One of the key aspects of modern social change has been the ’sexual revolution’ that started in the 1960’s and has carried over and morphed into different forms since. I bought into the messages about equality of sexual conduct and sex without shame or strings attatched, and I was very promiscuous. Embarrasingly so, now that I look back, but it never satisfied me (on any level) and never made me happy, and it certainly didn’t make me feel free or equal. I try to look at the issue from an evolutionary perspective, imagine a group of cave dwellers. The first group engages in sexual conduct with emotions, strings, obligations and social expectations attatched. The second engages in free love. Among the first tribe, when a woman becomes pregnant, there is at least some idea of who the father is, and that father has to have had at least some sort of emotional attatchment to said woman, or he never would have had that intimacy in the first place. THerefore, the father protects and provides for that woman while she’s vulnerable due to pregnancy, and does the same for the child, as that child is his own. The tribe survives. Take the second tribe, a woman becomes pregnant, any number of men could have been the father, none of these men might take any particular interest in the woman’s well being because they have no investment in her, if she doesn’t die during her pregnancy, it’s highly likely that the child will die. Then men may have more fun, but the tribe ultimately dies out within a few generations. Also, the transmission rates of venereal disease are much higher from man to woman than they are from woman to man, making women much more vulnerable in this respect too. The writer is correct in pointing out that sexual freedom doesn’t really deserve the glorification it’s recieved. The rules of engagement surrounding sex have been oppressive for women, but ultimately they developed to protect women. We need to find a happy middle ground, not another radical extreme in the opposite direction.
Amanda Wright
