By Noah Rothman
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Modern revolutions — those we know to have
failed — share an impractical conceit. In the minds of their architects, the
establishment of a wholly new social contract has meant renovating human nature
itself.
France’s revolution, which begat the utopian tradition,
was predicated on the assumption that humanity unshackled from superstition and
guided by pure reason would enter a new epoch of Enlightenment. That utopian
ideal was carried forward by the Paris Commune and, eventually, the Soviets,
who sought to erase from the human experience concepts such as property,
enterprise, and individuality. Throughout, the revolutionaries’ ambition was
matched only by their contempt for the world as it was. Robert Owen, the
founder of one similarly ill-fated experiment in utopian design, in America,
professed that the social reformer’s goal is to stamp out “that greatest of all
errors, the notion that individuals form their own characters.”
It’s no coincidence, therefore, that the modern
revolutionists who convinced themselves that they could remake mankind
according to design experimented with radically new forms of relations between
men and women. The ideologically zealous sort in more-bohemian quarters
believed that perfecting the human condition required liberation from all
restrictive social constructs, romantic endeavors very much included. Freeing
the body and freeing the mind from convention were two complementary aspects of
the same project.
But the liberality of interpersonal relations in
postrevolutionary periods reliably gave way to a backlash when the consequences
of intemperance became tangible. From the Jacobin “sex panic” of the 1790s to
the Bolsheviks’ renewed emphasis on conventional familial forms (a corrective
after the widespread orphancy and delinquency that resulted from “free love”
and communal child-rearing), the old ways have a habit of making a comeback.
Our most recent quasi-revolutionary period followed a
similar trajectory. Amid the tearing down of the statues, the struggle
sessions, and the ritual denunciations of the ancien régime’s illegitimacy, a
transgressive set of carnal mores swept aside the preceding strictures. As that
fervor subsides, however, the old-fashioned ideals are returning to vogue. And
yet those who are resurrecting the old ways are desperate to avoid the
recrimination of their more subversive peers. No one wants to be branded a reactionary.
So a familiar dynamic has reemerged. The rediscovery of the old morality is
being framed not as a counterrevolutionary act but as a mere reinterpretation
of the radical project. Those who have tried to thread this needle have made
amusing spectacles of themselves.
***
Radical social reformers have long nursed a preoccupation
with gender roles. In an earlier age, gender-specific societal expectations
were branded a suffocating anachronism and condemned as obstacles to equality.
In our own time, they are perceived to be a source of great offense to those
who don’t believe they fit within that binary rubric. Gender itself, we are so
often told, is artificial. Therefore, it’s only right that gender-specific
behavioral norms be cast aside, not just in the professional and domestic
spheres but in courtship rituals as well. But as a reported item in the New
York Times recently discovered, that ideal conflicts with reality.
“My date, a 27-year-old woman I matched with on Hinge,
said gender equality didn’t mean men and women should pay the same when they
went out,” New York Times reporter Santul Nerkar related. That
age-old practice of men paying more cannot, however, be chivalric. It must be
an outgrowth of the enlightenment to which only the members of a sophisticated
vanguard are privy. “Women,” Nerkar’s date informed him, “earn less than men in
the workplace, spend more time getting ready for outings and pay more for
reproductive care.” Men must therefore pay a cosmic ante in penance for their
undeserved good fortune. Indeed, there is “an expectation” even among the most
au courant that “the person who did the asking out — usually the man — should
pay for the date,” which explains why researchers have found that young men
still pick up the tab roughly 90 percent of the time. Still, Nerkar remained
unconverted. “When the date ended,” he confessed, “we split the bill.”
The Times reporter’s modest sociological
study comports with broadly observable trends. Amid the wave of heterodoxy that
overtook American political culture in and around the annus horribilis 2020,
sex — its provision, its withholding, and its redefinition — was said to hold
its own revolutionary power. American politics is tainted by “our corrosive
sexual shame,” the author Dave Madden wrote for the Guardian. “So
many of us believe that the work of our genitals is far less noble than the
work of our minds,” he lamented. Hence the proliferation of sexual proclivities
— all of which have their own names, flags, and political agendas — that seem
to have little to do with gratification. Rather, sexual orientation became a
form of political activity, what reporter Olivia Goldhill described in Quartz as
one of many “quietly revolutionary” acts between the sheets.
Despite appearances, this superficially permissive
outlook toward sex is not in conflict with the strict codification, in either
law or institutional covenant, of what it means to consent to intercourse.
Around this time, a panic about the unseen prevalence of criminal sexual
misconduct led the stewards of America’s institutions to seek to standardize
the concept of “affirmative consent” — verifiable, sometimes written, and even
“ongoing” proof of explicit pre-authorization ahead of an amorous encounter — to
deter prosecutable violations of personal autonomy. Yet, despite all the social
engineers’ efforts, attraction and courtship remained a nebulous phenomenon
that could not be forced to fit within the confines of contractual
negotiations.
To hear young women tell it, the social strictures that
liberal columnist Ezra Klein hailed for making men “feel a cold spike of fear
when they begin a sexual encounter” had the effect of rendering men timid and,
therefore, unattractive. The new consequences of pursuing a partner boldly and
assertively had their intended effect, but no one much liked the new status
quo. And so, without admitting as much, the younger generation quietly
abandoned the revolutionary ideals that they had briefly adopted.
“Some students do practice affirmative consent, but many
others use a range of social cues to make sense of whether or not a sexual
encounter was consensual or nonconsensual,” the trend-setting venue Teen
Vogue observed. The outlet recognized the “cognitive dissonance” in
good progressives who nevertheless “operate within an implicit framework in
which men are the ones who move the sexual ball down to the field,” but the
curiosities of attraction just would not comport with the new
affirmative-consent paradigm.
By loosening the constraints associated with pair-bonding
amid a society-wide effort to crack down on sexual and emotional abuse within
relationships, the engineers of the new ideal created a permission structure
for even more abuse. Polyamory — a modern twist on the 19th century’s “free
love” movement — is a cause célèbre in the press. Accordingly, it has been
festooned with the trappings of revolutionary political activity, complete with
“a poly flag, poly symbols and poly pride celebrations,” as the Christian
ministry Focus on the Family remarked. “Ethical non-monogamy” has been the
subject of apple-polishing write-ups in mainstream venues from Vanity
Fair to Newsweek, and it has found its way into
conventional media fare such as HGTV’s House Hunters. But the
practice of polyamory has not lived up to its promise.
“At a time when non-monogamy has become a drop-down
option on dating apps,” the Times recently reported, upstart
institutions that “push the boundaries of sexual norms — or flout them
altogether — in the safe company of like-minded people” have flourished. But at
one venue for polyamorous encounters, profiled by reporter Sarah Maslin Nir,
the members began to feel more like “victims of sexual or physical assault.”
Readers of deviationist tracts such as Nir’s are treated
to a lot of pseudoscientific jargon designed to recast the rank hedonism they
criticize as a species of sophistication. They are aware that their modest
critiques risk offending their more committed comrades, but their criticisms
ring true nonetheless.
Of course, sexual assault and misconduct are attributable
to their alleged perpetrators alone. But tales of abuse like those Nir
chronicled also allow progressives to make note of the narcissism, emotional
manipulation, and dehumanization that the industry devoted to promoting open
relationships can encourage. Such observations can now be spoken aloud even by
progressives in good standing, so long as they are couched in the language of
therapy.
“After many months and lots of experiences both great and
difficult, my partner and I had a long discussion about the future and decided
to become monogamous together,” one essayist confessed in the Vox Media
outlet PopSugar. Ultimately, she wrote, “the transition from a
polyamorous relationship into monogamy . . . has made me feel more secure, and
overall increases my capacity to love my partner more selflessly.” After all,
“compersion,” or the vicarious joy one derives from seeing one’s partner
achieve sexual satisfaction in the arms of another, involves a “level of
selflessness that only comes from loving someone unconditionally.” Yet it
is for that reason that polyamory and unconditional love tend
to be mutually unsustainable. A love so selfless that it might tolerate
polyamory takes up enough emotional bandwidth to preclude multiple similar
sentimental (and physical) obligations. Eventually, either love or polyamory
gives way.
It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that the author is
fishing for congratulations over her self-professed “selflessness,” but she
does, in fact, deserve some credit. In progressive circles, admitting to
finding fulfillment in something as bourgeois as monogamy takes real courage.
The rediscovery of the old ways is not limited to
expressions of sexuality alone. In mid February, an essay published by the Cut,
a New York magazine offshoot covering “women’s lives and
interests,” captured the attention of the national intelligentsia. In the
essay, inaptly titled “The Lure of Divorce,” the author Emily Gould spun a
winding tale involving her own deep, often manic, dissatisfaction with her
husband and their respective professional successes, the fruits of which she
thought were inequitably distributed.
The essay exploded onto the literary scene at a time when
the upsides to divorce had become a fixation of the pop-cultural press. It may
be no coincidence that the media’s obsessive effort to make divorce into a
fashionable trend had an inverse relationship with American divorce rates.
According to census data compiled in 2021, the rate of divorce in America
declined from 9.7 per 1,000 women aged 15 and older in 2011 to just 6.9. But
media accounts of the declining divorce rate present it as an undesirable development.
“Families are sticking together!” Time editor
Belinda Luscombe remarked. “But in practice, this does not mean more people are
living happily ever after.” As Lyz Lenz, author of a book on divorce and her
experience with it, wrote in an excerpt published by the Washington
Post, marriage is an especially raw deal for women — whose happiness never
seems to rate with either their partners or society more broadly. “You do not
have to waste years of your life hoping that maybe, one day, you’ll finally get
there,” she concluded in an essay that evolved into a pep talk. “You can be
happy now.”
Lenz’s contentment in divorce notwithstanding, the
available data don’t suggest that her experience is representative. As American
Enterprise Institute scholar Brad Wilcox documented, the 2022 General Social
Survey found that “a combination of marriage and parenthood is linked to the
biggest happiness dividends for women.” Just 22 percent of unmarried, childless
women between the ages of 18 and 55 describe themselves as “very happy”
compared with 40 percent of married women with children. The same can be said
for men, who experience more happiness and prosperity within matrimonial bonds
than outside them. “Specifically, the odds that men and women say they are
‘very happy’ with their lives are a staggering 545 percent higher for those who
are very happily married, compared to their peers who are not married or who
are less than very happy in their marriages,” Wilcox wrote in his new
book, Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong
Families, and Save Civilization.
Wilcox’s conclusions are a source of resentment among
those who promote divorce as a fashion. Given this fad and its accompanying
social pressures, it’s reasonable to expect that Gould’s celebrated essay on
divorce would culminate in a, you know, divorce. But it did not. “We still see
the therapist twice a month,” she wrote. “We talk about how to make things more
equal in our marriage, how not to revert to old patterns.” Staying together may
be “work,” but it’s the satisfying sort and vastly preferable to its
alternatives. “The difference is that we now understand what can happen when we
don’t do it.”
It’s a touching conclusion — one that reflects shifting
values on the progressive left. That shift is as apparent in Gould’s essay as
it is in the decline of Times op-eds that fête divorce as “an
act of radical self-love” or ask whether a “good-enough marriage” can “make for
a great divorce.” It’s evident in the fact that the Times replaced
those items with essays extolling “the case for staying married to a spouse you
cannot stand” and tales about how “I married the wrong person, and I’m so glad
I did.” When outlets such as Vox can produce compositions
about how the alleged “‘decline’ of marriage isn’t a problem” in one decade
only to lament in the next the degree to which “America has made it harder for
Black people to marry,” we can deduce that a metamorphosis on the cultural left
is under way, despite the efforts to disguise it.
***
All of this is to say that the Left is insecure in its
own intellectual and moral evolution. We see that insecurity especially in
tentative efforts by progressives to question what has become the foremost
value proposition in modern left-wing orthodoxy: the attribution of social and
cultural currency to victimization.
The author Kathryn Jezer-Morton, in her column for the Cut,
expressed her deep fear that her sons, ages ten and 13, may grow up to become —
gasp — right-wingers. In an admission against interest, she confided in her
readers that the only cure for the ills of her children’s miseducation is more
miseducation. By immersing them in the academy’s ideological finishing schools,
Jezer-Morton hopes to forestall late-onset conservatism in her offspring. In a
moment of clarity, however, the author acknowledged a conundrum: The forces
busily transforming academia into progressive reeducation camps are the same
forces turning young men toward what she regards as the toxic
masculinity–industrial complex.
“Overcoming obstacles is the most hallowed narrative in
our culture,” Jezer-Morton asserted. “It’s a place where capitalism’s growth
imperative dovetails with the progressive appetite for stories about
emancipation.” In simpler terms, the culture and its progressive arbiters
privilege persecution narratives above all others. “So, for young men, and
straight white men in particular, to feel like valid participants in the
storytelling of selfhood, they feel the need to start from a place of
grievance, because otherwise there’s no way to bounce back and beat the odds.”
What a stroke of insight — one Jezer-Morton was brave
enough to publish but not stalwart enough to attribute to her fellow
progressives. Although she astutely condemned the “appeal of a grievance-based
identity” as the source of so much modern psychological maladjustment, she
blamed the incentives for victimization on anything and everything but the
Left. It must be “logic from the free-market economy,” the modern feminist
supposition that “women started from a position of inferiority,” or the
“paranoid hands of masculinist discourses of male disempowerment.”
These are the tributes vice pays to virtue — an offering
in exchange for a worthwhile indulgence. And Jezer-Morton made the most of the
dispensation she had purchased. “The appeal of a grievance-based identity makes
it hard to convince straight white boys that they in fact have plenty going for
them, and that they have no reason to feel aggrieved,” the author concluded.
Conservatives know her to be correct and have been saying precisely that for
decades.
If the revolutionaries are slowly letting go of the
radicalism that was so fashionable just a few years ago, they have not
abandoned the language of rebellion. They frame as their own innovations their
rediscovery of and satisfaction with ancient insights into the human condition.
They tell anyone willing to listen that their breakthroughs are available only
to those with levels of enlightenment rivaling their own. Well, whatever gets
them through the night.
If these authors need to convince themselves that finding
happiness in monogamous fidelity is insurrectionary, that gender-specific
courtship rituals are an outgrowth of an education in gender inequities, and
that a culture of victimization is psychologically debilitating only because of
the evils of capitalism, so be it. As go the revolution’s myths, so goes the
revolution itself.
Conservatives who never needed to rediscover these
eternal truths in the first place will have to be satisfied in victory without
a triumph. And that shouldn’t be too difficult. After all, conservatives know
too well that lasting achievements are of the incremental sort. Here’s hoping
that progressives never convince themselves of the shrewdness in that bit of
wisdom, too.
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