![]() Khachiyan could not “with a straight face” argue that the sexual revolution failed. ![]() Perry struggles with specifics but seems to genuinely believe we would be happier with mid-century sociosexual norms (let’s assume it’s a kink), so it was simultaneously unfortunate for her and very funny that her more capable co-debater, Anna Khachiyan, refused to defend the proposition. If there is nothing here that went unsaid by Kay Hymowitz or Christina Hoff Sommers in the dark heyday of the hookup-culture think piece, at least everything sounds better in a British accent. Women have been pressured to “fuck like men,” a situation that leaves alpha males very happy but all women depressed, abused, vulnerable, and commodified. Fifty-six percent of the audience, polled beforehand by text at an event featuring four ambitious women and moderated by a queer married media mogul, agreed that the sexual revolution had “failed.” The debate was drawn from Louise Perry’s book, serviceably titled The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, which takes as its presumed reader an extremely credulous liberal raised up in isolation from any information beyond the feminist blogosphere circa 2004 and who needs to be informed, at truly extraordinary length, that men are, on average, physically stronger than women. The alt-right’s inchoate longing for sexual repression in the absence of religion remains mysterious. A friendly Free Press staffer sported a pink dress with the words SHADOW BANNED embroidered across the chest, and the room cheered when a projection of Camille Paglia popped onto the stage, as perfect an example of a brilliant woman willing to say crazy shit as one can conjure. A late-breaking special guest was announced: the comic Tim Dillon. Perhaps the packaging overpromised: The Free Press PR styled like old-timey boxing posters ( Fight 7pm), the reminder, when informed of the location of the exits, to leave should we be offended by the fearless exchange of bold ideas. ![]() An ill-defined proposition, half of Red Scare, a random British lady very upset about BDSM, and Grimes? No notes. You can’t really fault the organizer, even if the organizer was Bari Weiss. The question “Has the Sexual Revolution Failed” contains within itself a number of other questions (failed at what? Failed whom? Why are we talking about this?), precisely none of which were answered Wednesday night at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where 1,600 plaid-skirted e-girls and be- khakied normies and the aspiring canceled paid as much as $165 a seat to hear a British ideologue, a deft Dimes Square shape-shifter, an ex-Muslim podcaster, and Techno Mechanicus’s mother debate the resolution. Photo: Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Bari Weiss, Sarah Haider, Grimes, Anna Khachiyan, and Louise Perry at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |