Can We Close Pandora's Box?

The combination of the birth control pill and the sexual revolution have dramatically changed the way men and women interact. The promise was nothing short of total liberation: women freed from the animal reproductive cycle, marriages based on love and mutual respect between equals, and an end to loneliness and sexual jealousy. More than a half-century later, however, the voices of discontent are growing louder. In The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, journalist and anti-rape campaigner Louise Perry surveys a sorry landscape of discontented women, lonely, porn-obsessed young men, and abusers cloaking their misdeeds in the language of "sex positivity." On balance, has the sexual revolution been a positive or negative? We discuss.