Some of our social norms pertain to sex. They are needed in order to handle potential conflicts. For example, there is a conflict between living as a monogamous couple in a nuclear family and having total sexual freedom.
I think that people should apply their social norms to themselves and those who are close to them, but we should be careful about applying our norms to people we do not know. When norms are applied by strangers, such as politicians, college administrators, or social-media mobs, this is less likely to be helpful.
The rest of this essay will elaborate on these opinions. And they are just that — opinions. I make no claim to expertise.
Non-judgmentalism is not an option.
Because sexual conduct affects other people, I can see no way to avoid making moral judgments. If I have a taste for groping, and you are averse to being groped, then one of us is going to have to repress our desires. Social norms are going to tell us who it should be.
Groping is an interesting example, because I would have thought that the social norms always went against the groper. But until recently, apparently, there were at least two exceptions. At an alcohol-fueled party of college students, or when the groper is a celebrity in media, politics, or business, the social norm was that the woman who was groping-averse had to repress her feelings. I hope that those exceptions are going away.
Sexual freedom and nuclear family life can conflict.
I am an only child. My experience of family life growing up was very limited.
When I was in my late teens, I befriended someone with many brothers and sisters, and I was entranced by their family. For the first time in my life, I thought about the type of family that I might like to have some day. I idolized the father, who enjoyed rich and varied interactions with his children. I determined that I wanted to emulate him in my own life.
A few years later, I found out that the father had taken up with a younger woman, leaving his wife and children bitter and confused. I was traumatized by this episode. Actually, it was somewhat typical for the 1970s, when the sexual revolution was accompanied by a spike in the divorce rate. Since then, the divorce rate for college-educated couples has receded.
I formed the opinion that the joys of a nuclear family require people to restrain their sexual impulses. You can have the sense of closeness and fulfillment that comes with a nuclear family. Or you can have the variety of sexual experiences that comes from the exercise of the freedom to pursue every desire. But you cannot have both.
Obviously, I am assuming that my friend’s parents’ marriage failed because the father pursued his sexual impulses. There are, of course, other reasons that marriages fail. And I am not saying that people should stay in bad marriages.
In my opinion, it is very nice to be able to stay married as you raise children and to see them grow up, get married, and have children of their own. You have to look pretty hard to find long-term married couples that are unhappy as grandparents.
The Culture War pits sexual-freedom advocates against nuclear-family advocates.
Given all the factors that might affect sexual norms, you might think that I am peculiarly focused on what I see as the conflict between sexual freedom and the life of the nuclear family. But it seems to me that most of the “culture war” can be interpreted along such lines. That is, on one side, you have activists who are focused almost entirely on promoting sexual freedom. On the other side, you have activists who are focused almost entirely on promoting the nuclear family. They tend to talk past one another.
For example, the abortion debate in the early 1970s had elements of this conflict. Supporters of legalized abortion saw laws against abortion as part of a cultural pattern of restricting women’s sexual freedom. Opponents of legalized abortion saw legalization as part of a cultural pattern of undermining the nuclear family.
Without intending any disrespect for other people’s opinions on the subject, I believe that abortion should be legal. I don’t like to see the apparatus of the state used to coerce a woman into bearing an unwanted child.
There are people on both sides of the culture war whose personal behavior is inconsistent with their professed political stance. We have seen prominent politicians who made careers promoting “family values” but were found to be guilty of what would be considered sexual misconduct by their standards. On the other side, many of us take the side of sexual-freedom advocates on issues of abortion, gay marriage, transgender rights, etc., but in our own lives embrace and act out traditional nuclear-family ideals.
It is hard for sexual-freedom advocates to see nuclear-family advocates as anything other than the enemies of sexual freedom. It is hard for nuclear-family advocates to see sexual-freedom advocates as anything other than the enemies of the nuclear family.
Neither side wishes to talk about sexual freedom and the nuclear family as two positive goods that are in conflict. Sexual-freedom advocates will insist that alternative family arrangements work just as well as the nuclear family. Nuclear-family advocates will insist that monogamous couples have great sex. But whatever the quality of their sex together, monogamous couples are still accepting constraints on their sexual freedom.
Heterosexual men and women are equally promiscuous, on average.
This is the opinion about which I have the greatest confidence, because it is based on pure arithmetic. In a population of heterosexuals where there are equal numbers of each sex, the average number of sex partners per male will be the same as the average number of sex partners per female.
Imagine an evening of dancing where dance partnerships are heterosexual. Suppose that there are exactly five men and five women at the dance, and none of them are dancing. Then Abel and Alice break the ice, so that the average number of dance partners per male is 1 in 5, which is the same as the average number of dance partners per female. If later in the evening Alice dances with each of the other four males while the other women sit out, then the average number of dance partners per male is 1, since they each dance with Alice. The average number of dance partners per female is also 1, since Alice has 5 partners but the other four females each have zero partners. No matter how much dancing takes place, the average number of partners per male will be the same as the average number of partners per female.
Think of this as the Law of Correlated Promiscuity: if promiscuity is low for men, then it will be low for women; If promiscuity is high for men, then it will be high for women.
On average, among heterosexuals men are more likely than women to prefer more sex partners.
Now we are back to opinion. I am not saying that every man wishes he could be promiscuous or that every woman prefers monogamy. I am suggesting that on average the preferences for promiscuity are higher among heterosexual males than among heterosexual females. You can look up studies that might support or refute this opinion.
Imagine that there were exactly four types of people: males with a preference for promiscuity; males with a preference for monogamy; females with a preference for promiscuity; and females with a preference for monogamy. Then my opinion would be that there are relatively more males with promiscuous preferences and relatively more females with monogamous preferences.
If my opinion is correct, then not everyone can be happy. This follows from the Law of Correlated Promiscuity, which says that we cannot have an outcome in which heterosexual males are more promiscuous than heterosexual females. We can either have norms against promiscuity, which will make the promiscuity-preferring men unhappy, or we can have norms that tolerate or encourage promiscuity, which will make the monogamy-preferring women unhappy.
In my lifetime, we have not seen a set of social norms that is favorable to women.
Given what I have just said, it may seem as if I believe that women were better off, on average, in the 1950s. Wasn’t that when promiscuity was discouraged, and didn’t I just say that more women have preferences for monogamy?
Yes, but.
How women fare under monogamy-favoring social norms depends on what those norms consist of. In the 1950s those norms were hard on women, and especially on women with promiscuous preferences.
The 1950s norms were much harsher against promiscuous females than against promiscuous males. The attitude toward a promiscuous male was somewhere between a knowing wink and a mild “tsk-tsk.” But a promiscuous female was regarded with widespread hatred and contempt. Their social status was low, comparable to that of gays at that time.
In the 1950s, abortion was illegal and birth control was less accessible. This imposed greater hardship on promiscuous women than on promiscuous men.
The 1950s norms were not fair to women. But getting rid of the 1950s norms, without replacing them with other norms to dampen promiscuity, had mixed results. For women with promiscuous preferences, it was a tremendous relief. But for women with monogamous preferences, it was not such a blessing. And from a nuclear-family perspective, the loss of social norms favoring monogamy was a disaster.
I do not want to return to the 1950s norms that assigned low status to promiscuous women. But I do not think that getting rid of all norms that promote monogamy worked out well. Perhaps the best approach would be if we could adopt social norms that assign high status to monogamous men.
An interesting recent development concerning sex norms is the “affirmative consent” idea. You can think of this as a backlash against promiscuous social norms. If affirmative consent were widely adopted, I believe that it would reduce promiscuity without being harshest on women. And yet I find the concept distasteful, because
I wish that young people could experience more old-fashioned sexual exploration.
In 1976, Bob Seger’s hit song “Night Moves” described a teenage sexual relationship as “Workin’ on mysteries without any clues.” Those lyrics refer to a time when people had less information about sexual anatomy than they have today. Although Seger sings that “We weren’t in love, oh no, far from it,” the atmosphere of “Night Moves” is romantic in a way that seems difficult to recapture today.
Nowadays, young people have too much information about sexual anatomy. Sex education and pornography have taken away the mystery. I see this as an adverse development.
I think that pornography, and even sex education, misleadingly portray the human body as a paint-by-the-numbers orgasm kit. They present a distorted picture that fails to emphasize the caring, anxiety, envy, pride, jealousy, and other emotions that surround sexuality.
I think that young people are actually better off approaching sex with some gaps in their knowledge. The adventure of mutual discovery, like any other difficult adventure, can be a rewarding experience. It makes for a more emotionally fulfilling relationship. There is a positive feedback loop between caring about someone, embarking on this adventure, and caring more about the person as the adventure unfolds.
I do not envy any young couple whose sexual experience consists of trying to apply their knowledge from sex-ed courses and following the script of “affirmative consent.” I think that there is more romance in “workin’ on mysteries without any clues.”
Don’t go to college to learn sex norms.
At age eighteen, young men and women face choices. One approach is to spend the next several years in pursuit of a suitable mate for a monogamous marriage. Another approach is to spend the next several years exploring alternative sexual identities and experiences.
In the 1950s, the levers of power at colleges were held by traditionalists, who put in place rules and policies that supported the nuclear-family approach and treated the sexual-freedom approach as wrong. By the 21st century, the levers of power at colleges were held by sexual-freedom activists, who put in place rules and policies that supported the sexual-freedom approach and treated the nuclear-family approach as wrong.
In my opinion, colleges should not have sex policies. Let young people make their own choices and their own mistakes, rather than have their mistakes made for them by those who hold the levers of power.
Of course, colleges are too heavily invested in sex policies to take my advice. The best we can hope for is that students will ignore the policies and instead rely on their insights into their individual natures as well as guidance provided by friends and family who know and care about them as individuals.
A final word
The traditional, monogamous life can be very rewarding for people able to live with its restrictions. For other people, alternative lifestyles may be more appropriate. If you fall on one side of that divide, try not to think of people on the other side as if they were broken and it’s your job to fix them.