Here we are in 2023 and a lot of us seem to think we’re wiser and better at life than our forebears were.
We think we know much more about dating, marriage, and sex than our grandparents or great grandparents did in an era when liberals like to scoff that people were “controlled” by religion and pressured into conforming to rigid social norms.
One has to wonder, is 2023 really all that different?
The prudishness around premarital sex may have been thrown out the window but pressure to conform to social norms has not.
Whereas 50 years ago there was an overt expectation that sex was for after marriage, now the overt expectation is that it’s ‘for fun’ and those who want to wait are the exception.
So where do people who want to do something as radical as get to know someone for a little bit without the underlying expectation – pressure even – that sex is on the cards in the short term?
Luckily for conservative-leaning singletons Louise Perry, author of controversial hit The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, has launched a good old fashioned matchmaking event.
In a recent interview Perry spoke about how a young woman said she felt that reading The Case Against the Sexual Revolution had “given her permission” to say no to the dashing proposal of ‘sex with no strings’ after being disappointed that her university crush didn’t want to bother having a meaningful relationship with her.
This might seem like an example of simply learning to stand up for yourself but as Perry says young women have an innate desire to please and to be liked which is easily taken advantage of, and unfortunately there’s a darker twist.
Perry’s time working with a rape crisis centre inspired her to start advocacy group We Can’t Consent to This.
The group says it was born as a response to the “increasing use of “rough sex” defences to the killing or violent injury of women and girls.”
It says there have been at least 60 women in the UK “killed and many more injured”, where “rough sex” was used as a defence and that they are “extremely concerned by normalised violence against women in sex,”
The Case Against the Sexual Revolution questions whether the abandonment of traditional societal norms around dating and sex have really benefited women or if they’ve created a situation where we are in many ways worse off than before.
I just read this book by @Louise_m_perry and it has blown my mind. Everybody should read it! #feminism #thecaseagainstthesexualrevolution pic.twitter.com/H1rrxVT2xe
— Rose Carlyle (@RCarlyleAuthor) July 5, 2023
Maiden Matchmaking – the name seems to derive from Perry’s podcast Maiden, Mother, Matriarch – was launched yesterday in London and this writer had the opportunity to go along.
Perry, who is the mother of a two year old son, says that although her political leanings were originally of the left that she believes Christianity ‘got sex right’.
She says she’s “constantly getting messages from young men and women who want to get married to someone who shares their values, but have no idea how to find such a person,”
Speaking to Perry at the event yesterday she said that young conservatives who are not religious are the ones who find it most difficult to find a mate.
Perry says dating apps have “changed social norms so dramatically that approaching strangers offline is now regarded as unthinkable,” adding that “we all know how dysfunctional the apps are,”
This she says brought about the birth of Maiden Matching which Perry said she would be happy to bring to Dublin should the stars align.
“[W]e had an idea for an event that is really very simple: we get all these single people in the same room and introduce them to one another,” she said, adding that “filtering people in the orbit” of her podcast seemed like a good way of bringing together people similar views together.
“Who knows, it could be the evening on which you meet your future spouse,” she says
While lightning didn’t strike for me on this occasion the event was an encouraging rumble of thunder that has the potential to grow into a storm of opportunities to make connections with like minded individuals.
Fascinating conversations about everything from Tolstoy to earrings were lubricated by the generous amount of complimentary bubbly and delicious canapés – the only ones seemingly unsatisfied with the spread were the vegans…
It’s easy to see why this kind of event is important in creating a space for people to meet and mingle with the underlying understanding that everybody expects a certain standard of respectful behaviour from one another.
Perry, who has a wonderfully disarming gentle charm, encouraged everyone in attendance to get to know one another with the wise caveat; ‘no shagging on the first date’, to which this writer replied, “Amen”.