Reevaluating The Sexual Revolution: Louise Perry’s Guide To Modern Hookup Culture
(REVIEW) Growing up in the 1990s a Christian automatically made you seem pretty “weird,” especially when it came to sex. Christians were often seen as prudish, advocating for abstinence until marriage and opposing pornography (let alone gay marriage), which — according to the popular narrative at the time — made them toxic and oppressive. The film “Easy A” is a good example of how the Christian sexual ethics was portrayed in pop culture.
Fast forward to today. I’ve now lived long enough to see a new generation of secular thinkers making many of the same arguments that Christians made back then. One of the biggest voices challenging the modern sexual landscape is Louise Perry. A feminist journalist and author of “The Case Against the Sexual Revolution,” Perry argues that many feminists have ignored the downsides of the sexual revolution.
This year, Perry updated her book with a new version titled, “A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century.” It’s a shorter (at just 176 pages), more accessible book aimed specifically at young women, helping them navigate the challenges of the modern sexual world. While the book is a valuable resource, I remain skeptical that her framework for resisting hookup culture will be more successful than the efforts of the Christian counterculture of the ‘90s.
“A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century” is easy to read and filled with straightforward data and arguments. Perry makes modest claims, which she backs up well with “facts and logic,” as the kids say. She argues that men and women are biologically different; most men enjoy casual sex, while most women feel exploited by it. Not all desires are healthy. We should prioritize female safety over male pleasure. The porn industry and sex work are inherently dehumanizing, as they treat people like products and cater to male sexual demands, often encouraging predatory practices to increase the "supply" of women. Marriage, she writes, is valuable and leads to far more happiness for women than most feminists like to acknowledge.
In many ways, Perry could be seen as the female counterpart to Jordan Peterson. She uses academic research and folk wisdom to show young women why much of what their religious grandmothers told them was true, and why they’ll be happier if they follow that wisdom. As someone who has benefited from Peterson’s writing, I’m happy to see women have a voice like his, too.
That said, I have concerns about how effective Perry’s approach will be. Women — as Perry often points out in her book — are not like men. A lot of Perry’s arguments for why women should abstain from promiscuity remind me of the Christian counterculture of the ‘90s. This movement largely failed to prevent young people from having sex, but did contribute to a wave of traumatized women who internalized shame for not meeting the sexual standards of their faith communities.
Perhaps the fact that Perry bases her arguments on feminist principles and academic research will make her approach more effective. But I’m not entirely convinced. While she makes a persuasive case that most women would be happier avoiding casual sex, she doesn't fully address why the minority of women who do enjoy casual sex should change their behavior.
Why not let everyone do as they please? Well, because if any small minority of women engage in casual sex, they will monopolize all the men unless the majority of women who don’t want to participate in hookup culture do so anyway. But why should that minority of women care? Isn’t the majority just ... the majority?
The only way the majority of women can get what they want is through a social shaming campaign against the sexually liberated minority — in other words, “slut-shaming.” But Perry offers no moral justification for slut-shaming beyond “the majority of us want it this way.” It’s unclear, too, how it would be more effective than when purity culture tried it in the past.
One of the main reasons hookup culture is so prevalent today has less to do with ideology and more to do with economics, something Perry alludes to in her essay “The Myth of Female Agency.” Women overwhelmingly want to date men who are as rich as they are or richer. But with more and more women attending college and earning higher incomes (while fewer men are doing the same, women face tough choices): Date someone they’re not interested in, stay single or compete for an increasingly smaller pool of men who can set the terms of entry into the dating market.
This means the key to changing hookup culture might lie not in women exerting more agency (as Perry encourages), but in increasing the number of eligible men to give women more negotiating power and change men’s sexual habits.
Where Perry’s book falls short is giving men compelling reasons not to engage in hookup culture. She tries to draw parallels between men who sleep around, like Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, and the empty, humiliating lives they lead. But most men don’t plan to sleep around into old age; they do it through their 20s and possibly into their 30s. Most of Perry’s arguments cast men as the “bad guys” for their sexuality. Yet, men are increasingly rejecting the notion of women’s moral superiority and are unwilling to sacrifice their optimal mating strategies for it.
Encouraging women to feel disgust toward men’s sexuality also doesn’t seem like the best approach to restoring harmony between the sexes. Despite Perry’s focus on the harms of hookup culture, Gen Z is actually having less sex than previous generations. Culture critic Freya India points out that much of this is due to the constant fearmongering about sex and men from online influencers. The result of Perry’s book may not be healthier relationships, but simply fewer relationships overall.
Thankfully, other work is being done to address these gaps. Figures like Peterson and Richard Reeves are raising awareness of the “boy crisis” in schools and at home — finding strategies to help men succeed. Gen Z men are increasingly returning to church, which historically has been an effective way to encourage more female-friendly sexual values. These movements are focusing more on affirming men than deconstructing them, which means Perry’s framework could serve as a helpful supplement to these wider trends rather than carry the weight of changing culture on its own.
While “A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century” doesn’t fully succeed in creating an effective framework to resist the excesses of the sexual revolution, it could be a valuable resource for parents of young women who want their daughters to see that not everything they’re being taught today is beneficial.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.