Casual sex and the blame game

Who is to blame for the mess that has become of heterosexual relations?

The battle of the sexes seems to have reached its peak, as we have all found ourselves trapped in culture we were told would liberate us.

The sexual revolution freed us up to have casual sex without consequence. This is what we were told in any case. The reality is that sex remains consequential.

When we speak about consequence-free sex, we are generally thinking about pregnancy. So the advent of the birth control pill, as well as easier access to abortion, was our apparent liberation towards “casual sex”—a thing that couldn’t really exist prior. Sex can’t ever really be “casual” if there are lifelong consequences in the form of a human being.

But the truth is that sex is still not “casual.” We just tell ourselves it is.

Brett Weinstein noted on X recently that “The sexual revolution disrupted something fundamental.” He explains:

“Sex, it turns out, is far more important than we understood, and making it cheep unleashed a cascade of negative effects. Among the worst: men and women have now become unsympathetic and grotesque in each others’ eyes.”

In the past, women had to operate as gatekeepers: men tried to access sex, women prevented them from doing so without commitment. (I am speaking in generalities, of course. Sexual urges did of course get the best of us in the past at times, just much less so than they do now.) For women, it was important to ensure the man they allowed access to would stick around. Becoming a single mother in the past was an incredibly challenging path, sometimes life-ending. We didn’t have the options we do today to operate independently. Single motherhood is still less-than-ideal, but it’s doable in a way it wasn’t for most of history.

Today, we have no visible reason to gate-keep sex. We can prevent and end pregnancies should we wish, and we can also choose single motherhood if we wish. But what impact has all this “choice” and “freedom” had on relationships between men and women?

Things look rather bleak, honestly. The “situationship” thrives, porn consumption is through the roof, and apparently the younger generations aren’t even dating. People still crave connection and relationships, and women still crave love and commitment. What the sexual revolution really offered was the freedom for men to act without consequence or accountability. And it told women this was good for them too.

But the problem is that “casual sex” is a “freedom” that is really only desirable for men. Women, despite what we might tell ourselves or what we might like to believe, simply aren’t wired for endless one night stands. It’s not satisfying on a sexual or an emotion level. Men might feel nothing after sleeping with a woman and never seeing her again, but women tend to feel used, discarded, disrespected, and unfulfilled.

This may sound like sexist stereotyping but it’s rooted in biology.

Women are wired to bond through sex. Our brains are flooded with oxytocin—the “love hormone” which promotes not just bonding between heterosexual partners, but between mother and baby. It creates feelings of closeness, intimacy, trust, and attachment. It contributes to that “falling in love” feeling. Men might scoff at women who attach to men who’ve insisted they “don’t want anything serious,” but that’s not how women operate. You can be as rational as you like, but if you’re sleeping with us, we are most likely bonding to you and will want more, as it were. Forcing ourselves to disconnect and remain unattached is just that: forced. And most-often a lie. We compartmentalize to avoid pain. And generally don’t actually end up avoiding the pain.

So who is to blame for all of this?

When I shared Weinstein’s observation that “Sex is naturally collaborative for women. Men have a collaborative mode, and a predatory one,” I added:

“By allowing men ‘casual sex’ (sex is not “casual”... especially not for women) we as a society have allowed them to be at their most selfish, acting without care and accountability. Women hate men as a result and men think women are whores. It’s all very sad.”

The truth is that when sex had more clear consequences, men were forced to accommodate women’s desire for commitment much moreso than they are today. As Weinstein explains:

“The sexual revolution caused women to drop their guard, rewarding men for predatory behavior. Women are now following suit. This is why men and women increasingly disgust each other.”

Women don’t trust men, think they are predatory dogs who will use them for sex and discard them, offering them zero respect or commitment, and men think women are whores and gold diggers who choose men only for superficial reasons, ignoring the masses of sex-starved geeks.

The second part is mostly a delusion, fed to bitter, lonely young men by other bitter, lonely young men with little-to-no real world experience with women. But if you only operated online, you would be forgiven for believing such a thing, as your world is awash in OnlyFans chicks thotting themselves out to anyone who will pay.

The truth is not that women love casual sex and porn. The thotting in particular brings little satisfaction beyond a temporary dopamine hit. This is a generation of women trained to view superficial validation from social media as the route to self-confidence and validation. They have learned through porn culture that “sexuality” and “sexiness” is about appearances—about how men (usually strange men on the internet) see you, rather than it being about actual sexuality, sexual pleasure, satisfaction, and empowerment. (Posing in sexual ways for the camera, for those with no imagination, is not “sexy,” but tedious and uncomfortable.) The sexual revolution and third wave feminism convinced women they could and should “have sex like men,” because the alternative, “purity culture,” was oppressive to women.