Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E69: The Case Against the Sexual Revolution with Louise Perry

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E69: The Case Against the Sexual Revolution with Louise Perry · The Lila Rose Show

0:00
What women used to be able to say before the pill came along
0:03
was, oh, but we can't because I don't want to get pregnant.
0:05
And then as soon as contraception came along, that
0:07
was no longer a sort of last line of defence.
0:09
That was no longer an excuse available in a situation where a
0:12
young man and young woman on a date, she doesn't want to say I
0:16
don't want to have sex with you because I don't like you enough
0:18
or because I don't trust you or because I'm not sufficiently
0:21
attracted to you. Is that feeling of suddenly
0:23
basically having to have sex with men to be polite?
0:29
Hello, hello, welcome back to the Lila Rose podcast.
0:32
Today we're going to talk about the sexual revolution, that
0:35
cataclysmic event in the 50s and the 60s that changed American
0:38
culture and the culture in the West in dramatic ways and had
0:41
huge consequences. We're going to be talking with
0:43
Louise Perry, who's a British journalist and author, about her
0:46
book from last year called The Case Against the Sexual
0:50
Revolution. I think you're going to find
0:51
this fascinating. Louise has done some amazing and
0:54
very important research on all the consequences of the sexual
0:57
revolution. She approaches it from a very
0:59
driven viewpoint, and we also get into abortion at the end of
1:03
the conversation. She has some different views on
1:06
abortion and I think she's evolving on her views and she
1:09
was very candid about that. So I hope you'll enjoy this
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1:53
All right. Well, Louise Perry, welcome to
1:55
the podcast. Thank you for having me.
1:57
Hi. I've admired your work, your
2:00
book, from afar, for I think ever since it came out.
2:03
It's been over a year since The Case Against the Sexual
2:05
Revolution came out. Yeah, a little bit every year.
2:09
So I think it was published in the States in September.
2:13
Bottom So let's start with your background.
2:16
You have a not not the expected background, one might think for
2:21
writing the book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution.
2:23
So let's first hear about your background and then what
2:26
inspired you to write your book. So yeah, I, I started out as I
2:33
did anthropology at university. I also did women's studies at
2:36
university, like very much coming from a feminist sort of
2:43
academic perspective, although I actually specialized in the
2:47
history of women's medicine when I was a university, which was
2:51
considered slightly unorthodox at the time because it's not
2:54
really fashionable to think that women have biological
2:56
differences from men. But anyway, we'll get on to
2:58
that. And then after I left
3:00
university, I worked at a Rape Crisis center.
3:03
So I was working with young women who'd experienced sexual
3:06
violence, and I was also going into schools and teaching
3:08
consent workshops and training volunteers and things like that.
3:13
And I guess that that was a very formative experience to me in
3:16
the sense that it brought me up close and personal with some of
3:20
the ways in which I don't think feminist theory really wrap maps
3:24
on to reality, which I ended up writing about a lot in the book.
3:29
I think that, you know, I would still describe myself as a
3:32
feminist in the sense that I think that women, there are
3:36
certain ways in which women have interests that differ from men
3:39
are sometimes in tension with men's interests.
3:41
And I think that women's interests are typically
3:44
underserved, particularly, you know, I would argue in the post
3:47
sexual revolution era where we have a new sexual culture which
3:50
is very much more geared towards male sexuality than a female.
3:53
Again, we can get on to that. And I, yeah, I guess it was
3:56
during that period that I started to be much more
3:58
skeptical about a lot of sort of orthodox feminist claims about
4:03
sex. And then after I left that job,
4:06
I worked as a journalist for a whole bunch of different
4:11
newspapers and magazines in the UK and America.
4:14
And yeah. And I started writing this book,
4:18
I guess 2-2 or three years ago. I actually wrote it when I was
4:21
pregnant with our son, who's now two.
4:24
It's not a writing schedule I'd recommend.
4:26
So I had to write to the breakneck pace.
4:29
And then it came out when he was 1.
4:33
So it's been quite a, it's been quite a busy couple of years for
4:38
me. So it sounds like you would you
4:41
say you had an evolution of your own thought where you maybe held
4:44
what would be seen as a more modern feminist ideas about men
4:48
and women and about sexuality. But your book, I mean, you have
4:52
chapters like, you know, sex must be taken seriously.
4:54
Men and women are different. Loveless.
4:57
Sex is not empowering. Consent is not enough.
5:00
That chapter in particular, what I read it, I I thought, well,
5:03
this is we've been saying this for years.
5:04
You know, these are things that we've been saying many people
5:09
maybe with more conservative or you could say more on the right
5:12
those values. So what?
5:14
What was the moment for you when you had this maybe realization
5:18
that so much of the feminism it sounds like you perhaps agreed
5:22
with was actually flawed in some ways, very seriously flawed?
5:28
Yeah, so I, I've always been a bit contrarian.
5:31
I mean, I I started out when I first sort of became interested
5:37
in feminism. Forgive me, that's my dog in the
5:39
background. There's probably someone at the
5:41
door. When I first became interested
5:43
in feminism, I was drawn more to radical feminism, which is a
5:47
branch of feminine that's all kind of derived from Marxism and
5:51
sees men and women as biological classes, you know, in tension
5:55
with one another. I don't.
5:57
There are several fundamental tenets of radical feminism that
6:01
I no longer agree with, but it's interesting that radical
6:04
feminists do end up having reaching some of the same
6:08
conclusions as conservative Christians.
6:12
So for instance, radical feminists are opposed to
6:15
prostitution and opposed to pornography and opposed to
6:19
surrogacy. You know, these are these are
6:21
some important sort of policy points on which actually there's
6:24
a surprising amount of agreement, not on abortion,
6:27
obviously, but but on those points there's a lot of, it's
6:31
like sort of surprise sympathy. My theory as to why that is, is
6:36
that it's not that radical feminists and conservative
6:40
Christians have the same priors really.
6:44
It's that it's actually the, the, the, the liberal feminists
6:49
or the libertarians or whatever sort of group, whatever
6:52
description you want to use for that group, who are much more,
6:56
you know, who are in favor of circled sex work, in favor of
7:01
the, the wide availability of porn, all of this, you know, the
7:04
kind of the, the ones who favor a free for all when it comes to
7:08
sexual culture. I think it's that group that
7:10
actually are the weird ones in the sense that I think that they
7:14
hold to a very strange idea, which is not really shared by
7:18
any other, any other ideological group, which I describe in my
7:21
book as sexual disenchantment. So this is the idea that there's
7:26
nothing special about sex. There's nothing unique about sex
7:30
compared with other forms of social interaction.
7:34
That you can buy it, you can sell it, you can do whatever you
7:36
want with it. And we should all sort of try
7:38
and pretend that it's just a neutral thing.
7:41
Of course it isn't natural and neutral thing.
7:43
Like no one actually lives their lives as if sex is just like
7:46
playing tennis or making coffee or doing any other kind of like
7:50
social act. There's like a deep, I think
7:53
emotional and many religious people would say spiritual
7:57
component to sex, which makes it unlike anything else.
8:00
And I think the reason therefore the radical feminists and
8:02
Christian Converses end up agreeing with each other is
8:05
because they both agree that sex can't be disenchanted without
8:08
terrible consequences. So anyway, so I so I kind of
8:11
started off in the radical feminist position.
8:13
And then why did I become more conservative partly from having
8:17
children, I think that have, I think that happens to a lot of
8:20
people. Partly, I suppose, just from
8:22
having more experience of the world, more of a recognition
8:26
that actually there's this line that a reader sent to me, which
8:32
I've, I've, I've, I've said a couple of times publicly because
8:36
I just think it's a great line. He found it in a book about
8:39
winemaking. So, you know, a sort of
8:43
politically neutral space in which to say a line that is
8:45
actually very politically explosive, which is traditions
8:48
are experiments that worked right.
8:50
Now, that's not to say that all traditions are necessarily good
8:54
and healthy, because sometimes material conditions can change
8:59
such that they no longer fit the sort of environment that they're
9:04
designed to fit. So that's, that's one way in
9:06
which traditions can end up being misaligned, but also that,
9:10
you know, sometimes traditions can be a way of dealing with a
9:13
problem in a, in a cruel way. You know, like when I've used
9:19
this line previously, people have said, well, you know, what
9:20
are you saying that like the foot binding is a good thing.
9:23
Foot binding is a tradition that lasted 1000 years, you know, in
9:26
China. Why?
9:28
And I say, well, you know, foot by foot binding is not, I'm not
9:31
saying it's good. I'm not saying that it's that
9:33
it's that it's kind or healthy or any of this.
9:36
But it did, it did serve a purpose.
9:38
You know, the purpose of foot binding was about a signaling
9:41
status, about controlling women, right?
9:46
Which actually historically often has been in men's
9:48
interests because make guarding is like a thing that men are
9:53
evolutionary drawn towards doing, making sure that they
9:55
know that their children are their own.
9:57
It's not very nice. It's not very, you know,
10:00
virtuous, but it is something that we see across human
10:04
societies, men being very preoccupied with paternal
10:07
certainty. You know, foot binding,
10:10
therefore is is working in the sense that it is a true, it's
10:16
serving kind of functional purpose in the society.
10:19
Now, that's not to say that all physicians are necessarily, you
10:23
know, some traditions are some traditions are, are, are healthy
10:27
and unhealthy. They all emerge and survive for
10:30
a reason, though. And I think what we discovered
10:33
post sexual revolution, which is, you know, ideal in an
10:35
ideological sense, is all being about just abandoning tradition,
10:39
rejecting everything of the past.
10:41
That's basically the the ideological project for 1960s is
10:45
that actually some of those traditions were actually doing a
10:48
pretty good job of fulfilling the functions that society need
10:52
to be fulfilled. Like the example that I give in
10:54
one chapter is marriage. You know, there are, there are
10:57
some downsides of marriage that like the, the, the feminists are
11:02
completely right to say that if you live in a society where
11:07
divorce is an impossibility, that having a tyrannical husband
11:11
is a terrible outcome. I completely agree with that.
11:13
That isn't to say, though, that marriage, that the old tradition
11:16
of anogamous marriage, which is now more or less dead in the
11:19
West, wasn't fulfilling a very, very important function, which
11:24
was basically the regulation of heterosexuality, right.
11:28
Heterosexual relationships are incredibly complicated, like the
11:30
coordination problems involved in in mating and reproduction so
11:35
difficult, you know, and of the very many ways that societies
11:39
have come up with to deal with that coordination problem.
11:42
Actually monogamous marriage of the Christian model is I think
11:46
that the model that we have, the only model that we've come up
11:50
with that seems to adequately serve the interests of women and
11:55
of children. Because the sort of utopian
11:58
models the throw tradition out the window and come up with
12:01
something completely new models that progress its propose have
12:05
never actually managed to have never actually managed to solve
12:08
that problem had they is we have not successfully come up with a
12:11
better alternative to monogamous marriage.
12:14
You know, given the rates of fatherlessness among children
12:19
now I mean in my City of London, half of children now will reach
12:23
the age of 50 not living with their biological fathers.
12:25
It's. Incredible.
12:26
Right. And we know that there are so
12:27
many of us outcomes for children associated with that for all of
12:31
its flaws, the monogamous marriage model, but
12:36
realistically that the choices that we actually face if we're
12:39
looking at the anthropological record are between the
12:42
monogamous marriage model and the polygynous model, right?
12:46
So we have one man having multiple wives.
12:48
That's actually for most of our species history has been the
12:51
most common mating model adopted.
12:53
It's also a model that has very harmful consequences for for
12:59
women and children in terms of that.
13:01
It's a model that's associated with high rates of domestic
13:04
violence and child abuse and also all sorts of other unwanted
13:07
sociological phenomena. So this is sort of, this is the
13:11
point that I guess I've come to learn with age that actually
13:15
it's very easy to sit atop your high horse, you know, and, and,
13:20
and point out the point out the problems with different
13:24
traditions or different political systems or whatever.
13:26
What's much, much harder is tearing them down and then
13:28
creating something new and better.
13:30
That's actually really, really difficult thing to do.
13:32
And I guess that's a sort of fundamentally conservative
13:35
insight. Well, I thought your book does a
13:39
fantastic job of really outlining why the sexual
13:43
revolution created such harm. Can you share a little bit more?
13:46
You mentioned, you know, some of the harm of children born to non
13:50
monogamous parents as an example.
13:52
You know, that's a problem here. By the way, in the United States
13:55
too, I think it's about half as well as children will not have
13:58
an intact family. They will have, you know,
14:01
whether it's remarried or boyfriend, you know,
14:03
stepparents, they'll have these different kind of Modern Family
14:07
arrangements as a consequence of the sexual revolution.
14:10
What are some of the other consequences of the sexual
14:13
revolution that you explore in your book?
14:17
Yeah. So the, I mean the I, I try as
14:20
much as possible to be really data-driven on this because
14:22
actually the data I think is really compelling on on, on
14:26
things like fatherlessness, for instance.
14:28
I mean, like, one of the strongest arguments in favor of
14:32
not bringing a step parent into the home, which normally means a
14:35
stepfather, is that the presence of an unrelated male in the home
14:42
is called the Cinderella effect in evolutionary psychology.
14:45
It's associated with a hundredfold increase in the risk
14:48
of physical and sexual abuse. You know, which is obviously not
14:51
to say that all stepparents are abusers.
14:53
Of course, that's not true. But there isn't actually another
14:57
factor that we're aware of that increases the danger as much as
15:01
the presence of a stepparent in the home.
15:03
And I don't think people know that.
15:05
I think I really don't think that that's a widely known fact.
15:08
But the data is very clear on that.
15:10
It's also very clear on the fact that fatherlessness is
15:12
associated with high rates of incarceration for boys, high
15:15
rates of teen pregnancy for girls, all sorts of unwanted
15:18
outcomes because actually fathers do perform very
15:21
important socialization roles with their children.
15:24
And the, you know, the despite valiant efforts, it's just much
15:30
harder to do all those all of those things as a single mother
15:33
because you have to do it all by yourself.
15:35
This seems obvious, but it's. Yeah, these, these are
15:38
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16:14
revolutionary might respond to you and say.
16:15
Well, I, I see you, the research you're pointing out, you know,
16:18
it's hard to argue with that. And so our recommendation, of
16:21
course, is not to change sexual mores, you know, necessarily we
16:24
need to still encourage freedom and exploration for adults who
16:29
consent. But that is why we have
16:31
contraception and abortion to avoid children that are born
16:35
born in arrangements where there is not really a long term
16:38
arrangement where the child could grow up with that
16:40
security. What would be your response to
16:42
that? That humans are incredibly
16:46
complex creatures and human societies are even more complex.
16:49
And one of the weird outcomes of the introduction of reliable
16:52
contraception and decriminalized abortion has actually been a
16:55
massive rise in rates of childbed outside of wedlock,
17:00
which is not what you would expect, right?
17:02
You would expect that obviously when people were given the sort
17:04
of technological means to control their reproduction, that
17:08
they would choose not to have children in unstable situations.
17:14
And that's not what we see. I mean, because I think what
17:17
happened is that the introduction of contraception,
17:21
abortion basically served to shred all of those traditions
17:26
that I was talking about earlier.
17:27
The 2 to like the shotgun wedding, for instance, was
17:33
basically a thing of the past by sort of the end of the 1970's.
17:36
The line that I use in the book is when, when motherhood became
17:40
a biological choice for women, fatherhood became a social
17:43
choice for men in the sense that it became much more socially
17:46
acceptable for men to say, well, you chose, you know, this is
17:49
your problem babe. Like you chose to have this
17:52
child, so it's on you. And also I think that we saw an
17:57
uptick in the sort of absolute amount of out of wedlock sex
18:02
that was happening. One of the interesting
18:06
recollections that you'll you'll, you'll read or hear from
18:08
women who were in their 20s when the pill came along is that they
18:13
suddenly found it much more difficult to say no to sex
18:17
outside of wedlock. Because previously, you know,
18:21
one of the differences between men and women psychologically,
18:23
which I think is very important to understand and which that
18:26
anyone who's sort of committed to a blank slate view of human
18:28
nature can't understand is that women are more agreeable than
18:31
men in general. So on average, women are more
18:34
willing to put the interests of other people before their own
18:38
and they struggle to sort of stand their ground when those
18:43
kind of conflicts come along. And one of, and I think that's
18:46
even more acute when you're dealing with also the physical
18:48
differences between the sexes. So, you know, in a situation
18:51
where a young man, a young woman on a date, young woman doesn't
18:57
really want to have sex. She doesn't want to say I don't
19:01
want to have sex with you because I don't like you enough
19:04
or because I don't trust you or because I'm not sufficiently
19:06
attracted to you or any of these things which, you know, demand
19:09
some disagreeableness, demand assertiveness and also
19:12
potentially risk physical, you know, intimidation or
19:17
retribution or whatever. What women used to be able to
19:20
say before the pill came along was, oh, but we can't because if
19:24
we were pregnant, you know, I don't want to get pregnant.
19:26
And then as soon as contraception came along, that
19:28
was no longer a sort of last line of defense.
19:30
That was no longer excuse, an excuse available.
19:33
And what and what women who experienced that that transition
19:38
speak about and write about is that feeling of suddenly
19:41
basically having to have sex with men to be polite.
19:44
That suddenly becomes the sort of social expectation, which
19:47
sounds so weird. But that like, you know, that's
19:48
how that's how human relationships work.
19:51
They are often weird. And so you ended up with, you
19:55
know, women often not like, like the statistics on the amount of
19:59
pleasure that women actually get from these kind of casual sexual
20:01
relationships are really depressing.
20:03
You know, most of them are not, they're not actually orgasming
20:05
during these encounters. They're not necessarily all that
20:08
attracted to the men. You know, it's kind of we.
20:11
What is often described as sexual freedom can also from
20:14
another angle just be looked at as often just a sense of sort of
20:16
sexual obligation almost women having sex that they didn't
20:19
really want to be having. But because contraception and
20:23
abortion give the illusion of it being consequence free, there
20:28
isn't. There doesn't seem to be a
20:29
reason to say no. So you end up with a sort of
20:32
absolute rise in the amount of extramarital sex and premarital
20:35
sex that everyone's having, which then obviously leads to
20:40
unwanted pregnancies and many women not having abortions for
20:44
whatever reason. And so, yeah, you end up with
20:47
with many more children born into, born into homes where they
20:52
actually never have a father or into, into relationships that
20:56
are unstable because of the demise of marriage.
20:58
And so they end up it's actually in the first year, I believe
21:01
that most of these relationships breakdown, which is actually not
21:06
surprising if you know, we know, we know how stressful it is
21:08
having a baby. It's not uncommon for sleep
21:11
deprived parents to get grumpy with each other.
21:13
And so for relationship to Frey. And if you don't have that
21:17
expectation that this is for life, you can see why people
21:21
would bail at moments when it felt difficult.
21:25
Or they have the abortion and they bail afterwards.
21:28
I mean, because of the, the implications of the abortion and
21:31
the, some of the, you know, mental health or emotional
21:34
repercussions of that abortion. So either way, it's a, it's a
21:38
hard, it's a bad bargain of what they're dealing with.
21:41
You know, it can be a, it can be a difficult bargain for what
21:44
they're dealing with Afterwards. In your chapter on consent is
21:47
not Enough, you mentioned earlier, I think after your work
21:50
with women who were victims of sexual assault and working, you
21:54
know, with rape survivors, you talk about, you know, I think
21:57
helping out at workshops to negotiate consent.
22:01
It sounds like if I understood you correctly, and I'm curious,
22:04
you know what, why, why consent isn't enough, you know, from
22:08
your vantage point and, you know, what does it mean then?
22:11
You know, the work that you've done in the past about, you
22:13
know, training people on consent, is that something that
22:16
can be trained? You know, can you take a, a 17
22:19
year old and say, these are the things that you must expect
22:22
before doing the sexual act with another, you know, 17 year old?
22:25
These are the things you must demand.
22:27
What's your kind of take on that approach by some feminists and
22:31
and other people in culture who say that's the one of the, you
22:33
know, the bright lines we have to teach young people in order
22:35
to ensure a successful sexual future for them?
22:39
Yeah. So I don't think the consent
22:41
workshops are a complete waste of time, but I think that they
22:44
don't do what most of their proponents think they do.
22:47
So I think what they do, which is useful, is they inform young
22:51
people on the law. You know, one example.
22:54
Obviously the law varies across countries, but in the UK, for
22:57
instance, it's illegal to take photos of yourself, like photos
23:04
of yourself if you're under 16 and share them because that's
23:07
technically like possession of child pornography.
23:12
And, and indeed, you know, sharing other images of say your
23:16
15 year old girlfriend sends you these images, you're then in
23:19
possession of child pornography. Like these are the sort of like
23:21
insurance and outs of the law that a lot of young people
23:23
aren't going to know. And so it is a good opportunity
23:25
to tell them, particularly if this is say in a school
23:28
environment where then you can say, you know, we've informed
23:31
you of the law. If you, if you are caught
23:33
breaking this, you will be expelled or whatever.
23:35
So it's there's some merit in just in just making clear the
23:39
kind of institutional position on this kind of behavior.
23:42
There's also some merit in, sorry, the dogs out again.
23:46
There's also some merit in informing victims, you know,
23:50
either girls or boys who are going to be victims in the
23:53
future or or who have already been victims of some kind of
23:56
sexual offense. You know, this was illegal.
23:59
What was done to you, You, you are you, you are you would be in
24:03
within your rights to go to the authorities or to speak to a
24:05
teacher or whatever, you know. So there are things that concern
24:07
workshops to do that are useful. What they don't do, though, is
24:10
they don't actually prevent rape, I don't think, because
24:15
rape isn't a consequence of that kind of misunderstanding that
24:20
oh, I didn't know that was illegal.
24:21
Yeah. I, I, I think that's, I think
24:24
that's a really implausible way of looking at the motivations
24:27
behind sexual violence. Like sexual violence actually is
24:30
basically just straightforwardly sexual aggression, you know,
24:33
sexual desire combined with like aggression or lack of any kind
24:41
of moral restriction. And unfortunately, it's a fact
24:46
of all human societies. And it's also, by the way, it's
24:48
overwhelmingly committed by young men.
24:50
Like like really quite young typically sort of like age 15 to
24:54
25 is actually the peak. And that makes sense when you
24:58
think about the fact that that's when testosterone peaks as well.
25:01
Like this isn't a very comfortable, this isn't a very
25:04
comfortable way of looking at it among feminists where the the,
25:09
you know, the line that's typically used.
25:10
I mean the line that I'm sure I repeated when I was working
25:13
right crisis and teaching these workshops was rape isn't about
25:16
sex, It's about power. It's like a political act is
25:19
the, is the way that feminist theory tends to understand it
25:22
and say, well, no, actually, it's kind of a it's a product of
25:26
our evolutionary history. You know, like for obvious
25:29
reasons, in some instances, it is evolutionarily adaptive for
25:35
men to be sexually violent. That doesn't mean it's a good
25:37
thing, you know, a long way from it, but it does provide an
25:41
explanation and a way of understanding, you know, why,
25:44
for instance, sexual violence peaks at certain ages.
25:48
Also why the most at risk groups of victims tend to be young
25:51
women. The modal age of a victim of
25:54
rape in the UK, and this is also true elsewhere, is 15 and
25:57
surprisingly young. Again, it's because it's it's
26:00
it's it's victims fertility, which is what's really
26:05
attractive to would be rapists. You know, this, given these
26:11
quite deep rooted origins of this kind of crime, you can't
26:17
just sit kids down for half an hour and just tell them the
26:20
consent is really important and expect that to like make any
26:23
real difference. And I think that the argument
26:26
you have there is that what's underpinning it is lust.
26:29
And you mentioned at the evolutionary impulse to
26:32
procreate. But I think at the very core
26:33
level, it's a lust that I want to do this thing biologically,
26:37
even though morally speaking and I have free will, I should
26:40
choose not to do this violent thing, but I have this impulse
26:44
to do it. So you're not saying that they
26:46
don't have the ability to choose not to do it, It's more that
26:48
they have a strong impulse to do something wrong?
26:50
Yeah, yeah. And it's a very, it's a very,
26:52
very strong desire. And recalling five years ago
26:56
when you were told at school, you know, that this was a bad
26:59
idea is not likely to be very persuasive in that moment,
27:01
right? I mean, like one of the things
27:04
that I, one of the things I advise parents on, for instance,
27:08
is it's a really, really bad idea to leave young people alone
27:15
together with alcohol. Like it wasn't that long ago
27:18
that that was considered to be very sort of common sensical,
27:20
but it more sort of parents of more progressive politics who
27:27
don't want to be too heavy-handed are likely to be
27:31
much more liberal on that sort of thing.
27:34
And I say, look, you know, if you're dealing with like horny
27:38
young people, basically like one of the worst things that you can
27:41
do is introduce alcohol to the mix.
27:43
Because there's this, there's this cognitive bias in men where
27:47
men will tend to overestimate the degree of sexual interest a
27:51
woman has in him, right? That there might be absolutely 0
27:54
sexual interest, but there's a cognitive bias in men where they
27:56
will tend to see a little bit of sexual interest even when there
27:59
is none. And alcohol aggravates that
28:01
effect. So basically you have a young
28:04
man who is probably being raised watching porn, which is addled
28:07
his brain and give him, given him completely unrealistic ideas
28:10
about what about female desire. And he's drunk.
28:15
So he's like more likely to to see sexual desire in a woman
28:19
where there is none. And he's also has less impulse
28:22
control. So he's more likely to give in
28:24
to his to his lust, as you say, right.
28:27
Like that's that's like the perfect recipe for the kind of,
28:33
you know, the me too incidents or date rape, we might call it
28:36
whatever. So not necessarily violent rape,
28:39
but nevertheless very, very distressing rape, which is
28:42
actually, you know, this is it's impossible to collect data on
28:45
this because it's just such a measuring sexual violence data
28:49
is infamously difficult. But my guess would be that that
28:52
kind of sexual violence, the kind of date rape, teenager
28:55
sexual violence, it's probably never been higher than it is
28:57
right now just because we are more with gent tend to be more
29:01
permissive. And you know that those kind of
29:05
sexual encounters are probably not going to result in a baby
29:08
because of contraception and abortion being available.
29:10
And so in some sense they seem invisible and maybe.
29:13
Parents, they do result in a baby, but the baby is aborted,
29:17
which is, you know, the whole case for abortion in cases of
29:19
rape, that this is a needed thing to tend the life of this
29:23
baby in this, in this tragic case.
29:25
And parents might never know that their teenage daughter,
29:28
right, has gone through this. So it seems invisible.
29:32
And it seems that actually that kind of liberal hands off
29:34
parenting doesn't look, it's fine, it doesn't have any
29:36
consequences, but actually often, very often does have
29:39
consequences. Like the number of times, for
29:41
instance, that teenage girls that I've spoken to will, will,
29:45
will be raped in those kind of circumstances and will and their
29:47
parents will never know. It's quite common.
29:50
So I think often what's going on here is that, you know, these
29:53
young women are experiencing the the very damaging, distressing
29:59
consequences of not having the kind of, yes, onerous, but also
30:04
existing for a reason, boundaries that used to exist.
30:07
And they they suffer in silence very often.
30:12
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weeks. So what would you say, Louise,
30:56
is the alternative? Obviously on my show we talk
31:00
about chastity a lot inside and outside of marriage.
31:03
We talk about marriage being between one man and one woman,
31:06
lifelong, sacrificial, loving, open to life.
31:10
And, you know, other principles that I think are seen as, say
31:13
conservative or Christian, but I think they're also profoundly
31:17
reasonable. And you don't have to arrive by
31:21
to that conclusion of this is the most best way to live for
31:25
human flourishing just from a faith perspective.
31:27
You can arrive by it by looking logically at the consequences of
31:32
other, you know, deviant or sexually explorative.
31:36
You could call it behaviors, you know, the sexual revolutions
31:38
kind of prescription for this is how we should behave.
31:40
What do you what would you say is the solution?
31:43
You've definitely dismantled, you know, I think you did a
31:45
great job of dismantling the sexual revolution in your book.
31:48
So what is the what is the alternative that people should
31:52
the moral, the moral foundation that people should consider and
31:55
and perhaps live by? Well, the thing that I tell
32:00
women, you know, religious or not, is we can't uninvent the
32:03
pill, but we could live as if it doesn't exist.
32:07
You could pretend it doesn't exist, you know, and, and, and I
32:10
think generally that's a, a good indication of whether or not
32:14
you're making good sexual decisions.
32:17
Like, would you basically, I think it's a terrible idea to
32:20
have sex with a man who you really, really don't want to
32:23
ever be the father of your children.
32:25
Like it. If that's the case, then why is
32:29
he worthy of your trust? Why is he worthy of your
32:32
emotional investment? Why would you, why would you,
32:34
you know, be trust him to like to be alone together?
32:37
If he's completely not cut out to be a husband and father, then
32:43
surely that tells you something about whether or not you ought
32:45
to be jumping into bed with him. So yeah, I think that I think
32:49
that that that general principle is a useful one.
32:55
And, and yeah, I mean, many of the prescriptions that I that I
33:00
end up issuing, it's funny, I started off writing the book
33:04
just thinking that it would be a kind of standard journalistic or
33:07
semi academic take on this history in politics.
33:12
And then I realized when I was writing it that I did actually
33:14
have to, I did actually have to be prescriptive.
33:16
I did actually have to say, you know, what is the, what is the
33:19
better alternative? And I actually ended up writing
33:21
a list that every chapter contains some kind of
33:24
prescription. And indeed, every chapter title
33:27
contains some kind of prescription.
33:28
And then the conclusion, I end up sort of summarizing it.
33:31
And yes, a lot of it is, I mean, frankly, a lot of it is just
33:34
incredibly basic. It's stuff that it's stuff
33:37
that's considered to be commonsensical in every year
33:39
about hours, you know, which is why my last structure is called
33:42
Listen to Your Mother. Because I think actually like
33:46
basically any mum could tell you.
33:48
This not your feminist mother though, right?
33:51
Depends on maybe it's your grandmother or your great
33:53
grandmother. Maybe it's your grandmother on
33:55
who she is, but yeah, but any. Woman who's sort of spent enough
33:58
time in the world to have accumulated some common sense
34:03
can basically give you exactly the advice that Ioffer.
34:08
But it's interesting, I mean, even what you said earlier,
34:10
which I completely agree with, I think I've said this on, on in
34:14
many ways on many different platforms.
34:15
You know, don't, don't sleep with a man that you, who who not
34:19
only you wouldn't want to be the father of your children, but who
34:22
isn't already committed to you for life.
34:24
Because I mean, what you were saying earlier, you know, if
34:27
this man is not someone you'd want to be a husband or father,
34:30
why would you, why would you sleep with them?
34:32
Well, it's, it's it's one thing to want them to be be a husband
34:35
and a father, but if they haven't committed that to you
34:38
that they want to that they are willing to go the go the path of
34:42
I'm going to be your husband and I'm going to be a man who would
34:46
be a a father and seek being a good father.
34:48
Then, even if you're sleeping with someone, you know, a young
34:50
girl who says, oh, I think he'd make a great husband and father.
34:53
He's not committed. So you get pregnant.
34:55
That doesn't secure you or your child in any way.
34:58
So it's it, it forces the issue. It forces the issue of not just
35:03
is he good enough to marry, but are you married?
35:07
It's funny, one of my, one of my best friends when I was at
35:10
school, her mom always used to like tell us the words of
35:15
wisdom, which I now find myself, you know, reproducing.
35:18
And, and we, and we used to roll our eyes and think crazy.
35:21
But like, one of the things that she used to recommend, for
35:23
instance, is that if you're, if you're dating a man and you're
35:28
both, you know, like of age and, and, and serious about marriage
35:34
and such, etcetera. If he hasn't proposed to you
35:37
within the first six months of a relationship, you should break
35:39
up with him. And we always thought that's
35:41
crazy. Like what you like this man so
35:44
much you want to marry him and therefore you going to break up
35:45
with other. But now I think, Oh no, I
35:47
understand the reasoning. The reasoning is if he's not
35:50
willing to to make that demonstration of commitment,
35:52
he's not going to. And that tells you something
35:55
actually about how how he regards the relationship and
35:59
investing in it further is very likely to waste your time.
36:01
So like, yeah, all of these maybe 12.
36:03
Months. Maybe give them 12?
36:04
Months. But I think 12 months.
36:06
The principle there is a good one because I mean, how many
36:09
women are cohabitating or waiting around years and years,
36:13
sometimes a decade of their life and they're saying there's still
36:17
no formal commitment, There's still no, there's still no.
36:21
Not just a promise. You know I love you, but I
36:23
promised before the whole world I love you and I'm committed to
36:26
you. Yeah, Yeah.
36:28
That. I mean, that's, yeah, that's
36:29
essentially what marriage is, isn't it?
36:31
It's just, it's just making, yeah, making a formal
36:34
declaration. And if you're not willing to do
36:36
that, it's not a very good time. Yeah, which is, again, the whole
36:39
trope of, well, marriage is just between you and one person.
36:41
It's private. Why does the law have to get
36:44
involved? You know, I would say, well,
36:45
it's involved because you could create children and then the
36:49
state has an interest. And then most importantly, this
36:52
is a community effort to encourage your unity and your
36:55
promise and that you are an exclusive unit.
36:58
But there's one other thing I, I wanted to get into.
37:00
I know you've got to go in, in a few minutes here, Louise.
37:03
And it's some of the commentary on abortion.
37:05
Obviously, as, as you know, I had a live action and I'm keenly
37:07
interested in. And what I see is maybe a
37:09
progression of thought that you have on us.
37:11
You had an article now out recently on the basically on
37:16
abortion. And you, you quoted a poem from
37:20
the Scottish poet Holly Mcnish. And he says he said he thought
37:24
they'd found a brothel on the dig he did last night.
37:27
I asked him how they know. He sighed.
37:29
A pit of baby's bones. A pit of newborn baby's bones
37:32
was how to spot a brothel. The article, of course, is about
37:36
the sexual revolutions consequence of so much abortion.
37:41
I mean, really, billions of abortions globally since the
37:44
60s, and in the United States it's over 60 million.
37:48
So I'd love to hear from you, you know, your position on
37:52
abortion and how it hasn't been affected at all by the research
37:56
that you've done over the last few years and also the the
37:59
response that you've received to your book.
38:01
So I use that poem as the epigraph actually for my book.
38:04
And and then, yeah, I repeated it in that the essay wrote for
38:07
First Things, which was called We are Repagonizing.
38:11
And the argument that I make in that article.
38:14
I didn't actually write a great deal about abortion in the book
38:16
itself, but it's obviously very central to this whole question.
38:21
Such revolution is that you know, my my so my legal position
38:28
in all honesty, is safe, legal and rare.
38:30
I think we're safe, legal and rare is quite a good principle,
38:33
but I think that's. Possible though, I mean, based
38:35
on the reality of we have abortion, very legal.
38:40
They argue that it's very safe, but it's not ever rare.
38:45
I mean, I, I this goes back doesn't enter the dismantling of
38:49
all of the, the, the, the laws and norms that compose the old,
38:54
the old sexual culture, you know, where we had various
38:57
things in place like fragile, complex social systems to try
39:02
and basically minimize the risk of anyone getting pregnant
39:07
outside of wedlock. And those of all just being
39:12
thrown out the window by the technological innovation of the
39:16
pill really. And trying to reconstruct them
39:19
is very hard. And I suppose the thing I worry
39:22
about is that if you were to ban abortion in its entirety, you
39:30
wouldn't see those old systems resurrected overnight because
39:33
that's hard to do. You know, there's a line from
39:35
Roger Scruton, I think the the British philosopher, the
39:40
beautiful things are easily destroyed, but hard to make.
39:42
I think that's the line. I'm probably, I'm probably
39:44
mangling it. I think that also applies to
39:47
social norms. Trying to resurrect those
39:50
overnight would be really difficult.
39:55
I mean, it might happen over time, but the thing that I fear
39:58
about criminalizing abortion and the reason I'm kind of agnostic
40:01
on this question is that it would be like what happened in
40:04
Romania and the Ceausescu where you ended up with state
40:08
orphanages filled with unwanted children.
40:10
So I think that all of the options here are difficult and
40:13
tragic. I mean the point that I make in
40:15
the in the First Things article though is that.
40:19
I think that the Christian prohibition on abortion is
40:24
really quite unusual. Historically, most cultures,
40:27
most religious traditions are more more permissive on abortion
40:31
than Christianity is. And I think that's because
40:34
there's this very central moral principle within Christianity,
40:38
which is the protection of the weak and the vulnerable, which
40:41
is really unique. To and the uplifting of of women
40:46
too. And I think you make that case
40:47
as well. Yeah.
40:48
No, I think Chris, I mean, I think the reason that early,
40:51
Chris, early converts to Christianity were overwhelmingly
40:53
women was because it was a far, far superior system,
40:56
particularly of sexual ethics than the the Roman Pagan system,
40:59
which was deeply misogynist and also very tolerant of abortion
41:04
and infanticide. And I think that the problem
41:07
therefore for feminists who want to, you know, I am not one of
41:10
these feminists who says an abortion is just like getting a
41:13
tooth removed, it's morally meaningless.
41:15
You know, I don't believe that a vast majority of voters also
41:17
don't believe that that's a very sort of eccentric position to
41:20
take. But the feminists who want to
41:22
take that position and say that abortion is morally meaningless,
41:26
I argue that they're kind of soaring at the branch on which
41:29
they sit in the sense that the whole feminist idea that women
41:33
are just as morally as morally valuable as men are is not
41:37
something that all cultures or or religious traditions agree
41:40
on. Like far from it.
41:41
It's actually really quite unique to the Christian view of
41:44
the world because of this Christian uplifting of the
41:46
vulnerable and the weak. And women are vulnerable and
41:48
weak compared to men just on a physical sounds like where where
41:51
we have half as much upper body strength as men do, like in a in
41:54
a straightforward and competition of strength and
41:58
women lose, so to say, OK, well, we're throwing this a whole idea
42:03
out the window that that vulnerability and weakness and
42:05
whatever are worthy of special protection.
42:07
I think not only I mean, there are all sorts of reasons why
42:10
that's not welcome, but one of them is that actually I think
42:13
that the whole moral argument for feminism depends on that
42:16
idea. And I think that that trying
42:21
therefore to reject Christianity rejects the the the the moral
42:26
ideas that are derived from 2000 years of of, of Christian
42:30
tradition in in in the atmosphere is to risk is to risk
42:34
undermining that very valuable principle.
42:37
And here's the question, though, it's I wouldn't just say it's a,
42:40
you know, a risk of rejecting Christianity and the principle
42:42
of valuing the vulnerable, but it's really valuing reality.
42:46
You know, as you've made the case in your book, sex is
42:48
meaningful. To pretend that it's not is it
42:50
is to deny reality. And similarly, I would argue,
42:53
you know, human life is meaningful and to, you know,
42:56
pretend or deny its reality or its meaningfulness is another
43:00
form of living in an, you know, an alternate universe and in La
43:03
La land. And so, you know, when someone
43:05
is pregnant, you know, and I think you would probably agree
43:09
with this, they are pregnant with a human life.
43:11
And I think that's the underpinning of the pro-life
43:14
argument. It's, it's not so much about we
43:15
want to, you know, take away women's rights or, you know,
43:18
criminalize something because we just love using the law as a
43:20
cudgel, but more that these are if these are human lives and
43:23
human lives have a right to live that right to life, then they
43:28
deserve equal protection under the law as as done anyone, as
43:31
does anyone else. What's your what's your take on
43:34
that? Where hey, women are more
43:37
pro-life than men are, right because and mothers are more
43:39
pro-life because I think that yeah I mean anyone who's been
43:42
pregnant knows that it's not a trivial thing and that, you
43:49
know, a miscarriage is far more upsetting than is not getting
43:55
pregnant. Like everyone knows that there
43:56
is a very meaningful difference even from the from conception,
44:01
but but also the sorry fact is that basically abortion and
44:06
infanticide has been a facts across every human culture that
44:10
we know of. You know what could in?
44:13
The West it was it was criminalized and looked down
44:15
because as was premarital sex and because of Christianity
44:18
premarital sex being criminalized.
44:20
But yeah, I think yeah. And I and the reason that
44:23
Christianity had for that it wasn't just oh, this is a God
44:26
sent a message from heaven don't have abortions.
44:28
It was the logical conclusion of if we are if human beings are
44:32
very special and they're equal in the eyes of God, and their
44:36
lives are equally of value, then that would extend to the most
44:40
youngest and vulnerable, as well as to the strongest and the most
44:44
empower. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I can.
44:46
I mean, the, the, the, the, the Christian prohibition on
44:50
abortion and infanticide, which I mean, I'm using them in the
44:52
same breath because most cultures do basically see them
44:55
as being kind of contiguous. Acts is yeah, is is it's, it's,
45:04
I think as I wrote in the first things piece, like it's a, it's
45:07
a difficult, it's difficult to follow it, it demands sacrifice,
45:11
it demands difficulty. But then that is also the I like
45:14
it's supposed to be difficult to be a good Christian.
45:17
It's not the yes. The fact that it's difficult is
45:20
not an argument against it within that worldview.
45:23
Well, I think a lot of morality can be difficult, right?
45:26
And to your point about culture, if the culture is kind of
45:28
broken, the morality is harder if people aren't raised with it.
45:32
But you know, it can be hard to not misuse people sexually,
45:35
other people. It can be hard to treat your
45:37
children kindly. You know, it can be hard to be
45:41
monogamous. You know, these things, all of
45:43
morality has that hard element, you could argue.
45:47
But it, you know, as you've made such a beautiful case of it,
45:49
Louise, it leads to what is really flourishing in the end,
45:52
like this is the better path for men and for women.
45:56
So I'm just curious exploring, you know, your view on abortion
45:59
because it seems the principles underlying your case for against
46:03
the sexual revolution. I think you could use those same
46:04
principles for a case against which has been, I think, the
46:07
worst fruit of the sexual revolution, which is the rampant
46:10
kill rate you know of, of the sexual revolution with abortion.
46:14
You're not the first, you're not the first to call me out on this
46:17
and to try and press me on it. Well, I appreciate, I appreciate
46:25
you, you sharing your thoughts and I, I would encourage
46:28
everyone listening to consider your book.
46:31
It's really fantastic. You've done a a wonderful job
46:33
with it, Louise, and. Any any final thoughts just
46:36
about the reaction that people have had to your book and
46:39
anything that anything that you maybe have changed on since the
46:42
book came out over a year ago? The reaction has been so much
46:47
more positive than I thought. That's been my main take away.
46:49
It's been like 98% positive. And I still, I get, I get, I
46:54
don't know, at least an e-mail a day from someone saying this
46:58
book has transformed my life, which I really wasn't expecting
47:01
when I wrote it, honestly, it seemed to me as if it was quite
47:04
obvious. But I guess that says something
47:07
about the culture in which we find ourselves that saying
47:12
seemingly obvious things can be quite, can be quite radical.
47:16
I guess it shows how far we've strayed.
47:19
Well, thank you. Thanks so much for joining the
47:21
podcast, Louise. Thank you so much.
47:25
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Lila Rose
47:27
podcast with Louise Perry. I hope we'll have Ron again.
47:29
I felt like that conversation could have gone way longer and
47:31
we maybe we'll do it again in the future.
47:33
As always, don't forget to leave a review.
47:35
Give us five stars if you're on podcast app and don't forget to
47:38
subscribe to the YouTube channel.
47:41
Thanks so much and we'll see you next time.