"Doing sex before and outside marriage is a great ideal that should inspire us!"
"Be promiscuous!"
"If you question this, you're a prude!"
Example song: Young Girl (get out of my mind) by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap.
In the 1970s were we not told:
"Everyone, break the boundaries the prudes imposed!"
"Explore sex in all sorts of ways.
Not only with same sex, but also with younger, older, with ..."
"Didn't Kinsey say so?"
"Sex is for pleasure, not procreation."
"Sex is for leisure, not responsibility."
Were we not also told:
"You want it really!
"If you question this, you are repressed. Freud said so."
In the 1980s were we not told:
"No such thing as society. Everyone for himself (sic)."
"Those with money can get all they want. Loadsamoney."
"Divorce is good; nobody's fault; Marriage is boring."
"Your wants are your right."
In the 1990s did we not tell ourselves:
"Your wants are your consumer right."
"Sex is a pastime."
"Seduction is an artform."
"Sex is the most important thing in your life."
Since the 2000s have we not told ourselves:
"Sex is what defines you."
"Homosexual sex is wonderful and must never be criticised."
And now, is not social media telling us:
"If you don't send me a nude pic, you don't love me!"
-----
Though male sexual predation is nothing new,
going back millennia,
these decades changed the social norms
of affluent society.
Sexual predation used to be frowned on.
From the 1960s it became not only acceptable
but an expectation.
I want to say there is no excuse for sexual predation.
I want to say we shouldn't be doing this.
But where do I hear the message of responsibility?
Where has that message of responsibility been consistently given?
Nowhere in mainstream society since the 1960s.
Was C.S. Lewis right when he wrote, all those years ago [Essay: Right to Happiness, 1940s]
"A society in which conjugal infidelity is tolerated must always be in the long run a society adverse to women. ... Where promiscuity prevails, they will therefore always be more often the victims than the culprits. Thus in the ruthless war of promiscuity women are at a double disadvantage. They play for higher stakes and are also more likely to lose."
Who would have thought, during the 1960s 'sexual revolution', that some of the acts then applauded would be the subject of retrospective court cases 50 years later?
"A healthy attitude to sexuality" - in which women and men both have dignity and neither oppresses nor possesses the other, but each gives willingly of themselves to the other to whom they are committed for life. The sexual act is an expression of the multi-aspectual intimacy that is marriage.
The Christian view of sexuality developed from the Jewish attitude. (See also In Defence of Marriage or On Marriage.)
What Freud, Kinsey and the 1960s idealists were against was the so-called Victorian view of sex, which is a distortion of the CHristian view, which is similar to the Jewish "healthy" view. (Actually: were the Victorians as bad as we are told they were?)
I wonder ...
Many #MeToo-ers agree with this, and recognise the paradox.
But do not many others want to retain the same core of society? Do they not have have this contradiction deep inside:
"Anything goes as long as there is 'consent'
But before consent, men should behave like Christians."
* "Affluent elites" - affluent compared with rest of world, especially so-called the Developing World. Especially university students.
Another note: I heard today (12 April 2019) that Pope Francis had commented on the roots in the 1960s.
Created 16 December 2018. Updated: 23 May 2019 spelling errors, links to marriage pages. 12 March 2021 Where do we get the message of responsibility? 8 May 2021 1960s song Young Girl. 30 May 2021 things for 2000s: defines you, homo. from note. 17 June 2021 rearranged and reworded.