F. Roger Devlin - Sexual Utopia in Power: The Feminist Revolt Against Civilization

S EXUAL U TOPIA

IN P OWER:

T HE F EMINIST R EVOLT A GAINST C IVILIZATION

by

F . R OGER D EVLIN

Counter-Currents Publishing Ltd.

San Francisco

2015

Copyright 2015 by F. Roger Devlin

All rights reserved

Cover image:

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Judith with the Head of Holofernes , 1530

Cover design by

Kevin I. Slaughter

Published in the United States by

C OUNTER- C URRENTS P UBLISHING L TD.

P.O. Box 22638

San Francisco, CA 94122

USA

http://www.counter-currents.com/

Hardcover: 978-1-935965-88-6

Paperback: 978-1-935965-89-3
EBook: 978-1-935965-90-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Devlin, F. Roger.
Sexual utopia in power : the Feminist Revolt against civilization / by F. Roger Devlin.
1 online resource.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
ISBN 978-1-935965-90-9 (electronic) -- ISBN 978-1-935965-88-6 (print)
1. Women--Sexual behavior. 2. Feminism. 3. Monogamous relationships. 4. Families. I. Title.
HQ29
305.42--dc23
2015009194

C ONTENTS

Note to the Reader:

No women were harmed in the writing of this book.

P REFACE

This is a book about the decline of virtue in women. In more contemporary parlance, it deals with feminism and the sexual revolution: two related socio-political movements which are both expression and cause of that decline.

Many people have written in criticism of these social phenomena already, but I have found most of this literature unsatisfying. Sex is among the most difficult subjects to write about; the writer is too close to his subject matter; limbic impulses (the male protective instinct, notably) substitute themselves for careful observation and interfere with cold analysis.

Moreover, sex is pre-eminently the domain in which normative discourse thou shalt nots and, occasionally, thou shalts drown out description, explanation, and rational understanding. This is understandable: sex is essential to the races continued existence, yet is also potentially destructive. Practicality dictates keeping young people on the narrow path that is best both for themselves and for society, so the older discourse on sex was pretty much limited to the inculcation of marriage backed by religious sanctions (religious awe being the only force strong enough to counter something as primal as the sex instinct).

But a formerly effective method of regulating sexual behavior is one thing, a rational understanding of sex is something else entirely; and today, a correct understanding is what we most need. Traditional normative discussion of sex and marriage presupposes a social order in which lifelong monogamy enjoys social and legal sanction; the rearing of the young was intended to reinforce this already-existing order. Once moral and legal sanction have been withdrawn and the monogamous order destroyed, the old advice can even be harmful to the young man or woman who follows it. Plainly put, the young man or woman who waits for marriage in the contemporary West is likely either to wait forever or to be divorced within a few years.

The case is similar to the hoary advice to put money aside for a rainy day. As long as one is living in a reasonably healthy economy, the advice is good; but in a context of currency inflation, where the value of money is being eroded faster than it can be saved, saving becomes counterproductive.

Like inflation, sexual liberation turns the marketplace morally upside-down by actively punishing the virtuous and rewarding the vicious. Young people are gradually figuring this out for themselves through painful experience, and if traditionalists have nothing better to offer them than repetition of their grandparents advice suited to a vanished order, they will lose whatever tatters of authority they yet retain.

In this book, I explain what really happens when sex is liberated, and why it happens. I like to think of my argument asborrowing a phrase from John Crowe Ransoman unorthodox defense of orthodoxy . The old order was, indeed, better than what we have today; but its defenses have failed. The barbarians are no longer at the gatesthey are ourselves. To go on defending traditional marriage in the contemporary world is to shut the barn door after the horse has bolted. In a word, we must stop thinking like conservatives and figure out how to rebuild a tolerable order upon the facts of primitive human nature alone.

The main focus in what follows, along with all that is most likely to surprise and possibly provoke the reader, is the account I give of female sexuality. For the record, I hold no brief for my own sex, but our faults are already sufficiently well-known and widely denounced by feminists as well as traditionalists (often in eerily similar ways). Women do not come in for the same kind of criticism because (1) they are more complicated and harder to understand than men; (2) they are masters of dissimulation, even when not consciously trying to be; and (3) men have an instinct to protect themeven from criticism. If this book sometimes sounds one-sided, it is because it seeks to correct this imbalance. I am not a misogynist, but a misanthrope with a special focus on women.

Boys and girls both come into the world as savages, and the continuance of civilized life depends upon teaching them to control their instincts before they reach adulthood. Neither sex should be criticized for having natural instincts which require control, but both should be liable to criticism for failing to do so. What I say about womens sexual instincts is meant to apply to all women, or at least to all normal women; but my criticism of contemporary female behavior refers only to women emblematic of the current Zeitgeist , those who have liberated themselves from the normal duties incumbent upon their sex in any healthy society. The objection that not all women are like that is always valid, of course, but a bit like defending the Black Death on the grounds that it did not, after all, kill everybody .

Indeed, when I read Theodore Roosevelt or Victorian sentimentalists rhapsodizing about the heroic self-sacrifice of wives and mothers, I do not feel that there necessarily exists any substantive difference between my view of women and theirsrather, I would explain our differences by the different historical data sets with which we are working. Human nature and feminine nature may be constant, but they can express themselves in radically different ways under different circumstances. We have exchanged a set of incentives that raised womens behavior above that of the average man in favor of one which has allowed women to plunge themselves to depths previously unimagined.

In short, the modern West must face up to its systematic failure to properly socialize its young, but its girls in particular. This will require many persons to abandon cherished illusions. Here are a few of the things I attempt to explain in the essays ahead:

1. There is no more sex available to men in general today than there was before the sexual revolution; i.e., men in general did not gain at the expense of women from the sexual revolution.

2. Sex today, whether on college campuses or in the larger society, is not a free for all.

3. Men do not prey upon women.

4. Women are not naturally monogamous.

5. Women do not naturally look for worthy men to marry; i.e., there is no moral component to female sexuality.

6. Our current problems would not be solved if only men would man up and accept their traditional responsibilities.

I started to develop the views presented in the following essays around the year 2000, based initially on the surprising things I was starting to find in obscure corners of the internetwhat later became known as the manosphere, then in its infancy. For a long time, most of my waking hours were devoted to thinking through what I was learning, tracing it back to first principles and forward to its ramifications in different domains. It was intellectually exciting to discover a whole new way of thinking about relations between the sexes; at the same time, much of it was heartbreaking to an old romantic such as I used to be.