"Eberstadt is at her best in highlighting both the ironies and tragedies of sexual liberation."

Janice Shaw Crouse, an Evangelical, positively reviews Mary Eberstadt's book Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution (Ignatius, 2012) for The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy:

Eberstadt is at her best in highlighting both the ironies and tragedies of sexual liberation. She laments the “sexual doublespeak” of popular women’s fashion magazines, a la Cosmopolitan, as they reveal “a widely contradictory mix of chatter about how wonderful it is that women are now all liberated for sexual fun—and how mysteriously impossible it has become to find a good, steady, committed boyfriend at the same time.” Children and young people, too, have suffered. A major legacy of the sexual revolution, she laments, “is the assault unleashed from the 1960s onward on the taboo against sexual seduction or exploitation of the young.” Young people imbibe a “toxic collegiate social brew made possible by the sexual revolution,” a revolution that now includes date rapes, hook-ups, binge drinking, and pervasive pornography. The toxic brew of today’s permissive culture, portrayed by Tom Wolfe in his 2004 novel I am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel, also features what Eberstadt calls contraception’s “permanent backup plan”: abortion. Instead of “liberating women from the slavery of their fertility” as some adversarial feminists claim, the Pill empowered a sexual revolution by absolving men of responsibility and, as Kay Hymowitz documents in Manning Up, left far too many in permanent adolescence. The net effect is a climate of “sexual obesity”—a phrase that Eberstadt borrows from University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist Mary Ann Layden—a perfect storm that includes pervasive pornography and attempts to mainstream pedophilia.

An unexpected dimension of the poisoned culture is the imposition of ersatz morals, evident in new obsessions with so-called safe sex and healthy eating, which have filled the vacuum left by the rejection of common-sense morality. Citing shifts that took place in public attitudes toward tobacco and pornography, Eberstadt believes these developments reveal a great deal about our current situation. In the 1950s, pornography was morally repugnant and tobacco smoking was entrenched in the culture. At that time, family-centered morality governed sexual behavior while food choices were morally neutral. Today, the moral valences have been reversed: anything goes sexually, but food choices carry moral significance. Borrowing from Friedrich Nietzsche, Eberstadt terms these shifts “the trans-valuation of values,” meaning “the ways in which the existing moral code would become transformed in a social order no longer centered on Judeo-Christianity.” We can only hope that by continuing to shine the spotlight of truth on the sexual-revolution juggernaut, we can halt and then reverse the cultural pollution, the widespread discontent, and the collateral damage.

Read the entire review.

Comments

[Charlie B]

I have written (Family Planning: A guide for exploring the Issues. Liguori Publ, 1985-2009) that feminism, in blanket endorsements of contraception and abortion, unwittingly reinforce the very roots of the sexism and chauvinism they wish to neutralize. Layden's idea of sexual obesity is enshrined cultural icons like Howard Stern or Tucker Max, and in the James Bond fantasy where women are precocious, available, seductive, never say no (for long), never menstruating, never have a headache, never get pregnant - i.e. an illusion (or perhaps delusion?). Contraception and abortion make this fantasy possible. I keep wondering if or when feminist "leaders" might wake up and smell the hypocrisy, and the damage done. I ain't holding my breath.

[V]

So many women (and men too) are conditioned to think that somehow, by indulging in their worst desires, they might find lasting satisfaction. What is found instead, is that the more you indulge, the stronger you crave, until the things that "turn you on" today, were unthinkable yesterday. IN an attempt to chase after the chimerical bliss, they try to change the culture so they don't have to feel guilty about the extent of their degradation. Seriously, have you seen *greeting cards* lately? Many of them are pornographic cartoons!

So when did pregnancy turn from being a blessing, to being a terrible cliff-hanger in a story? I was told years ago that it was all because the economy was worse and people were worried about feeding the little bundles of joy. Nope. Can't be, because babies were still blessings during the Great Depression. It's because you can't chase the bliss... and raising babies is hard. Yet women are left cold, spiritually hungry and alone more than ever before. And it's our own fault.

Also, for most of those feminists, their philosophy has become their ego. If you disagree with them, it is a hate crime. If reality shows that their conclusions are false, reality must be wrong. "Women must not be trying hard enough! We are not fee yet! Just wait while I"...chase another momentary fling down the rabbit hole of (so called) identity.

Also... how are you supposed to attract a nice reliable young man when most of your philosophy involves castigating the entire male species? I know a number of honorable and reliable and good hearted men who've sworn perpetual single-hood because getting married is too dangerous, and women too hostile and fickle. There are entire internet cultures based on this. Certainly they are not an example to follow, but they are yet another symptom of this disease.

[Micha Elyi]

The contraceptive pill was demanded by women. Legal abortion was demanded by women. They are called "women's rights issues" by women. Yet the Eberstadt and Hymnowitz women blame - wait for it - men.

Sisters, I am disappointed.