4 ms·

The sexual counterrevolution is coming

19 points by throwkeep 5y ago

nocobot 5y ago
'No hymen, no diamond' is, on so many levels, such a disgusting thing to say
- playingchanges 5y ago
  It’s mind blowing the author chose to include that phrase given the rest of the article is pretty well written.
  - morelisp 5y ago
    It's a thing this community actually says, not wordplay on the author's part.
- fallingfrog 5y ago
  I know, the whole essay is like a character study of the most repulsive people you can possibly imagine.
- Gravityloss 5y ago
  I guess if the article is against prostitution or paying for sex, it however encourages paying for the opposite, abstinence.
morelisp 5y ago
> Charlotte and Narayan are not the uptight fundamentalists or ugly, embittered feminists of stereotype: they’re members of the Ivy-educated jeunesse dorée. 1) In what context would a focus on sexual monogamy and a traditional marriage have been a sign of an "embittered feminist"? Neither has been a focus of any of the major American feminist movements. 2) When have the Ivy-educated elite not been also the uptight fundamentalists of America, at least as it pertains to everyone else's choices? It's all just the usual garbage of rich people trying to elevate some social signifier more accessible to them than others as a moral virtue.
sealeck 5y ago
The whole point about not kink -shaming is that it's OK to have kinks so long as it's between you and other consenting individuals. Nowhere is it suggested that it is OK to use this in order to perpetrate abuse onto other people. Everyone is expected to act with restraint, set clear boundaries and stop if their partner(s) ask them to.
988747 5y ago
Hippie concept of "free love" was taking us back to prehistorical times, when humans were just like animals: fucking, sleeping, eating, and not much else in between. It's a good thing that current generation is reverting to more sophisticated behaviors.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  What? The reason for the historical death of "free love" is even more base, it's literally about resource conservation as populations pass what is feasible to support balanced against the need for field labour. If anything, prehistorical attitudes about love are much, much, much more sophisticated than what came after.
  - krapp 5y ago
    The reason for the historical death of "free love" was mostly the rise of HIV/AIDS.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      I got from the context they were talking about the prehistoric type of love.
Barrin92 5y ago
There's a difference between the upper strata of society rediscovering Puritanism and a counterrevolution. Revolutions require means to enforce norms. If we have seen one thing it is that there is no means any more by which elite can force a discourse on the population at large. In the same sense how old fashioned aristocrats used to live by suffocating norms I guess we now get the techbro version of the same thing but ordinary people will not throw Tinder away because Ivy league graduates adopt the values of Victorian England. Revolutions always require a certain amount of energy and momentum in society which we don't have. You can see it with the other sort of old-fashioned ruling class attitudes that even progressive, liberal, elites have rediscovered. Veganism, exercise, obsession with health etc, it hasn't really percolated down much. Case in point, the author of the article who I happen to follow on twitter also just retweeted this: https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNews/status/1395792792945844227?s=20 https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNews/status/1395792792945844227?...
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  There are about a hundred different ways the elite can force a discourse. Control over regulation, cultural osmosis via mass media, financial influence, etc.. I think you might be impressed just how much cultural power there is that can be wielded.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    We don't live in the age of mass media any more, that's the point. In our postmodern age where everyone lives in their own internet sphere regulation and 'mass anything' doesn't matter. You can like or it dislike it, but there is no one single reality any more where an elite of educated gentlemen sits in a room and decides what society looks like. This is why there can be no revolution, or counter-revolution. That finance and polite society do not manage discourse any more should have become clear in 2016. As Bruno Macaes pointed out in a great recent piece[1], the world we are in now resembles Westworld theme parks. The elite can go to the Victorian park, and everyone else goes to the saloon. But this is truly virtual, we're not actually rolling the sexual revolution back. [1]https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/what-comes-after-liberalism https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/what-com...
vwoolf 5y ago
Did I misread this, or is there no real data presented whatsoever? There are a few anecdotes and that's it. Slate used to have a series called "bogus trend stories," and this feels like a bogus trend story: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/08/bogus-trend-stories-of-the-week-pieces-about-cuckolding-cemetery-real-estate-plagiarism-and-infanticide.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/08/bogus-trend-stor...
- morelisp 5y ago
  The goal isn't to inform us, it's to be an onramp for their movement.
- thephyber 5y ago
  Agree. There are some valid points in this article, but I found it difficult to adopt them because there was so much bad faith conflation of causation and ignorance of the state of society before the sexual revolution.
ArtWomb 5y ago
"Reject Modernity, Embrace Tradition" -a popular meme Sexual counter-revolutionaries targeting "commercial sexual exploitation" will fail. Just as the Meese Commission in the 1980s failed to combat the mainstreaming of content that deviated from "community standards". It just moved to VHS. And will further move to IPFS & privacy preserving crypto coins. I see the prohibition of regulated sex work falling in a similar vein to cannabis & psychedelics. Expect to see large investments from Founders Fund or A16Z. Even a YC style incubator for sex tech coming soon.
dippersauce 5y ago
This reads much like the musings of some of the religious fundamentalists I grew up around in my town. They purport that their way is the mainstream or "coming/silent majority", then shame anyone who falls outside their sexist and dehumanizing beliefs. They seek to make those people feel small and outcasted, thereby fulfilling their false beliefs in their own eyes. It's sad that someone could write something as sexist as she has, and not have even a shred of self-awareness about the irony of it.

19 points by throwkeep 5y ago

nocobot 5y ago

'No hymen, no diamond' is, on so many levels, such a disgusting thing to say

playingchanges 5y ago
It’s mind blowing the author chose to include that phrase given the rest of the article is pretty well written.
- morelisp 5y ago
  It's a thing this community actually says, not wordplay on the author's part.
fallingfrog 5y ago
I know, the whole essay is like a character study of the most repulsive people you can possibly imagine.
Gravityloss 5y ago
I guess if the article is against prostitution or paying for sex, it however encourages paying for the opposite, abstinence.

morelisp 5y ago

> Charlotte and Narayan are not the uptight fundamentalists or ugly, embittered feminists of stereotype: they’re members of the Ivy-educated jeunesse dorée. 1) In what context would a focus on sexual monogamy and a traditional marriage have been a sign of an "embittered feminist"? Neither has been a focus of any of the major American feminist movements. 2) When have the Ivy-educated elite not been also the uptight fundamentalists of America, at least as it pertains to everyone else's choices? It's all just the usual garbage of rich people trying to elevate some social signifier more accessible to them than others as a moral virtue.

sealeck 5y ago

The whole point about not kink -shaming is that it's OK to have kinks so long as it's between you and other consenting individuals. Nowhere is it suggested that it is OK to use this in order to perpetrate abuse onto other people. Everyone is expected to act with restraint, set clear boundaries and stop if their partner(s) ask them to.

988747 5y ago

Hippie concept of "free love" was taking us back to prehistorical times, when humans were just like animals: fucking, sleeping, eating, and not much else in between. It's a good thing that current generation is reverting to more sophisticated behaviors.

sudosysgen 5y ago
What? The reason for the historical death of "free love" is even more base, it's literally about resource conservation as populations pass what is feasible to support balanced against the need for field labour. If anything, prehistorical attitudes about love are much, much, much more sophisticated than what came after.
- krapp 5y ago
  The reason for the historical death of "free love" was mostly the rise of HIV/AIDS.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    I got from the context they were talking about the prehistoric type of love.

Barrin92 5y ago

There's a difference between the upper strata of society rediscovering Puritanism and a counterrevolution. Revolutions require means to enforce norms. If we have seen one thing it is that there is no means any more by which elite can force a discourse on the population at large. In the same sense how old fashioned aristocrats used to live by suffocating norms I guess we now get the techbro version of the same thing but ordinary people will not throw Tinder away because Ivy league graduates adopt the values of Victorian England. Revolutions always require a certain amount of energy and momentum in society which we don't have. You can see it with the other sort of old-fashioned ruling class attitudes that even progressive, liberal, elites have rediscovered. Veganism, exercise, obsession with health etc, it hasn't really percolated down much. Case in point, the author of the article who I happen to follow on twitter also just retweeted this: https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNews/status/1395792792945844227?s=20 https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNews/status/1395792792945844227?...

sudosysgen 5y ago
There are about a hundred different ways the elite can force a discourse. Control over regulation, cultural osmosis via mass media, financial influence, etc.. I think you might be impressed just how much cultural power there is that can be wielded.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  We don't live in the age of mass media any more, that's the point. In our postmodern age where everyone lives in their own internet sphere regulation and 'mass anything' doesn't matter. You can like or it dislike it, but there is no one single reality any more where an elite of educated gentlemen sits in a room and decides what society looks like. This is why there can be no revolution, or counter-revolution. That finance and polite society do not manage discourse any more should have become clear in 2016. As Bruno Macaes pointed out in a great recent piece[1], the world we are in now resembles Westworld theme parks. The elite can go to the Victorian park, and everyone else goes to the saloon. But this is truly virtual, we're not actually rolling the sexual revolution back. [1]https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/what-comes-after-liberalism https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/what-com...

vwoolf 5y ago

Did I misread this, or is there no real data presented whatsoever? There are a few anecdotes and that's it. Slate used to have a series called "bogus trend stories," and this feels like a bogus trend story: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/08/bogus-trend-stories-of-the-week-pieces-about-cuckolding-cemetery-real-estate-plagiarism-and-infanticide.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/08/bogus-trend-stor...

morelisp 5y ago
The goal isn't to inform us, it's to be an onramp for their movement.
thephyber 5y ago
Agree. There are some valid points in this article, but I found it difficult to adopt them because there was so much bad faith conflation of causation and ignorance of the state of society before the sexual revolution.

ArtWomb 5y ago

"Reject Modernity, Embrace Tradition" -a popular meme Sexual counter-revolutionaries targeting "commercial sexual exploitation" will fail. Just as the Meese Commission in the 1980s failed to combat the mainstreaming of content that deviated from "community standards". It just moved to VHS. And will further move to IPFS & privacy preserving crypto coins. I see the prohibition of regulated sex work falling in a similar vein to cannabis & psychedelics. Expect to see large investments from Founders Fund or A16Z. Even a YC style incubator for sex tech coming soon.

dippersauce 5y ago

This reads much like the musings of some of the religious fundamentalists I grew up around in my town. They purport that their way is the mainstream or "coming/silent majority", then shame anyone who falls outside their sexist and dehumanizing beliefs. They seek to make those people feel small and outcasted, thereby fulfilling their false beliefs in their own eyes. It's sad that someone could write something as sexist as she has, and not have even a shred of self-awareness about the irony of it.