Amerika

Here’s a hint — they’re polarized by gender and personal drama:

SYMs of the postfeminist era are moving around in a Babel of miscues, cross-purposes, and half-conscious, contradictory female expectations that are alternately proudly egalitarian and coyly traditional. And because middle-class men and women are putting off marriage well into their twenties and thirties as they pursue Ph.D.s, J.D.s, or their first $50,000 salaries, the opportunities for heartbreak and humiliation are legion. Under these harsh conditions, young men are looking for a new framework for understanding what (or, as they might put it, WTF) women want. So far, their answer is unlikely to satisfy anyone — either women or, in the long run, themselves.

By the time men reach their twenties, they have years of experience with women as equal competitors in school, on soccer fields, and even in bed. Small wonder if they initially assume that the women they meet are after the same things they are: financial independence, career success, toned triceps, and sex.

But then, when an SYM walks into a bar and sees an attractive woman, it turns out to be nothing like that. The woman may be hoping for a hookup, but she may also be looking for a husband, a co-parent, a sperm donor, a relationship, a threesome, or a temporary place to live. She may want one thing in November and another by Christmas. “I’ve gone through phases in my life where I bounce between serial monogamy, Very Serious Relationships and extremely casual sex,” writes Megan Carpentier on Jezebel, a popular website for young women. “I’ve slept next to guys on the first date, had sex on the first date, allowed no more than a cheek kiss, dispensed with the date-concept altogether after kissing the guy on the way to his car, fucked a couple of close friends and, more rarely, slept with a guy I didn’t care if I ever saw again.” Okay, wonders the ordinary guy with only middling psychic powers, which is it tonight?

City Journal

Sounds very neurotic and queeny, and guaranteed to produce neurotic parents who don’t trust each other to scream out the right name during sex, which will in turn produce hopelessly neurotic, paranoid kids.

The more people you have sex with, the less you bond with any one. This seems contrary to human “wisdom,” which holds that sex is a bodily function or friendly gesture like a handshake.

In reality, some things are sacred and can only really be shared once, or they become subdivided and therefore never full attention on any one person. The bond is temporary, and as a result, any relationships unstable.

The self is a tyrant.

Tags: devolution, neurosis, reproduction, sex, sexual liberation, sexual revolution