Feminism is in disarray, and its unresolved issues are slowly percolating to the surface of our culture. Naomi Wolf is currently having a meltdown in the public square. Cosmopolitan magazine, once at the vanguard of the women’s movement, has become a monthly manual in how teenaged girls can get intimate with their boyfriends. And on our college campuses, many young women are, in the name of female empowerment, having casual sexual encounters that they, by their own admission, do not want to have—the hook-up culture.
Television shows like Lena Dunham’s Girls, articles like Kate Bolick’s blockbuster Atlantic essay “All the Single Ladies,” and books like Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men are all attempts to navigate the choppy waters of our post-feminist world. Where do we go from here? Add Nathan Harden’s voice to the mix. His Sex and God at Yale tackles these womanly issues from a decidedly unique perspective: that of a conservative young man. The book is less about God than it is about sex, but maybe that’s the point. Ladies, be warned: his traditional ideas about women and propriety have already left some feminists pretty upset.
For Harden, the culture of sexual permissiveness on campus is one that is now institutionalized by the university. Pornography is screened at the law school, porn stars stand in as professors, and the most read article in the history of the Yale Daily News’ website is about oral sex. This is not only demoralizing, it
