HAVE WE GIVEN UP ON SEXUAL FREEDOM?

Filmed at the Battle of Ideas festival 2023, the panel discuss contemporary attitudes to sexual freedom.
Sex has never been so fetishised. We hire experts to portray it ‘consensually’ on TV series, we plan classes on how to talk to our kids about it and we row, constantly, about what is the right way to have it.
Is chastity really the only answer to a fraught sexual landscape, or are we too obsessed with theorising instead of doing? With all its flaws, didn’t the sexual revolution and reproductive technologies give women the ability to choose which and how many sexual partners they have? Does the backlash against sexual freedom risk turning back the clock on women’s freedom?
The speakers are:
Ralph Leonard - author, Unshackling Intimacy: Letters on Liberty; contributor, Areo
Nina Power - philosopher; senior editor, Compact Magazine; author, What Do Men Want? Masculinity and its discontents
Ella Whelan - co-convenor, Battle of Ideas festival; journalist; author, What Women Want
Rosie Wilby - award-winning comedian; broadcaster; author, Is Monogamy Dead? and The Breakup Monologues: the unexpected joy of heartbreak
The chair is: Dr Tiffany Jenkins - writer and broadcaster; author, Strangers and Intimates (forthcoming) and Keeping Their Marbles
This debate was filmed by volunteers working with Worldwrite. Please help ensure the charity is able to edit further debates by hitting the THANKS button above and donating whatever you can afford.

[@Sarahk150]

Ella Whelan makes sense

[@shafeydanish]

Ella Whelan seems to have missed the point, butchered the point, and accepted the point all at the same time. There is not just hypocrisy but also confusion in her arguments. The point of the conversation was whether one was or should be free to have sex, which she argued for but also incredibly claimed was not the point. If for instance freedom and not sex is the main point, and Jane Eyre is a potential model for it, then freedom should apply to choosing a partner and not to having free sex. That is the kind of freedom that no one has a problem with. No one asked her hard questions or for consistency; for example, whether her argument for sexual freedom extended to men too, whether married men were also included, whether it had to be cleared with the partner in that case, or whether one could cheat. Because the problem that this conversation comes out of, is the inequality of potential abuse in equal sexual freedom. Men would hardly if ever feel used if a woman had emotionless sex with them. Women on the other hand have been reporting for some time now how bad dating has become precisely because they feel used in these hookups. She seems to be either out of touch with this reality, or perversely asking others to swim in the raging sea while herself being comfortably on the shore. She doesn't seem to get the irony of the example she gives; of the difference between Eric Pickles and Leonardo DiCaprio putting a hand on her arse. Her argument implies that it is only a certain type of men ("high-value men" in the red pill world) who actually get to benefit from the sexual freedom that women have. This is a point that the Red Pill community also makes while asking boys to become that kind of man and holding the potential sexual rewards as the incentive. She misses the point that while the Leo adjacents of this world might be willing enough to put the metaphorical hand on her arse, it is unlikely that she would be their choice of partner. She is thus reducing herself to a sexual object by a combination of her freedom and the manner in which she chooses to use that freedom. Were she using her sexual freedom responsibly, to choose a good partner for example, it would be a different matter. Faced with the prospect of being the men that women would come to, after they have had multiple sexual relationships with men who would never invest time in money in them to build a lifelong partnership, ordinary men are moving to the view that they must treat sex as purely transactional. Understandably, women are not happy with this development. There is a lot that a long-term partnership brings, and not just economically. Women also do seem to be coming around to the view that they really need to be mothers to be happy. That's another thing that is better done with a long-term partner. It worked for her because she met a guy who didn't want to sleep around and was ok that she had slept around. She is one of the lucky ones. She did not have to pay a price for the sexual freedom she is advocating for. Society needs to be built around the differences between men and women because those differences matter. The default sexual freedom is not working for most men and most women. It is only working for women in their early years and only working for maybe 10% or 20% of the men at the top of the dating market. Older women and poorer men are being selected out. And that is why things need to change.

[@eaton55r]

The intros are a speech filled with gibberish for the most part. Like children talking about sex!