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It's not really my place to engage in pseudohistorical theorizing, but I would challenge one of the major examples in the quoted text: late Rome. The author here seems to be conflating a general idea that Rome was sexually libertine (when? it matters) with the eventual fall of the (likely) Western Roman Empire in the fifth century CE. And certainly there are some aspects here that are true. Romans of a certain class, after a certain point in the republic, did some freaky sex stuff. They also had lots of sex outside of marriage. Julius Caesar (d. 44 BCE), famously, had lots and lots of affairs. Emperors like Tiberius (d. 37 CE) and Nero (d. 69) were infamous for their sexual escapades and deviance. When we turn to a work of fiction, like Petronius' *Satyrica* (ca. 65 CE?), we find all sort of sexual libertinism. Like, tons of it. All sorts of weird combinations, stuff that would boggle your mind (and boggles students' minds today). Quick plug, here, for the Fellini *Satyricon* movie. It's weird, but so is the ancient text it's based on. And of course there's all the love poetry from guys like Catullus (d. 54 BCE), or Ovid's (d. 17/18 CE) *Ars Amatoria*.
So yeah, the Romans, especially in the late Republic and early Imperial period, got up to some
pretty freaky (and probably fun!) shit. They also did all sorts of horrible and awful things like systematically raping slaves and children (and child slaves) of both sexes, because that's what happens in a brutal slave society in which masculinity is deeply tied to the ability to penetrate (with swords, spears, or anything else). But they had been doing that for a loooong time: Amy Richlin's work on this is very good, as is Kathy Gaca's.
And yes, eventually the Roman Empire fell. Not to get into the weeds on when, exactly, it fell (I think for all intents and purposes what happens after the 7th century CE is something
totally new), but this person is most likely thinking of the Western Roman Empire, which collapsed over the middle decades of the fifth century CE, to be replaced by the "barbarian" successor states of the West. The canonical date for this, again all sorts of problems, is 476 CE.
The main problem, here, is that the sexual libertinism of the Romans, which perhaps reached its peak in the first centuries of the common era, is... three or four or even five hundred years before the fall of the WRE. In fact, if you were to ask someone when the Roman Empire was at its height, it's when they were doing all the freaky stuff. You even have emperors like Hadrian (who is considered one of the best) who has a long term, very public homosexual relationship.
Now, there is one major change having to do with sexuality that coincides with the fall of the Western Roman Empire: the rise of Christianity and the imposition of strict sexual norms against extramarital sex, homosexuality, and even in some cases against sex in general (the concept of holy virginity). Now, as a caveat, I don't think this has anything to do with the fall of the WRE, which has much more to do with transport costs, climate and environmental shifts, the incentive
structures of the late Roman state, the rise of non-Roman confederacies, and a million things that have nothing to do with sex, but if you're a sex person, then you kind of have to wrestle with it.
By the fifth century CE, the century in which the Empire collapses (in the West...), basically all of Roman society has converted to Christianity. With the rise of Christianity there is a new discourse that develops around the body, sin, desire, all that. Saint Paul, the most important figure in the development of Christian dogma, is famously ambivalent about sex, and the idea that sex should be restricted to marriage for procreation, if you're even going to have it, takes over. What we see in the decades leading up to the collapse of the West Roman state is in fact the total opposite of what the essay above argues. Rather than a period of sexual libertinism leading to imperial collapse, we find that the period of sexual libertinism is when the Empire is kicking ass and taking names. And it's the period in which there is a strict sexuality that denies non-procreative sex, or even sex in general, that sees imperial collapse.
Again, I don't think these are related at all, but if you think that sex leads to the end of Empire, you can't use Rome as an example.

It's not really my place to engage in pseudohistorical theorizing, but I would challenge one of the major examples in the quoted text: late Rome. The author here seems to be conflating a general idea that Rome was sexually libertine (when? it matters) with the eventual fall of the (likely) Western Roman Empire in the fifth century CE. And certainly there are some aspects here that are true. Romans of a certain class, after a certain point in the republic, did some freaky sex stuff. They also had lots of sex outside of marriage. Julius Caesar (d. 44 BCE), famously, had lots and lots of affairs. Emperors like Tiberius (d. 37 CE) and Nero (d. 69) were infamous for their sexual escapades and deviance. When we turn to a work of fiction, like Petronius' *Satyrica* (ca. 65 CE?), we find all sort of sexual libertinism. Like, tons of it. All sorts of weird combinations, stuff that would boggle your mind (and boggles students' minds today). Quick plug, here, for the Fellini *Satyricon* movie. It's weird, but so is the ancient text it's based on. And of course there's all the love poetry from guys like Catullus (d. 54 BCE), or Ovid's (d. 17/18 CE) *Ars Amatoria*.
So yeah, the Romans, especially in the late Republic and early Imperial period, got up to some
pretty freaky (and probably fun!) shit. They also did all sorts of horrible and awful things like systematically raping slaves and children (and child slaves) of both sexes, because that's what happens in a brutal slave society in which masculinity is deeply tied to the ability to penetrate (with swords, spears, or anything else). But they had been doing that for a loooong time: Amy Richlin's work on this is very good, as is Kathy Gaca's.
And yes, eventually the Roman Empire fell. Not to get into the weeds on when, exactly, it fell (I think for all intents and purposes what happens after the 7th century CE is something
totally new), but this person is most likely thinking of the Western Roman Empire, which collapsed over the middle decades of the fifth century CE, to be replaced by the "barbarian" successor states of the West. The canonical date for this, again all sorts of problems, is 476 CE.
The main problem, here, is that the sexual libertinism of the Romans, which perhaps reached its peak in the first centuries of the common era, is... three or four or even five hundred years before the fall of the WRE. In fact, if you were to ask someone when the Roman Empire was at its height, it's when they were doing all the freaky stuff. You even have emperors like Hadrian (who is considered one of the best) who has a long term, very public homosexual relationship.
Now, there is one major change having to do with sexuality that coincides with the fall of the Western Roman Empire: the rise of Christianity and the imposition of strict sexual norms against extramarital sex, homosexuality, and even in some cases against sex in general (the concept of holy virginity). Now, as a caveat, I don't think this has anything to do with the fall of the WRE, which has much more to do with transport costs, climate and environmental shifts, the incentive
structures of the late Roman state, the rise of non-Roman confederacies, and a million things that have nothing to do with sex, but if you're a sex person, then you kind of have to wrestle with it.
By the fifth century CE, the century in which the Empire collapses (in the West...), basically all of Roman society has converted to Christianity. With the rise of Christianity there is a new discourse that develops around the body, sin, desire, all that. Saint Paul, the most important figure in the development of Christian dogma, is famously ambivalent about sex, and the idea that sex should be restricted to marriage for procreation, if you're even going to have it, takes over. What we see in the decades leading up to the collapse of the West Roman state is in fact the total opposite of what the essay above argues. Rather than a period of sexual libertinism leading to imperial collapse, we find that the period of sexual libertinism is when the Empire is kicking ass and taking names. And it's the period in which there is a strict sexuality that denies non-procreative sex, or even sex in general, that sees imperial collapse.
Again, I don't think these are related at all, but if you think that sex leads to the end of Empire, you can't use Rome as an example.

Part 2
Meanwhile, your claims about divorce are also wrong. In ancient Rome, divorce was an informal, straightforward, and socially accepted process: The wife took her dowry and left her husband's house, or the husband could demand a divorce, or the head of the family could order anyone under him to divorce. Women didn't need their husband's consent to divorce them, and they didn't even need to tell their husband they were doing it, they could just leave. It was such a casual practice that the Romans didn't even start keeping formal records for it until almost 500 C.E., - how does your theory explain over a thousand years of Roman history with casual divorce?
At the same time, under Jewish law as far back as 450 BCE, the Ketubah - marriage contract - was a legal document that husbands gave their wives (who would sometimes sleep with them under their pillow!) that explicitly spelled out their rights, which included divorce. So unless you're going to argue that Jewish culture has been degrading for almost 2,500 years because of its permissive attitudes about divorce, you've got even more explaining to do.
>why do you keep trying to smuggle misogyny into this?
Because what you're calling "sexual liberation" in our day and age is really just the sexual liberation of women. Men have been enjoying those rights of sexual freedom the whole time. You're complaining about divorce as if men haven't had the right to divorce their wives for centuries. What's changed recently is that it's finally been made easier for women to make that same choice. You're complaining about "non-reproductive sex" as if men haven't been acting as if any sex where they weren't legally obligated to support or care for the resulting child was non-reproductive the whole time. The only thing that's changed recently is that improved contraception - and especially female contraception - has made it so that for the first time ever, women can have non-reproductive sex too. Whether you were aware of it or not, what you call "sexual liberation" is actually just "women's liberation" and so, your critique of it reduces to rank misogyny.