Can the Left Regulate Sex? by Ross Douthat
(Link): Can the Left Regulate Sex?
– (that link to New York Times; three free articles per month, otherwise it’s behind a pay wall)
by Ross Douthat
(also here – excerpts available at that link)
Excerpts:
July 24, 2021
By Ross Douthat
There is a harrowing story in The New Yorker that everyone should grit their teeth and read [see also resources on this blog].
Written by Rachel Aviv, it tells the story of how a respected German psychologist named Helmut Kentler decided to foster neglected children with pedophiles, how he ran this experiment with government support for decades after the 1960s, and how it created exactly the kind of hells you would expect.
…. That today the readers of an impeccably progressive magazine recoil in horror from that extreme is, among other things, proof that revolutions don’t move in one direction — you can climb back up a slippery slope, you can break a taboo and partially rebuild it.
But in its retreat from the Polanski era, its concession that sometimes it’s OK to forbid, cultural progressivism entered into a long internal struggle over what its goal ought to be — to maximize permissiveness with some minimalist taboos (no rape, no sex with children) or to devise a broader set of sexual regulations that would reflect egalitarian and feminist values rather than religious ones.
This tension is visible all over recent history. The mood in which liberals defended Bill Clinton’s philandering was an example of the more permissive option. The mood of the #MeToo era, which condemned cads as well as rapists, is an example of the more regulatory approach.
….But if the tensions are longstanding, how they’re worked out is becoming more important, as social conservatism ebbs and progressivism’s cultural dominance expands.
Progressives are not quite in the cultural position that Christian churches once occupied in this country, but they are close enough that the question “how should the left regulate sex?” increasingly implicates our whole society.
In general the recent trend has been toward more regulation: The sexual-assault tribunals on college campuses, the changing rules of workplace harassment, the new politesse surrounding pronouns and sexual identity.
Part of this reflects a pattern often observed by conservatives, in which certain forms of sexual liberation seem to require more micromanagement than the old “thou shalt nots” — like the rigor required to distinguish supposedly empowering “sex work” from the exploitative variety, or purportedly egalitarian pornography from the misogynist or pedophilic sort.
But this regulatory mood is contested and unstable. Last month there was an internal progressive debate about whether, now that Pride parades are essentially part of a new civic religion, (Link): their kinky side should be sanitized for kids, or whether encountering B.D.S.M. is a healthy part of a queer-affirming childhood.
In New York’s mayoral race, the allegations of sexual misconduct against Scott Stringer helped derail his campaign but also exposed progressive discomfort with the stricter forms of #MeToo orthodoxy.
…So progressives will continue to teeter between two anxieties. On the one hand, the fear of turning into the very Puritans and Comstocks they brag of having toppled. On the other, the fear of Helmut Kentler’s legacy, and liberation as a path into the abyss.
Related:
(Link): Anti-Porn Activist: ‘Ethically Sourced’ Porn ‘Sounds Like an Oxymoron’
(Link): Some Researchers Argue that Shame Should Be Used to Treat Sexual Compulsions
(Link): The Oxymoron of Ethical Porn via End Sexual Exploitation
(Link): Liberals Disagreeing on Personal Preference as Dating Criteria
(Link): Scripture vs. the Sexual Deviancy Zeitgeist by M. P. Orsi
(Link): Christian Preacher Admits He Won’t Preach About Sexuality For Fear It May Offend Sexual Sinners
(Link): When Adult Virginity and Adult Celibacy Are Viewed As Inconvenient or As Impediments
(Link): Are You Ashamed of Biblical [Sexual] Purity? by J. Slattery
(Link): “Consensual Incest” Should Be Decriminalized, Advocates Say By Kathianne Boniello
(Link): Incest a ‘fundamental right’, German committee says
(Link): No, Christians and Churches Do Not Idolize Virginity and Sexual Purity
(Link): Slut-Shaming Is Bad—But The Overreaction Against It Also Hurts Women by J. Doverspike
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