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Reading "I Am Charlotte Simmons"
May. 7th, 2009 09:04 amSo far, so good, although not a little grotesque. Here's a review:
He is Charlotte Simmons
Peter Berkowitz on I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe
Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 688 pages. $28.95
The sexual revolution is perhaps the greatest social revolution in human history. Arising from the explosive encounter between the liberal idea that individuals should make their own choices and the technological innovation that produced a cheap and reliable birth control pill, it has dramatically transformed relations between men and women, family and friendship, popular culture and the workplace. Forty years down the road we have only begun to deal with its consequences, in part because the sexual revolution quickly came to be regarded as an expression of the natural order of things. [...]
The new sexual freedom and the relationships that developed to accommodate it have expanded choices about whom to be with, in what ways, and for how long; created opportunities for experiments in living; and, for women, on whom the burden of pregnancy unavoidably falls far more heavily, provided more equality. But what if men and women are different in ways that go beyond the structure of their sex organs, and so experience sexual relationships differently? And what if the exercise of the new freedom imparts lessons to both men and women about life, and develops habits of heart and mind, that interfere with the capacity to give oneself to and care for another, and so to build lasting, loving marriages? What if relationships teach how to withhold one’s heart, to embrace another with one eye always fixed on the exit, to make long-term plans only for oneself though part of a couple? And what if such lessons, habits, and teachings are more easily acquired than discarded?
Full article at http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3431656.html
He is Charlotte Simmons
Peter Berkowitz on I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe
Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 688 pages. $28.95
The sexual revolution is perhaps the greatest social revolution in human history. Arising from the explosive encounter between the liberal idea that individuals should make their own choices and the technological innovation that produced a cheap and reliable birth control pill, it has dramatically transformed relations between men and women, family and friendship, popular culture and the workplace. Forty years down the road we have only begun to deal with its consequences, in part because the sexual revolution quickly came to be regarded as an expression of the natural order of things. [...]
The new sexual freedom and the relationships that developed to accommodate it have expanded choices about whom to be with, in what ways, and for how long; created opportunities for experiments in living; and, for women, on whom the burden of pregnancy unavoidably falls far more heavily, provided more equality. But what if men and women are different in ways that go beyond the structure of their sex organs, and so experience sexual relationships differently? And what if the exercise of the new freedom imparts lessons to both men and women about life, and develops habits of heart and mind, that interfere with the capacity to give oneself to and care for another, and so to build lasting, loving marriages? What if relationships teach how to withhold one’s heart, to embrace another with one eye always fixed on the exit, to make long-term plans only for oneself though part of a couple? And what if such lessons, habits, and teachings are more easily acquired than discarded?
Full article at http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3431656.html
