Christopher

“Sexual freedom for men has been practiced on the mode of autonomy, detachment, and accumulation, while for women sexual freedom has been more ambivalent; it is lived alternatively on the mode of autonomy and on the mode of relationality, trying to accomplish with others some common emotional goal. For women casual sex creates a conflict between relationality and the autonomization of the body, while for men casual sex is the opportunity to accumulate sexual capital and status. Women’s social being remains largely relational because women still provide the overwhelming bulk of care work in society,68 while for men casual sexuality is a way to perform the main tropes of masculinity: power, detachment, autonomy, instrumentality geared to the satisfaction of one’s pleasure. In that sense, sexualization of relationships conflicts with the relational imperative and places men and women in different positions in the sexual field and in the social structure of intimate relations.69”
― Eva Illouz, The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations

“Because the ideal of sexual freedom has focused on sexual repression and domination, it has omitted to ponder about the negative effects on cultures dominated by the freedom to exit. We have failed to inquire about the extent to which the repeated or frequent experience of breakup may harm the possibility of holding on to a secure sense of self and of forming durable and meaningful relationships.”
― Eva Illouz, The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations

“Christianity gave Eros poison to drink: he did not die of it but degenerated—into a vice.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“Alvin Gouldner argues that social exchanges are possible because actors orient their action toward a general norm of reciprocity,62 and expect others to reciprocate what they give. But in sexual exchanges where casualness prevails, the expectation of reciprocity is considerably undermined, precisely because the norm of freedom makes it difficult to establish whether, how much, and how one should reciprocate.”
― Eva Illouz, The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations