It is not a truth,
but unfortunately it is almost universally acknowledged, that the sexual
revolution’s primary beneficiaries were women
because it gave them the ‘right to choose’.

Hence, any time
anyone challenges even the tiniest aspect of it they are immediately smeared as
being “anti-woman”. This is the current
smear being propagated against those who oppose the Obama Administration’s
attempt to force religious institutions to cover abortion-causing drugs in
their health insurance
policies.

Hoover Institute
scholar and author Mary Eberstadt begs to differ forcefully with the myth that the sex revolution is pro-women and its opponents
anti-women.

She
has just published a book on the subject called “Adam and Eve After the Pill:
Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution.” which she summarises in this Wall Street
Journal article. She takes on certain myths which
she says are propagated by supporters of the sex
revolution.

“Myth No. 1: The
‘war on women’ consists of tyrannical men arrayed against
oppressed but pluckily united women.

“In the first place,
womankind, bless her fickle heart, is not exactly united
on…anything. 

“Public opinion polls
show women to be roughly evenly divided on the question of abortion. This same
diversity of opinion was also manifest in the arguments over the proposed new
federal mandate forcing employers to pay for birth control, including
abortifacients.”

“Myth No. 2: If it
weren’t for the Catholic Church, no one would be talking about contraception
anyway. 

“It is not only a
series of popes but also a number of prominent secular thinkers who believe that
the birth-control pill has been one of the major milestones in human history—a
diverse group that runs from public intellectuals of a previous generation like
Walter Lippmann to such contemporary scholars as Francis Fukuyama and Robert
Putnam.

“In other words, this
isn’t just a Catholic thing. In severing sex from procreation, humankind set
into motion forces that have by now shaped and reshaped almost every aspect of
life in the Western world.” 

“Myth No. 3: The
‘social issues’ are unwanted artifacts of a primitive religious past that will
eventually just fade away.

“To the contrary.
What we know as the ‘social issues’—abortion, gay marriage and the rest—are here
to stay, and we’ll be dealing with them for generations to come. In fact, one
might even predict that these vexing issues will outlast almost every other
controversy burning today. 

“That’s because they
cannot be resolved until the legacy of the sexual revolution has been settled in
the Western mind—and this certainly includes the question of whether it has been
a good thing or a bad thing.”

Myth No. 4: The
sexual revolution has made women happier. 

Eberstadt asks “if
the sexual revolution has really made women as happy as feminists say, a few
elementary questions beg to be answered”.

She says: “Why do the
pages of our tonier magazines brim with mournful titles like “The Case for
Settling” and “The End of Men”?

…………. 

“Or how about what is
known in sociology as “the paradox of declining female happiness”? Using 35
years of data from the General Social Survey, two Wharton School economists,
Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, made the case in 2009 that women’s
happiness appeared to be declining over time despite their advances in the work
force and education.

“The authors noted
that women (and men) showed declining happiness during the years studied. Though
they were careful not to draw conclusions from their data, is it not reasonable
to think that at least some of that discontent comes from the feeling that the
grass is greener elsewhere—a feeling made plausible by the sexual
revolution? 

“However one looks at
the situation, it seems difficult to argue that the results of the revolution
have been a slam-dunk for happiness.”