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Mark Lickliter's Reviews > Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution
Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution
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Mary Eberstadt’s book is a worthwhile contribution to the discussion regarding the ill effects of the sexual revolution. I don’t have much to critique in her work. Instead, I would just urge anyone to pick up any or her books. In other words, Eberstadt in her own words is far more beneficial than anything I have to say. With that being said, here are my highlights:
Introduction: “Modern contraception is not only a fact of our time; it may be the central fact, in the sense that it is hard to think of any other whose demographic, social, behavioral, and personal fallout has been as profound” (p.11).
“It may be possible to imagine the Pill being invented without the sexual revolution that followed, but imagining the sexual revolution without the Pill and other modern contraceptives simply cannot be done” (p.12).
“In this standard celebratory rendition, the sexual revolution has been a nearly unmitigated boon for all humanity. Along with its permanent backup plan, abortion, it has liberated women from the slavery of their fertility, thus freeing them for personal and professional opportunities they could not have enjoyed before. It has liberated men, too, form their former chains, many would argue—chiefly from the bondage of having to take responsibility for the women they had sex with and/or for the children that resulted” (p.14-15).
Eberstadt proceeds throughout the rest of the book to demolish the claim that the sexual revolution has improved the quality of life for most Americans. She writes, “contrary to conventional depiction, the sexual revolution has proved a disaster for many men and women; and second, its weight has fallen heaviest on the smallest and weakest shoulders in society—even as it has given extra strength to those already strongest and most predatory” (p. 15-16).
Chapter 1: In the first chapter Eberstadt draws a parallel of the culture’s denial of problems of the Cold War to our denial today of the problems that have attended and resulted from the sexual revolution.
“I have dwelt on this analogy to the Cold War because it illuminates a related problem that so often seems inexplicable in our own time: the powerful will to disbelieve the harmful effects of another world-changing social and moral force. That would be the sexual revolution, or the destigmatization and demystification of nonmarital sex and the reduction of sexual relations in general to a kind of hygienic recreation in which anything goes so long as those involved are consenting adults” (p.24).
“This resolute refusal to recognize that the revolution falls heaviest on the youngest and most vulnerable shoulders—beginning with the fetus and proceeding up through children and adolescents—is perhaps the most vivid example of the denial surrounding the fallout of the sexual revolution. In no other realm of human life do ordinary Americans seem so indifferent to the particular suffering of the smallest and weakest. Our campuses especially ring with self-righteous chants of those protesting genocide in Darfur, or wanton cruelty to animals, or gross human rights violations by oppressive governments such as China’s. These are all real problems about which real students shed tears. Such selective deployment of compassion is one of the more curious features of our time. People who in any other context would pride themselves on defending the underdog is when the subject is the sexual revolution” (p.29).
“When people look back on this or any other momentous debate decades or centuries from now, one of the first things they will want to know is whose corner reason and empiricism and logic were in” (p.35).
Chapter 2: “The pressure on women to accept pornography as an inconsequential and entertaining fact of life rises steadily—and outside the circles of the conservative and the religious, there is little cultural ammunition for any woman who wants to resist it” (p.52).
“In the postrevolutionary world, sex is easier had than ever before; but the opposite appears true for romance. This is perhaps the central enigma that modern men and women are up against: romantic want in a time of sexual plenty. Perhaps some of the modern misery of which so many women today so authentically speak is springing not from a sexual desert, but from a sexual flood—a torrent of poisonous imagery, beginning now for many in childhood, that has engulfed women and men, only to beach them eventually somewhere alone and apart, far from the reach of one another” (p.53).
Chapter 6: Here Eberstadt says that food has become the new sex. Before the sexual revolution, the average adult female would consider sexual immorality just that, wrong, and a non-negotiable. Everyone “knew” fornication, adultery and having children out of wedlock was sin. In our day it has flip-flopped. The non-negotiable sin is unhealthy eating. People’s food practices have become more important that sexual. Eberstadt does a great job of exposing that paradox.
Chapter 7: Pornography is the new tobacco. The same reasoning is applied in chapter 6 towards this parallel in chapter 7. 6 and 7 were both strong chapters.
Chapter 8: In chapter 8 Eberstadt discusses contraception. In the Reformation John Calvin called it the unforgiveable crime. (p.156) Consider the fact the Calvin wasn’t talking about the pill but of contraception itself!
Eberstadt shows that the Catholic Church was the only tradition to not cave on this issue.
“Seen in the light of actual Christian tradition, the question is not after all why the Catholic Church refused to concede the point; it is rather why just about everyone else in the Judeo-Christian tradition did. Whatever the answer, the Catholic Church took, and continues to take, the public fall for causing the collapse—when actually, in theological and historical terms, she was the only one not collapsing” (p.156).
“If Paul VI was right about so many of the consequences deriving from contraception, it is because he was right about contraception itself. This is exactly the connection few people want to make today, because contraceptive sex—as commentators from all over, religious or not, agree—is the fundamental social fact of our time. And the fierce and widespread desire to keep it so is responsible for a great many perverse outcomes” (p.157).
Epilogue: Eberstadt concludes regarding the effects of the sexual revolution: “Every family in America by now has been shaped by one or more of its facets—divorce, single parenthood, abortion, cohabitation, widespread pornography, open homosexuality. This fact that were all in this together also gives people powerful reason to deny the true costs” (p.160).
Introduction: “Modern contraception is not only a fact of our time; it may be the central fact, in the sense that it is hard to think of any other whose demographic, social, behavioral, and personal fallout has been as profound” (p.11).
“It may be possible to imagine the Pill being invented without the sexual revolution that followed, but imagining the sexual revolution without the Pill and other modern contraceptives simply cannot be done” (p.12).
“In this standard celebratory rendition, the sexual revolution has been a nearly unmitigated boon for all humanity. Along with its permanent backup plan, abortion, it has liberated women from the slavery of their fertility, thus freeing them for personal and professional opportunities they could not have enjoyed before. It has liberated men, too, form their former chains, many would argue—chiefly from the bondage of having to take responsibility for the women they had sex with and/or for the children that resulted” (p.14-15).
Eberstadt proceeds throughout the rest of the book to demolish the claim that the sexual revolution has improved the quality of life for most Americans. She writes, “contrary to conventional depiction, the sexual revolution has proved a disaster for many men and women; and second, its weight has fallen heaviest on the smallest and weakest shoulders in society—even as it has given extra strength to those already strongest and most predatory” (p. 15-16).
Chapter 1: In the first chapter Eberstadt draws a parallel of the culture’s denial of problems of the Cold War to our denial today of the problems that have attended and resulted from the sexual revolution.
“I have dwelt on this analogy to the Cold War because it illuminates a related problem that so often seems inexplicable in our own time: the powerful will to disbelieve the harmful effects of another world-changing social and moral force. That would be the sexual revolution, or the destigmatization and demystification of nonmarital sex and the reduction of sexual relations in general to a kind of hygienic recreation in which anything goes so long as those involved are consenting adults” (p.24).
“This resolute refusal to recognize that the revolution falls heaviest on the youngest and most vulnerable shoulders—beginning with the fetus and proceeding up through children and adolescents—is perhaps the most vivid example of the denial surrounding the fallout of the sexual revolution. In no other realm of human life do ordinary Americans seem so indifferent to the particular suffering of the smallest and weakest. Our campuses especially ring with self-righteous chants of those protesting genocide in Darfur, or wanton cruelty to animals, or gross human rights violations by oppressive governments such as China’s. These are all real problems about which real students shed tears. Such selective deployment of compassion is one of the more curious features of our time. People who in any other context would pride themselves on defending the underdog is when the subject is the sexual revolution” (p.29).
“When people look back on this or any other momentous debate decades or centuries from now, one of the first things they will want to know is whose corner reason and empiricism and logic were in” (p.35).
Chapter 2: “The pressure on women to accept pornography as an inconsequential and entertaining fact of life rises steadily—and outside the circles of the conservative and the religious, there is little cultural ammunition for any woman who wants to resist it” (p.52).
“In the postrevolutionary world, sex is easier had than ever before; but the opposite appears true for romance. This is perhaps the central enigma that modern men and women are up against: romantic want in a time of sexual plenty. Perhaps some of the modern misery of which so many women today so authentically speak is springing not from a sexual desert, but from a sexual flood—a torrent of poisonous imagery, beginning now for many in childhood, that has engulfed women and men, only to beach them eventually somewhere alone and apart, far from the reach of one another” (p.53).
Chapter 6: Here Eberstadt says that food has become the new sex. Before the sexual revolution, the average adult female would consider sexual immorality just that, wrong, and a non-negotiable. Everyone “knew” fornication, adultery and having children out of wedlock was sin. In our day it has flip-flopped. The non-negotiable sin is unhealthy eating. People’s food practices have become more important that sexual. Eberstadt does a great job of exposing that paradox.
Chapter 7: Pornography is the new tobacco. The same reasoning is applied in chapter 6 towards this parallel in chapter 7. 6 and 7 were both strong chapters.
Chapter 8: In chapter 8 Eberstadt discusses contraception. In the Reformation John Calvin called it the unforgiveable crime. (p.156) Consider the fact the Calvin wasn’t talking about the pill but of contraception itself!
Eberstadt shows that the Catholic Church was the only tradition to not cave on this issue.
“Seen in the light of actual Christian tradition, the question is not after all why the Catholic Church refused to concede the point; it is rather why just about everyone else in the Judeo-Christian tradition did. Whatever the answer, the Catholic Church took, and continues to take, the public fall for causing the collapse—when actually, in theological and historical terms, she was the only one not collapsing” (p.156).
“If Paul VI was right about so many of the consequences deriving from contraception, it is because he was right about contraception itself. This is exactly the connection few people want to make today, because contraceptive sex—as commentators from all over, religious or not, agree—is the fundamental social fact of our time. And the fierce and widespread desire to keep it so is responsible for a great many perverse outcomes” (p.157).
Epilogue: Eberstadt concludes regarding the effects of the sexual revolution: “Every family in America by now has been shaped by one or more of its facets—divorce, single parenthood, abortion, cohabitation, widespread pornography, open homosexuality. This fact that were all in this together also gives people powerful reason to deny the true costs” (p.160).
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July 3, 2017
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July 3, 2017
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July 12, 2017
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