Caitlin Flanagan gets a lot of attention because she's able to write in these elliptical, obtuse ways that seem really profound, which is why it's useful to listen to her on the radio, where she's forced to be more concise, revealing that she's just the same old culture warrior whose veneer of sophistication falls off at a sneeze, revealing the cranky (prematurely) old church lady underneath. That's why I recommend skipping her strange-sounding new book and listening instead to this interview on WBUR, which has the added bonus of Irin Carmon's presence as a sanity check. Listening to it, you realize that for all the puffery about girlhood fascinations and diaries, Flanagan is really only making one argument, one we know really well, that goes like this:

*Boys and men only care about sex, and mainly see girls and women as these tedious obstacles between them and pussy. 

*Girls and women only care about romance---the more princessy, the better---and see sex as this filthy ritual they have to perform in order to get it. 

*Therefore, women should use sex as a bartering chip to get men to pretend to like us. Actual affection from men is clearly impossible to get, but in Flanagan's view, women can get a semblance of self-respect by refusing to have sex with men until they play-act affection by taking us on some dates and letting us call them our boyfriends. According to Flanagan, not having a man hanging around pretending to like you in order to get his dick wet is a major tragedy, probably the worst thing that could happen to a woman. 

And that's about it. A lot of attention is paid to Flanagan's strange descriptions of what she calls "girlhood", which the rest of us tend to think of more as "adolescence", but Flanagan does really collapse the two in significant ways, imagining the typical teenage girl as horrified at her burgeoning sexuality and desperate to return to the comfortable world of childhood. (You can read Irin's review here.) Pretty much all of her descriptions of the life of teenage girls is in support of the above argument. For instance, she's bizarrely insistent that nostalgia for childhood toys is both universal to young women and not something young men care for at all. This has confused quite a few people who live in reality, because, if anything, it's men who are more likely to keep their childhood toys. How many guys not only have a collection of action figures and comic books from their youth, but continue to buy new things that have a connection to childhood playthings? Nor is this a new phenomenon; think of older generations of men with toy train collections or baseball cards. Not that Flanagan is wrong that a number of college girls still have their dollies or teddy bears. That's the point: her continued insistence that men and women are basically opposite in every way is just wrong. 

But it's clear to me why she paints a picture of young men forging into adulthood while young women lean back, clutching teddy bears. It's about S-E-X; everything Flanagan says is in service of her belief that women want Disney princess romances, and sex is this filthy price that men extract from us in exchange for the Prince Charming act. (Seriously, few things are more grim than conservatives' view of heterosexuality.) Thus, she has to insist that girls are innocent and boys are not. 

Flanagan's call to action is for parents to be excessively "protective" of their daughters' innocence. Listening to this program, you get the creeping feeling that Flanagan feels that you're not a successful parent of a daughter unless your child is a social reject because she acts childish throughout her high school years. She gets positively giddy when some overbearing parent calls and brags that her kids aren't allowed to use Facebook. She proposes sheltering girls (and only girls, apparently) in two very important ways: by disallowing them to have their own internet in their rooms and by insisting that cross-gender socializing only occur in traditional date-like situations, probably involving the boy picking the girl up (which conveniently shuts off any dating before 16, soon 18 in places with graduated driving licenses). The excuse she gives for the internet lockdown is that girls shouldn't see pornography, though I suspect that, due to Flanagan's over-excited response to the Facebook ban, the real reason is that she fears girls having a social life outside of the view of adults. (As the mother of only boys, Flanagan conveniently doesn't have to live by her own rules.) As for the porn thing, well, I don't disagree that it's not awesome for young kids to see so much hardcore porn before they even start to think of being sexual themselves, but I also think the results of Flanagan's actions aren't so great, either. I mean, how would you prefer a girl to first see porn: in her bedroom by herself, or because a boyfriend in college shows it to her? 

And that is the fundamental problem with Flanagan's wingnutty attitude towards adolescent girls; she has no interest in helping girls make the transition from girlhood to adulthood. She just wants girlhood to last as long as possible. She's deliberately vague on what happens after the sheltered girl is released into the "wild", as it were. She did slip at one point in the show and say that we shouldn't "let" college women "hook up", which suggests that Flanagan is far more radical than she lets on, and personally fantasizes about young women staying virginal and generally unaware of sex well into adulthood and probably until marriage, by force if necessary. But she won't be up front about it, because she knows showing her cards will end her career as  "provocative" writer and expose her as the same old boring wingnut as every other abstinence hysteric. (Seriously, how do we avoid "letting" grown ass adult women---even if they look like young kids to us---not make their own sexual choices?) The problem is that even though Flanagan is right and sheltering a high school girl is possible, there's not much you can do when they move out of the house. So the question is, then what? Is the college freshman better off having learned a little about men and sex in her adolescence before she's dumped into the waters and asked to swim, or does knowledge give you power? Interestingly, Flanagan really wants high school girls to have boyfriends (she's wrong that they don't; what research I've read suggests that high schoolers drift into committed relationships and college kids are more like to hook up), but her proposal of sheltering them is exactly how to keep girls from having that. What normal boy wants to date the religious weirdo whose parents forbid her from having internet access? I'm guessing that a lot high school relationships are conducted online, in fact, so keeping a girl offline probably removes her flirting and getting-to-know-you opportunities. 

But realizing that requires thinking, and Flanagan, for all that she's a talented prose stylist, isn't a thinking person. She's just a reactionary, and one with a particular obsession with young women.

This week, in anticpation of the upcoming WAM Prom on Friday, I'll be blogging some thoughts on music and culture by the way of our mash-up theme of hip-hop and disco.

Those of us who lived through the early 90s can attest that it was a time when there was a sudden surge of pop culture interest in HIV and getting out the message about safe sex. MTV started talking about condoms, and having special addressing condom use. Fox, believe it or not, started airing condom ads in 1991. The first major movie about AIDS, the treacly “Philadelphia”, came out in 1993, the same year that a cast member of “The Real World” came out as both gay and infected with HIV. And, the two biggest female hip-hop acts in the country made raising awareness about condoms part of their act.

First you had TLC, who tried to normalize condoms in a sly way, by having Left-Eye Lopez wear one as an eye patch.

And Salt’n’Pepa took on discussions about safe sex on in a big way, both in their hit song “Let’s Talk About Sex” and revised versions that put even more emphasis on the issue of preventing HIV transmission.

Why was there a sudden interest in having even more frank discussion about HIV and AIDS in the early 90s? I think it was a couple of things. Part of it was that it was an era of shaking off the Reagan years, and all the prudery and conservative nonsense that came with the so-called Reagan revolution. But another part of it was that AIDS really stopped being the “gay disease” in the early 90s. 

HIV incidence among women increased gradually until the late 1980s, declined during the early 1990s, and has remained relatively stable since, at approximately a quarter of new infections (23% in 2009).

The realization that women were getting HIV in the late 80s really, I think, made it clear that straight people needed to be educated on protecting themselves. It’s a shame that it took HIV growing into the straight community to get this much attention paid to it, of course, but to be expected considering how much more acceptable homophobia was back then. That women were getting it, too, is why I think it was female rappers specifically felt pressure to address the situation. I’m just speculating here, but I suspect that these women, being, you know, straight women, knew very well how hard it can be for a woman to bring up the topic of safe sex with a man she’s having sex with, and they did a really great thing in trying to make condoms and the discussion of them seem less scary.

What I want to point out is that TLC and Salt’n’Pepa framed portrayals and discussion of safe sex within a larger context of talking about pleasure. Their songs are fun and light-hearted and put a particular emphasis on women as sexual subjects, who have sex for their own reasons and not just because men expect them to. This is in contrast with far too many safe sex messages, which are medicalized and don’t talk about power or pleasure. Many safe sex messages assume that the biggest barrier to condom use is knowledge, but actually, a lot of people who don’t use condoms really know that they should, and so repeating messages about the efficacy of condoms doesn’t do much to improve usage. But if you can associate condoms with having fun, and if you can portray women taking charge of their sex lives in a positive light, you’re going to do a whole lot better.

What’s disappointing is that this trend of women putting out songs portraying women as fun-loving, empowered, sexy women who take care of their own health seems to have been just a blip on the radar. Good luck finding that many women doing anything like TLC or Salt’n’Pepa were doing in the early 90s in hip-hop, dance, or rock music, at least anything that’s topping the charts like these groups were easy to do. Why it went away so fast is something of a mystery to me, even still.

By the way, Marc has released another mash-up from the set he'll be playing on Friday night at WAM Prom. It's two female acts from completely different eras from the one described above, but both with their own strengths. 

Disco in the Deep (Adele feat. Sister Sledge) by @marcfaletti

Well, my plans to blog some of the best of 2011 totally fell apart, and for that I apologize. I thought I would make it up to you by compiling a list of some of my favorite (or most disturbing) moments in sexual misinformation. These are some of the strangest, most dunderheaded, or most appalling falsehoods of the year, at least when it comes to doin' it. You'd think Americans in 2011 wouldn't be so dumb, but sadly, we have a long way to go before we start getting smarter about sex. 

Most Jaw-Droppingly Audacious Lie

Yep, when Michele Bachmann tried to claim that a woman told her that her daughter got Gardasil and became mentally retarded. This lie was audacious on a number of levels. Obviously, the HPV vaccine has been demonstrated to be safe, and Bachmann's just trying to maximize the number of health problems and deaths that come to women who have sex, which she disapproves of. But what made this lie special was that she didn't even reference some of the prior, false accusations about the vaccine. It seems what she did here was half-remember claims about the MMR vaccine causing autism, translated "autism" into "retardation" in that special brain of hers, and coughed this one up. It's  unlikely that there was a woman, and if there was, she probably didn't say what Bachmann is claiming. Even the most audacious anti-vaxxers know better than to insinuate a shot given at 12 years old causes some of the mental problems they falsely claim early childhood shots cause. Bachmann couldn't even get her bullshit straight. 

Stupidest Response to Elevatorgate

There were many iterations of this claim, but to summarize: Many supposedly "skeptical" dudes repeatedly and apparently with a straight face claimed that there was no way for a fellow to get his dick wet if he couldn't cold-proposition women he had never met before at 4 in the morning in enclosed spaces with no means for her to escape. You would think that a skeptic, before making this bold claim, would gather some evidence first, by asking people how sex happens for them. Of course, they weren't going to do this, because they'd find that overall, straight people manage to hook it up without scaring the shit out of women most of the time, through processes like meeting someone, chatting, letting it develop into flirtation naturally, and developing a mutual attraction that eventually spills into fucking. Obviously, for sexist men, the problem with this process is it involves being nice to a woman for stretches of time, be it an hour or days or even months. So they falsely claimed it was cold propositions in scary circumstances or nothing, and women who expected men to behave in socially normal ways when they're physically attracted to women are out of their minds. 

My favorite version of this lie was by James Onen:

Here is where the problem lies: a man generally cannot know until after attempting the proposition that it was unwanted. Not only that – it is, after all, also possible for a proposition to be unwanted at first but for the recipient of the proposition to change her mind after persuasion.

Setting aside the notion that it's acceptable to badger someone who has already turned you down for sex, let's consider the extraordinary nature of this claim, which is that a man literally cannot know if a woman is amendable to fucking him until he corners her in an enclosed space, and without any prior introduction, discourse, or flirting, asks her to his room for "coffee", a well-known euphemism for sex. For a skeptic, you'd think that such a claim could be tested, again, by asking people who have had successful sexual interactions, and asking what process got them from not knowing each other to touching naked bits. I bet you'd find that 0% of them said, "By getting perfect strangers into enclosed spaces and cold propositioning them." The notion that there's no way to know if someone likes you without asking them for sex without so much as a formal introduction? But James really believes this, and so he suggests that since sex can only happen under these dubious circumstances, we need to build an opt-out system for women who have peculiar ideas like, "A man should flirt with me a little to see if I'd be interested before he asks me to suck his cock".

The solution to such ambiguity is simple – as a way forward, women who attend atheist-skeptic conferences that are absolutely certain they don’t want to be hit on should wear a clearly visible “do not proposition me” sign on their backs. If not, maybe a colour-code can be designated for such women by the event organisers – let’s say, red – and then it could be announced that all women wearing red clothes should not be propositioned or approached by strangers.

Since the vast majority of women aren't amendable to being propositioned by perfect strangers in enclosed spaces, and the vast majority of men know better than to do that (and, I'll add, have no real interest in it, because a lot of men actually like women and enjoy the process of flirting and building up sexual tension so that the eventual sex is about more than crossing the daily ejaculation off the to-do list), this system seems unfair, because it puts the burden of monitoring the behavior of the slim minority of men who feel they're too good for flirting onto women. I offer a counter-solution that puts the burden on those who are too good for ordinary social interactions: men who feel they can't get laid without cold propositioning strangers. If you're one of those men, I suggest walking around with your cock out, to signal that you'd like a lady to do something about it without having to go through that tedious process of introducing yourself and having a conversation with her to gauge her interest. Since there are supposedly a lot of women down with cold propositions from strangers, I'm sure that these guys will find lots of takers!

Lie That Probably Has Its Root In Semantics

My personal theory is that when Jon Kyle said that 90% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion, he felt that was accurate, because the word "abortion" is slowly becoming a catch-all phrase on the right to describe any health care that allows women to have happier, healthier sex lives. So, you or I, when we say "abortion", mean "terminating a pregnancy". But Kyle probably includes Pap smears and condoms in his list of things that are "abortion". Anything that allows sexually active women to avoid conceiving against their will, contracting an STD, or dying? The end game for anti-choicers is to get all that defined as "abortion". Kyle was just being a little over eager. 

Weirdest Theory About Anal Sex

This may eclipse the B.S. right wing claims that gay men all spend their old age shitting themselves from all the anal (why that doesn't happen to straight women who take it up the butt is never explained), and strangely, this claim comes from an actual gay man:

Paul Angelo MHA, MBA, the Miami Gay Matchmaker who incorporates health, relationship and lifestyle coaching has again "gone wild" with the intention to save the gay community from poor self-esteem, lack of confidence and relationship confusion.

Angelo explains that receptive anal sex decreases self esteem by forcing the person to assume a submissive position during an act of pleasure. This confuses the brain to believe that a feminine-like behavior is appropriate for a man and in turn reduces the man's assertiveness, confidence and will power.

Angelo is an enthusiast of "neurolinguistic programming", which is an obsession usually only found amongst straight men who, coincidentally, find the process of meeting and flirting with women to be a tedious waste of precious man-hours and so spend a bunch of time reading "pick-up artist" materials to find a way to fast track from seeing an attractive lady you don't know and having your penis inside her. Angelo's interest in the incredibly iffy NLP practices may not be geared towards trying to get vagina while minimizing your interactions with the woman surrounding the organ, but he nonetheless seems to be a rabid misogynist. This suggests a link between finding NLP intriguing and rabid misogyny, though further study is needed on this question.

Right Wing "Always Be Breeding" Pressure Reaches A New Low

This video, described by Kyle at Right Wing Watch:

The discussion then moved on to how she has been able to use this healing power to cure all sorts of maladies, particularly barrenness, including one time when her prayers "completely replaced everything" for a woman who had had a full hysterectomy, resulting in her pregnancy.

In the past, religious wingnuts guilt-tripped women who had abortions, and then those who used contraception. Now they've added women who physically can't have children to the list of those they wish to shame. If you're not reproducing because your uterus has been removed from your body, well, I guess you're just not praying hard enough, you slattern.

Since I spend most of my time reading political blogs, it has only just come to my attention that there was a kerfuffle about ladies selling stories of Cocks I Have Known, which unlike Fond Memory of A Vagina, is not---I repeat not---a valid literary art form. Don't ask questions. It's just not. It's just kissing and telling, then, or in the words of Kat Stoeffel writing for the New York Observer, "that there is some sort of feminist impulse at work, that she derives power from humiliating men with her sexuality, the same tool they used to objectify her." Which is a continuation of the mistaken belief that feminism is an ideology that wishes to continue the war between the sexes, but just wants to give women some guns, as opposed to what it actually is, which is a movement attempting to create equality between the sexes and disputes that the sexes are inherently at odds. I know that this definition of feminism has recently attracted a mansplaination about how I'm not a for-real feminist, just a, uh, "post-modern" one, but I promise. It's not a controversial view. It's in the dictionary and everything!

I'm not usually one to turn to the dictionary for the ultimate definition. There's more to feminism than this, after all. But it's certainly useful for demonstrating that, despite the claims of my critics, my belief that feminism is more pro-equality than anti-male is not an elite, practically unheard of view of feminism invented by me to be an asshole. It seems that it's a fairly common understanding of it. 

Anyway, here's the story in question, with the names changed to protect the guilty, though we have every reason to suspect his girlfriend already knows. It's incredibly long and incredibly boring to those who don't find self-delusion and other forms of cringe-worthy fail endlessly entertaining*, so the TL;DR version: A 21-year-old writer who makes up for her lack of ideas with her incredibly good memory of sexual encounters emails a 40-year-old writer who I suppose I won't name, because the 21-year-old did ungraciously name him while using a fake name for herself. His name has been changed to "Adrien Brody" now, so you have to ask around to find out who it is, but these days it isn't that hard. They meet. He continues to see himself as the hapless Nice Guy® who can't get laid because the assholes are supposedly snatching up all the booty, and he believes this despite having what our author describes as a lovely, age-appropriate girlfriend. (Seriously, he tells the young woman, named Marie, that she's more "sexually experienced" than him, though he's probably been having sex for the entire duration of her life. More partners =/ more experience, as Marie's descriptions of the sex make really very clear.) He tries to quiet his deep insecurities about not getting laid as a young'un very much by sticking it to a young woman whose profound insecurities cause her to see sex as nothing more but a way to validate herself in the eyes of men, who are the only people who count, after all. They try to convince each other they're feminists. Eventually, having to endure listening to a 21-year-old go through that process of thinking she's a profound person for having the same thoughts everyone else has had (at one point, she thinks she's a genius for suggesting that porn choice and personality might be related) causes Adrian to zip it up and get the fuck out of there while Marie cries in the bed, realizing once again that sleeping with guys you perceive as high status isn't going to cure that inescapable fear that you're not good enough. 

Or that's my interpretation of it. Marie seems to believe Adrian was really into her, despite the fuck-and-run, but I'm a lot closer to him in age, and I recognize from Marie's stellar memory all the signs of someone who is only pretending to be interested because they're horny. Incidentally, both men and women do this. In fact, one of the reasons that Marie's piece annoyed me was that "I sleep around to fill the hole inside" writing really undoes the work of all of us trying to assure the world that women have sex mostly because they like it. 

It's interesting to me that the reaction to this has, from what I understand, mostly been dominated by those who think men and men alone own the kiss-and-tell genre that's humiliating to the kissed-and-told-upon. You'd think women would have more to say about a story that's about a guy who presents himself to the world as a good guy, but then does something like this, but from what I understand, the reaction has been aimed mostly at Marie for the kissing-and-telling. It's a tough ethical call to publish something like that. But mostly I think there is a tendency to discourage women from speaking their experiences in their communities, if doing so---god forbid---would result in other women deciding not to have sex with the guy because of his prior behavior. That, I think, is messed up. 

I just really was moved, after reading this piece, to write a letter to my fellow bookish nerds.

To My Fellow Bookish Nerds:

Let's get this out of the way: I feel you. High school was a bummer, wasn't it? Seemed like everyone was getting laid but you. Or more often than you, anyway, since some of us were actually getting some kind of action in high school. You felt ugly. Unwanted. There were a lot of people posing like they had sexy, exciting lives, but you had time to read books, and felt like you were missing out on something. 

So now you're older and you feel like you're definitely getting laid more than in high school. But you're still really insecure and fear that everyone can see the unfuckable nerd inside. So you act out in really inappropriate ways that, ironically (being bookish, you'll appreciate that I use that word correctly) is making you seem like a fool, and sending out a bat signal of stay-the-fuck-away-ness to people that are genuinely fun to be in sexual relationships with. You pull the Nice Guy® whine. You exploit other people's weaknesses to get sex and then act like an ass when the inevitable fallout occurs. You promise NSA sex and then get upset that partners don't fall immediately in love with you and cure all your insecurities. You start to think that rom-com tropes are real life, and then get sickly bitter when it turns out life doesn't work that way. 

Just cut it out. You don't have to carry that baggage around with you. Here is what I've learned from my years of being a bookish nerd with a particular fascination for people's endless romantic goof-ups, including my own (so you know I'm not being a dick here):

1) Other people weren't/aren't getting laid more than you, so stop worrying that you're not good enough. Yeah, teenagers have sex in high school, but not as many as you think (about half by senior year) and not as often as you think. Familiarize yourself with these statistics. The kids who were bragging about how much sex they were having? Well, they were acting out like you want to now, trying to stifle their social insecurities with a little preening.

2) In fact, most people are full of shit. Just stop taking people at face value. Everyone who you look up to and who makes you feel insecure is a sloppy bag of poop who thinks they don't get laid enough and watches more TV than you'd think. They just pull it together well so that others don't see.

3) And guess what? So do you! Believe me, most of us aren't looking at you and wondering, "Oh man, they look so pathetic. They are totally not getting laid." Most people are a) far too concerned with their own bullshit to worry about yours and b) they just can't tell anything by looking at you. If you have gotten this far and have convinced yourself, "I am good at fooling people about how cool I am, but deep down inside, I'm really not," I refer you back to #2. 

4) What people really like to gossip about is people who do extremely stupid shit. If you're worried that you're not cool enough, realize that tawdry sex scandals aren't going to improve their opinion of you. They're just going to make people think you're an insecure sad sack who never got over not getting laid at the prom. 

I highly recommend starting the program of getting over it as soon as you graduate high school. Insecure acting out is annoying in 21-year-olds, but when 40-year-olds do it, that's when tongues really start flapping. Something to consider.

I just want to end on this note: not all tawdry sex scandals are the result of insecure people acting out. Sometimes it's really secure people who really do think they're impervious to exposure. Sometimes it's people who sincerely don't give a shit. Sometimes it's people who were just plain horny. Sometimes it's people who have deeply personal stuff that's hard to sort. 

But man, you can tell the ones when it's nerds who just can't get over the fact that people will fuck them now, and have to keep proving it to themselves over and over. That's the person you really don't want to be. 

*I am not one of those people. I read it with a breathless enthusiasm, as a major fan of the entire genre of epic fail.

One argument in defense of Sebelius's decision on Plan B is really starting to grate on my nerves, so at risk of running this topic into the ground, I'm going to have to vent on this. Michael Tomasky makes a good point---similar to mine from earlier---that Obama was playing less to the right on this issue than to parents, some liberal, who believe that their children (well, daughters) should be subject to strict parental controls and have no sexual privacy.  The difference in our positions is that Tomasky thinks this is a good thing, and I think it's awful. Tomasky:

 But it seems to me that there is a fair issue here, and it has to do with parents having a right to know about and be involved in what their kids are up to. You simply don’t have to be a right-winger to have concerns about your 14- or 15-year-old daughter having easy access to such a pill.

And he follows with:

In an ideal world, parents would rationally support the idea of their daughters having every means available to them to correct an error (or, obviously, to override a violation) that happened a day or two prior. But parents don’t always think rationally about these things. 

Yep. Parents don't always think rationally. That's why the whole notion that parents are entitled to know the extent of their child's sexual experimentation is inherently flawed. It's become a real truism of the debate over teenage sexuality that parental knowledge of the sexual activity is inherently a good thing, with an exception carved out for abusive parents. But I've never seen a shred of evidence that the input of parents who have an across-the-board hostility to sexual intercourse for minors is actually valuable. There's plenty of evidence that parents who are understanding and supportive of high school kids having sex can be good for kids, but I haven't seen any that suggests that there's a net positive if a teenage girl who is sexually active is outed to disapproving parents, unless she's being exploited, of course. But most sexually active teenagers are actually pretty boring. Most of them are in age-appropriate, consensual relationships, often with some kind of commitment. I fail to see any value in invading their sexual privacy. 

The "parental argument", as I'm calling it, is basically that Plan B should be made available to younger women only with a prescription because doing so means a girl who needs it will have to out herself as sexually active to her parents. This argument is bad on a number of fronts. First of all, it's a red herring. The law doesn't require you to talk to your parents, but to a doctor, who is legally required to protect your privacy in most states, unless you're being abused. True, many teenage girls may not know that, but I think parents are kidding themselves if they think those girls are the majority. The first girl to go to Planned Parenthood and get birth control without her parents will spread that knowledge through her peer group with rapid speed. Second of all, it's a blatantly sexist argument; I haven't seen a single soul, including Tomasky, making it even consider the question of condoms, which are legally available without age restrictions in all 50 states. Plus, they're infinitely less hassle and cheaper than Plan B, meaning that if you think there's some inherent good to minimizing the frequency of teenage sex, then condoms should be a greater concern. (Though let's be clear here; lack of access to contraception has been repeatedly shown to have little to no impact on the amount of sex young people have.) The only reason possible that condoms don't come up is pure sexism; Plan B provokes anxiety about female sexuality, and the stereotypical (though not actual) image of who has condoms on their person in high school is male. Fill in jokes about the condom-shaped wear on the leather wallet, etc. 

But most of all, the flaw is in assuming that there's intrinsic value to outing a girl who is having sex to her parents, with the exception of abuse. But if you think about this argument, it assumes a lot that is not proved by a long shot. So, let's walk through the standard, non-abuse discovery of sexual activity of a 15- or 16-year-old, which are the ages when the percentages of kids having sex grows rapidly. (Contrary to hysterical assumptions, younger teenagers just aren't doing it that much.) People who are making the parental argument are literally assuming that a tearful girl comes forward to her parents and confesses shamefacedly that she's been having sex with her boyfriend. Yelling, crying, and recriminations ensue. She gets her Plan B, but is perhaps grounded and her parents are very disappointed in her. They may or may not have a conversation about birth control going forward, but at every point in this process, her choice to have sex is considered less than ideal.

What does this solve? How does this standard American situation improve life for anyone involved?

It doesn't. The girl is highly unlikely to give up having sex, though now she may decide to be sneakier about it. She'll probably be defiant and feel her parents don't understand her; she will be right to think this. She may, correctly, see them as hypocrites, because they probably had sex as teenagers (that being what teenagers do), and it worked out well for them, but now they're going to punish her for the same. She's going to start counting the days when she can get out of the house with these unreasonable people and have a place of her own, where she can do what she wants. Meanwhile, the parents also have a worse go of it. If they really have absorbed prudish attitudes, they may think less of their daughter, even though she hasn't actually done anything wrong. Even if they are just typical American hypocrites who remember their own sexual debuts fondly while enacting hostility towards their daughter in the same situation, they're going to feel weird and out of sorts. They'll always feel that there may be something else they should be doing to stop the sexual activity. They may worry that they failed somehow. They may want to offer advice, but it's going to be filtered through the assumption that youthful sex is bad, and so it's probably not going to be good advice. 

Kids really do need their privacy, for the same reason that adults do. Even though I'm a grown ass adult and there's no shame or recriminations there, I don't talk about my sex life with my mom as a general rule. Because there's no value in it. Everyone's just happier minding their own damn business. I personally think there's a lot of value in letting teenagers spend their high school years gradually gaining rights and responsibilities---including sexual privacy rights and responsibilities---instead of simply dumping them into adulthood at 18 and expecting them not to get overwhelmed. This is another reason I support comprehensive sex education in schools.  I see no reason to believe that information "should" come from parents. Even the most well-meaning parents are going to be embarrassed and conflicted. It's better for everyone involved if kids have a place outside of the family to really talk about these things without being afraid of getting grounded or making their mom cry. 

I really enjoyed this sparky interview Tracy Clark-Flory did with David Ley, who has an upcoming book called The Myth of Sex Addiction, which is coming out right after Newsweek did a big cover story on "sex addiction", so lucky him. Good timing, David! I'm a known skeptic of the idea of "sex addiction", which really got its start in Christian right circles and is usually deployed in fucked-up ways, to either shame people who actually have normal-enough sexual desires that simply need healthy outlets or to rationalize cheating behavior, especially male cheating behavior, by casting it as a pathology. In the latter case, society uses "sex addiction" to deflect more serious questions about the role of marriage in our society, and particularly the way that male privilege comes into conflict with increasing expectations that monogamous standards of marriage be applied to men as well as women. In other words, "sex addiction" has grown up in no small part because it smooths over the cracks that have erupted as many men cling to male privilege while women have started to demand equal treatment. 

Ley has a lot of intereseting points in this interview, especially with regards to the lack of evidence for sex addiction, the unbelievably low bars set by some proponents for diagnosis (one orgasm a day is considered excessive by some)  and the rejection of the diagnosis by the DSM. I'm intrigued and want to read his book. But I was really sad to read this section:

Yep. Instead of examining the application of the concept of monogamy over a 30- or 40-year marriage, and looking at how male sexuality works, it’s much easier to say: “Well, it’s a disease.” I include a quote in my book where a woman says, “When my husband was cheating, it really was a comfort to consider it a disease and that it really wasn’t his fault. Finally, I had to realize that it wasn’t a disease, it was just him being selfish and treating my life and health casually.” If we look at it as a choice, what changes?

I agree with most of this---and before you panic, I would argue that examining monogamy doesn't mean that you can't make a monogamous commitment at the end of the day---but I pulled a frowny face at the phrase "looking at how male sexuality works". The cure for a patriarchal diagnosis of "sex addiction" is not to re-engage stereotypes about men having a natural baseline of horniness that is so much higher than women's that women can't even understand it. That argument simply returns us to the status quo of demanding marriages where men get to cheat, but women are expected to be monogamous and like it. It also treads into that gender essentialism/evo psych zone, where evidence-free assertions about men and women's "natural" states are asserted instead of proven, and women are expected to just swallow it, even though those arguments always end up pushing in the direction of tolerating mistreatment while having our own desires clipped. Sexual desire is variable as hell between individuals and contexts. I think we can have this discussion without sweeping generalizations about male vs. female sexuality. 

It's entirely possible that Ley didn't intend that. He's also written a book about the fetish known as cuckoldry, a topic you can't even begin to understand unless you accept that our sexual desires are incredibly dependent on social context---women's cheating is eroticized in a way that men's isn't, because women's role as being "possessed" by their husbands gives it a much different meaning than men's cheating, which is understood more as a threat to a woman's social status. I'm not judging cuckolds, by the way. I think it's kind of an awesome example of how the human spirit digests toxic social mores and turns them into excuses to get off. But the existence of fetishes like that demonstrate that the ready assumption that men are hornier than women by nature are far too simple-minded to describe our realities and our contexts. As does the stats I'm sure he discovered in his research showing that women's cheating rates are fast approaching men's as our dependency on men decreases. 

It's an interview, and I agree with Ley that "sex addict" seems to be a term used to control and rationalize male behavior more than female behavior, so maybe he didn't intend to suggest what it seems he suggested. But I want to caution experts about sexuality to be careful to avoid essentializing phrases or arguments, because doing so creates real problems for real people. I can't speak with much authority to how men who have little desire to sleep around or who have low sex drives are hurt by pressure to be a "player", but I can speak to how it affects women to be essentialized as the less desirous sex. Women who crave frequent sex or who have a lot of partners are pathologized in our society, by others and by themselves. There are people who call you a slut, sure, but there's also the problem of having leering men who think you're a freak and though they claim to be approving of your sexuality, they may make demands on your attention, your time, and even your body because they buy into the same notion that a woman with a high sex drive or openness about her sexuality is open to all comers. In addition, women who find themselves in heterosexual relationships where they have more sexual desire than their partners, whether temporarily or just in general, often take being rejected for sex or being put upon to initiate it most of the time very hard on their self-esteem. If you believe that "men want it more", that he doesn't want it as often as you gets interpreted as "I'm boring" or "I'm unattractive". Because there's very little cultural room to talk about this problem, women in this situation have very little chance at getting relief or setting themselves straight. 

Otherwise, yeah: be skeptical of "sex addiction". There's an agenda there more often than not. 

Poor Jill seems to have the most random fucked-up adventures while traveling, but this may take the cake:

I travel a fair bit, too, and have noticed there being a strong correlation between getting the "friendly" TSA search notification and the presence of modern lady conveniences of the more fun sort. Which always sucks, because then you have to call the front desk to have a bottle of rubbing alcohol sent up to ease some of your more paranoid concerns. With this in mind, I've concocted a strategy of making sure that someone isn't fondling your sex toys out of your sight just because you have the nerve to remain orgasm-interested while traveling. 

1) Don't check bags. I used to scoff at this advice as inadequate for my shit-carrying needs, but since then I've learned the rolling method of packing, which is truly life-changing. I just got back from a week-long trip and I went all carry-on, and I had about twice as many clothes as I ended up using. 

Granted, the concern here is that the TSA agent will flag your carry-on right in front of everyone. This, I believe, is a preferable situation to having them go through your shit behind your back. Having seen a friend have a bag flagged for dildo-related materials in the checkpoint, I can safely say that it's not as bad as you'd think. The woman searching said friend's bag blushed to her toes and let us go on our way with no further fussing, nor touching of the item. No concerns about gross perverts doing gross things to your stuff. 

2) Disguise it. A lot of people have wondered why there are so many vibrators shaped like things you wouldn't think would be appealing as vibrators. A sampling:

Well, now you know. So nosy people think it's a toy of the non-adult sort and move on. As a TSA-dodging strategy, this one works surprisingly well.

Of course, that makes you wonder why it's less shocking for a grown woman to be traveling with what looks like children's bath toys than with sex toys, but thus is the way of our fucked-up country. 

I'm sure you've seen this story that's been passed around about the supposed "health" editor at xoJane who uses Plan B as her primary form of contraception. (Seriously, how rarely are you getting laid that this even seems like a remotely feasible plan of action?) There was much fail in that piece, including her casual assumption that condoms are only there if you sleep with a subjectively-defined "many people", as if STDs are the result of cumulative stranger-seed instead of exposure to contagious germs. This sort of thing might make you wonder---I know it made  me wonder---if younger people these days have been so poisoned by creeping prudery plus abstinence-only education that behavior like Cat's, which indicates a deep ambivalence about the morality of sexual pleasure, is common. I know it made me long for the days when Salt 'n' Pepa were talking about sex and TLC was flinging condoms around, and the pursuit of female sexual pleasure was taken as a right, instead of treated like some foul thing that requires self-punishment through repeated abortions. Or worse.

Well, I'm here to tell you that it may just be that Cat is an outlier, because the overall trend is towards more condom use, not less. 

As part of its National Survey of Family Growth, the CDC discovered that eight in 10 teen boys ages 15 to 19 reported they had used condoms during their first sexual experience. That's 9 percent more teenagers than the last time the CDC checked in, back in 2002. High school kids are still boning at the same rate they were 11 years ago—a little more than 40 percent for both genders—but they're getting smarter about it. Besides the rise of rubbers and the decline of teen pregnancy, the study also found that 16 percent of teen males "double up"—that is, use a condom in combination with a female partner's hormonal method—up from 10 percent in 2002.

As Nona notes, this shows that fears that better access to contraception will lead to more sex are ungrounded. Of course, the idea that "more sex" is some sort of bad thing to be opposed at all costs is what we in the biz like to call a problematic assumption. More bad sex is a bad thing, sure. But just more sex? If it's good sex, opposing it is like being opposed to sunny days and laughing with puppies. But even if you have a fucked-up way of looking at things and think that people feeling good has to bad, take heart. People don't have more sex because they use more condoms. Generally with young people who are already ready for sex, having it is a matter of people-based opportunity more than any other factor. The main obstacle to the fucking in the streets that conservatives worry so much about is getting people to do it with you. Since there's not a massive surge in people's attraction to each other, there really shouldn't be a surge in the havings of the sex. 

For those of us who actually like people and want them to be happy, this is just straight good news: Teenagers can be teenagers---that is, experiment and muddle their way towards adulthood---with a lower chance of getting sick from it. 

I'm sure you all have seen the ads for the new Anna Faris movie "What's Your Number", which is built around a head-scratchingly outdated premise, that a woman who has slept with 20 guys would quite literally believe that pushing that number to 21 would push her out of the marriage market forever (and that she would believe it's better to be married to some random dude you have already determined you're not in love with than to not be married at all). Or I would have thought it was an outdated premise---the movie's poor box office showing suggests that may be the case---but Jessica Grose has convincingly argued that there's still a lot of anxiety about women having "too many" partners, and for men there's a lot of anxiety about having "too few". She also starts to crack open the eternal statistical mystery of how men can routinely claim to have more sex partners on surveys than women, which is so consistent that there basically has to be fudging going on, because the men couldn't be having this much sex if the women weren't into it, unless they were having it with each other. (Even the usual explanation---that a small handful of women are the "excess" partners for all these men, doesn't hold up---a greater percentage of men than women claim to have more than 15 partners.) Jessica discovers that part of what's going on is women round down and men round up to meet expectations. Men count oral sex and mutual masturbation as sex and women don't as much. 

What Jessica didn't note was that people just straight up lie on those surveys, too. Researches have found that when you hook survey-takers up to fake polygraph machines, the number of partners that women put down on the surveys nearly doubles. This reflects the double bind that Jessica describes women being in. You don't want to have too few partners, or people will assume you're a prude, but you don't want too many, or people will assume you're a slut. Women's official "number", then, is more reflective of social expecations than their actual behavior. I've even seen, in my time, tongue-in-cheek dating advice that suggests that women settle on some number, usually around 3 or 4, and say that's their number to potential boyfriends who ask, regardless of what the actual number is. 

Which brings me to this interesting article at Jezebel about research done recording sexual mores amongst college kids. Kids were given two nearly identical scenarios.  In both, a couple meets at a party and has a one night stand (locations varied, but the kids didn't seem to think whose house mattered that much). Afterwards, one of the two asks the other on a date, which ends with a kiss but no sex. Where the scenarios diverged was that in one scenario, the man did the asking for the date, and in the other, the woman did.  What researchers found was that in both scenarios, the man and woman were given basically identical motives for the one-night stand, i.e. that they were horny and there was a shot at getting laid. There was some overexplaining for the woman from some students, but it related mainly to overcoming pressure and inhibitions to get to the getting laid. But when it came to the dating part, there was a great deal of divergence.

Things looked different, however, when it came time to explain the date, and the mere kiss that ended it. Many students thought that, in both scenarios, the man and woman might be holding off on sex in order to get to know each other better. However, in scenario A, where the man asks the woman out, the most common explanation for the lack of sex was "redemptive chastity" — that is, the woman wanted to prove to the man that she wasn't slutty. Explains one student, "The first time they met, she probably assumed she would never really see him again so she didn't care what he thought of her. However, after he asks her out, she probably doesn't want him to assume she is a slut or easy so she decides to merely end the date with a kiss." In scenario B, where the woman asks the man out, two explanations were equally common: that both parties want to get to know each other, or that the man didn't really want to see the woman again, and only went out with her out of pity. One student encapsulated the "pity date" scenario thus: "The girl hoped for some kind of relationship. On the second date the guy tried to start getting away from the girl in a gradual way." The study authors add that "justifying their interpretations in explaining the man's sexless behavior, students often brought attention to the fact that it was the woman who asked for the date, indicating that if the man were interested in her, he would have requested the date himself."

Part of this, of course, is the generalized belief that women are all desperate for boyfriends and men are desperate not to be boyfriends. (Reality actually demonstrates that this doesn't hold up at all, because men tend to benefit more from partnering up than women.) But what I also thought was interesting was the performative aspect of chastity. It's strange to me that so many people think it's perfectly normal for a woman to put up the "not a slut" front to a guy who has direct knowledge that she's up for hopping straight into bed with men, or at least him. It's a strange choice on its surface, but what was really weird to me was that there was such a widespread expectation that not-a-slut-ness is a performance that has no relationship to reality. It's not that people don't think women are horny, they just expect women to pretend they're not. In my admittedly radicalized mind, there is literally no reason for this. Everyone involved in the dance knows that women like sex for itself and want it, so why pretend otherwise?  What possible value is there for performing chastity for an audience that knows you don't mean it? 

I tossed that question to my resident dude and informant on all ways patriarchal bullshit, and he said, "Well, it's a ritual, isn't it?" Ah yes, it is a ritual, the same way you go through the ritual of pretending to like your racist and overbearing uncle in order to keep the peace. The expectation here, as articulated by the students, is now that there's a potential relationship, the norms of said relationship need to be set up.  And let's be clear, the norm isn't just female semi-chastity for its own sake---I imagine the young man in this scenario expects sex after a couple of dates, and the young woman does, too. Basically, now that there's going to be a continuing relationship, the ritual of female reluctance is invoked in order to reimagine the relationship as a more traditional, male-dominated one. It's to establish that he's the boss now that their connection is more than fleeting. This is what the researchers also determined:

The study authors sum up the situation thus: "Women are allowed to have fun at parties, but once it becomes a serious matter, traditional gender norms, which affirm men's prerogatives, take precedence."

The charade that he chases and she is caught and seduced is performed even though everyone knows it's a charade, because by going through the motions, his dominant status is established. Even a fake "victory" over a faux-reluctant woman is good for establishing the power dynamic that is all too real in these traditional dating relationships. 

People who scold young women for "hooking up" often claim to have their best interests at heart. They warn of broken hearts and feelings of rejection. I often point out that dating is no cure for broken hearts and feelings of rejection; if anything, dating someone seriously means crying that much harder when it ends. That doesn't mean you shouldn't date, though---life is for the living, and all that. But it also means that you should hook up if that's where your muse takes you. But it's interesting to note that hooking up has one major advantage over dating, which is that it is less likely to invoke these toxic gender norms that are so destructive to women's happiness. Of course, to my mind the solution isn't "stop dating", but to date differently. For instance, don't go through ritualized performance of chastity. Any man who needs that in order to date you is just being sexist, and doesn't deserve to date you. 

I know I shouldn't give the NY Post the time of day, because it's a right wing, misogynist rag that has very little interest in boring old journalistic ideas like "facts", but I'm going to go ahead and address this article decrying modern women for being "cheap", and not holding out for sex until men provide a higher "price". The reason is I've seen a variation of this article in practically every newspaper under the sun. There are a lot of dudes out there not getting laid as much as they think they deserve, and this theory of sexual markets is so appealing to them that they're willing to shove aside all critical thinking to believe that "science" has explained their problems. See, the eternal complaint of the Nice Guy® is that a) women give it away to guys who don't deserve it but b) women's affections aren't loose enough to be applied to them.  (Not all Nice Guys® are obsessed with "sluts" even as they work hard the idea that if a woman would guy X, she's required to date guy Y, and if she finds Y unattractive, she's "shallow". As long as they're not raving about sluts, I think there's potential for redemption for Nice Guys®.) The problem with the theory of Nice Guys® is that it's internally contradictory: they both believe women's standards to sleep with a guy are too low (which is why she sleeps with him) and too high (she's shallow for not sleeping with me). There's mental tricks they play to ease the cognitive dissonance---for instance, by suggesting that if a guy's hotness impresses you that makes your standards too low, but if you don't like someone who spends 40 hours a week playing table games, you're shallow---but evo psych has come up with a theory that satisfies many of their desires.  It's the "market theory" of sex. NY Post, as is their habit, reduces a misogynist theory that's painted in more subtle terms elsewhere in the blunt terms that make it oh-so-accessible.

Men want sex more than women do. It’s a fact that sounds sexist and outdated. But it is a fact all the same -- one that women used for centuries to keep the price of sex high (if you liked it back in the day, you really had to put a ring on it). With gender equality, the Pill and the advent of Internet porn, women’s control of the meet market has been butchered. 

Ha ha! Women's rights have taken from them the only thing women really want: some man to pretend to love them in order to get laid. Ladies, admit it. You may think that living with a guy who seethes with resentment towards women but occasionally and reluctantly buys you flowers in order to achieve occasional penetration may not sound so great, but really the culmination of all your heart's desires. 

But what's so great about this theory for Nice Guys® is that it explains all their problems. It characterizes women as both sexually reluctant (meaning the reason she doesn't want to have sex with you is she just doesn't like sex) but also paints them as dirty sluts (who only sleep with other guys because, shallow whores that they are, they're all brainlessly competing for a guy that is more "alpha" than the Nice Guy®).  On top of it all, the theory punishes women for daring to believe they deserve something like rights---especially the right to choose their partner, meaning they can not choose the Nice Guy®!---by suggesting that their dumb female ambition to be treated like full human beings is what will destroy them. I suspect that it's Nice Guys® driving the market for these stories, because every time I write about them, I get exactlly the same clusterfuck of comments and emails from angry dudes I get when I make fun of Nice Guys®.  (Please, Nice Guys® of the world, I beg of you: If you must innundate me with emails and comments where you insist that I drop everything I'm doing--hey, it's not like women need to work to earn money---could you just dial down the condescending, pompous language that insinuates that you are uniquely burdened to explain to the child-woman how stupid she is being and how, if she just applied herself to swallowing your horseshit wholesale, she could even pretend she's real people?  No?  Okay, I thought I would ask.) 

My reporters willing to promote this evidence-free sexual market theories try to conceal some of the  obvious flaws in the theories, but NY Post doesn't give a shit.  Their blunt language makes it all the much easier to see some of the glaring flaws in this theory. 

Flaw #1: Men like sex, but women don't.  None of these theories work for a second without believing this.  Evo psych goobers have dialed it back a little, by suggesting just that men like sex "more"---which is a softened way of saying men like sex, and women don't, so men have to buy it from women.  The reason that "more" can't be in play is that the argument always rests on the assumption that every act of sex is a woman trying to extract resources, not orgasms.  For instance, if they did accept that women like sex for itself---even less than men---at least some sex, even casual sex, needs no explanation.  Women do it because they like it. I don't love lattes as much as some people who live in the coffee shop. But somehow, when I'm in the mood for a latte and buy one, there's no need to create a market explanation for what I'm getting out of latte that the person who simply likes latte isn't getting.  When evo psychologists say men like sex "more", they mean men like sex and women like money and/or male attention. Believing taht women don't really like sex with men tells you more about the person holding the belief than men and women.

Flaw #2: Men like sex more than women. As noted, this is just weasel language to try to fit evo psych theories into undeniable evidence that women seek out sex because they like it. (Also, it's really hard to explain away lesbians if you assume women live for male resources and attention.)  It does make some sense that if men liked sex more, women could be pickier, even though it would drain a lot of this market theory of its oomph. But they'll take it---anything to preserve the theory, which means that it falls outside of the realm of science, where theories that don't hold up well are abandoned in favor of better ones. The problem with this theory that men like sex more is no one has really ever been able to prove it. There was one study that was bandied around as proof positive, but it turned out that it was a study where random people were asked by a stranger of the opposite sex to have sex right then and there, and men were more likely to say "yes" than women (who basically all said no).  Of course, what that study measured was not actually sexual desire, but women's fear of being raped, a fear that makes perfect sense in a world where rape rates are so incredibly high. Pretty much all research I've seen indicating men like sex "more" only indicates that men have more freedom and opportunities for sexual stimulation.  It's probably impossible to measure some kind of pure biological set level of desire in men and women.  Desire is heavily influenced by environmental factors and varies tremendously from individual to individual. It's also worth noting that even if you could find some average, that doesn't say much about individuals. Many women out there could easily tell you about having far more sexual desire than male partners, for instance.  The theory that men like it more is torture for these women, by the way. It makes them feel like unattractive monsters---after all, if men like it more, why do they have to beg for it, if not that it's they're extremely undesireable? (If we accepted that men can actually have lower sex drives, these women would be in a better place to realize that it's unlikely their partners would be with them if they didn't like to fuck them.)

Flaw #3: Women's rights somehow automatically mean more sluttiness.  I've never figured this one out.  They explain it over and over again, but it keeps sounding like a just-so story.  If women had a cabal over the pussy before the pill, why don't we have a cabal over it now?  If we don't like sex, it would be the easiest thing in the world to say no still.  People who forward this complex theory can't get around this problem.  The easiest explanation for why women fuck more with contraception is that the price of sex was lowered for everyone, not just men.

To put it this way: I don't like the taste of mayo. I make every sandwich place hold it. But I know that I can tolerate it if I have to. So if you paid me, I'd probably eat some mayo if the price is high enough. But if you were like, "This mayo is free!", I'm still not going to eat it.  In this model, mayo is sex for women. Even if you assume that I occasionally have a mayo craving because of hormone swings, that doesn't mean I'm going to eat more mayo when I'm not in the mood for mayo. What evo psychologists can't get around is that women like sex so much that they had it even when it often meant having babies they didn't want or even the possibility of death. Unless you believe that most to all sex was basically bought or extracted with rape throughout history and women only developed a teeny little flicker of desire in the 20th century, I really don't think this theory holds up in the slightest. 

Worse, it justifies rape. When you're running around saying that science says men are uncontrollable horny beasts and women who have sex have lowered their value, then you've just written a blank check to rapists to rape as many "sluts" as they want, assured that science says they can't help themselves and that women who have had sex before have no value anyway. 

Every time I write pieces like this, by the way, I'm accused of having an agenda. I think it's high time we start asking if people who forward theories of sexual markets that have little to no real evidence behind them might themselves have an agenda.  I know, for instance, that Mark Regenerus, who is quoted in this article, is a conservative Christian who believes that the ideal would be for women to be locked down as someone's wife by no later than 23. What's funny is I have less of a dog in the fight than a bunch of dudes that feel left out of the "sexual marketplace".  Defending women who have casual sex is more of an intellectual than a personal exercise for me at this point in my life. But for men who, whether it's because they're married or they aren't high performers with the ladies, don't get to be in the game and seriously resent it, these theories might have a lot of emotional power that is clogging up their ability to be rational. 

I definitely think that Rick Santorum's quote was (probably accidentally) revealing of conservative attitudes about sex. In an attempt to explain why he supports banning gays in the military but doesn't want this to be characterized as bigotry, Santorum said this:

I — I would say, any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military. And the fact that they’re making a point to include it as a provision within the military that we are going to recognize a group of people and give them a special privilege to — to — and removing “don’t ask/don’t tell” I think tries to inject social policy into the military.

What made this comment so eye-rolling is that he's functionally trying to claim that people who have any kind of sexual activity with the opposite sex are already banned, and therefore letting gay people in is a "special" right.  That's literally the only way this makes sense.  But in a fucked-up way, I think he probably does believe a variation of that.  There's just a deep-set sense with the religious right that sex is just inherently perveted. This is a statement of a man who probably begs for forgivenness every time he ejaculates.  That's why they insist that contraception even within marriage is an iffy proposition---if you're going to be so dirty, you should at least pay for it somehow. 

Which isn't to say they see straight and gay sex the same. It's more like straight sex is the marijuana/alcohol of sex, and gay sex is the cocaine. It's more taboo in their minds, so it's somehow more sexual. So he's approaching it like you would if you were a big enough dip to say, "Drinking and drugging has no place in the military," with the full understanding that you'll look the other way when it comes to the drinking, but you'll boot someone immediately for cocaine.  So pointing out that Santorum has 4 kids with his wife sounds, to him, like someone doing a line claiming it's the same as someone who has a glass of wine with dinner. 

It's a holiday, so a good day for a nice, light post with some feminist grounding. Sady and Jill have both weighed in on the subject of dealbreakers, Sady explicitly in response to the rejecting-a-dude-for-geekiness controversy and Jill in response to GOOD's Dealbreakers feature.  I think both are good, important reads, especially since so many people are projecting their own fear of rejection onto the Gizmodo story and judging the writer on unfair grounds.  Sady, like myself, thought it dastardly to name the guy in the Gizmodo post, but, like myself, is appalled at all variations on the theme of, "Women who reject geeks are SHALLOW BITCHES AND I'LL BET YOUR NEXT BOYFRIEND HITS YOU AND THEN YOU'LL BE SORRY."  Ahem. Warning: Sady does screw up and misattributes this reaction from Jon Finkel himself, when in fact he reacted like a grown-up to the whole thing.  It was people who were projecting their own fears of rejection onto him that were doing this.  But please read it anyway, because her framing of the entire incident is fascinating.  She brings up the Frog Prince myth that is foisted on women---especially in romantic comedies---that the guy you find unappealing will, if you give him a chance, morph into Mr. Perfect.  And what a fucking lie that is.  

It's upsetting to read mostly women in comments come down on Sady like a hammer.  It's really obvious what's going on, of course. They're geeky and don't like being rejected for it, so they're projecting that onto the situation without thinking about what the alternative is, which is demanding that women lay sadly under men they find unattractive while those men penetrate their bodies, all in order to prove they aren't "shallow". That there is a fucked the fuck up demand and I applaud everyone who loudly proclaims against it.  As the comments at Feministe demonstrate, there are a lot of women out there who are being concern trolled by friends and family who expect them to settle for someone they don't want, because OMG you might be single and that's the worst thing that could ever happen to a woman.  

I liked Jill and Sady's posts because they spelled out some of their own dealbreakers, which helps normalize the idea that women have a right to say no and this doesn't make them shallow or evil.  Yes, even if what they very much don't want in their life is a geek.  Thinking about it, I realized when I was single, I had a long-ass list like Jill's(I guess I technically still do, but having a boyfriend, I don't have to mentally check in with it), and I refuse to be ashamed.  

*Bad or incompatible taste in music.  This was something I occasionally felt guilty about when I was single, but it was just a no-go.  If a guy liked a bunch of shitty or boring music, I knew there was no long-term potential.  If he was indifferent to music, there wasn't even short-term potential.  I mean, what are you going to talk about and what are you going to do for fun if music is off the table?  It would literally be like dating someone who isn't into sex for me.  Incompatible music is a slightly different issue, but still important.  I don't think I could make it work with someone who was deep into dance music or any other kind of music that I can accept can be very artful, but isn't my thing.  I don't like fighting over the stereo, because it's one place where I really stand my ground and then come across as bitchy.  The idea of spending a lot of time wearing a polite expression over someone else's taste makes me really sad.  A corollary to this is no dating of guys in bands you can't stand. This, I think, was one of the things that was escalating tension between my ex and myself that led to the break-up---it just can't be a coincidence that relations broke down rapidly while his taste in music to play began to drift in unacceptable directions.

*Bad dresser.  There's something off-putting to me about men who are dedicated slobs. Even if you're a jeans-and-T-shirt guy, I prefer a clean, well-fitting shirt and nice jeans.  And not wearing shit like sandals.  I would see guys who were sloppy dressers and I would think, "And there's someone who will never once want to go out to dinner just because the weather is nice."  In Austin, the music thing was never a problem, but sometimes the bad dresser thing could limit your options.  It's just a slovenly town, for all its other wonders.  But, as noted before, there's no shame in being single.  Plus, a lot of men in Austin have a studied casualness that looks good without being dressed-up.

*Beards.  Hate 'em. I don't mean like a couple day's stubble that you routinely remove, but like a full-on beard. It's not like I wouldn't be friends with a guy with a beard, but kissing a dude with a beard puts me way off.  I'm super glad to be off the market in our times of "mountain man" being a style.  I object to that style in total, but also just really don't like beards, which I refer to as "germ farm face pube crumb catchers".  I also feel a beard is making a mockery out of how much shaving women are still expected to do.  You have one thing to shave, guys!  That is not too much.  I never see hipster dude with a beard out about town with a woman sporting underarm and leg hair, you know.  

*Religion or belief in woo. Again, a main objective in my life is to minimize having to make polite, tolerant faces at someone else's bullshit.  There's enough of that in your family and social circles, so why invite it into your home?  If a guy was into astrology or, god forbid, religion, there is no fucking way.  None.  I can't stilfle my opinion about acupuncture for hours, so years is just off the table.  Plus, the god thing is heavily correlated with unquestioned hostilty towards female sexuality and independence.  I don't want to worry while dating a liberal Christian that one day I'm going to have a anti-patriarchy opinion that he's suddenly deeply uncomfortable with. But that's really a secondary concern, right behind my complete and utter inability to spend too much time around someone whose fantasies have such a powerful grip on them.

*Republicanism, anti-choice beliefs, bigotry that sort of thing.  I won't even be friends with someone who's anti-choice, honestly.  I consider it a form of bigotry, on par with homophobia.  I'm not friends with homophobes, so why should I be friends with someone who has lingering hostility towards women who want to have sex without "consequences"?  I've had situations where anti-choice people took my casual, happy nature as evidence that we could be friends, and I had to shut that down.  Just, no. Belief that I'm entitled to control my own body is minimum.  I'm fine with being friends with someone who feels they couldn't have an abortion themselves, but the second they judge someone else, we're done.  Needless to say, racism and homophobia are also just no-duh dealbreakers.

*Cat haters.  I haven't actually really dealt with this, but I  hear they're out there.  I don't fathom cat-hating.  I think it's based primarily on ignorance of how sweet cats are, but it's really not my job to educate someone on this topic. 

*Lacking an evil sense of humor.  It's not just that I need a guy with a sense of humor, but it also has to be dark, too.  I laugh at all sorts of inappropriate shit, and I not only need that to be acceptable to a guy, I need him to make me laugh by cracking dark jokes, too.  This is so incredibly critical.  Earnestness and I do not get along.  

I could go on, but you get the picture.  I've definitely spent time seeing guys who just didn't meet my idiosyncratic standards of what I wanted, because they were nice and fun and there was stuff you could do to kill time with them. I had a low-intensity life then, and could really afford to date recreationally, but some people's schedules are too full and I certainly sympathize with cutting someone off right away because they're not going to be a match.  My strategy was to keep it light.  "I'm just in a place for seeing anyone seriously right now," became my mantra.  This, of course, was abandoned as soon as I met someone who hit all the notes.  This is all the more reason that people need to let people have their face-saving white lies on the dating scene.  Because the other option---making them spell out why a commitment isn't going to happen---implies that the things they don't like about you are just objectively bad things.  And for someone else, they may not be.  For instance, a lot of folks don't give a flying fuck if you have shitty taste in music. 

I'm certainly not trying to suggest that one should be looking for another pea in a pod, and in fact, I'd caution people to really think hard about what does and doesn't matter to them.  Like, I have a lot of things about myself I don't have any need to have in common with a boyfriend.  I've found that I don't care if the guy I'm with is a vegetarian, a sports fan, or a lover of books.  I'm cheerfully indifferent to sports; I don't love them, but I don't hate them and I really don't mind dating a sports fan, but I've also dated guys who don't like sports at all.  I find it doesn't matter any which way to me.  I'm surprised at my own indifference to the books thing.  As long as someone is smart and funny, I don't care that they're perhaps not a giant bookworm like I am.  Part of that is that reading is such a private, idiosyncratic thing.  Even if you are dating a bookworm, he's probably not reading what you are, and so discussing what you're reading in depth is still off the table.  Now that everyone is online anyway, what you're going to probably have in common, private-consumption-wise, is websites and whatnot.   Make the book thing even less important.  Being open-minded is important, too.  I basically never watched TV before meeting Marc, and dating him has turned me into a huge lover of television.  So I'm grateful for that.  Learning new things and picking up new habits is one of the fun things about dating, and I wouldn't say anyone should abandon that in favor of some checklist.  

But you have a right to say no to stuff that's simply not negotiable.  And women specifically are asked far too often to apologize for this, and we need to stop apologizing. 

Like roughly half the internet the other day, I too read Alyssa Bereznak's piece about her date with Jon Finkel, who is apparently a world champion at the game Magic: The Gathering. The piece both made me laugh and made me uncomfortable, for reasons I'll get to in a bit, but what made me just as uncomfortable was some of the reactions to it.  I mean, any story that involves a woman rejecting a man for any reason outside of "he hit me" is going to bring the Nice Guys® out in droves, projecting their own issues with women and their own entitlement onto the situation, claiming that she's shallow and she has some sort of obligatioon not to reject the guy for "shallow" reasons.  Since the "shallow" reason in this case was that he's got a geeky hobby, and an all-encompassing one at that, the Nice Guys® were out in force, making the demonstrably false assumption that because a woman isn't into geeky stuff, that means she's rejecting nice guys in favor of jerks.  Demonstrably false, because it assumes a correlation between niceness and geekiness that doesn't exist.  We internet dweebs especially should have figured that one out after Elevatorgate, when geeky dudes came out in force to be some of the biggest assholes I've ever seen online.  And some were nice and feminist.  That's the point---the correlation between niceness and "extracurricular" interests is non-existent, which is part of the reason dating is in fact hard.  

I'll also add that the Nice Guys® were also making the false assumption that Finkel was suffering some huge humilation by being rejected, again projecting their own issues and fantasies on the situation.  It turns out, as you'll soon find, that Finkel was equally uninterested.  I don't imagine there will be a full-scale freak-out over that on her behalf, however. 

The problem I saw in the reaction in comments on the post and elsewhere was that all the various issues with this post were getting tangled up and people were getting confused about what was okay about this and what was fucked up.  So, for clarity's sake, I'm going to list what are the three entirely separate questions that this post brings up, and weigh in on how they're different issues and shouldn't be confused.  The questions were:

1) Was Bereznak wrong to reject Finkel on the grounds of dweebiness?

2) Was Bereznak wrong to go onto Gizmodo and tell the story, using Finkel's name?

3) Was Finkel wrong to "forget" to mention that he spends most of his free time playing Magic on his OK Cupid profile?

I will add that #3 modifies #2.  I think it's okay to call someone out by name in a public forum and certainly on the gossip vine if that person does something really wrong.  Even men should be subject to social accountability, and unfortunately as anyone who has seen a community embrace a rapist or a wife-beater (often while rejecting the victim) can attest, that doesn't happen nearly enough.  But you should tread softly and use good judgment.  If the bad behavior was only mildly harmful and can easily be corrected, I see no value in shaming a person publicly over it.  I hesitate to bring this up in what is a largely unimportant situation, but I just want to be clear that my opinions on #2 are not absolute rules.  I mostly err on the side of believing discretion is the better part of valor, but there are exceptions.

Anyway, my answers to these questions are:

1) Absolutely not.

2) Yes, and this is the real cruelty.

3) Yes, but.....

I'll admit I was a little surprised to see Rebecca Watson address her response to this mostly to the first question.  I agree with large parts of her post, especially how there's lots of women who wouldn't find the Magic-enthusiasm unattractive at all, but that's all the more reason why I don't think it's appropriate to call some shallow for finding it to be a major league turn-off.  Plenty of fish in the sea and all that.  I'm a big fan of the belief that you can whatever damn dealbreakers you want and people really shouldn't give you hell for it.  Why on earth should anyone clench their teeth and tolerate sex with someone who turns them off to prove they aren't "shallow"?  That some women are geeky and would be down with the Magic playing, and some women are indifferent and wouldn't care as long as you had other things to recommend you doesn't mean that these women are in any way superior to women who are like, "Magic, ew."  That's because the geeks and the indifferent women probably have their own dealbreakers that, if left to the Nice Guys® to judge, would also demonstrate "shallowness".  Some of the women who would be okay with the Magic-playing would, for instance, find it a huge turn-off if a guy was a big sports fan or rushed out to see every single new blockbuster movie, no matter how shitty-looking.  Nothing wrong with that.  Most of us are dating with an eye towards finding a partner, and thus weeding out the annoying and intolerable is a mercy to everyone up front---better now than 15 years from now when you're fighting because he's taking your kids to Magic tournaments. 

I particularly want to quarrel with this:

After all, it’s not easy fighting to destroy the damaging stereotype that women are shallow bitches who not only won’t date nerdy men but also laugh at what dorks they are behind their backs. That stereotype feeds into the Nice Guy syndrome that infects guys who come to the conclusion that all women only want to date stupid jerks.

What makes Nice Guys® wrong is not their assumption that women will reject them for being geeky.  This is one of  many reasons any of us can get rejected!  Sometimes we get rejected for not being geeky.  It's not even that someone will laugh at them for being geeky.  Again, that probably does happen, but then again, people get laughed at for all sorts of reasons.  I can only imagine what kinds of stuff guys I went on one date or another made fun of me for, but I think it's probably just best to learn not to give a shit what they think.  (After all, I wasn't so hot into them, either.)  Making fun of bad dates after the fact is just one of those things, like gossip.  Everyone technically agrees it's a Bad Thing to Do, but everyone does it, because the alternative of high-mindedness about it is just too boring.

The Nice Guy® whine is wrong for two reasons.  One, they often equate irrelevant qualities with niceness.  In this case, that someone plays Magic is being used as evidence that he's somehow nicer or more stable than men who don't.  There's zero evidence of any correlation, and in fact lots of examples of geeky guys who are just assholes that no one should date for their own damn wellbeing.  (Not that I'm weighing in on Finkel's character either way.  There's simply no way to know, because there's no correlation.)  Two, and this is just as important, Nice Guys® believe they are entitled to the women they want because they are "nice".  You saw this a lot in the comments at Gizmodo.  An example:

Yeah, the last thing a single woman needs is a smart single guy who makes a good living playing a "geeky" game.

The assumption underpinning this is that a woman should take the first stable guy who will have her---no matter how unattractive she finds him---and be grateful to have him.  That's what is so irritating about Nice Guys®, who generally do consider things like sexual satisfaction and joy to be important aspects of dating for them, but are unwilling to allow women to have the same desires.  No, in their minds women should feel obligated to date a guy just because he's nice and stable, and a woman who holds out for a man that can make her happy is a shallow bitch.  

It's important to note that Finkel himself did not agree with the Nice Guys®.  He responded to Rebecca's post by pointing out that he was equally uninterested.  In other words, it worked out how it should.  He didn't work himself up into a lather about how she "should" want to be with him and instead was able to calmly assess that it wasn't a match and move on with his life. Nice Guys® should take note.

Where Bereznak really shit the bed is with #2.  There's no reason on god's green earth to name the guy in your post.  Now this post is going to be in Google searches for his name.  I can't for the life of my understand why she thought using his name was appropriate.  It's just as good a story without naming him.  In fact, it's a better story, because the moral of her story---be upfront about pertinent information on your dating profile---comes across as a more universal lesson when you're discussing an anonymous date.  It's easier for any of us to project ourselves into the situation that way.  The only explanation I can come up with for her naming him is that, despite her protestations to the contrary, she was actually impressed at how good Finkel is at Magic, and is in fact bragging that she went on a date with him.  Which is just fine if you're telling the story to your friends, but posting it on the internet is just fucked the fuck up.  

It disturbs me that #1 got way more attention than #2, when #2 was the truly egregious failing here. 

As for #3: I don't think Bereznak is wrong that a guy who doesn't reveal something like a deep interest in Magic and an entire social circle built around Magic on his profile is doing something stupid.  Here's the "but", though.  Rebecca is right to say that you don't have to put everything up front when you're on the dating market.  If you have other interests you explore that are more likely to seem attractive, putting those forward instead of the others is just human nature.  I agree with Rebecca on this.  Still, you have to balance that with truthfulness and an unwillingness to waste someone's time.  If you list a bunch of interests, they really should be important interests to you.  It's not cool to portray yourself as a good companion for concerts and weekends at the museum if in fact you spend most of your time playing Magic with your Magic friends.  There's probably some mathematical formula that can indicate when it's fair to drop an interest off your profile to juice it up a little, and when you spend enough time on it that you have to disclose.  We don't really know if Finkel falls above or below this line, for what it's worth.  Maybe Bereznak is exaggerating how much time he spends on Magic, maybe she isn't. 

Still, the worst that happens when you conceal such a big part of yourself on a dating profile is that you waste a few hours of someone's time.  Not nice, but not the end of the world, and certainly not such a bad thing to do that you deserve to be shamed for it in a public forum.  The person you're often hurting the most is yourself if you find that you are routinely making dates with people who, when they find out more about you, are turned off.  I haven't got experience in putting an online dating profile up, but I do a lot of social networking, and my feeling is the more upfront you are, the less bullshit and time-wasting you generally have to put up with.  My feeling is that if you'd lead with it to find friends, then you should lead with it to find dates.  The one exception, of course, is sexual interests.  But even then, you're probably better off leading with it.  Sure, you'll eliminate people who just aren't into that thing you're big into, but so what?  That just means less dates where you're sitting across from someone wondering how quickly you can break it off without being rude. 

Once again, in her mission to be an awesome cataloger of sex-and-dating fail, Jill posted an affirmation that one is well within one's rights to dump a dude because he no tasteth the pussy.  This common sense observation was met mostly with amen-sisters in the comments, but there was the inevitable showing of people who live to make sure no feminist blogging thread can be free of the kind of hand-wringing that makes outsiders think we're all fucking nuts.  It is asserted that dumping someone for being bad in bed somehow cuts against the grain of the feminist concept of "enthusiastic consent".  But no, it really doesn't.  In fact, I'd argue it's part and parcel of the whole concept. Jill puts it well:

Sure, you have to respect his boundaries — but that doesn’t mean you have to keep on having sex with someone who doesn’t respect you, or that you have to keep your mouth shut as to why it’s offensive that he makes a gross-out face in response to your vagina.

While you’re obligated not to pressure him, I think you are entitled to be like, “Well, we appear to be done here.” And I think you’re entitled to tell him that his vagina-phobia is why.

I think a lot of the people protesting this are women who imagine some dickwad demanding something they don't like at all, such as peeing in your face or something, and saying, "I'll dump you if you don't do it," and that idea makes them very sad.  No one likes to be dumped.  But as I often remind folks, feminism isn't a birthday party thrown for you by your mother, and therefore isn't insulation against being rejected or lonely.  Feminism doesn't exempt you from the impeccable logic of the Ramones.

Enthusiastic consent is a concept that extends beyond sex, but should encompass relationships.  No one is entitled to a certain sex act with a certain person, yes.  But in addition to that, no one is entitled to a relationship with another person.  If refusal to give head causes the person you like to say they don't want to walk around with you, it's on you to stop wanting to walk around with them.  Find someone who likes to play tiddlywinks or whatever instead. 

Obviously, the way this plays out in individual relationships is complicated---what isn't?---but the principle is secure. If you're not doing it for someone, they don't have to be with you.  In fact, it's just better to rip that band-aid off, I'd say. Nothing sadder than looking back over the past couple of years and realizing it was doomed for a long time and you just wasted your time.  

Plus, overall I think women have more to lose with the guilt trips over dumping someone over "just" sex.  When a guy pulls away sexually from a relationship, women are socialized to blame themselves for not being hot enough.  The original story that Jill linked demonstrated this problem; even though the woman who wrote it was having sex with all sorts of men who loved going down on her, she still thought that the reason the guy she liked wouldn't do it was her and that waxing, scrubbing and wearing fancy panties would somehow change the equation.  (It didn't.)  Over time, spending a lot of time and money on beauty rituals that don't get the sexual results you want can really be demoralizing to your self-esteem, and I wouldn't recommend it.  The world is harsh enough on women's self-esteem.  You don't need to invite it into your bed to pull faces at the idea that you have a yucky vagina. 

We feminists are big on talking about double standards, with the stud/slut dichotomy being a particular favorite, in fact often referred to as the double standard.  But I think one that we tend to circle around in discussion around sex, consent, sex work, etc. is the way that the continuing model of heterosexuality is based on the he's buying/she's selling model.  That's the most obvious when it comes to sex work, where men are literally buying and women are literally selling, but I think that the assumption that men are the choosers and women are the chosen is the functioning one in even more liberal circles.  (And in misogynist circles, the assumption isn't concealed in neat little euphemisms, and the free market ideology causes them to whine that minor girls aren't legally available for sale.)  But generally I don't see feminists tackle this problem directly, unless they're Twisty Faster, and obviously she's talking on an experimental plane that is interesting for provoking thought but doesn't have a whole lot of bearing on the lives of those of us who aren't playing footsie with a separationist kind of thing.  

I'd really like to see more discussion of this double standard as a double standard.  I think that it underpins a lot of rape culture and creepy demands from so-called Nice Guys®, because the women are selling/men are buying model of heterosexuality has the side consequence of convincing the public that men are entitled to partner sex.  After all, in our economic systemm, as long as you have the money, it's unheard of to turn you away as a customer, often because of non-discrimination laws.  Now, the price in the heterosexual dating system isn't always money---this is a metaphorical, not a literal economy---but consider the whine of the Nice Guys®.  They paid the price of giving a woman attention and pretending to listen to her, and now she has to sell, right? Most interestingly, since women are considered a product and men the buyers, women are also considered a resource, and arguments about equitable distribution come into play.   

Women, on the other hand, are the sellers in the heterosexual economy.  Our job is to make sure the product is worth buying.  We are no more entitled to partner sex than a company is entitled to move all its widgets when customers aren't buying.  

Dating advice tends to get gendered along these lines.  When women aren't getting any action, it's pretty much standard to tell them to look at themselves and see if they're charging too high a price for the product they have on offer.  The advice from there is to either improve the quality of the product or lower the price.  Granted, upbeat American society being what it is, most of the advice industry aimed at women is about improving the quality of the product.  

But you definitely get your share of people griping that women are too full of themselves and think they deserve more than they do, i.e. that they charge too high a price for a crappy product. Advice to settle isn't as rampant as advice to learn how to suck cock better and tighten those abs more, but it's definitely out there.  The assumption in a market view also is that the seller really has to sell, but the buyer has an option not to buy.  Thus, in our heterosexual dating model, women are often cast as so desperate to get the man to sign on the dotted line and drive off with his new car-wife.  Men are buyers, of course, and therefore are cast as hesitant to spend the money, and thus commitment is seen as a tense negotiation between a woman trying to move product and a man worried that he's paying too much.  Many conservatives warn that because women are willing to have sex outside of marriage now, that has made it all the much easier for men not to buy at all, much like the way that an avid bicyclist is probably going to be that much harder to sell a new car to. 

Men's sex and dating advice tends to be more on the grounds of being a better consumer.  Pick-up artist books and websites aren't interested in teaching men how to improve the product so more women want to buy.  Seriously, PUA guides read like guides on buying a car---show up looking like money, demonstrate to the salesman that you fill out the checklist of requirements to get a car, talk down the price (which PUA guides suggest you do by insulting women, hoping the loss of esteem in their product will cause them to sell at a lower price), and you're done.  Actual improvement of one's self is as strange an idea as suggesting that you have to have good character and a tight waistline to get a car.  You just need to have the cash, the credit rating, and a solid ability to bargain. 

So much of what causes strife and 500 comment threads on heterosexuality online is when feminists challenge this model of heterosexuality, though again,  I think we usually peck at various manifestations of it as opposed to directly attacking this metaphorical understanding of dating. Elevatorgate caused strife for this reason.  In the market model of dating, men are allowed to drive a hard bargain, just like consumers are allowed to haggle. Offense at being told that this is scary resembled the offense one might take if one is thrown out of a car dealership because you weren't wearing a suit---hey, you don't know if he  has the money!  He should be allowed to at least make an offer!  The reason feminists flinch when using the "I have a boyfriend/husband" strategy to get a pest off them is because that's basically saying that you aren't for sale, because someone has already paid for you.  

And of course, the reason that threads about men who buy sex blow up to epic proportions here is that there's always a handful of guys pushing the Sad Unfuckable John myth, i.e. the belief that men who go to sex workers are just sad sacks who can't get laid through normal means and so are forced---because men are entitled to partner sex---to pay for it.  The fact that women don't turn to paying men for sex if they can't get it through normal means isn't even acknowledged.  After all, women are the sellers, and sellers don't have the right to sell in the way that buyers have the right to buy if they can get the money together.  Feminists are told we're supposed to sympathize with the largely mythical (in reality, most johns have wives or girlfriends, don't actually enjoy the paid-for sex in and of itself, and are mainly shoring up their masculine bona fides by proving they can buy and control women) Sad Unfuckable John, because you know, women are a resource and as good liberals we should want more equitable distribution. 

A lot of us feminists who came up online have been promoting a model of sexuality called "enthusiastic consent", and I think that one thing that could strengthen this is tackling the market model of heterosexuality.  Because, to put on my Twisty Faster hat, if we cast men as buyers and women as sellers, that means that women are assumed to be in a perpetual state of consent just as that gallon of milk at the store is assumed to be on sale for anyone who can cobble together the $5 to buy it.  As long as the market model of heterosexuality is in play, the notion that sex should be a mutual exchange between two individuals will not make so much sense to people.  

What brings all this to my mind was reading Tracy Clark-Flory's examination of when "violent sex", aka sex that involves violence without enthusiastic consent, is okay.  To those of us who don't buy into the market model of heterosexuality, the answer is simple: never.  It's  never okay to have sex with someone who isn't saying yes, and it's especially never okay to make someone feel afraid or threatened.  If a man can't get enthusiastic consent for rough sex from an equal, well, too bad.  Clark-Flory comes to these conclusions, but it was heart-breaking to see how much the idea that men are entitled to partner sex infects our ability to see the ethics of these situations clearly.

How should rough (or "brutal") sex be appropriately negotiated? What should we call an encounter where brutality and dominance is not requested, but also not objected to? Is it the responsibility of the aggressor to OK it with their partner, or is it the "receptive" partner's responsibility to object if it's undesirable?

For those of us who don't believe men are entitled to partner sex, but that it should be a mutual exchange between enthusiastic partners, these aren't complex questions: 1) By open communication between two people who put each other's safety first.  2) It's always wrong, and it's often straight up rape. 3) The responsibility is on the person doing the asking, always. People speaking up for themselves is good, but it's not required.  Making sure you aren't assaulting someone is the responsibility of the person pushing for more. 

All of this is obvious if you don't believe men are buyers and women are sellers.  The notion that she's consenting until she says "no" is ridiculous when applied to other social situations.  For instance, we invite people to parties.  We don't tell them where to be at what time and expect them to work up the courage to say no. We especially don't lure people into our homes under false pretenses and then bar the door and demand they plead a little before we let them out. We don't show up at people's houses uninvited, bags in hand, and start making ourselves comfortable unless they throw a fit and toss us out.  Sex is a social situation, and should be treated as one. But instead, it's treated like a market and so we all have to wonder if it's acceptable to pressure an unwilling person as long as that person isn't fighting back.  

Of course, people are notoriously bad at actually communicating during sex -- whether it's outright stating what they want or asking what their partner wants.

I think that this sentence is a clear example of how the notion that men are entitled to partner sex can creep up even on feminists.  Some men are bad negotiators!  Feel sorry for them!  We certainly can't tell them that it's just too bad if they can't charm someone into having enthusiastic sex with them, because that implies they aren't entitled to partner sex.  To be clear, that's not what Tracy's saying by any means.  But the stance of pity towards a man who struggles to get things like consent is rooted in the largely unexamined male entitlement to women's time and affections. 

I actually would say that my ideal is a world where everyone is kind of selling a little, but no one is cast as a buyer.  I think that people's friendships work this way, in fact.  People shouldn't feel entitled to have the time or affection of others, but instead should assume the responsibility of being charming enough to have people give it to them of their own free will. I do see a turn towards this in our culture somewhat, with men actually starting to think a little harder about being what women want instead of just meeting the metaphorical price tag that they are socialized to think is hanging off women.  We just have a long way to go.