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Firstly I’d like to say, I love Louise Perry. She was featured on the podcast. Her book The Case Against The Sexual Revolution was an amazing read. So much so that at Christmas I bought all my friends a copy because I felt the message was so powerful and so needed. I wish I had read it before I dated or had sex. Her book is dedicated to “All the women who learned it the hard way.” I cried reading that very first sentence and I still tear up thinking about it. Because I learned the hard way. I have had absolutely horrible experiences with men because I participated in hook up culture and didn’t value myself. I let men who didn’t give a shit about my well being, use my body and exploit me. It hurt me physically and mentally. It took me years to build myself back up from the trauma of it all. It is not old fashioned or conservative or prudish to feel that sex should be a special thing and not given out to strangers. She says that birth control began our downfall because now women could have sex without consequence, there was no reason to reject a man’s sexual advances. Before birth control, you could say no and men understood that. But now there’s no excuse because you won’t get pregnant. Women are pressured into casual sex and feel like they can’t refuse. The pill allowed women to have sex like men and the 90s began the Sex and The City era of no strings attached sex being called liberating and powerful etc and that it wasn’t a big deal. “It’s just sex.” Enter todays liberal feminism that has done absolutely nothing but harm women. I don’t need to go into that, we all know the dangers, we’ve seen it and experienced it for ourselves.
Louise Perry advocates for Motherhood and Marriage being the most important things for women. Now I’m sure she means women that actually want children…. I am not part of this camp. I’ve never wanted children, I got my tubes removed at 19. Her main arguments seem to be social collapse, future regret….not having anyone to take care of you in your old age…..parenting is joyful but not fun….it’s a hard but necessary job that must be done. All reasons I find inherently selfish and not a good argument for having children. Now I have known a lot of women and a lot of families. I have never met a Mother whose life I would want for myself. Even if married, the majority of the time, she is still taking care of and raising her kids by herself. She is being taken advantage of, she’s not valued. I have never met a father who pulled his weight or who I would personally want as a partner. Not saying they’re not out there, but clearly it’s rare. My main criticism of Louise Perry is that I feel she is putting too much responsibility on individuals and not on society as a whole. Yes she still talks about society's problems but I feel like she’s asking women to take this on despite the hardships. Like for the greater good. Even if it's not necessarily good for yourself. (maybe I've misunderstood her)
Why aren’t we having children? Maybe because no one can afford a home and we’re already struggling to keep afloat, why would you then add more stress to your life? Maybe because we can’t find decent men to procreate with? I just finished listening to her interview with John Anderson and she said “couples with children on a single income are losing out to childless couples with two incomes.” I wholeheartedly disagree. It’s not couples with two incomes that are buying up all the homes and living in luxury. They’re still struggling! So if you’re struggling with two incomes, how could you possibly survive off one and then add all the expenses a child brings on top of it all. If you want to advocate for motherhood and children, we need to get to the root of the problem. We need reform in society. We need better maternity leave, better health care for women. Why is the US ranked #1 in mother’s mortality rates in the west? Let’s fix that first eh. We need to be able to afford to live. We need a home. Do y’all remember like 15-20 years ago, everyone said don’t have kids until you’re established with your own home and good careers? Now we’re being pushed to pop out kids “foR tHe gOod oF soCiETY” while rent keeps increasing and it’s not a guarantee that you’ll be able to keep living there anyways. The threat of eviction will always be there if you don’t own your home. To that, Perry argues that there’s never been a good time in history to have children, our ancestors had kids not expecting most of them to reach the age of 5. My response to that is, because people didn’t have a choice on if they had kids! This is the first time in human history we’re able to control our fertility, to society’s detriment.
Even if we could magically fix the cost of living, men are not stepping up and being good partners and fathers. The majority of men are low value, negative value, abusive, burdens. Women truly are happier without that in their lives. For the first time ever, we are putting ourselves first and not settling for a hard life. Again, to society’s detriment.
She's a conservative, through and through. Many times excerpts of her podcast show up on my feed, and her views are always right wing leaning.I also don't like her body language. She has this thing of her eyes blinking rapidly and scanning the room tentatively and speech faltering at the same time in search of what to say next. She adopts this posture of female fawning as a way to be less intimidating as a woman when communicating her ideas. It feels deceptive and put-on, almost like she lacks intellectual courage to defend her opinions and not just nervous tics. Massive pick-me vibes imo.
Yeah I read "The Case Against the Sexual Revolution" and I agreed with most of it. Louise Perry made some excellent arguments against porn, prostitution and casual sex. The one part I disagreed with was that part where she pushed marriage and children as the only path for women. I also felt like she contradicted herself because early in the book, she implied that women should have high standards for men but then later implied that all women should get married. What if a woman lives in an area where there are no good men?! According to Louise Perry's logic, that women would have to settle for a LVM. Having said all that though, I enjoyed the book and I'm glad I read it.
I liked her book very much.
Shame about that angle, motherhood is definitely not for everyone and society sure ain't helping women in that regard.
What an excellent post. I listened to Perry's book and let me just say: I wish I had been chaperoned as a young woman. Now I will teach what I had to learn the hard way to any young woman I meet. My main problem with the book was portraying marriage as something that increases happiness, when the data are absolutely clear: married women live shorter lives, are less happy and earn less. Statistically speaking it's unmarried, child-free women who are the happiest. Marriage is great though - for men.