Sexual Suicide
George F. Gilder
Quadrangle
George Gilder has written on of the most important books on sex, society and the women's role to have appeared in many years. Sexual differences, Gilder asserts, are at the root of our entire moral and social order. In a book that has been compared to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, he demonstrates that just as our natural environment is being endangered, our sexual ecology is threatened by a pollution of ideas and technology. The result is an erosion of love and family that reduces sex to a from of meaningless sensual massage. Both men and women are losers, and the society succumbs to anarchy and crime. Gilder argues that the "women's liberation" movement leads finally to a bitter harvest of male chauvinism and sexual conflict. The chief effect of feminism is not to liberate women, but to liberate men to oppress them. For all but an elite of careerists, the movement subjects women to a new bondage to the marketplace--freeing them not for creative careers but for mops, switchboards, and sexual exploitation. He believe that most observers in the women's movement and elsewhere fail to understand the vital economic and social importance of love, it is through love that men are induced to submit their impulsive and short-circuited sexuality to the long term goals and horizons of female sexuality: motherhood, family and community. Love is crucial to sustaining civilization and sexual differences are crucial to sustaining love. Examining a wealth of anthropological, economic, social, and psychological data, Gilder demonstrates that familial breakdown is the chief cause of the violence and drug addiction, the welfare explosion and the crime that afflict our nation's cities. By weakening family ties, the women' movement programs would worsen these problems. Crucial to restoring the balance of the sexes is maintenance of the male role as provider. Although career women make indispensable contributions to the nation's welfare and economy, the woman in the home performs the most important work of civilized society. From her maternal and domestic responsibilities derive the moral and social values necessary to human individuality and democracy. The alternative is a child care state to care for children and a police state to discipline men. Pointing to statistics proving that single men are the chief source of crime and social disruption, Gilder argues that marriage is essential to male socialization in the modern world--from dust jacket