Tag: Louise Perry

Slow dating makes a return

Just finished Louise Perry’s book The Case against the Sexual Revolution, which was so informative and eye-opening, even if it isn’t stuff that finds its way into my normal diet. Perry is a journalist and writer, raised in all the tropes of Western sexual culture, but turning away from them. I think broadly her argument is that:

  • Technology and culture change (easy divorce, the pill, abortion) have freed up women’s sexual choices
  • That freedom, in the cultural context that evolved with it, hasn’t served them at all well
  • The forces of evolution are much stronger in our make-up than new social constructs; men and women view and treat sex differently
  • It’s better to rely on structures that have worked OK in the past (monogamy) than speculate on or explore options that are theoretically possible but have not, across the whole of society, actually worked.

A former volunteer in a rape crisis centre, she’s very dismissive of the figleaf of ‘consent’, which is deployed whenever freedom to love is raised. Her problem? It doesn’t work:

[Out of ‘Me Too’ came stories of] a lot of women who described sexual encounters that were technically consensual but nevertheless left them feeling terrible because they were being asked to treat as meaningless something that they felt to be meaningful.

I’m anxious not to quote her too much, lest in my clumsy hands I make her say things she doesn’t say or (more likely) say things without her elegeance and erudition. As a writer she prefers the rapier to the halberd.

Nor does she start from an a priori conservative position (I think) ; more from observation and evidence of how much damage (to both women and men) the prevailing sexual culture is creating. The ones who suffer least are the high-status men; the ones who suffer most, young women. I wish I could quote her better and I wish even more than people would read her book.

It is, finally, a manifesto for slow too. Here’s a taster of her stuff, from near the end of the book:

  • Consent workshops are mostly useless…
  • The category of people most likely to become victims of [sexually aggressive] men are young women aged about thirteen to twenty-five. All girls and women, but particularly those in this age category, should avoid being alone with men they don’t know or men who give them the creeps. Gut instinct is not to be ignored: it’s usually triggered by a red flag that’s well worth noticing.
  • Get drunk or high in private and with female friends rather than in public or in mixed company.
  • Don’t use dating apps. Mutual friends can vet histories and punish bad behaviour. Dating apps can’t.
  • Holding off on having sex with a new boyfriend for at least a few months is a good way of discovering whether or not he’s serious about you or just looking for a hook-up.
  • Only have sex with a man if you think he would make a good father to your children – not because you necessarily intend to have children with him, but because this is a good rule of thumb

She has a podcast too.

Like a subscription to a sweetshop

So. I just discovered Perlego.com and it is like having a subscription to a sweetshop, or an all-you-can-eat buffet, or a pizza restaurant. I think it was originally for students. It stores a million textbooks and for a simple monthly fee, you can download and read them all. (Note that it is perlego and not perlogo. The alternate spelling in my experience is a site that has been taken over by cybersquatters who intend you harm.)

Here’s my usage over the past two months.

  • Our church has a teaching series on the biblical book of Nehemiah, which I’m speaking on in August. Want a commentary on Nehemiah? Perlego offers 94 of them across the range of Biblical scholarship. I tucked into Derek Kidner’s 2015 Tyndale commentary for starters.
  • I helped myself to Tom Wright’s biography of Paul, which I just read in hardback and wanted to review.
  • I was able to hunt down all John Walton’s books, which are revolutionizing studies of Genesis and read in detail The Lost World of the Flood, very much enjoying his blend of Biblical scholarship, from a conservative perspective no less, and his receptivity to God’s other book, the book of nature as opened and read by modern science. His secret sauce that blends these two ingredients is a renewed study of the ancient literature and an awareness of the cultural flow of the times. If we know what they meant then, today’s science isn’t a problem.
  • I chewed without finishing Joshua Swamidass’ book The Genealogical Adam and Eve, which I have blogged about in a previous year. It claims that you can have a historic literal Adam and Eve and they can be ancestors of everyone, provided they weren’t the only humans on earth at the time. I haven’t eaten my crusts so far as this book is concerned because (a) it’s quite dense and my eyes glazed over and (b) I’m not wedded to a literal Adam and Eve,especially after reading Walton. But still.
  • Fancying something a little more spiritually improving, I looked to see what the scholar-archbishop (and Cambridge resident) Rowan Williams had on offer and dug out probably the most difficult of the alternatives, his book Passions of the Soul which is, broadly, a study of what the Greek-speaking Desert Fathers did all day in terms of scrutinizing the human psyche’s response to God. One wonders if the Desert Fathers rather pushed to the background the Second Great Commandment, love your neighbour, but it’s nevertheless interesting.
  • Then I’ve been listening to Justin Brierley’s excellent podcast series The Surprising Rebirth of Faith in God which is also a book and isn’t yet available on the sainted Perlego, but his previous title Why I’m Still a Christian is. The podcast had an episode on a woman called Louise Perry, who, starting with impeccable feminist credentials, has come to conclude that the best way for most people and for societies as a whole to thrive is to aim at a life not incompatible with many of the Christian values. (I don’t think she herself is at the moment a Christian believer, saying she stumbles on the metaphysics.) She was so eloquent, gracious, honest and deeply, deeply smart in the interview that I put her in Perlego and lo! There her book appeared, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, and I can read that too. I can read them all. For my £12 or so monthly subscription.

Cue the rumble of the earth moving around me. I have written about how sad it is that thousands of pieces of excellent writing (in my particular world, Christian academic writing) are hidden inaccessible behind mighty paywalls. Woe to you if you are Nigerian youth leader or a Filipina pastor or, frankly, an ordinary Joe in the West whose budget doesn’t stretch to this literary feasting. The seven titles I’ve mentioned here would empty your wallet of the best part of £100 to buy, even assuming you could find them.

The Internet was always supposed to give us access to every film ever made, every piece of music ever recorded, and every book ever written. Big tech has muscled in mostly, so the films are divided between different streamers, and the music is being buried under a weight of AI generated elevator sound. Amateur films, books and music are everywhere, creators far outstripping the capacity of consumers.

But Perlego is, I think, where publishers’ backlists go, a far superior place to the literary Hades which is the nether end of the Amazon bestseller lists, where books crowd in semi-darkness, waiting usually in vain to be called up higher by an Order. (This is where my books reside, incidentally, at least until I get my move to Substack sorted out, of which more sometime.)

Enjoy it while it lasts.

My challenge now is to find le temps juste when I can moot to my wife the idea of an annual Perlego subscription (£100 or so, so a saving really) and perhaps a compact little Android e-reader like this to read it on.

Faith and patience.