{"id":1414339,"date":"2022-04-01T07:45:18","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T11:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1414339"},"modified":"2022-04-01T07:45:24","modified_gmt":"2022-04-01T11:45:24","slug":"how-liberalism-ruined-sex-and-degraded-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/how-liberalism-ruined-sex-and-degraded-women\/","title":{"rendered":"How Liberalism Ruined Sex And Degraded Women"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fhow-liberalism-ruined-sex-and-degraded-women%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1414339&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/pxfuel.com-14.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>For a prophet of doom, vindication requires catastrophe, which tends to take the fun out of \u201cI told you so.\u201d Thus, for Christian conservatives the disaster of the sexual revolution is cause for sorrow, not schadenfreude.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That the sexual revolution has failed to deliver on its promises is increasingly obvious, even to those who loathe Christian sexual ethics. For example, Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times has returned to the <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/09\/29\/social-conservatives-were-right-about-sex-new-york-times-columnist-admits\/\">problem<\/a>, this time with a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/03\/21\/opinion\/manifesto-against-sex-positivity.html\">review<\/a> of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/622579\/rethinking-sex-by-christine-emba\/\">Rethinking Sex: A Provocation<\/a>\u201d by Washington Post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2022\/03\/17\/sex-ethics-rethinking-consent-culture\/\">columnist<\/a> Christine Emba. Although Goldberg dislikes the book\u2019s Christian influences, she concedes that \u201cmodern heterosexual dating culture appears to be an emotional meat grinder whose miseries and degradations can\u2019t be solved by ever more elaborate rituals of consent.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Despite this admission, Goldberg isn\u2019t ready to abandon the sexual revolution, but instead wants to save it. She concludes that the problem \u201cis that many women are still embarrassed by their own desires, particularly when they are emotional, rather than physical.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>This, she argues, is why Emba\u2019s book \u201cis full of examples of people suppressing their longings. She interviews many women who seem to feel entitled to one-night stands, but not to kindness. \u2026 It\u2019s what you get when you liberate sex without liberating women.\u201d If only women were more assertive about what they want and don\u2019t want, all would be well.<\/p>\n<h2>Liberalism Undermines the Desires It Claims to Liberate<\/h2>\n<p>This unrealistic analysis reveals the impoverishment and impotence of modern liberalism\u2019s moral vocabulary. All that this sort of liberalism can offer women who have been immiserated by our sexual culture is the suggestion that they negotiate for more romance and less sexual degradation from porn-addled men. <\/p>\n<p>But liberals remain insistent that these preferences are purely subjective, and are not normative in any way. Thus, liberalism can only suggest a more inclusive settlement between warring desires, with emotional needs now balanced with sexual fetishes.<\/p>\n<p>It would, of course, be good if more women told men to take their internet-induced perversions and shove them. It would also be good if women demanded more emotional commitment from men, rather than settling for hookups. But liberal culture cripples women\u2019s ability to take such stands by vitiating the necessary moral and cultural support for them.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Morally, liberal ideology deprives a woman of anything stronger than setting her own \u201cI want\u201d against the \u201cI want\u201d of a man. This refusal to judge between desires leaves modern liberals such as Goldberg stuck, able to recognize the disaster of the current relational marketplace, but unwilling to accept any moral judgments that would give women\u2019s desires more than subjective value. After all, without a normative understanding of what is good in a relationship (including sex), why should a woman\u2019s desire for romance, or even simple kindness, matter more than a man\u2019s porn-induced kinks?<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, liberalism\u2019s theoretical neutrality between competing desires in practice favors desires that are simple and intense over those that are more complex and diffuse.\u00a0 Thus, in a liberal culture, emotional needs and relational longings will naturally take second place to immediate sexual gratification. To be uncomfortable with unbounded indulgence is to mark oneself as an enemy of liberalism. This is why liberalism\u2019s supposed neutrality about the nature of the good and the good life actually denigrates self-control and commitment while promoting selfish indulgence. Our culture is filled with celebrations of the liberation of desire, including the sexual desires and relational habits that are proving so harmful to women.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>A Sexual Counter-Revolution<\/h2>\n<p>Changing this exploitative environment requires more than subjective assertiveness. Minor tweaks to the sexual revolution will not fix it. What is needed is a normative challenge to sexual liberalism\u2019s ideology, morality, and culture \u2014 a sexual counter-revolution.<\/p>\n<p>A sexual counter-revolution in favor of loving commitment may seem unlikely, but it has happened before. There have been, of course, the original sexual revolutions as Christianity converted pagan cultures, but there have also been revivals of Christian sexual teaching, such as the Victorian reaction against the excesses of regency England. Today, such a sexual counter-revolution would be motivated by the misery the sexual revolution has inflicted \u2014 misery for which sexual liberalism seems to have no remedy.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, Christians should not grow weary or afraid of proclaiming gospel truths about human sexuality and family life. Though they are unpopular and unfashionable, and the powers that be will rage against us, our culture needs Christian truths, including in bed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Of course, cautions may be appended to this. We should always strive to speak with wisdom, to be gentle when needed, and to humbly recall our individual and corporate sins. The excesses of evangelical purity culture a couple of decades ago are an example of how bad teaching can harm believers and discredit our witness.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But we should not allow our sins and the inevitable difficulties of life to keep us from sharing the Christian moral insights that our culture needs. We know that the sexual revolution has failed to deliver on its promises of happiness because the liberation of desire means slavery to desire. If we do not master our desires they will master us, or, alternatively, we will be mastered by someone else\u2019s tyrannical passions.<\/p>\n<p>The liberation of desire has led not to satisfaction and peace, but to conflict and domination. It is no wonder that many, especially women, are looking for an alternative. Christians should be proclaiming \u2014 and, more importantly, modeling \u2014 a better way to live and love.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For a prophet of doom, vindication requires catastrophe, which tends to take the fun out of \u201cI told you so.\u201d Thus, for Christian conservatives the disaster of the sexual revolution<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":538,"featured_media":1894162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1414339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/538"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1414339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1894162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1414339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1414339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1414339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}