Upon opening Louise Perry’s new book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century, I’m moved to tears by the dedication: “For the women who learned it the hard way” Unlike many other people who have read and reviewed Perry’s work, reading her book wouldn’t be some academic exercise in contemplating how liberal feminism has let women down. It wouldn’t be evaluating what those poor sluts over there have endured in the wake of the sexual revolution. Reading her book was personal.
Aug 20, 2022·edited Aug 21, 2022Liked by Bridget Phetasy
My comment might be longer than your essay - sorry! My comments are not directed specifically at you, but rather to the issues your essay raises.
Bridget’s essay brought certain things to mind that’ I’ve wanted to say to young women for a long time. I just turned 74, so came of age in the late sixties and early seventies, just at the cusp of the so-called sexual revolution, when The Pill made it possible for women to engage in promiscuous sex, and the feminist icons of the seventies and eighties steered women in the direction of becoming [like] men.
I graduated high school in 1966. This year represented a clear dividing line between so many cultural phenomena that were dominated by sex in one form or another. In 1966 and before, a young man and woman needed a period of courtship leading to marriage before sex could take place, and then there was every expectation that sex would lead to children and the formation of a family. In my large high school class of about 300 students, only one girl became pregnant, with the result that she and the boy were required to leave school and get married. They hardly knew each other. They were ridiculed by the community for having no self control. Their parents wanted to kill them. Any future plans they had were in shambles. Everyone understood the devastating implications, and while the high school students of that era had no fewer raging hormones than young people today, their sexual activity was limited to smooching in the back of the car. They stopped short of having sex.
Before continuing, I’d like to take a step back, to put certain things in perspective. I'd like to zoom way back in space, to a point where we can see the Earth as a small, distant blue and white marble, and if we look closely, we can see patches of green. Folks, that beautiful little marble is the only place in the entire known universe where there is life. Sure, the search goes on, yadda, yadda, but to date there is not one iota of evidence of life anywhere else.
Please bring your mind to this fact, that the totality of life, from the tiniest microbe to the complexity of the human species, exists only here, in this one spot. And the fundamental drive of life is to make more of it. Life exists to make more life, and the fact that life exists at all is entirely miraculous, given the obvious challenges. In nearly every single spot on the earth, right under your very shoes, life is happening, and if you took the trouble to notice, you would find it amazing, astonishing and mind boggling. You are a piece of this life. As humans, we get to participate in life. It is a miracle and a privilege. That is the fundamental biological reason for the existence of men and women and for having sex: to make more life.
So please, show some respect for this incredible gift of life. Realize that the reason you have these raging hormones, these powerful desires to connect with your opposite, is to make more life – to participate in life. If you had a cabbage between your ears this would not seem complicated. Now, with the availability of contraceptives, you can hold off indefinitely on making more life; you can circumvent Nature. You can have sex 24/7 with strangers if you want. You can do it while drinking shots, snorting drugs and watching pornography. But is that really what you want?
Before 1967, when The Pill became widely available, men and women generally looked forward to getting married. Why? So they could have sex! In the absence of contraception, children naturally followed. Big families, food fights, barbeques, camping trips – these results of participating in life are the things that people who grew up in that era are most nostalgic about.
Has this rather natural way of living lost its appeal? Or do young people today even see it as an option? I hear young people increasingly say they don’t want children. I hear young men talking about getting vasectomies, and young women talking about sterilization. The arguments they give for these abnormal, anti-life sentiments are entirely divorced from nature. It’s as though they don’t realize that the consequence of ceasing to make life is extinction. They also say they just want to have fun; marriage and children aren’t appealing. But the joyless promiscuity of hook-up culture is appealing and fun?
Who were the role models for this lost generation? At least some of the blame for this state of affairs must be laid at the feet of feminism. The feminist ideology of the seventies and eighties persuaded women that to succeed in life they needed to be like men. Every bookstore of this era had prominent shelves filled with tomes directed at women, explaining how to think like men, dress like men, argue like men, understand about pecking orders and the sports and military influences in the workplace. This was the era of the pant suit. Women were told that every business had a glass ceiling she needed to break. The goal was to become CEO. Women pitted themselves against men in the workplace. Somehow, it was overlooked that most of these men were leading lives of quiet desperation in their paper-pushing jobs, and that maybe corporate America wasn’t the ideal environment for a woman looking to make her mark. Women kept on banging their heads against the glass ceiling and complaining about misogyny. This still goes on today. It occurred to very few of them that if they wanted so very much to be a CEO, they could just go start their own company and put their money where their mouths were. No head banging required.
So, after this decades-long war of women against men, we’ve now arrived at the bizarre state of affairs where women are, in fact, declared to be men, and vice versa, and/or none of the above, or all of the above. Well intentioned people sincerely declare that they cannot define what a woman is, other than to say it is a body with a vagina. The gender ideology wars have become incomprehensible babble, with many people apparently swearing off sex altogether. And perhaps that is a good thing. Probably people should get their genders sorted out before they go back to making more life. Before a woman can have any self-respect, she must at least know she is a woman. Not being a slut has to start there. "A body with a vagina" has "slut" written all over it.
I would like to make the argument that life is a good thing, and that participating in life is good for humans. And I would further argue that men and women, in the old-fashioned meaning of the words, are a good thing, and that sex, carried out joyfully, with love, passion, humor and commitment, the old-fashioned way, is a good thing. There is a simple cure for those who have gotten too far lost in the labyrinths of their own minds: nature. Nature knows how to do life, in all its diversity. So, if you regret being a slut, or some version of that, get out of your bubble, go for a walk in a wild place, hug a tree, get grounded and have a look at how Nature is doing life. There are no lies in nature; you will always get the truth. You will feel better. Things will make more sense. You might turn over a new leaf.
This resonated SOO much! Growing up (fast lol) in the 80’s and raising my girls in the 90’s....and now at 55, single and on a healing journey, I’m waking to my “damage” and internal dialogue, and working on REPROGRAMMING! I’ve literally been meditating on this over past year! Thank you for your frank and raw honesty! 💚🌎
I had to subscribe to comment on this. (That’s not a problem BTW). Just saying your piece moved me. And resonated like you wouldn’t believe. You are talking about me. Thanks Bridget. I’ve never talked about it bc I was so ashamed of it. So it’s great to hear others talk about it. Cheers. Xx
Bridget, I just love your unfiltered filter. I am struggling to read the same book. I spent years using men for fucks and having relationships with other women. Too much pain, trauma, and baggage to make it make sense. May God bless you and your sweet family. I'll always be rooting for you all.
Thank you for your courage and example. There is additional damage to aging sluts and their partners. My wife was a slut...slept with well over 100 men while a waitress at a five star hotel in Russia during the five years following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Wealthy Internationals picked her up constantly and she was flattered and felt the shallow power you describe so well. The difference is in your present lives. My wife became so accustomed to being used and tossed aside that she now hates sex. We are in love, but she cannot rid herself of the past and will never know loving and enriching sex as part of a forever and deep love. I miss that as does she and we always will.
Amen- been there and came out the other side too. So much unnecessary, self induced pain. Thanks for this thoughtful piece. You are very deserving of your husband and daughter. ❤️
This is a game changer for me!!! I have a 14 year old (going on 20!) foster daughter that just moved in with us a few months ago and I never thought I would ever have to think about this subject ever again but here it is slapping me right in the face. This kid is from the streets and already highly sexualized just by the music she listens to I can tell it's a constant onslaught of bad messages like it's not important to have self respect (not sure how much she's experienced yet but I'm sure more than she should have) but with articles and shows like this (god-willing) I will help her avoid the pitfalls and downright evils that await her fully developed body - yet young undeveloped mind!!! Thanks, keep up the good work, ladies!!!
I could have written this piece. Growing up Catholic in the 80s, it feels like we lived the same life. I too was using sex to fill a void. I too had low self esteem and no respect for myself. I too am now finally in a wonderful relationship with a man who respects me regardless. Thank you for speaking this truth out loud!
subscribed due to this essay - not even that I agree or disagree but it is so clear and honest and real. I feel like Bridget's writings and podcasting has become more focused and powerful of late. Thanks.
Excellent article. It sparked a thought that has been swimming around in the back of my thoughts for a long time. The concept of "filling a hole" and sense of "shame" have long been connected, but I think the sexual liberation movement inverted the connection.
Growing up Catholic myself, and then drifting away from the church while carrying a disdain for "shame". I did everything in my power for years to revel in debasing myself. I learned the hard way that while the Church was ham fisted, they really did have a point.
It's as if our ancestors really did know a thing or two about living.
The thought I was having is that we all, deep down, value ourselves more than we know. It manifests itself as shame and guilt and emptiness when we act against our our best interests. Our soul, or whatever term you feel more comfortable with, never loses its sense of self worth. We know it's there, and we know it knows it is worth protecting because it tells us, repoeatedly, to be mindful of it through this sense of shame.
Hi Bridget! Wow. Wow wow wow. You nailed the emotional core of this experience. I just finished your excellent interview with Joe Rogan. That led me to here. I’m 12 years sober myself. Good stuff. Though I’m a straight man, I totally relate to your essay: Yes, I had a lot of drunken meaningless sex, and yes, it was pleasurable and yet empty. As a former alcoholic asshole, I WAS one of the guys you write about, sadly. I remember that broken look in women’s eyes, that sort of animal desire for sex as a way to prevent authentic intimacy. Now I’m almost forty and in love and sober and it’s phenomenal. I’m so glad we’re on the other side of the chaos.
By the way I just posted about the latest Joe Rogan interview with Matt Walsh. Anyway: Thank you again for your courage and vulnerability. With sexual liberation comes other sideways consequences. It’s never that simple. Our binary media desperately wants it to be. But as your essay suggests, it’s not.
I Regret Being A Slut
My comment might be longer than your essay - sorry! My comments are not directed specifically at you, but rather to the issues your essay raises.
Bridget’s essay brought certain things to mind that’ I’ve wanted to say to young women for a long time. I just turned 74, so came of age in the late sixties and early seventies, just at the cusp of the so-called sexual revolution, when The Pill made it possible for women to engage in promiscuous sex, and the feminist icons of the seventies and eighties steered women in the direction of becoming [like] men.
I graduated high school in 1966. This year represented a clear dividing line between so many cultural phenomena that were dominated by sex in one form or another. In 1966 and before, a young man and woman needed a period of courtship leading to marriage before sex could take place, and then there was every expectation that sex would lead to children and the formation of a family. In my large high school class of about 300 students, only one girl became pregnant, with the result that she and the boy were required to leave school and get married. They hardly knew each other. They were ridiculed by the community for having no self control. Their parents wanted to kill them. Any future plans they had were in shambles. Everyone understood the devastating implications, and while the high school students of that era had no fewer raging hormones than young people today, their sexual activity was limited to smooching in the back of the car. They stopped short of having sex.
Before continuing, I’d like to take a step back, to put certain things in perspective. I'd like to zoom way back in space, to a point where we can see the Earth as a small, distant blue and white marble, and if we look closely, we can see patches of green. Folks, that beautiful little marble is the only place in the entire known universe where there is life. Sure, the search goes on, yadda, yadda, but to date there is not one iota of evidence of life anywhere else.
Please bring your mind to this fact, that the totality of life, from the tiniest microbe to the complexity of the human species, exists only here, in this one spot. And the fundamental drive of life is to make more of it. Life exists to make more life, and the fact that life exists at all is entirely miraculous, given the obvious challenges. In nearly every single spot on the earth, right under your very shoes, life is happening, and if you took the trouble to notice, you would find it amazing, astonishing and mind boggling. You are a piece of this life. As humans, we get to participate in life. It is a miracle and a privilege. That is the fundamental biological reason for the existence of men and women and for having sex: to make more life.
So please, show some respect for this incredible gift of life. Realize that the reason you have these raging hormones, these powerful desires to connect with your opposite, is to make more life – to participate in life. If you had a cabbage between your ears this would not seem complicated. Now, with the availability of contraceptives, you can hold off indefinitely on making more life; you can circumvent Nature. You can have sex 24/7 with strangers if you want. You can do it while drinking shots, snorting drugs and watching pornography. But is that really what you want?
Before 1967, when The Pill became widely available, men and women generally looked forward to getting married. Why? So they could have sex! In the absence of contraception, children naturally followed. Big families, food fights, barbeques, camping trips – these results of participating in life are the things that people who grew up in that era are most nostalgic about.
Has this rather natural way of living lost its appeal? Or do young people today even see it as an option? I hear young people increasingly say they don’t want children. I hear young men talking about getting vasectomies, and young women talking about sterilization. The arguments they give for these abnormal, anti-life sentiments are entirely divorced from nature. It’s as though they don’t realize that the consequence of ceasing to make life is extinction. They also say they just want to have fun; marriage and children aren’t appealing. But the joyless promiscuity of hook-up culture is appealing and fun?
Who were the role models for this lost generation? At least some of the blame for this state of affairs must be laid at the feet of feminism. The feminist ideology of the seventies and eighties persuaded women that to succeed in life they needed to be like men. Every bookstore of this era had prominent shelves filled with tomes directed at women, explaining how to think like men, dress like men, argue like men, understand about pecking orders and the sports and military influences in the workplace. This was the era of the pant suit. Women were told that every business had a glass ceiling she needed to break. The goal was to become CEO. Women pitted themselves against men in the workplace. Somehow, it was overlooked that most of these men were leading lives of quiet desperation in their paper-pushing jobs, and that maybe corporate America wasn’t the ideal environment for a woman looking to make her mark. Women kept on banging their heads against the glass ceiling and complaining about misogyny. This still goes on today. It occurred to very few of them that if they wanted so very much to be a CEO, they could just go start their own company and put their money where their mouths were. No head banging required.
So, after this decades-long war of women against men, we’ve now arrived at the bizarre state of affairs where women are, in fact, declared to be men, and vice versa, and/or none of the above, or all of the above. Well intentioned people sincerely declare that they cannot define what a woman is, other than to say it is a body with a vagina. The gender ideology wars have become incomprehensible babble, with many people apparently swearing off sex altogether. And perhaps that is a good thing. Probably people should get their genders sorted out before they go back to making more life. Before a woman can have any self-respect, she must at least know she is a woman. Not being a slut has to start there. "A body with a vagina" has "slut" written all over it.
I would like to make the argument that life is a good thing, and that participating in life is good for humans. And I would further argue that men and women, in the old-fashioned meaning of the words, are a good thing, and that sex, carried out joyfully, with love, passion, humor and commitment, the old-fashioned way, is a good thing. There is a simple cure for those who have gotten too far lost in the labyrinths of their own minds: nature. Nature knows how to do life, in all its diversity. So, if you regret being a slut, or some version of that, get out of your bubble, go for a walk in a wild place, hug a tree, get grounded and have a look at how Nature is doing life. There are no lies in nature; you will always get the truth. You will feel better. Things will make more sense. You might turn over a new leaf.
This resonated SOO much! Growing up (fast lol) in the 80’s and raising my girls in the 90’s....and now at 55, single and on a healing journey, I’m waking to my “damage” and internal dialogue, and working on REPROGRAMMING! I’ve literally been meditating on this over past year! Thank you for your frank and raw honesty! 💚🌎
I had to subscribe to comment on this. (That’s not a problem BTW). Just saying your piece moved me. And resonated like you wouldn’t believe. You are talking about me. Thanks Bridget. I’ve never talked about it bc I was so ashamed of it. So it’s great to hear others talk about it. Cheers. Xx
Thanks Bridget. I will be sharing this with my teenage daughter.
Brave beautiful essay! I just subscribed.
There is no such thing as casual sex, especially for most women.
Bridget, I just love your unfiltered filter. I am struggling to read the same book. I spent years using men for fucks and having relationships with other women. Too much pain, trauma, and baggage to make it make sense. May God bless you and your sweet family. I'll always be rooting for you all.
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
On Fri, Aug 19, 2022 at 10:05 PM, Jan Glaser
<janhglaser@yahoo.com> wrote:
Thank you for your courage and example. There is additional damage to aging sluts and their partners. My wife was a slut...slept with well over 100 men while a waitress at a five star hotel in Russia during the five years following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Wealthy Internationals picked her up constantly and she was flattered and felt the shallow power you describe so well. The difference is in your present lives. My wife became so accustomed to being used and tossed aside that she now hates sex. We are in love, but she cannot rid herself of the past and will never know loving and enriching sex as part of a forever and deep love. I miss that as does she and we always will.
Amen- been there and came out the other side too. So much unnecessary, self induced pain. Thanks for this thoughtful piece. You are very deserving of your husband and daughter. ❤️
This is a game changer for me!!! I have a 14 year old (going on 20!) foster daughter that just moved in with us a few months ago and I never thought I would ever have to think about this subject ever again but here it is slapping me right in the face. This kid is from the streets and already highly sexualized just by the music she listens to I can tell it's a constant onslaught of bad messages like it's not important to have self respect (not sure how much she's experienced yet but I'm sure more than she should have) but with articles and shows like this (god-willing) I will help her avoid the pitfalls and downright evils that await her fully developed body - yet young undeveloped mind!!! Thanks, keep up the good work, ladies!!!
I could have written this piece. Growing up Catholic in the 80s, it feels like we lived the same life. I too was using sex to fill a void. I too had low self esteem and no respect for myself. I too am now finally in a wonderful relationship with a man who respects me regardless. Thank you for speaking this truth out loud!
subscribed due to this essay - not even that I agree or disagree but it is so clear and honest and real. I feel like Bridget's writings and podcasting has become more focused and powerful of late. Thanks.
Excellent article. It sparked a thought that has been swimming around in the back of my thoughts for a long time. The concept of "filling a hole" and sense of "shame" have long been connected, but I think the sexual liberation movement inverted the connection.
Growing up Catholic myself, and then drifting away from the church while carrying a disdain for "shame". I did everything in my power for years to revel in debasing myself. I learned the hard way that while the Church was ham fisted, they really did have a point.
It's as if our ancestors really did know a thing or two about living.
The thought I was having is that we all, deep down, value ourselves more than we know. It manifests itself as shame and guilt and emptiness when we act against our our best interests. Our soul, or whatever term you feel more comfortable with, never loses its sense of self worth. We know it's there, and we know it knows it is worth protecting because it tells us, repoeatedly, to be mindful of it through this sense of shame.
Hi Bridget! Wow. Wow wow wow. You nailed the emotional core of this experience. I just finished your excellent interview with Joe Rogan. That led me to here. I’m 12 years sober myself. Good stuff. Though I’m a straight man, I totally relate to your essay: Yes, I had a lot of drunken meaningless sex, and yes, it was pleasurable and yet empty. As a former alcoholic asshole, I WAS one of the guys you write about, sadly. I remember that broken look in women’s eyes, that sort of animal desire for sex as a way to prevent authentic intimacy. Now I’m almost forty and in love and sober and it’s phenomenal. I’m so glad we’re on the other side of the chaos.
By the way I just posted about the latest Joe Rogan interview with Matt Walsh. Anyway: Thank you again for your courage and vulnerability. With sexual liberation comes other sideways consequences. It’s never that simple. Our binary media desperately wants it to be. But as your essay suggests, it’s not.
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
Powerful and well written piece. Thank you for sharing this with the world.
So much about this resonates. Thank you!