It’s not every day that I see an article that’s quite this chock full of conservative malarky on sex and marriage. But boy does Brendan Case deliver.
“Restoring marriage as a cultural norm will likely demand a sexual counterrevolution to overthrow the regime of ‘cheap sex,’” Case writes.
Elsewhere, he opines, “Many men might enjoy—at least for a season—a culture in which sex is the normal outcome of a first date.”
Here’s the thing. It is simply not possible for cheap sex/hookup culture/sex on the first date as a norm to be responsible for declines in marriage. Why? Well, first, those things don’t exist outside of the feverish imaginations of pearl-clutching moral scolds.
As we’ve discussed before, hookup culture is a myth. Americans today have fewer sex partners than previous generations. The average Americans has between four and six sex partners in their whole lives. On college campuses, supposed hotbeds of “hookup culture,” just 19% of men and 8% of women said they’d had “casual” sex in the past month. The average person kisses just 20 people over the course of their lives.
About 10% of the population is highly sociosexual and will have many partners. But the average American is not having cheap sex or hooking up. It’s just not happening. I mean, I kinda wish conservative nutjobs would read each other, as National Review was just complaining about teens not having enough sex. And while a decline in teen sex is probably on-net good, the actual panic should be around sexlessness, not hooking up. In the 90’s, about half of Americans had sex at least once per week. In 2022 fewer than 40% could say the same. In 2021 a greater percentage of US adults had sex zero times in the past year than has ever been recorded by the General Social Survey: 26%. The next two runner-up years were the last two times researchers ran the survey: 2016 (23%) and 2018 (23%). In 1989, by contrast, 35% of American adults had sex once a month or less. Before 2004, 19% was the highest percentage of Americans who’d had zero sex in the past year.
I’d love Case to explain how hookup culture is eroding marriage when hookup culture isn’t real and when rates of marriage have declined at the same time sexlessness has risen and the average American has had fewer and fewer partners. Usually, when X causes Y, Y rises when X rises. Usually, when Y rises while X declines, it’s a sign that you’ve misunderstood the causal relationship.
But Case is not content to misrepresent sex and marriage. He has to also claim, “Optimism about modern sexual emancipation is an axiom for most feminists.” Oh, Case. If only that were true.
Then he claims that sex work and pornography are “bound up with human trafficking,” which is as brain-dead as saying agriculture is bound up with human trafficking. It’s actually far more brain-dead, as there’s way more trafficking into agriculture than sex slavery. He also links it to exploitation of the poor and mentally ill. Because the sex industry is the only industry that exploits vulnerable people. He’s also dog whistling at the demonstrably false piece of conservative propaganda that adult performers are more likely to be victims of abuse.
He also claims porn will “intrinsically foster… a demeaning view of women in the men (almost always men) who patronize them.” First, women absolutely look at porn and it’s actually linked to easier, higher quality orgasms for us. Second, porn use isn’t actually linked to men holding more sexist views. In fact, some research shows men who watch more porn tend to hold more gender egalitarian views than men who watch less.
The good news for conservatives who are super upset about consenting adults having sex outside the bounds of marriage is that it’s becoming more rare by the day. Rejoice! The bad news for those removed from reality enough to think that this is going to boost marriage rates is that marriage rates are down for many of the same reasons rates of sex, dating, fertility, and even friendships are down. And until you’re ready to grapple with those reasons, and be honest about reality, please don’t pollute the waters with blatant disinformation.
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