and I would love if you would consider subscribing and hitting that notification bell.
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We're keeping this intro a little bit casual, I'm recording on my phone,
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but I'm really excited to share with you this preview of my podcast, Classically Ever After.
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So if you don't know, I have a free podcast called Classically Ever After and it's available
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anywhere you listen to podcasts and usually it is with my husband and we talk about maintaining
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traditional values in this modern era. But this is a special episode where I interviewed Louise Perry,
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the author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. We read her book for my book club and we all learned
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quite a bit and I asked my premium subscribers to submit their questions for her and I asked
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her those questions in the podcast. So please enjoy today's episode and if you want to hear the
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whole thing, make sure to head over to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and you can hear
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the entire episode. I would also love if you would consider subscribing to my Substack newsletter where
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you can join and be a part of my book club, my AV club, get access to a lot of exclusive content.
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I mean, I was actually told this because I got engaged quite young and particularly young for
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someone who coming from a secular liberal background. So I got engaged when I was 24 and
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married when I was 25. And I remember speaking to a friend who was a bit older than me about at the
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time. And she said very explicitly, like, you are making a mistake. You should be spending your 20s
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having as many like different sexual romantic experiences as possible and experimenting and finding
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out who you are. And then you can settle down in 10 years or something. And luckily, I didn't follow
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her advice. Terrible advice. What terrible advice?
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Hello, and welcome to a special episode of Classically Ever After. On today's podcast, I'm interviewing
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Louise Perry, author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, a book we read for book club,
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and she's answering your questions. I'm really looking forward to sharing this podcast with you
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all today. So make sure to take a listen all the way to the end. And we'll be back to our regularly
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scheduled programming next week. So thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of
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Classically Ever After. I'm so excited to have you. We recently read your book, The Case Against
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the Sexual Revolution, with our book club. And it was a fantastic discussion. People were
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really into it. They enjoyed it immensely. Also learned a lot because there's so much to talk
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about with this book. So I'm going to ask you the question that I'm sure you've heard ad
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nauseam at this point. But what inspired you to write The Case Against the Sexual Revolution?
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I wish I had a better answer because yes, you're right. People do ask me a lot.
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And I wish I had some beautiful anecdote of the moment, you know, the moment where I decided
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to do it. Sadly not. I mean, I've been working around this space in a lot of different ways
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for a decade, really. Initially, in what I studied at university, and then in working in
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rape crisis, and then as a journalist, and then as a campaigner. And I kept sort of being led
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back to this narrative of the sexual revolution, this idea that it had been done for women by
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women, that it was unambiguously a good thing. And I kept, I just kept thinking how flawed that
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narrative was. And I felt as though no one had really written down my specific objections
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Well, it seems like you have the background for it. But the thing that I found fascinating
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was that, you know, I went online to search Louise Perry, like on any streaming streaming
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platform to see kind of what you'd said before, who'd interviewed you. And what's fascinating
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is how many people have interviewed you on both sides of the political spectrum. I mean,
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you've got people on the far left talking to you about this book. You've got people on the
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far right talking to you about this book. So did you expect your book to strike a chord
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with so many different people, people on both sides of the aisle?
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No. Well, I mean, I didn't expect it to be as big a deal as it's been, because this is
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my first book I published with a very small academic publishing house. I don't think anyone
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thought that it was going to be quite, make quite as big an impact as it has, which is obviously a
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great problem to have. I've had such an exhausting summer, let me tell you, because
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I can't believe it. Because we have a toddler at home, and I've got all these other work
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commitments. And everyone wants to talk about this book all the time, which is obviously wonderful,
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but it's slightly overwhelming. And yeah, I mean, I would say that it's probably been a bit,
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I've probably had a little bit more positive attention from conservatives.
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Yeah. Sort of centre-centre-right range. But you're right that there's been feedback from
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across the political spectrum. And it has mostly been positive, amazingly, because I did think
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when writing it, sometimes I'd write sentences and I'd be like, that's it, I'm done, that's
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my career room. Because there's so much cancellable stuff in this book. But I made the decision
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early on that I thought that trying to kind of pander to any particular audience was going
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to make it ring false. So I thought it was better to just be as honest as I felt I could
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be, and kind of let people say what they will. And I mean, it's interesting that there have
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been a few other books. There's this funny thing about publishing that it has quite a long
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lead time. So you're talking, when you sign a contract, you're expecting a book to come
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out maybe two years later. So it was quite, so you quite often have this phenomenon where
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people are sensing something in the air, and then there ends up being books coming out at
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the same time that are on roughly the same topic. So I've had that. So there have been
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a few other books roughly in this space in the last year or two. But I think so far, at
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least, mine is probably the one that most sort of, that kills the greatest number of progressive
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sacred cows. And that seems to be what people want. I think actually people are desperate for
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what, I mean, what the probably the most common piece of feedback that I've had from readers is
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I've been thinking this for years, thank you for saying it, because I didn't feel like I was,
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I could say it before. And now I, and now I feel able to because of, you know, having seen it set
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down on paper. So I suppose what I suppose the reason that it is how the impact that it's had
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is because a lot of us must have been thinking the same thing for a long time.
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Absolutely. I mean, it's, it's coming from a more religious perspective, perspective, I'm an
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Orthodox Jew. You know, this is something that I, I talk about in maybe less explicit of a way,
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although sometimes explicitly, but more saying dating for marriage is a good thing. Dating with purpose
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is a good thing. You're putting yourself in bad situations when you are dating for quote unquote
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fun and constantly and consistently getting hurt. Now that can be like emotionally, but even, you know,
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in the book, we're also talking about physically in both danger and just getting, making decisions
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that you regret. Um, and I think that hearing that from somebody who isn't explicitly religious
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can give people permission who are not religious to, to agree instead of saying, Oh, this has to be
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from a religious perspective. And if I'm not religious, then I have to say, Oh no, I'm, I'm
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entirely in favor of the sexual revolution. I feel like your perspective, given that at least from the
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way that you've portrayed it throughout your interviews in your book, I don't know if you're
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religious, but it seems that you're not, um, it gave women permission to say, I, I also don't
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feel great about the things that I've been sold as something I should be doing with my life.
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It's funny that we feel that need for permission, isn't it? But it is such a common human,
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human trait. Yeah. Yeah. Especially as women, I think.
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Yes. I think so too. I think it's partly to do with us being, um, more agreeable than men
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on average. I was just thinking that. Yeah. And femininity is all about being, so I think
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probably what happens is that women are naturally more agreeable than men. And I think that probably
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has a lot to do with, um, our minds being primed for motherhood because you have to be so wildly
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agreeable with your baby. It's because it's all about, because motherhood is all about putting
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your children's needs first. Um, and so I think we're, we're already sort of primed for
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that. And then femininity that when we're in being feminine involves being even more agreeable.
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And obviously there are upsides to that because agreeableness is lovely. It's really nice to
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be around agreeable people. It's, you know, um, it's what kind of keeps the social show on
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the road, but the downside of it is that you do sometimes have a tendency to, to, to sort
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of, um, put your own needs second to the point of being self-destructive.
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And I think as well in, in part, it also encourages you to do what you think everyone else is doing
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and fit in. And so when you are, I think this is especially a problem in college when you're
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surrounded by women who are telling you that the best way to find fulfillment is to an empowerment
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is to sleep with as many people as possible and disregard how you actually feel about it at the end
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of the day. It's very easy to slip into that as a practice and try to justify after the fact why you
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feel bad. It's society that's making me feel bad. It's other people, it's outside influences that are
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making me feel the way that I do. If none of that existed, I could have sex willy nilly and no one
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could hurt me. Um, but I think a lot of the time that's, I think all of the time, that's not the case.
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I think that women, uh, or rather, I guess, going off of what you said in the book regarding sex
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with sociosexuality and how, uh, there are those few outliers, perhaps those few outliers,
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that's the case. But I think for most women, um, it is an innate thing that you're not meant or built
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for this random hookups with people you've never met and with relationships that are not going to go
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anywhere and with men who may not be safe. And it's amazing. The, the, um,
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the ability that we have most of us to suppress those feelings and to construct or to gravitate
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towards narratives, which, which retell what's going on in a more palatable way. But then I,
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I don't think I have ever, I have spoken to so many women both before and after the publication
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of this book who said that they had this exact journey of doing, doing the hookup culture thing,
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feeling bad, not quite like knowing why telling themselves the progressive story to make it seem
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better. And then later on saying, hang on, I can't believe I put up with that. You know,
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what a mistake I have never found anyone who's gone in the other direction. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
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it's really telling. It is really telling. And I can tell you as somebody who grew up religious and
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didn't do, uh, you know, didn't engage in hookup culture because religious perspective, it was wrong.
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Then I did. I like what I went into college and I'm very open about this on my channel,
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even though I come from a very traditional perspective. Um, a lot of that is informed by the
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decisions I made when I decided to kind of go off the beaten path. So this, um, and I decided,
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oh, I want to, I want to try this stuff that everyone's telling me is going to be empowering.
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And I would feel awful the next day. And it had nothing to do. I think there's kind of this
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misperception or misconception that it would be because I had ingrained in me these religious
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feelings of guilt, but it had nothing to do with that. It had to do, it had everything to do with,
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oh, I, I'm, you know, hooking up with someone who I have no feelings for and they really have
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no feelings for me. And maybe I'm getting more attached than he is or whatever it is.
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And that just felt bad. And as I moved out of that and into a relationship that, you know,
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married and I have a child, like this is the most fulfilled I've ever lived in life. And it's
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because this is, I think is healthy. Like this is protective for me. It's protection for my child
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from, you know, a very practical perspective. And then from a very not practical perspective,
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I get to live the best life by having, you know, love every single day from my husband and from my,
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Yeah, I think it is so, um, I don't know if you read Bridget Fetasy's
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essay that she, cause I went on, I went on her podcast to talk about the book and she, she later
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wrote, um, this amazing essay, which she said she'd been working on for years, but it was reading the
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book that made her sort of spurred her on to finish it. And there's a, she writes about this feeling of,
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this horrible feeling of having sex with men who, who basically wouldn't care if you got hit by a
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bus next week. There's no, there's no love there. There's no affection there. There's nothing.
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And the, and the, and the, the crux for her, the crucial moment is when she
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gets a text from a guy that she's been hooking up with saying, good night, love you or something
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on that, something on those lines. And then he immediately follow ups, follows up with sorry,
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No, it's not. If anything, it's regarded as a rite of passage.
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Not quite that extreme, extreme level of like texting, um, embarrassment, but, um,
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yes, the, the idea that you should, you should, I mean, I was actually told this cause I got engaged,
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um, quite young and particularly young for, um, someone who coming from a secular liberal background.
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So I got engaged when I was 24 and married when I was 25. And I remember speaking to a friend who was
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a bit older than me about at the time. And she said very explicitly, like you are making a mistake.
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You should be spending your twenties, having as many like different sexual romantic experiences as
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possible and experimenting and finding out who you are. And then you can settle down in 10 years or
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something. Um, and luckily I didn't follow her advice. Terrible advice. What terrible advice?
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But so, um, but it's such a common idea that, that, um, that sex is like a skill set that has
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to be refined with as many partners as possible. That's kind of the idea. Um, which is of course,
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why you get in, in, in women's mags, you'll get things like, uh, guide to having sex from sex workers
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or cause the idea is that it, that it is just this kind of, um, alienated skill set, which can be
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commodified, which doesn't have any intrinsic specialness and which isn't sort of attached to
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the people. It's like something you do to someone, not something that you do with someone.
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Thank you so much for watching this preview of my podcast, Classically Ever After. Make sure to go
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and listen to the entire episode and subscribe. And if you aren't already subscribed to my
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Substack newsletter, head over to classicallyabby.substack.com. If you're not following me on social
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media, it's classicallyabby absolutely everywhere. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you guys