Feminist Author Louise Perry: Why the Sexual Revolution Failed Women

British feminist Louise Perry explains how starting from feminist principles led her to socially conservative conclusions about modern dating, hookup culture, and the devastating effects of "sexual liberation."

Key Takeaways

• Louise Perry comes from feminist background but reaches socially conservative conclusions about sexual culture
• The sexual revolution primarily served male interests by normalizing casual sex that women are less likely to enjoy
• Men and women have fundamental psychological and physical differences that affect sexuality and relationships
• Hookup culture forces women to suppress natural instincts around partner selection and emotional bonding
• Online porn has created unprecedented sexual dysfunction and unrealistic expectations for both sexes
• Marriage and monogamy benefit society as a whole despite sometimes being suboptimal for individuals
• Current dating apps treat people like products in a consumerist marketplace rather than potential partners
• Sex work normalization through platforms like OnlyFans ultimately harms women's long-term relationship prospects
• The "97% consensus" and fear-based climate messaging represent political manipulation rather than genuine scientific concern

Timeline Overview

• 00:00–20:00 — Perry's political background, book reception, and thesis that men and women are fundamentally different in ways that affect sexuality and relationships
• 20:00–40:00 — Analysis of why the sexual revolution served male interests more than female interests, despite being promoted as feminist liberation
• 40:00–60:00 — Discussion of changing sexual norms, how young women face pressure to be "sexually adventurous" while navigating contradictory expectations
• 60:00–80:00 — Examination of male sexual satisfaction decline, incel phenomenon, and how modern dating fails both sexes through different mechanisms
• 80:00–100:00 — Historical context of sexual constraints, Christian influence on modern consent culture, and who actually benefited from sexual liberation
• 100:00–120:00 — Analysis of women's magazines promoting casual sex, biological differences in sexual disgust thresholds, and suppression of natural instincts
• 120:00–140:00 — Marilyn Monroe as example of sexual exploitation, Matthew principle in modern dating creating underclass of sexless men and dissatisfied women
• 140:00–160:00 — Discussion of technological impacts from contraceptive pill to dating apps, and why contraception paradoxically increased single motherhood
• 160:00–180:00 — Examination of monogamy as "sexual socialism," anthropological evidence for polygamous societies being less stable and more violent
• 180:00–200:00 — Sexual disenchantment concept, why people don't actually believe sex is meaningless despite claiming it is, workplace sexual harassment contradictions
• 200:00–220:00 — #MeToo movement analysis, consent culture problems, Aziz Ansari case as example of women suppressing instincts in hookup culture
• 220:00–240:00 — Sex work normalization through OnlyFans, economic realities vs promises, long-term relationship consequences for participants
• 240:00–260:00 — Porn industry analysis, technological manipulation of human sexuality, death grip syndrome and cultural pornification effects
• 260:00–280:00 — Modern feminist views on porn, Oxford Union debate victory, generational differences in porn exposure effects on young people
• 280:00–300:00 — Dating apps as consumer products, anti-capitalist critique that left-wing feminists miss, recommendations for more traditional dating approaches

Feminist Origins Meeting Conservative Conclusions

• Louise Perry studied at SOAS University of London and writes for the traditionally left-wing New Statesman magazine, approaching sexual culture critique from feminist rather than religious conservative perspectives
• Her book chapters include provocative titles like "Men and Women Are Different" and "Loveless Sex Is Not Empowering," which she deliberately wrote to be "simultaneously obvious and also incredibly provocative"
• Perry explains her approach: "I start from feminist priors and end up with socially conservative conclusions," meaning her analysis begins with concern for women's wellbeing rather than traditional moral frameworks
• The book's contents page alone generated a several-day Twitter storm three months before publication, with responses being "80% really positive and 20% complete outrage" with little middle ground
• Ben Shapiro quote-tweeted her work alongside images of naked men parading in front of children, asking people to "choose your future," though Perry notes he likely hasn't read her full arguments about constraining male sexuality
• Perry hopes her book won't be dismissed as "yet another socially conservative take on sex revolution" because she reaches conservative conclusions through different analytical pathways than traditional conservatives
• Her feminist background allows her to speak to liberal audiences while challenging fundamental assumptions about sexual liberation, creating "something in it for everyone to hate except Ben Shapiro"

Why the Sexual Revolution Served Male Interests

• The sexual revolution was "kicked off by the pill" which severed the link between sex and reproduction, creating the impression that sex could be "just a leisure activity that didn't have to mean anything"
• Perry argues this idea that "sex is just just a bit of fun doesn't really mean anything suits male interests much more than it does female" because men are more naturally oriented toward casual sex
• Men are statistically more likely to enjoy casual sex, watching porn, and buying sex—all behaviors that became "much more socially acceptable post-sexual revolution"
• Women "carry all of the risks associated with" casual sex including "physical risks like pregnancy and violence," making it inherently a worse deal for them than for men
• The popular narrative portraying the sexual revolution as "a feminist accomplishment" is fundamentally incorrect, though Perry acknowledges some aspects have benefited women in other areas like education and workplace success
• Male sexuality differs from female sexuality in that men maintain much lower standards for short-term partners than long-term partners, while women tend to assess all partners using similar criteria
• Men "will be willing to have sex with a woman that they absolutely would not marry" or "would not even introduce to their friends," creating potential for women to misinterpret sexual interest as relationship interest

The Pressure to Have Sex Like Men

• Modern sexual norms have "spun on a sixpence" so that instead of protecting virginity and reputation, young women now face pressure "to be up for it and to be just as sexually adventurous as the guys"
• Women navigate a "really difficult tight rope" where they're expected to be sexually open and base reputation on being "really sexy," but still face penalties if their "body count is too high"
• Women's magazines feature articles encouraging women "not to catch feelings" during casual sex and "how to have casual sex in like a fun feminist way," despite biological evidence that women bond more quickly with sexual partners
• Women have "much lower sexual disgust threshold" than men, meaning they "get the ick much easier," yet are instructed to "suppress their instincts and have sex that actually they kind of know deep down they shouldn't be having"
• Perry describes women's magazines as instructing "their young readers in how to suppress their instincts," which she characterizes as "really bleak" and fundamentally anti-feminist despite being presented as empowering
• The contradiction creates a situation where participating in hookup culture requires women to fight against evolved psychological mechanisms designed to protect them from reproductive and physical risks
• Perry argues that representing the suppression of natural female instincts as "feminist in any way" constitutes a fundamental misunderstanding of what would actually serve women's interests in sexual relationships

Modern Dating's Failure for Both Sexes

• Nearly 30% of men aged 18-30 report no sex in the last year, a figure that has tripled in the last decade, creating a "huge underclass of sexless men" driving movements like "incel blackpill mgtow red pill"
• The Matthew principle operates in modern dating where "most women are probably dissatisfied with the way that their sexual pursuits are going" while simultaneously creating widespread male sexual frustration
• Perry notes "rates of erectile dysfunction among young men are like insanely high," likely related to porn consumption and possibly environmental estrogen exposure from sources like edamame beans
• Feminists and incels fundamentally "misunderstand each other" because women "cannot can't just can't like directly empathize" with male sexual intensity and frustration at being unable to find partners
• Incels look at women and think "you can walk out into the street and pick up half a dozen guys you know within five minutes you must be living heaven on earth" while women respond "but I don't want that"
• The antagonism stems from biological differences making it "hard for us to empathize with one another" combined with a culture that "routinely denies" both sexual differences and "the existence of sexual dimorphism"
• Perry asks rhetorically "how can you possibly successfully navigate the sexual landscape if you don't even think men and women exist as discrete categories," highlighting the fundamental conceptual problems underlying modern dating culture

Historical Context and Christian Influence

• Perry references Tom Holland's book "Dominion" which argues that constraining high-status men's sexual access to subordinates is fundamentally a Christian innovation rather than a universal human norm
• In the Roman world, "no one would think that Harvey Weinstein was doing anything wrong" because sexual access by powerful men to their subordinates was considered natural and acceptable
• The idea that powerful men "should be constrained" sexually is, according to Holland's analysis, "a very christian idea" that has shaped modern expectations about sexual behavior even in secular contexts
• Perry notes she's "not christian" and doesn't come "at this from a religious perspective," but acknowledges the historical importance of Christian sexual ethics in developing modern consent culture
• Traditional sexual constraints served multiple functions beyond controlling female sexuality—they also "existed to control male sexuality" and weren't "motivated by misogyny" but by community welfare concerns
• Before contraception, sexual behavior "matters to the community because if you've got people young couples producing illegitimate children like that matters to the family that matters to the community"
• Perry argues the rapid abandonment of these "quite finely tuned norms that used to exist basically to keep young horny people away from each other" has created the current sexual chaos without adequate replacement systems

Technology's Unintended Consequences

• The contraceptive pill gave women control over fertility but paradoxically increased single motherhood rates because it eliminated social pressure for men to marry women they impregnated
• Perry explains that "when motherhood became a biological choice for women fatherhood became a social choice for men," fundamentally altering the incentive structure around sexual responsibility
• The elimination of shotgun marriages meant that when unplanned pregnancies occurred despite contraception, men could argue "well you chose this, you know, you're on your own"
• Dating apps operate "like shopping apps" where users "swipe swipe swipe and select your product," creating a "really really consumerist kind of energy" around human relationships
• Apps feel "not that different from using like asos or ebay or whatever because you swipe swipe swipe and select your product," reducing potential partners to consumer choices rather than complex human beings
• Perry argues this represents exactly the kind of "multi-billion pound global empire" and "really consumerist attitude towards other people's bodies and minds" that should provoke "101 anti-capitalist critique coming from the left"
• The left's failure to critique dating app commodification stems from being "more interested in tearing down bourgeois sexual norms and basically promoting free love at all costs" than examining the actual consequences

Monogamy as Sexual Socialism

• Perry describes monogamy as "sexual socialism" because it functions as "a redistribution strategy" that prevents high-status men from monopolizing multiple women
• Anthropological evidence shows about 80% of societies throughout history have practiced polygamy, making monogamous Western culture "unusual" rather than natural to human societies
• Monogamous societies consistently outperform polygamous ones because they're "more stable" and "more productive," allowing them to "colonize other parts of the world basically because they're wealthy and you know striving and successful"
• Polygamous societies suffer from much higher rates of child abuse and domestic violence because households with "multiple wives and their children are like full of conflict"
• Children are "hundreds of times more likely" to be killed if living in a household with a non-biological parent, making traditional nuclear families significantly safer for child welfare
• Elite men naturally prefer polygamous arrangements and "will cheat for instance" or "take on extra wives if they could," meaning "monogamy is not really our natural state it does have to be socially enforced"
• Perry uses the seatbelt analogy: monogamy may be "sub-optimal" for some individuals but represents "a small individual sacrifice that you make" to contribute to "the entire stability of society"

Sexual Disenchantment and Its Contradictions

• Sexual disenchantment, borrowed from Max Weber's concept of natural world disenchantment, describes how sex went from having "special nurse" and being "a sacrament within marriage" to becoming "any old social interaction"
• Perry argues "basically no one really believes in sexual disenchantment" despite progressive and liberal feminists promoting the idea that sex should be stripped of "stupid old-fashioned ideas about having some innate specialness"
• People consistently behave "as if actually sex does have a special status" evidenced by jealousy in polyamorous communities where participants struggle with "this intense instinctive thing that they're trying to override and they can't quite do it"
• The contradiction appears in feminist positions where they simultaneously claim "sex work is work" equivalent to "working in mcdonald's or selling any other kind of service" while being highly sensitive about workplace sexual impropriety
• Perry poses the logical challenge: "if it's really the case that sex work is work then what is the problem with being asked by your boss to give him a blowjob... it's just a service it's like being asked to do over time or make a coffee"
• The response reveals that "no one actually thinks that it's just like making a coffee," exposing sexual disenchantment as "really just theoretical" and "a rhetorical kind of move" rather than genuine belief
• This inconvenient reality creates problems for those "trying to be super rational" and "trying to resist anything remotely traditional or religious" because human emotional responses to sex refuse to conform to rational frameworks

#MeToo and Consent Culture Problems

• Perry analyzes #MeToo as often describing experiences that were "not always rape" but rather situations where women felt "creeped out" or experienced instinctive feelings of disgust during consensual encounters
• The Aziz Ansari case exemplifies the problem: he "didn't rape her and he didn't do anything illegal but he just kind of subtly pressured her into doing sex things that she didn't really want to do"
• Women in hookup culture face pressure to "have sex like men" and "try and have emotionless sex" but "can't actually quite do it and they feel sexual disgust they feel shame they feel like these deep painful emotions"
• Since liberal feminist framework only allows discussion of consent rather than "chivalry" or "instinctive feeling of disgust or discomfort," women must express their distress through consent violation claims
• Perry explains that women often blame men "even though he actually might not have done anything wrong really" because men are following cultural rules that tell them "women love it" and that casual sex is what women want
• Men receive contradictory cultural messages from "sex in the city" culture promoting women "having loads of casual sex love it like don't have any emotional connection" as aspirational alongside porn giving "completely unrealistic perspective on what women like"
• The result is that "they're clueless basically they're playing by the rules of the game" according to cultural influences, while women suppress instincts and then experience psychological distress they can only express through consent frameworks

OnlyFans and Sex Work Normalization

• Perry argues that most women on OnlyFans "probably make a loss in terms of the amount of time they have to spend" because income distribution follows extreme inequality with most money going to existing celebrities
• The promise that "you can just be like as long as you're sufficiently pretty you log on and you're making a fortune is not true" and has been "deliberately whipped up that idea by only fans because they're the only people actually really profiting"
• The main long-term risk of OnlyFans participation is damage to "ability to have a long-term relationship afterwards" because images can't be retrieved from the internet and are often stolen and shared without compensation
• Perry notes that "the sexual double standard is still actually really alive and well" despite claims of progress, meaning future partners will judge women for OnlyFans participation regardless of stated acceptance
• She considers it a "red flag" if a man claims to be "really comfortable" with a partner doing OnlyFans because it suggests suppression of natural jealousy instincts or possible "cuckold fetish"
• The normalization primarily comes from women rather than men: "it's not men that are encouraging women to do only funds... the only people online saying sex work is real work seems to be women"
• Perry describes this as "self capitalization from women of women encouraging other women to go and do the game despite the fact that the chances of you making money on only fans is minuscule"

Porn's Technological Manipulation

• Modern online porn represents "a completely different beast from like playboy of the 60s" because it's designed as algorithmic "super stimulus" optimized for profit rather than human wellbeing
• Porn platforms are "incredibly adept at basically arousing the human body the human animal" by creating front pages where "everything is designed to make you as horny as possible as quickly as possible"
• The business model involves introducing users "to the super stimulus and then introduce it to something even more stimulating and even more stimulating even more stimulating" creating escalating addiction patterns
• About 25% of millennial men haven't used porn in the last month, but a minority become "helpless power users" with "2% of users using it for like seven hours a week or more"
• Death grip syndrome affects compulsive users who "can't actually have sex with a real person" due to inability to achieve arousal without extreme stimulation
• Perry describes "cultural death grip syndrome" where society has "incredibly pornified public life" with more explicit content everywhere, yet people are actually having less sex in the "sex recession"
• Choking during sex has become "insanely mainstream really quickly" among young people through porn influence, moving from "really niche bdsm thing" considered risky even in BDSM community to commonplace behavior
• The contradiction shows porn sometimes inspires "more aggressive behavior from its users" while other times "basically neutering users like they become actually incapable of having sex with a real person"

Dating Apps and Consumer Culture

• Perry criticizes dating apps for treating human relationships like consumer products, operating with the same "shopping" interface as retail websites like "asos or ebay"
• The apps create a "really consumerist attitude towards other people's bodies and minds" that should trigger "anti-capitalist critique coming from the left" but doesn't because leftists prioritize "owning the cons"
• She argues the left has become "more interested in tearing down bourgeois sexual norms and basically promoting free love at all costs" than examining where sexual liberation has actually led society
• The casual sex phenomenon represents exactly the kind of capitalist commodification that traditional leftists should oppose, yet receives support because it appears to challenge conservative values
• Perry sees this as evidence that the left has prioritized culture war victories over genuine analysis of power structures and economic exploitation in intimate relationships
• Dating apps exemplify how technology can reshape human behavior in ways that serve corporate profits rather than human flourishing, yet avoid scrutiny due to their association with sexual liberation
• The result is a system where "young horny people" are kept away from meaningful relationships through technological mediation rather than community-based social norms

Practical Recommendations for Modern Dating

• Perry recommends women avoid sex on first dates and wait "not even to have sex in the first three months" to assess whether men consider them "good time only or if your wife material"
• She acknowledges this advice resembles "agony aunts from like the 1950s" but argues there was "a proper principle behind it" that wasn't "motivated by misogyny"
• The waiting period allows women to determine male intentions since men maintain different standards for casual partners versus marriage prospects, information crucial for women's decision-making
• Perry hopes increased knowledge about "the reality of male sexuality and the reality of sexual difference" will help young women make better decisions by understanding how men actually think about relationships
• She notes that many young women misinterpret male sexual behaviors, such as viewing choking as "a sign of passionate love" when men typically don't interpret it romantically
• Better understanding could reduce the social status associated with displaying "bruises that they've got from having rough sex with men who obviously hate them" on social media platforms
• Perry emphasizes that "basically any moderately good looking young woman can get as many partners as she wants" so sexual attention isn't actually a meaningful status symbol requiring celebration

Conclusion and Practical Implications

Louise Perry's analysis reveals how sexual liberation, while marketed as feminist progress, primarily serves male sexual interests while forcing women to suppress natural protective instincts. Her journey from feminist activism to socially conservative conclusions demonstrates how evidence-based analysis can challenge political orthodoxies from unexpected directions. The sexual revolution's technological acceleration through dating apps and pornography has created unprecedented dysfunction for both sexes, suggesting the need for new social frameworks that acknowledge rather than deny biological differences between men and women.

Practical Implications

• Recognize that casual sex culture primarily benefits men despite being promoted as female empowerment
• Understand that men often maintain different standards for casual partners versus serious relationship prospects
• Wait several months before sexual intimacy to properly assess potential partners' intentions and compatibility
• Be aware that dating apps deliberately design interfaces to treat humans as consumer products rather than complex individuals
• Question the normalization of sex work and pornography consumption as inherently liberating or empowering for women
• Acknowledge that biological differences between sexes affect sexual behavior and relationship preferences in meaningful ways
• Support social norms that constrain male sexual behavior while protecting female partner selection processes
• Consider how technological changes in dating may require updated social frameworks rather than complete abandonment of traditional wisdom
• Recognize that monogamous marriage serves broader social stability even when not optimal for every individual
• Examine whether progressive positions on sexuality actually serve women's interests or primarily benefit male sexual access