Sex Matters

Author of the New York Times bestseller Useful Idiots and popular columnist Mona Charen takes a close, reasoned look at the aggressive feminist agenda undermining the success and happiness of men and women across the country In this smart, deeply necessary critique, Mona Charen unpacks the ways feminism fails us at home, in the workplace, and in our personal relationships--by promising that we can have it all, do it all, and be it all. Here, she upends the feminist agenda and the liberal conversation surrounding women's issues by asking tough and crucial questions, such as: ;;•;;Did women's full equality require the total destruction of the nuclear family? ;;•;;Did it require a sexual revolution that would dismantle traditions of modesty, courtship, and fidelity that had characterized relations between the sexes for centuries? ;;•;;Did it cause the broken dating culture and the rape crisis on our college campuses? ;;•;;Did it require war between the sexes that would deem men the "enemy" of women? ;;•;;Have the strides of feminism made women happier in their home and work life. (The answer is No.) Sex Matters tracks the price we have paid for denying sex differences and stoking the war of the sexes--family breakdown, declining female happiness, aimlessness among men, and increasing inequality. Marshaling copious social science research as well as her own experience as a professional as well as a wife and mother, Mona Charen calls for a sexual ceasefire for the sake of women, men, and children.

"Mona Charen has written a book that matters. Honest, fearless, and insightful, it's a polemic that's more than a polemic. It's a thought-provoking attempt to induce those willing to liberate themselves from contemporary pieties to think anew about the family, about equality, and about the nature of men and women." —William Kristol, editor at large, The Weekly Standard
 
“The solution to the boorish male behavior that has given rise to the #MeToo movement is not more feminism, but less, as Mona Charen reveals in her compelling expose of feminism’s war on reality. Gender studies departments will not issue trigger warnings about this book, they will try to ban it entirely—which is why the rest of us should read this lucid analysis of how our society has gone dangerously off track in ordering the relations between the sexes.” —Heather MacDonald, Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of The War on Cops
 
“An honest book on a crucial subject by a wonderful writer. Her book will be widely praised and widely attacked. Even the attackers, somewhere within themselves, will know it’s true. This is a book that deals in reality.” —Jay Nordlinger, senior editor, National Review
 
“Sex Matters is a cultural milestone. Mona Charen dissolves decades of fallacies in the acid of honesty. I found this book thrilling.” —George Gilder, author of Life After Google and Men and Marriage 
 
“I have long regarded Mona Charen as a national treasure. Sex Matters reinforces me in that judgment. The brilliance, wisdom, and courage on display in the book are breathtaking. Here is an author who boldly speaks moral truth to cultural power.” —Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University
 
“One of the greatest lies told to my generation is not only that we can do it all, but that we should as well. American mothers are pushed to a breaking point; trying to do everything at work and be Pinterest-perfect at home. Sex Matters is essential reading for any woman looking to see through the fiction that women are not only the same as men, but that they should want to be as well.” —Bethany Mandel, stay-at-home mother and editor at Ricochet

“An excellent issue-by-issue overview of conservative thinking on, well, sex matters — from the wage gap, to abortion, to the rise of unwed childbearing, to the mommy wars, to the hookup culture and alleged rape crisis on college campuses, to the new debate over transgenderism.” —*The National Review
 
 
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Auteur

Mona Charen, one of the most prominent conservative writers in the country, is the author of the New York Times bestseller Useful Idiots. She writes a critically acclaimed syndicated column that appears in more than 200 newspapers and is a former writer for National Review. She appears regularly on radio and television news shows and is a former panelist of CNN's Capital Gang.

Résumé
Author of the New York Times bestseller Useful Idiots and popular columnist Mona Charen takes a close, reasoned look at the aggressive feminist agenda undermining the success and happiness of men and women across the country

In this smart, deeply necessary critique, Mona Charen unpacks the ways feminism fails us at home, in the workplace, and in our personal relationships--by promising that we can have it all, do it all, and be it all. Here, she upends the feminist agenda and the liberal conversation surrounding women's issues by asking tough and crucial questions, such as:
Did women's full equality require the total destruction of the nuclear family?Did it require a sexual revolution that would dismantle traditions of modesty, courtship, and fidelity that had characterized relations between the sexes for centuries?Did it cause the broken dating culture and the rape crisis on our college campuses? Did it require war between the sexes that would deem men the "enemy" of women?Have the strides of feminism made women happier in their home and work life. (The answer is No.)
Sex Matters tracks the price we have paid for denying sex differences and stoking the war of the sexes--family breakdown, declining female happiness, aimlessness among men, and increasing inequality. Marshaling copious social science research as well as her own experience as a professional as well as a wife and mother, Mona Charen calls for a sexual ceasefire for the sake of women, men, and children.

Échantillon de lecture

Chapter 1

The Feminist Mistake

 

If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

--Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672), “To My Dear and Loving Husband”

 

Relations between the sexes are ailing in our time. Hundreds of prominent men in fields from entertainment to sports to business to politics have been credibly accused of gross sexual harassment and other forms of boorishness. The louts span the political spectrum, from Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes on the right, to Al Franken and John Conyers Jr. on the left. And the toll continues to mount.

Young people hardly date much, but they feel pressured into hooking up. Some millennials are giving up on sex altogether. Eighteen-year-old Noah Patterson, a virgin, told the Washington Post that he preferred online porn to having a girlfriend. “For an average date, you’re going to spend at least two hours, and in that two hours I won’t be doing something I enjoy.”1

Teenagers and even some preteens “sext” one another, and sometimes find themselves facing child pornography charges.2 The percentage of adults who have never been married is at a historic high (30 percent), and fewer than one-third of millennials say that having a successful marriage is “one of the most important things in life.”3 While many women proclaim themselves “single by choice,” others express frustration with the lack of marriageable men. In 2011, Kate Bolick described the proliferation of commitment-phobic men, whi…