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Modern Sex: Liberation and Its Discontents

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The basic premise of this book of collected essays by a handful of authors is that the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s promised individual freedom, unlimited sexual satisfaction, and personal fulfillment and that this promise was never fulfilled. To the contrary, this promise was a big lie that was a thin guise for a culture of protracted adolescence, selfishness, hedonism, and ultimately nihilism and despair. Looking back, it's almost easy to criticize the sexual revolution since we can see the zany pop psychology beliefs and appalling displays of selfishness that this so-called "Revolution" spawned. However easy the target, the sexual revolution is still considered the final word on sexuality for many and these essays for the most part offer an incisive and stimulating antidote to the excesses of the sexual revolution and make important critiques against the way we denigrate monogamy, the way children are inappropriately sexualized and exploited by pop culture, and the way certain "intellectuals" reduce human beings to science, removing the soul and its needs from any kind of discussion about family and sexuality. Bear in mind, these essays are written by writers who are members of a conservative think tank, so you're not exactly getting diverse opinions here. Nevertheless, considering how saturated our popular culture is with frenzied sex, these essays are an important call to pause and examine sexuality and its discontents in our society.

This is a book about sex. More specifically, it is about the sexual revolution, its promises, and its failure.

The sexual revolution, a subset of the 60s' cultural revolution, was one of the most significant social upheavals that the West has experienced. Indeed, the counter-culture movement as a whole made an impact perhaps as great as other global revolutions, such as the Industrial, the Russian, and so on.

It is because the sexual revolution offered so much, and made such great promises, that it needs to be critically examined. The authors of the essays found in this book do indeed cast a critical eye over this turbulent period, and unanimously argue that the revolution has been a monumental failure, even on its own terms.

The sexual revolution promised freedom, but resulted in captivity. It promised enlightenment, but led to new darkness. It was, in truth, a god that failed.

The authors featured here are well qualified to speak on this subject. They include some of our finest thinkers and cultural critics. Four American writers, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Wendy Shalit, Kay Hymowitz and Harry Stein are featured, along with two English heavyweights, Roger Scruton and Theodore Dalrymple. Together they offer twelve penetrating essays which analyse and dissect the sexual liberationists, their philosophy and practice.

A number of themes are discussed: the making and breaking of feminism, the divorce culture, the sexualisation of our children, the rise of the porn culture, sex education, the break-up of marriage and family, the meaning of love, and the importance of morality in our thinking and discussions of sex.

Everyone has been a loser in this revolution, as Magnet reminds us in his introduction. But it is our children who have especially suffered. Hymowitz devotes three articles to this theme. And they make for sad reading. We are really letting our kids down big time because of the new sexual paradigm that now reigns. It is a paradigm of non-judgementalism, libertarianism and market-driven sexploitation. And our kids have been major casualties.

Roger Scruton, ever lucid, incisive, and worth reading, argues in one of his three essays that we need to return to social stigma, shame, reproach, even - dare we say it - judgementalism when it comes to sex. We need to remind ourselves that not everything goes, and some sexual activities are simply wrong, and need to be regarded as such.

Another essay worth noting is Wendy Shalit's piece on the popular television series, Sex and the City. A major premise of the show, at least expressed through its female characters, is that equality means having women acting as debauched as men. But aping male promiscuity and crudity is hardly the path of women's liberation. Instead it drags them down to the same vulgar and animal level. The earlier feminists, as Shalit reminds us, disapproved of promiscuity, because they knew that real power for women came through morality, not immorality.

Other penetrating chapters focus on related topics, and taken together they present a good case for the more traditional scheme of things, and a searing indictment of how the West has managed to throw so much of value away in just a few short decades.

While there have been a number of recent critiques of the sexual revolution penned in the past decade, the essays collected here are some of the finest examples of writing and thinking on the subject. Given the very real, and very negative, consequences of the sexual revolution, and how in many ways it has swept everything before its path, it is reassuring to know that not everyone has succumbed to its siren sounds. Saner voices yet exist, warning us the perils of the sexual liberals, and pointing us to a better way. This volume is both timely and necessary.

The title looks racy, people give me odd looks when they see it on my shelf, but no work on the market better refutes the endless sexualization of America than "Modern Sex." We really shouldn't be surprised though. This book is a selection of the best of City Journal (which I recommend as a publication if you haven't read it before). Harry Stein's article on feminism is remarkable as are those of Roger Scruton-but practically everything that comes from his keyboard is top shelf. The authors of this book can, and do, stare down the sexual revolution. It's a must buy.