The Sexual Revolution Was Always a Failure

When the sexual-abuse scandal involving Canadian literary legend Alice Munro broke in July 2024, a few months after the writer’s death, the debate among fans mostly centered on the necessity of separating the artist from the art. Munro’s daughter Andrea Skinner had exposed her mother — the prize-winning writer of short stories about women and girls — for having overlooked Skinner’s sexual abuse at the age of 9 by Munro’s second husband, Gerald Fremlin. Even when informed of the abuse by Skinner as an adult — and having it confirmed by Fremlin, as family letters revealed — Munro chose to stay with him. Her fans, who had believed her to be an advocate for women, felt betrayed. The writer Mary Gaitskill described her feelings as “paralysis,” “real anger” and “disillusionment,” and went so far as to say she’d seen Munro as the “ideal mother.” And yet Munro on the page had not changed; her genius remained undimmed; and her stories still had value for us.