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I Pissed Off a Gen Y Feminist
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
Arthur Schopenhauer, German Philosopher
With my latest post How to Stimulate Demand in a Relationship Recession, I made Mary Lingwall of Austin, Texas really angry. Check out her article here: Things That Piss Me Off: Relating Sexual Interactions to Economic Phenomena
Mary demands that I “shut the hell up.” While I can’t offer that, I will happily welcome a healthy debate. In the four months since I started Hooking Up Smart, I’ve actually been a little surprised by the lack of controversy. After all, I’m addressing head on questions about sexuality and relationships, and some of my views are not, er, shall we say, PC with the Gen Y Feminist crowd. So I thought it might be useful for me to clarify my views and respond to Mary’s objections.
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I write my blogs to address the rampant dissatisfaction among many young women with regard to their sex lives and their relationships. Having heard many stories of women feeling discouraged, even depressed about their experiences hooking up, I try to offer support, including my thoughts on how to best navigate the realities of the hookup culture while remaining true to yourself.
If you don’t want a relationship, and casual sex meets your needs, that’s cool. (In fact, Mary mentions at the top of her post that HUS is one of her favorite blogs, yay.) If what you want is casual sex it’s all good, because it’s easy to obtain, and a lot less time-consuming than a relationship. But if you want to have relationship sex, then your hooking up behavior probably shouldn’t look exactly like the girl’s who wants nothing to do with commitment. That’s why this blog is called Hooking Up Smart, rather than Don’t Hook Up.
Here are my responses to Mary’s specific objections:
1. “I am a young, fairly respectable girl, who could be okay with the possibility of being in some sort of relationship at some future point in my life. Wouldn’t this post inspire a girl like me? Hell no.”
I’m uncomfortable with the connotation of respectable in this case. The only respect I care about is the respect you have for yourself. I support your right to enjoy your body and do with it whatever feels right for you.
2. Mary claims that there are two distinct groups of guys: those who are only looking for No Strings Attached sex, and those who are looking for the comfort and stability of a relationship.
That is simply not the case. Think about it:
- Hooking up casually is the way most romantic relationships begin. While that happens only 12% of the time, it is still the primary pathway to relationships.
- A guy initially looking for casual sex can develop feelings for a girl and form an attachment.
- Guys experience enormous peer pressure to keep it casual and refrain from getting “whipped” by one girl. So a guy who might prefer to have sex in the context of a relationship must brace himself for the disapproval of his buddies. I have heard many accounts of relationships that ended early because the guy couldn’t tolerate the constant ridicule from his peers.
- Guys change their preferences at different times. A guy who has been having a lot of casual sex may tire of the hookup scene, while a guy who has just come out of a long-term relationship may want nothing but casual sex for the foreseeable future.
3. Mary states that “decent people that fit well into you life are few and far between” and that casual sex is the cure for being horny. “Safe casual sex satisfies a valid need in the lives of thousands of men and women.”
I agree. Those men and women are probably not reading, or needing, Hooking Up Smart.
- I’m reaching out to women who are having casual sex when what they really want is to have sex with someone who loves them.
- I’m speaking to women who aren’t having any sex because all the guys who pursue them treat them disrespectfully, drunkenly pressing up against them in a bar and saying things like, “You’re hot. You have nice tits.”
- I’m trying to support young women who hook up with one guy for a while and develop feelings for him, only to learn that he doesn’t want anything serious with anyone right now.
Because that’s the norm. That is what the research shows. Casual sex is the cure for being horny, but it doesn’t address the longing for someone “decent” in your life.
4. Mary is offended by my suggestion that relationships will continue to be in short supply until women reduce the availability of sex in the marketplace.
“I say shut the hell up. Has she ever stopped to wonder why there is casual sex? Perhaps it is because not all women are looking for a long term relationship!!!! …relationships by and large are not that great.”
That’s Mary’s experience, and that’s fair enough. But Mary does not speak for the majority of women. The vast majority of women prefer sex within the context of a relationship. No one is saying they should feel that way. Women are saying that is what they want. And they can’t have it. It’s not available because men no longer need to offer anything at all in order to get access to sex. Not even kindness and respect.
5. Mary is incensed by my likening women to a luxury product that will be “marketed.”
“No one should have to sell themselves in order to gain love.”
I agree. I am not suggesting that women sell themselves. I am suggesting that women understand their own worth and not give themselves away to an unworthy douche.
“Love is not what happens when you doll yourself up and browbeat a cute boy into submission and longing.”
Damn. That’s too bad, cuz that sounds really hot. And I believe guys think so too. (See Bitchslap That Dude to Make Him Heel.)
6. The title of Mary’s post: Things That Piss Me Off: Relating Sexual Interactions to Economic Phenomena
Using “economic” terms to discuss other topics, including relationships, is nothing new. Economics is the study of the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. It includes the study of transactions between parties. A transaction is defined as “a communication between two people that influences and affects both of them.”
Here are some other relationship terms that are derived from the realm of economic transactions:
- Do not sell yourself short.
- You are precious to me.
- He is not worth crying over.
- You are the whole package.
- He’s a really classy guy.
- I’d hit that [bid].
- He is a diamond in the rough.
- He has an alibi, but I’m not buying it.
- She had a boyfriend, but now she’s back on the market.
7. “Maybe you do want to be a conniving, manipulative bitch who uses your sexuality in order to control others, in which case this is a nice how-to guide.”
Hooking Up Smart is not about using your sexuality to control others. It’s about you being in control of your own sexuality.
- It’s about taking the time to be thoughtful about what you want, and thinking strategically so that you are not always undermining your own objectives.
- It’s about enjoying your sexuality, and engaging in sex when it feels right. It’s about feeling good about yourself and your choices.
- It’s about avoiding random sex with some unworthy dude if it is going to make you feel like crap afterwards.
Young women today often express guilt that they feel regretful after casual sex; they think something is wrong with them if they can’t experience sex like a guy. Women and men are so dramatically different, chemically and hormonally speaking, that it’s absurd to think we would experience sex the same way. What’s fantastic is that men and women complement each other; their differences are exciting.
What I find most disturbing is that it is not guys who are making women feel guilty. Guys understand that some girls are DTF and some girls aren’t. No, it’s women who are pitting themselves against one another. That’s crazy! I’m not telling you not to have casual sex. I’m telling you not to do something if it makes you feel like shit. And no woman should be telling another woman that she is uncool if she chooses to deny a stranger access to her body.
