It’s it’s the hydrogen bomb it’s the transistor like it’s a major league transformation in human interaction women are now free from involuntary reproduction that’s never been the case in the entire history of the planet okay we don’t know exactly what to do about that
Okay so the first idea in the 60s was hell let’s party and you know you can see why it’s like what the rules for not engaging in um promiscuous sexual intercourse seemed to have vanished so we had a couple of Decades of experimentation it’s like well how’d that go
Little hard on the family I would say that’s not so good for kids AIDS that wasn’t a plus could have killed us all and it mutated particularly to take advantage of promiscuous sex because viruses are very tricky things so it turns out that sex is a little bit
More complicated than we thought well it actually turns out that it’s a lot more complicated than we think okay and now it’s for 50 60 years later and we’re trying to sort this out it’s like well when
Is it okay to have sex exactly and when is it not okay to have sex and what does it mean that it’s okay and what is consent mean and the answer to that is well we never used to have to think these
Things through because the rule was don’t have sex until you get married that was the rule now that isn’t the rule okay so what’s the rule well we’re not having a conversation about the rule we’re waiting till someone does something that seems like it might be untoward and then mobbing
Them and trying to extract the rule out that way and it’s not a very effective way of doing it you know you want to decrease campus rape that’s easy get real alcohol no one has that conversation
It’s like I did my PhD work on alcohol fifty percent of the people who are murdered are drunk and 50 of the people who kill them are drunk and almost all the date rape situations are consequences of excess intoxication but yet there’s a party culture on campuses and
Anything goes and you also have this strange thing especially on the radical left which is which is unbelievably paradoxical where absolutely every form of sexual expression imaginable is one hundred percent permissible because sex is fine but it’s so dangerous that while you’re dancing
With someone at a Princeton mixer you have to ask them two or three times if it’s okay for you to continue and and that’s that’s actually the case by the way I’m not making that up it’s like well
Both of those things can’t be true now what’s happening I think on the me too end of things and the affirmative consent end of things is the old sexual taboos are reasserting themselves the idea that we can extract sex out from emotional intimacy and especially emotional intimacy I
Would say psychological intimacy maybe even from long-term relationship is I don’t believe it’s a tenable idea I don’t think we can do it and a lot of what we’re seeing is the backlash against that it’s like well I feel used you know because one of the things that’s happening on the really
Radical end of the anti-uh sexual abuse movement is the idea that well if you have intercourse with someone and then you regret it the next day that’s evidence that it wasn’t consensual well it is in the sense evidence that it wasn’t consensual because it’s evidence that you
Didn’t bloody well think it through right it was good for last night but it’s not good for today it’s not very wise the question is well what constitutes consent and we need to have a very serious conversation about that like under what circumstances is it acceptable
To give consent but we’re not mature enough to have that conversation we want it both ways we want to be able to do whatever we want with ever with what with whoever we want whenever we want with no consequences and we want there never to be any trouble about consent it’s like well
No that’s not going to happen I don’t think that sex works very well outside of committed relationships I don’t think there’s any evidence that it does there’s a strong proclivity across cultures for for the enforcement social enforcement of long-term monogamy
And there’s reasons for that and I think you deviate from that at your peril so now if you if you want to deviate from that there’s all sorts of reasons to do it and I can understand why people
Are interested in adventure and all of that but you know my sense also as a clinician is you know you only really get to try out about five people in your life you have to make a decision pretty
Damn quick you know like between 20 and 30 there’s a lot of things to get straight and long-term mate is usually one of them and most of the time people should be more careful with their sexual behavior
When they’re young especially when they’re drunk than they are and I think it I just think it’s so interesting that all of the taboo reconstruction is coming from the radical left it’s not what you’d expect at all you’d think it’d be the damn right-wing Christians complaining about
You know sexual immorality it’s like no it’s the radical lefties you know you have to have signed consent before making any physical move and then that’s so what really who thought that up that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you know how awkward that would be you know you’re supposed
To be able to do a little bit of non-verbal reading right I mean that’s part of romance you don’t see it you ever see a movie where the two people who are dating exchange consent notes like that doesn’t happen so it’s an unrealistic solution but but I think the real solution is that
Despite the fact that we have reliable birth control we’re going to have to re-learn what the acceptable rules of propriety are with regards to sexual relationships one of the things I often tell my young clients is don’t do anything physically with anyone that you
Wouldn’t talk to them about because if you’re too damn embarrassed to talk about it well maybe it’s a little premature in the relationship to actually do it and then there’s harm in it you know there’s emotional harm in it for on both parties there’s the cheapening of both parties so
Well so it’s going to take us a long time to sort this out but hopefully we can do it in a serious Manner and and it won’t be merely a matter of mobbing those who seem to have made an error so
