The Costs and Consequences of Sexual Liberation
11th May 2025
In brief, pithy chapters, Perry outlines persistent fallacies about the sexual revolution, including the idea that the contraceptive pill, access to abortion, and freedom from supposedly restrictive norms about sex out of wedlock would liberate women. The revolution in morals did bring new freedoms, she concedes, but they were not enjoyed equally. “The sexual revolution has not, in fact, freed all of us,” Perry writes. “It has freed some of us, at a price. Which is exactly what we should expect from such a massive change.” She argues that it is past time we set aside the popular narrative about the sexual revolution, which sees it “as a story only of progress.”
Central to Perry’s argument is the quietly radical acknowledgment of differences between the sexes. The longstanding feminist message that, when it comes to sex, girls can do anything boys can do, is dangerously simplistic. “I accept the fact that men and women are different,” Perry writes. “They have different goals and interests. Those differences aren’t going away.”
These differences, moreover, spring from biological realities that feminism has either ignored or attempted to replace with specious claims: “Liberal feminism promises women freedom,” Perry writes. “But female biology imposes, in reality, limits on that freedom. Women get pregnant, and being pregnant and having children is not compatible with complete freedom.”