“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”
–John Stuart Mill
In case you’re new to this blog, I do book recommendations rather than reviews for a couple of reasons, including the fact that I don’t have time to keep reading things that aren’t providing me with either pleasure or food for thought. I also know how hard it is to finish a book, so I’m not interested in trashing another writer who has followed through, even if I didn’t like the final project. If I haven’t found something somehow worthwhile, you won’t read about it here.
The operative phrase above is “somehow worthwhile.” As a feminist, I believe in freedom for all genders to shape their own bodies, relationships, and sex lives. Women—and everyone else– should be trusted to choose their own paths, whether that means marrying young, staying single forever, doing sex work, abstaining from it all, or something else. I’m not interested in policing anyone’s womanhood (or other gender identity, for that matter) and believe that human rights are non-negotiable across the spectrum. So how did I manage to get through Louise Perry’s The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, which explicitly rejects many of my beliefs?
Perry’s writing style helped. The Case Against the Sexual Revolution is one of the most clearly written, intellectually honest and serious critiques of today’s sexual culture I’ve ever run across. Perry does not shy away from the gaps between feminist rhetoric and lived reality, asking tough questions many of us avoid about who actually benefits most from an “anything goes” approach to sexual behaviour. Drawing on her experience working at a rape crisis centre, she writes honestly about the harm caused by the porn industry and a marketplace that treats women as disposable. She argues that an emphasis on consent alone is not enough to protect women from harm, and makes the case for talking about risk without labelling such discussions as victim-blaming.
Still, I found Perry’s emphasis on gender essentialism oversimplified, especially when used as a justification for restricting women’s freedom. She treats many modern women’s choices on things like divorce, single parenthood, casual sex, sex work, or pornography as coming from false consciousness or coercion rather than agency, stripping women of moral authority over their own lives. If women can’t decide these things for themselves, who should do it for them? (You have three guesses and the first two don’t count.)
You probably won’t like this book any more than I did, but it’s worth engaging with challenges to our own assumptions once in a while. We don’t have to accept Perry’s conclusions, but we will be stronger for grappling with her questions.