I already took a small swipe at this piece by David Brooks, but I thought it deserved a longer examination, because it fits into the millenia-old tradition of sex panics inspired by new technology. Until I heard a lecture about it at the (where else?) Sex Tech conference, I had never realized how much a sex panic inevitably follows the development of a new technology, at least one that broadens people’s horizons through geography, art, or communication. It’s also funny to me how people forget so easily. Take this line, for instance:
Once upon a time — in what we might think of as the “Happy Days” era — courtship was governed by a set of guardrails.
Hey David, the kids these days are calling it the “Mad Men” era. But it’s funny, because the era he paints as so idyllic and peaceful, where kids did where they were told and no one had invented sex yet, was actually an era of extreme moral, sexual panic over rabid social and technological changes. If Brooks was living in that era, he’d be writing alarmist columns about the evils of “Negro music”, the electric guitar, jukeboxes and sock hops. He’d be bemoaning the promiscuity that comes once kids start dancing by themselves, instead of with partners. And the availability of privacy in cars, especially at drive-ins, would send him over the edge.
Brooks is upset over the explosion in popularity of text messaging on cell phones, which he links to promiscuity and the breakdown of Twue Wuv, which he argues can only be achieved by strongly limiting your options. And apparently, text messaging makes it easier (?) to have a number of potential partners on a string, so you can hedge your bets and sample the goods. As a number of Double X bloggers pointed out, comparing this negatively to the 50s is incoherent, since the 50s was an era where that kind of automatic monogamy after a date or two wasn’t expected at all, and both sexes were encouraged to hedge their bets by going on as many dates as possible with as many different people. And monogamy was only undertaken after you were “pinned”, which required having a formal discussion. Granted, people weren’t having sex with as many partners then, but other than that, we’re actually reverting to form.
But what teed me off was the way that Brooks contradicts himself. His thesis is that young people involved in these dating schemes of having first and second stringers, and using cell phones to organize your options, are scriptless and flailing.
There were certain accepted social scripts. The purpose of these scripts — dating, going steady, delaying sex — was to guide young people on the path from short-term desire to long-term commitment.
Over the past few decades, these social scripts became obsolete.
He blames feminism, technology, and a sliding regard for etiquette. But what he describes is a very rules-laden, etiquette-conscious script for modern dating, completely contradicting himself.