On Puritanism
Last month I wrote a thing going through a series of arguments used to oppose the current flow of accusations of sexual violence and harassment.
Since then, the number of opinion pieces rehashing these same stale points have multiplied, most notably in France, where Catherine Deneuve, Catherine Millet, and a number of other women signed one of the most laughably regressive pamphlets to date, which, if we’re honest, is only a more incendiary version of Daphne Merkin’s writ for the New York Times. Should be we surprised that women wrote these? No. Mostly because the deepest cuts to this moment could not be made by men.
One of their most notable rationalisations is what Merkin quaintly summarises in a question: “whatever happened to flirting?” The hilarious notion that #metoo’s effect will be to impose new strictures on gender relations, a terrifying return to puritanical mores.
I said something about puritanism, but as the conversation went on, another aspect of this point came to the fore, which underscores how deeply nonsensical it is: the invocation of puritanism is meant to paint the #metoo movement as a regression from the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, which was catalysed by the women’s liberation movement. By agitating for birth control, abortion, sex outside of marriage, women upended love and sex in ways that profoundly altered how genders related to each other.
The issue here is that a non-negligible portion of men have taken this to mean, simplistically, “more available women, more sex.” It basically made the unleashing of men’s most basic instincts more socially acceptable.
Let’s be clear: puritanism is a social constraint on women’s ability to do what they want with their bodies. It’s an obstacle to women’s freedom, but by no means is it the only one. True liberation happens when women acquire the freedom to say yes as well as no. Being forced into sex is equally as disempowering as being forced out of it.
What is happening, of course, is not a return to puritanism. It’s an attempt at removing another obstacle to women’s liberation, which is sexual violence. It’s the second chapter of the sexual revolution, and it, too, promises to profoundly alter how genders relate to each other. Not just in bed, but in every single realm, from the personal to the professional, from each household to the economy as a whole.
In a mostly friendly conversation, a man asked me:
“Where do women who prefer overt sexual aggression fall in your calculus? A situation that is one woman’s ‘that guy was an asshole’ can easily be another woman’s ‘that was hot as hell and I loved it.’”
That, of course, is where it lies: the fear of being policed into the bedroom. Here’s someone, I thought, who could use a bit of Savage Love. Everything is fair play, every kink and fetish is on the table, as long as there’s consent. If both parties are free to say no, if no one is pressuring anyone into anything, by all means, go wild.
As James Hamblin put it after the Aziz Ansari fiasco:
“This is not an anti-sex movement gone off the rails. It is a pro-sex movement just laying the tracks.”
My point exactly.
