Sexual Utopia in Power: The Feminist Revolt Against Civilization

166 Pages·2015·0.99 MB·English

by  F. Roger Devlin

S U
EXUAL TOPIA
P
IN OWER:

T F R A C
HE EMINIST EVOLT GAINST IVILIZATION

by

F R D
. OGER EVLIN

CounterCurrents 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 C P L
OUNTER- URRENTS UBLISHING TD.
P.O. Box 22638
San Francisco, CA 94122
USA
http://www.countercurrents.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

Preface

Introduction:
The Facts of Life

1. Sexual Utopia in Power

2. Rotating Polyandry—& its Enforcers

3. The Female Sexual CounterRevolution
& its Limitations

4. Home Economics

5. The Family Way

6. Back to Africa: Sexual Atavism
in the Modern West

7. The Question of Female Masochism

About the Author
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 race’s 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 as—borrowing a phrase from John
Crowe Ransom—an 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 gates—they 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 them—even 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 women’s 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 theirs—rather, 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 women’s 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 internet—what 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.
Toward the end of 2005, throwing caution to the wind, I tried to get down as
much of my new thought as I could in a single essay. The result was “Sexual
Utopia in Power,” the title being a combination of Utopia in Power, Heller and
Nekrich’s 1986 history of the USSR, with the phrase “sexual utopianism,” which
I remembered from a talk by columnist Joe Sobran. I could think of no
appropriate venue for the essay, but having previously contributed to The
Occidental Quarterly, I offered first refusal to that journal. I owe editor Kevin
Lamb a debt of gratitude for taking a chance on a provocative piece which I had
no professional qualifications for writing.
Over the next three years I expanded on my ideas in the following five pieces
included in this collection, three of which take the modest form of review essays.
The final essay was written recently.
These pieces are only a small fraction of what I have published over the years,
but have received more attention than all the rest put together. Clearly, the issues
I discuss strike a chord in many readers. Most interesting to me was the
generational pattern in responses I got. Older men who dated and got married in
the 1960s or before were more likely to condemn my viewpoint and assume I
must be a bitter misogynist. But the same essays attracted a cult-like following
among mostly younger men on the internet. Some of these young men have
approached me to thank me for explaining for them the mysterious and irrational
female behavior they have seen all their lives but had never before understood.
One response I received is so remarkable that I must quote it. Several times
over the course of these essays I have referred to Thomas Fleming as a good
representative of Christian traditionalism. I once made a half-hearted attempt
politely to introduce some of my ideas on a Chronicles website discussion
thread, suggesting that he and similar writers might profit from studying
unconstrained female sexuality directly (as opposed to theological
pronouncements on sexual morality or historical family law). I was told that I
was a “misogynist” due my personal “difficulties with women,” that I was guilty
of “demean[ing] the character of women” and “indulg[ing] in fantasies about
female sexuality” and that the “this is not the place to air [my] grievances.”
Farther along he added:

I know too well how many Men’s Movement androgynes are looking for a
reason to get back at the women who have ruined their lives. I am warning
them from the outset that there is no place in this discussion for their
battered egos, wounded vanities, and whining exaltations of a male
supremacy

. . . etc., etc. Fleming is acknowledged even by his admirers to be a bit of a nut,
but his bizarre ad hominem overreaction mirrors the weaknesses of too many
traditional conservatives.
On the internet, I have come across stories of men kicked out of their churches
for discussing the sorts of ideas contained in my essays. Weblogs like Dalrock
and Patriactionary have done a good job of cataloguing the cluelessness of
Christian pastors and even their collusion in perverting traditional teachings in
order to make them more palatable to the Cosmo-girls in their pews.
But among the younger generation, something is changing. Ideas like those
exposed here are reaching wide readerships. I did not have a lot of company
when I began the intellectual journey which produced these essays. Now I am
merely one voice among many. An entire so-called manosphere—androsphere
might have been a better label—has grown up on the internet in response to