The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution

by Carl R. Trueman

One is not born, but rather becomes, woman. No biological, psychic, or economic destiny defines the figure that the human female takes on in society; it is civilization as a whole that elaborates this intermediary product between the male and the eunuch that is called feminine.59

For her, the main issue is birth control. This is hardly surprising: reproduction is the most obvious evidence that there is a clear distinction in function between men and women that is rooted in biology.

number of pregnancies and rationally integrate them into her life, instead of being their slave. During the nineteenth century, woman in her turn is freed from nature; she wins control of her body. Relieved of a great number of reproductive servitudes, she can take on the economic roles open to her, roles that would ensure her control over her own person.

And just as the end goal of socialist revolution was not only the elimination of the economic class privilege but of the economic class distinction itself, so the end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally. (A reversion to an unobstructed pansexuality—Freud’s “polymorphous perversity”—would probably supersede hetero/homo/bi-sexuality.) The reproduction of the species by one sex for the benefit of both would be replaced by (at least the

the option of) artificial reproduction: children would be born to both sexes equally or independently of either, however one chooses to look at it; the dependence of the child on the mother (and vice versa) would give way to a greatly shortened dependence on a small group of others in general, and any remaining inferiority to adults in physical strength would be compensated for culturally. The division of labour would be ended by the elimination of labour altogether (through cybernetics). The tyranny of the biological family would be broken.68

human workers in a variety of industries, but there is no sign that this is leading to a Shangri-La of leisure time.

however, comes at the very end: the purpose of this revolution is to abolish the “tyranny” of the biological family.

to be found in the tools provided by technology.

The fact that sex is now politics is in large measure the result of this unusual marriage, and the latest iteration of that—the transgender movement—also takes its cue from the psychologizing and historicizing of human nature, combined with the now-standard leitmotif of oppression as society’s imposition of its own values and norms on the individual.

Modesty and sexual codes do not need to be merely expanded or redefined; for humans to be truly liberated and truly human, they need to be abolished altogether. That was the gospel of the sexual revolution of the sixties, and this has become the gospel of the consumerist world of today. Sex as revolution or sex as commodity: both are predicated on the idea of sex as the answer to human ills, and both assume the kind of psychologized, sexualized self that has emerged over the last three hundred years.

nature and purpose of human beings, the definition of happiness, and the relationship between the individual and wider society and between men and women. As Archbishop Charles Chaput summarizes the matter: Once the genie is out of the bottle, sexual freedom goes in directions and takes on shapes that nobody imagined. And ultimately it leads to questions about who a person is and what it means to be human.70

To concede this point means that debates about the limits of acceptable sexual expression become almost pointless because any attempt to corral sexual behavior is then rendered an oppressive move designed to make the individual inauthentic.

It is interesting to note that Reich regarded America, with its deep tradition of individualism, as the place where the sexual revolution was most likely to take root; see the discussion of Reich in Charles J. Chaput, Strangers in a Strange

Marcuse states, “The growing productivity of labor creates an increasing surplus-product which, whether privately or centrally appropriated and distributed, allows an increased consumption—notwithstanding the increased diversion of productivity. As long as this constellation prevails, it reduces the use-value of freedom; there is no reason to insist on self-determination if the administered life is the comfortable and even the ‘good’ life. This is the rational and material ground for the unification of opposites, for one-dimensional political behavior. On this ground, the transcending political forces within society are arrested, and qualitative change appears possible only as a change from without.” One-Dimensional Man, 53. To translate this statement into English, as long as people are allowed to buy the things they want and live a comfortable life, they will not be politically self-conscious and will passively accept the status quo.

See de Beauvoir’s comment on childbearing: “There is no way to directly oblige a woman to give birth: all that can be done is to enclose her in situations where motherhood is her only option: laws or customs impose marriage on her, anticonception measures and abortion are banned, divorce is forbidden.” The Second Sex, 67. Though de Beauvoir would presumably allow that a woman may choose to conceive even in a feminist utopia, the language she uses about childbearing is typically so negative that it is hard not to regard her as resenting the fact that women can produce children and men cannot.

Freud regards lesbians as women who have failed to mature correctly in terms of their sexuality, a view that de Beauvoir excoriates as rooted in “moralizing conformity” that leads him to regard lesbianism as never “anything but an inauthentic attitude.” The Second Sex, 418–19. For a good discussion of Freud’s views of lesbianism,

they opened the way for what are in essence claims of emotivism to be a way of subverting traditional moral stands: “Your objection to homosexual behavior is simply an irrational, emotional stand based on social conditioning.” In the hands of the New Left, this takes on a moral stridency: “And your irrational, emotional stand based on social conditioning reflects the politically repressive interests of bourgeois society.” The concept now dubbed emotivism allows one to explain and dismiss the moral claims of anyone with whom one happens to disagree. Emotivism for thee, but not for me.

In sum, in the work of the New Left one finds philosophical justification for what are now intuitive commonplaces of our culture: to be free is to be sexually liberated; to be happy is to be affirmed in that liberation. Our narrative has therefore reached the point at which the basic philosophical elements behind the modern social imaginary are in place.

In fact, the major criticism of pornography that the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective makes is in chapter 3 of Our Bodies, Ourselves, which discusses body image. Pornography’s major crime is that it creates unrealistic expectations regarding the perfection of the female form. In other words, it is not bad because it contravenes traditional codes of sexual morality. It is bad because it may have a detrimental effect on some women’s inner sense of well-being with their physical appearance. It is bad as and when it fails the therapeutic test.39

Feminists saw porn—accurately, in my judgment—as a degradation of women. Yet they always interpret life through the narrow lens of women’s oppression by men, which prevents them from seeing that its harm is to human dignity and not just to women as a class. Porn encourages immorality because it treats people as means, not ends—which is exactly what casual sex does. Porn is, in a sense, the logical end point of the sexual revolution

means that pornography is simply one manifestation of our contemporary world of therapy and expressive individualism, where sex itself has no intrinsic moral content and sexual ethics hangs on the spider-web-thin thread of consent. We

The logic of all three is essentially the same: it is that of expressive individualism working out in the public sphere and often driven by therapeutic concerns.

When it comes to the American Constitution, originalism—the conviction that law must be read according to the understanding of those who originally drafted it—may have been given new life through the work of Antonin Scalia, but it has scarcely carried the day on a number of key decisions.

Perhaps the most obvious example of this shift is the 2015 majority ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which found a right to gay marriage in the Constitution.

Court decision in the case of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 851 (1992).

Gay marriage is plausible because of the wider transformation of the social imaginary that we have noted in earlier chapters, and the background to and justification offered by the majority for the Obergefell decision demonstrate this fact.

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.

Such a statement should really be deemed incoherent when it comes from a legal body because it is arguably mystical in its approach to personhood.

Serial killers and child molesters still (thankfully) do not have the right to “define their own concept of existence” in twenty-first-century America.

restricted by the fact that their chosen callings are illegal and subject to severe legal penalty.

The Casey opinion begins with the statement that “liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt” and then proceeds to comment that the fact that Roe v. Wade established a clear legal precedent on the matter of abortion rights had formed a major part of the court’s reasoning.

The opinion stated that this was not the case, and therefore the precedent held.

arbitrary

application of this principle,

The flip-flop on precedent that the later case of Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), involved speaks eloquently of what really drives some of these key decisions.

Lawrence v. Texas. Texas law at the time prohibited certain intimate sexual contact between people of the same sex, and this was being challenged by two men who had been apprehended while engaged in such conduct in their own home

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the two men and thus overthrew a previous judgment in the 1986 case of Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), in which the court had upheld a Georgia law forbidding oral and anal sex between consenting adults.2

interesting is both its clear move to legitimate homosexual activity and also the willingness of certain of the justices to overthrow legal precedent in a manner that would seem antithetical to the logic that provided the justification for the ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

had argued in that decision that the precedent of Roe v. Wade should be upheld because if the Supreme Court allowed its decision to be affected by widespread popular opposition to its decisions, then it would lose its legitimacy.

significant individual or social reliance on it that would prevent it from being overturned. In this context, Scalia notes that the principle it reflects—the belief that certain sexual behavior is immoral and unacceptable—has been basic to the legal regulation of sexual morality since ancient times.

Later in his opinion, Scalia even goes so far as to be specific (and, in hindsight, prophetic) about what social and legal institutions might be affected by the logic of the decision: “This reasoning leaves on pretty

shaky grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite sex couples.”

Yet supporters of traditional marriage have numerous arguments that they would consider rational—for example, the overwhelming consensus of tradition regarding marriage as between one man and one woman and the role of procreation and family life.

The latter is highly unlikely; the former requires an act of cultural hubris whereby the elites of contemporary culture have an apparent monopoly on what can be declared rational.

Why can marriage not be between one man and two or more women? Why should marriage be restricted to a relationship that is exclusively human? Could the case not be made that to refuse to recognize polygamy or a marriage between a man and a dog would marginalize in turn the polygamous and zoophilic communities?

Polygamy and (even more so) bestiality still stand outside the current framework of what is socially acceptable. And it is that framework that ultimately determines what is rational judgment and what is irrational animus.

The second point, that the right to marry is fundamental because it supports a two-person union like no other, is vulnerable to the criticism we noted in the section on United States v. Windsor. Yes, it is true that marriage has traditionally been a two-person union. Yet historically its uniqueness has typically been connected both to procreation and to its being a lifelong bond, both of which no longer apply in modern society, given the existence of no-fault divorce laws.

The matter of number has actually been less important than the matter of sex. Polygamy, for example, is historically attested as a practice. But the concept of marriage that polygamy assumes is one of the relationship between different sexes, typically a man and two or more women. So why does the traditional view of the number of parties involved enjoy the status of a normative, rational position while the traditional notion of the sex of the persons involved does not? The answer is surely that the canons of reason that are operative here are determined not by the definition of marriage but rather by the contemporary tastes of the wider culture.

It can be gerrymandered to do so via adjusting adoption and surrogacy laws, but it is itself inherently sterile. So granting a gay couple the right to marry does not, in itself, bring in its wake the existence of a family; that depends on other laws and social practices—again, pointing to the fact that this ruling cannot be isolated from a host of other social practices and beliefs that already enjoy status within the social imaginary. It is as much a symptom of the changing definition of marriage within society as it is a contributing cause.

for example, when it defines marriage as between a man and a woman—it is to be dismissed as having no rational basis, as motivated by animus, as perpetuating inequality, as an affront to the dignity of the gay and lesbian community, and as denying fundamental freedoms essential to what it means to be a human.