The sexual revolution is harming itself. Literally.
A recent article in The New York Times piece by Peggy Orenstein explains that 20 years ago, sexual choking was rare, especially among young people who were new to sex and not good at communicating. But now it has become much more common.
Other writers have also reported on this trend, and Orenstein provides both data and personal stories. She mentions research by Debby Herbenick, who found in a recent survey that nearly two-thirds of women in college had been choked during sex, with one-third experiencing it in their most recent encounter. The percentage of women who said they were between 12 and 17 years old when it first happened had increased from 25% to 40%.
Orenstein blames online pornography, where the choking of women has become a common theme that young men are imitating, sometimes with the help of internet guides that claim to explain how to do it safely. She bluntly states that there is no safe way to strangle someone. However, she is quick to point out that she is not trying to shame anyone for their sexual preferences.
Why not?
People should feel ashamed of doing harmful things, such as seeking sexual pleasure through strangulation. For most of human history, stigma and shame were effective in regulating sexual behavior, albeit flawed. They were seen as essential in guiding and restraining sexual behavior.
However, the sexual revolution has succeeded, and there is now no moral language for sexual behavior beyond the requirement of consent. This lack of moral imagination and vocabulary has weakened shame's ability to restrain sexual behavior. It is now used to shame people for being too sexually conventional — the only thing considered shameful is to have shame; the only thing that must be restrained is restraint.
Criticism for Health Reasons
This has limited our culture's ability to address issues such as the growing occurrence of sexual strangulation. Orenstein then uses health and safety terminology to condemn it, noting that restricting blood flow to the brain, even briefly, can lead to permanent harm such as stroke and cognitive impairment. She refers to research studies where MRI scans found:
[U]ndergraduate women who have been repeatedly choked show a reduction in cortical folding in the brain compared with a never-choked control group. They also showed widespread cortical thickening, an inflammation response that is associated with elevated risk of later-onset mental illness. In completing simple memory tasks, their brains had to work far harder than the control group, recruiting from more regions to achieve the same level of accuracy. The hemispheres in the choked group’s brains, too, were badly skewed, with the right side hyperactive and the left underperforming. A similar imbalance is associated with mood disorders.
She also mentions that women who have been sexually strangled were more likely to suffer from a variety of mental health problems.
We should be thankful that Orenstein has been able to criticize choking in The New York Times, a bastion of cultural liberalism. However, we should not need brain scans and mental health surveys to denounce men who choke women for sexual pleasure. If sexual liberalism cannot condemn such actions as wrong without seeing the MRI results, then it is a farcical moral philosophy. Orenstein's attempt to reintroduce morality into the sexual landscape by invoking the language of equality, pointing out that trends involving “pain or submission, like choking, are generally more for women,” does not address the fact that sexual choking would be wrong even if it were equally distributed between the genders.
These ongoing differences show another failure of sexual freedom, which chooses to ignore the distinctions between men and women — only to be shocked when they reappear in harmful ways, like the rise of sexual choking. Even though it's trendy, most women don't like being choked, but Orenstein notes that some women actually wanted it. A college junior explained that it feels thrilling to be so vulnerable and that the power dynamic turns her on. This reduction of masculinity and femininity becomes a distorted portrayal of male physical dominance over females.
Women Choose Not to Have Sex
The idea that sexual liberation would eliminate harmful sexual dynamics between men and women has actually recreated them in new and dangerous ways. And it's not even delivering the pleasure it promised. Orenstein dryly noted that this same young woman had never achieved climax with a partner. The result of the sexual revolution is painful, joyless sex that harms women.
This miserable outcome of sexual liberation is causing many people to lose interest in sex altogether. Men's porn habits are making them less attractive to women and less capable of maintaining a good relationship. Faced with the choice of unsatisfying, possibly brutal sex or no sex at all, many young women will choose the latter. The violence and degradation of porn, and its influence on real-world sex, may also explain a lot of the increase in young women wanting to stop identifying as women — if being a woman means being treated as they see in porn and experience from men influenced by porn, then it's no wonder some young women want to find a way out.
Orenstein's suggested solutions, like her analysis, are limited by her unwillingness to challenge the beliefs of the sexual revolution. For instance, she wants to advocate for “evidence-based porn literacy curricula” and mentions the possibility of imposing real age verification requirements on porn sites. The latter is a good first step that has already been implemented in several states, but teaching “porn literacy” is a bad idea that will only further normalize porn.
Ban Porn
Instead, we should prohibit it. Porn is addictive and harmful, and it's not protected by the First Amendment. Sure, porn will never be eradicated, but the main distributors could be shut down and porn pushed back to the shady fringes of society and the internet, instead of being immediately and endlessly available to every teenager.
But taking such decisive action would require real moral judgment and determination, and the closest Orenstein can get to moralizing is to conclude, “Young people … deserve, and desperately need, models of [sexual] interactions that are respectful, communicative, mutual and, at the very least, safe.” This half-hearted attempt at a positive vision for relationships, including sexual ones, between men and women quickly retreats to demanding only the most basic restraint of not hurting one’s partner — and leaves each woman to try to negotiate this on her own in an unregulated sexual marketplace with partners who have no obligations toward her.
The Lie of the Sexual Revolution
Christians and others who have resisted the sexual revolution believe that a full understanding of how men and women can thrive together involves making and honoring commitments that prioritize long-term benefits over immediate gratification, such as marriage. They argue that genuine and lasting well-being and happiness in life are best achieved through this approach.
The sexual revolution deceived people by promising freedom, companionship, and pleasure. However, Americans are now lonelier and having less sex than ever, and much of the sex they do have is unsatisfying. If sexual liberation fails to provide good sex, then there is no reason to continue pursuing it. Instead, people should promote and support lifelong monogamous marriage, which offers more and more satisfying sex, among other benefits. averageThis may come as a surprise to those who embrace the ideals of sexual liberalism, which emphasizes individual flourishing. However, the truth is that people need deep, loving relationships based on mutual obligation and interdependence to thrive. And those who understand this don't need brain scans to recognize that harming women for sexual pleasure is wrong and twisted.
Lifelong monogamous marriage provides more sex and more satisfying sex, among other benefits.
