The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘My Hypothetical Daughter’

Posted on | September 29, 2014 | 133 Comments

Emily Heist Moss (@EmilyHeistMoss) is the type of young feminist who inspires readers to ask, “Stacy, how do you find these idiots?”

The short answer is that feminists are herd animals, who aggregate around certain online watering holes, so that wherever you find one zany Gender Studies type, there are sure to be many more. Thus while I was reading an article by Chelsea Bock, I noticed in the sidebar an article by Emily Heist Moss with this eye-grabbing headline:

To The Men Who Try To Have Condom-Free Sex

If crazy were silver, Emily Heist Moss would be the Comstock Lode, and the feminist blog Role/Reboot would be a Nevada mountain, but we’ll have to take these metaphors one at a time, beginning with Ms. Moss’s complaints about the hook-up lifestyle:

You know that thing when you’re about to have sex with someone and you’re feeling all warm and fuzzy and fun things are happening and you anticipate more fun things are coming and you’re in this groove and then, instead of the telltale ripping of a condom wrapper, or the brief pause when he sits back on his heels to assess and discuss the protection situation, he tries to slip it in like you won’t even notice?
And you, upon realizing what the moron down between your legs is doing — or rather, neglecting to do — you hear in your brain that screeeeeeeech like tires slamming to a halt because instead of warm and fuzzy you feel confused and indignant. You feel overlooked, irrelevant to this bodily conversation you were excited to get going just seconds before. You feel, suddenly, like just a hole, and not a person with opinions on the subject of contraception, with aspirations for a baby- and disease-free future, with a 50% stake in what’s about to go down.
Do you know that feeling?
If you have been so lucky as to avoid it, pat yourself on the back, cross your fingers, and continue whatever rain dance you’ve been performing that keeps condoms falling from the sky and conscientious partners in your bed. Because the rest of us? Man, we are sitting out here in the cold and it sucks. . . .
When I polled the Internet about their experiences, I got bombarded with stories of the bareback-pressurers, “Don’t you trust me, baby?” whisperers, and the worst offenders, slip-it-off-mid-coitus-no-condom-ninjas. The issue is so widespread that it seems obvious it’s not a question of a few bad apples, but rather a persistent misunderstanding of the rules of engagement. . . .

You can read the whole thing. I’ve quoted Ms. Moss at such length to avoid any accusation that she is being quoted out of context. This is how it is with feminists: If you try to briefly summarize their bizarre beliefs, you will be accused of distorting their meaning; on the other hand, if you quote them at length — unfair! You’re infringing their copyright on lunatic gibberish. But I digress . . .

What Ms. Moss seems to be saying is that when she picks up a random stranger for an exercise in meaningless hedonism, she is shocked — shocked, I tell you! — that these semi-anonymous creeps do not always heed her “rules of engagement.” But what do “rules” mean between two amoral fornicators? On what authority does Ms. Moss, an avowed atheist, base the rules for her loveless couplings?

Well, consent, you see. Starting in the 1960s, a coalition of bohemian perverts, porn merchants and civil libertarians fought a grand crusade to vanquish any vestige of morality from our laws governing sexual behavior, replacing it with the “consenting adults” standard. It was no longer sufficient, said these judicial and legislative modernizers, to say that something was wrong and therefore should also be illegal. According to the new regime, concepts like “right” and “wrong,” “good” and “evil,” “vice” and “virtue” had no useful meaning.

You could do absolutely anything, sex-wise, so long as the participants were “consenting adults.” Now all arguments about sex boil down to disputes about two things: Who is an “adult” and what does “consent” mean? I’m pretty sure that if the forces of Progress and Equality continue in the direction they’ve been going recently — because the logic of their argument is consistent — those who refuse to consent will be accused of a hate crime, the legal age of consent will be abolished, and deviants will then organize to demand the “right” to have sex with unborn fetuses. (“Pre-natal sexuality”? Who are we to judge?)

Anyone who thinks we have reached rock bottom on our long slide down the slippery slope simply hasn’t been paying attention. A commission in Germany recently recommended the legalization of incest, a “reform” too late to benefit the multigenerational incestuous clan in Australia where uncle/brothers were habitually sodomizing their sister/nieces before the police finally raided the place. Meanwhile, in England, gangs of Pakistani pimps were raping and prostituting working-class girls as young as 11 while local Labour Party officials looked the other way.

Amid this increasingly frenetic worldwide carnival of sordid sexual atrocities that the advocates of Progress and Equality have let loose upon humanity, you see, Emily Heist Moss is complaining that some of her “friends with benefits” are trying to sneak a bit of unprotected friction into their casual couplings. This is a Major Issue, OK? And if you disagree about the relative importance of her problems, you’re just a hater.

The venue in which Ms. Moss made this complaint deserves critical scrutiny. Here’s how Role/Reboot began a few years ago:

In 2009, Role Reboot co-founder Fran Rodgers was asked to teach a course on Women’s Movements Past and Future at Tufts University. Fran wanted to make sure that her course was relevant to a younger generation, and enlisted Morra Aarons-Mele as her partner in developing the course. . . .
As they prepared the college course, however, Fran and Morra realized that with every new reading they were moved to act, and began to feel a sense of awakening and responsibility to help create change among men and women. . . .
Fran asked her daughter Nicole to help. . . .
Nicole wanted to bring a feminist sensibility to modern debates without relying too heavily on second-wave authors and discussions. Eventually, the three women determined that what they wanted was an online space for thought leadership about how gender roles are changing . . .

This is from Role/Reboot’s mission statement:

We’re a group defined mostly by what we are not. We’re not the Cleavers or Ozzie and Harriet (nor do we want to be). We don’t aspire to the status quo. We’re forward thinking, creative, and counter-cultural. We’re concerned about deeply embedded “traditional” roles and expectations that often dictate how we structure our lives. We’re creating our own rules. We’re naturally a big-tent movement for anyone trying to live a life free from unhelpful “shoulds.”
While others rally for “New Normal,” we will continue to champion the ideal of “No Normal.”

They aspire to a world in which there are no norms. Who is Role/Reboot co-founder Fran Rodgers? A bit of investigation discovers that Mrs. Rodgers’ life has followed a familiar “gender equality” script: Get an elite education and marry an enterpreneurial Alpha Male so that the heteronormative patriarchy can then fund its own deconstruction (cf., Mike Huffington and Arianna, Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, etc.). Role/Reboot is all about postmodern narratives that challenge the discourse of the sex/gender binary, as Judith Butler might say. The site might as well be called “Slouching Toward Androgyny.”

One of the obvious problems with this subversion of gender norms — or, rather, a problem that should be obvious to anyone who hasn’t been drinking the radical egalitarian Kool-Aid — is that masculinity and femininity work, and androgyny fails, when it comes to the crucial social task of reproducing the species. Which is to say that, in general, when viewing cultures in terms of population demographics and over the course of time, traditional sex roles are associated with higher fertility, whereas androgyny is typical of societies that have become decadent and entered demographic decline. This can be demonstrated both historically and in comparing contemporary population groups.

Ceteris paribus, populations typified by what feminists call “male supremacy” (what anthropologists call “normal human behavior”) exhibit reproductive vigor while androgyny (or what feminists call “gender equality”) is typical of population groups with below-replacement fertility levels. Feminists simply have not recognized how their advocacy of the Contraceptive Culture must ultimately doom their movement to failure and, insofar as our nation embraces feminism, so also is our nation doomed. This has been explained by numerous authors. You can read Mark Steyn’s America Alone or Jonathan Last’s What to Expect When No One’s Expecting for timely discussion of these issues. Yet it’s really just common sense, and you don’t need a Ph.D. to understand why the birth rate in Yemen is higher than the birth rate in Denmark, why Orthodox Jews have large families and secular Jews do not, or why Oklahoma Baptists have more babies than Massachusetts liberals. Culture influences demographics and vice-versa, but while decadent intellectuals may dominate elite culture, demographics is a matter of simple math, and no amount of complex academic theory can change a basic fact of nature: The future belongs to the fertile.

What anyone could discern from facts, logic, tradition, common sense and elementary arithmetic, however, eludes the minds of those who have been indoctrinated into the beliefs of the intelligentsia. Thus we return to another Emily Heist Moss column:

On Choosing My Own Last Name
At 18, I added my mother’s last name to my signature. . . .
When I first changed my name, people thought it was a joke, that “Heist” was some sort of badass moniker, like “Danger,” that I gave myself to look cool on the Internet. . . .
My mother’s last name is Heist and she, like many in her cohort of second-wavers, kept it when she got married, even in the face of wedding day second-guessing from my traditionally-minded grandmother. . . .
When I was in college, probably with the assistance of a heavy load of consciousness-raising gender studies classes, I realized that my signature felt incomplete. Particularly because my parents were divorced, I wanted the name I put on things I was proud of to reflect both sides of my history. . . .
But what if you get married?! Oh how the naysayers love the What Ifs. What if you marry a hyphenated dude?! You can’t hyphenate forever! You wouldn’t do that to your kids! That’s just cruel! 
Is it? Maybe, if you think burdening children with complicated answers to simple questions is cruel. But is it any crueler than explaining to my hypothetical daughter that Daddy’s last name was more important than Mommy’s because he’s a man? Is it crueler than telling her that someday, unlike her brother’s, her identity will probably be considered dismissable, negotiable, non-essential? Is it really any crazier than what we do now? Disappearing one parent’s past into the other parent’s because… chromosomes? Because…tradition? Because…convenience? . . .
But what will I call my children?! Who knows . . . I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Uh, you mean if you get to it, don’t you, Ms. Moss?

There is tremendous irony in her hypotheticals, you see. Is hooking up with random dudes likely to lead to marriage for Ms. Moss? If she can’t even convince them to put latex on their weenies, how does she expect to persuade one to put a ring on her finger? Given how adamant she is about contraception, what do you think the odds are against her ever having that “hypothetical daughter”?

My guess is that both her imagined marriage and imagined children will remain hypotheticals. All those “consciousness-raising gender studies classes” tend to foster anti-male attitudes that are incompatible with marriage. A casual hook-up is one thing, but how many guys want to marry such a ranting fanatic? Even if there were some masochistic male willing to marry her, however, does anyone think Ms. Moss’s feminist consciousness is compatible with motherhood? Abortion is the most cherished sacrament of feminism; it’s impossible to imagine that monomaniacal advocates of baby-killing actually harbor any shred of natural maternal instinct. Yet such is the logic of feminism that we are expected to take seriously what Ms. Moss says about hypothetical marriage and hypothetical child-rearing, and anyone who expresses skepticism as to her authority in these matters . . .

Well, you’re just a hater.

Defining disagreement as hate, so that anyone who does not share their worldview is morally inferior, feminists create the kind of echo-chamber feedback loop we see in totalitarian states or inside paranoid apocalyptic doomsday cults. The possibility that the dictator’s ideology is wrong, or that the cult leader is not divinely inspired — these alternatives must be rejected by the True Believer, and only the voices of True Believers can be heard inside the echo chamber. People who become part of these types of movements typically don’t recognize the nature of the systemic bias built into the information structure that shelters movement members from facts or logic that contradicts the movement’s ideology. Over and over again, intelligent and well-meaning people who join such movements become disillusioned when they encounter the Thought Police who enforce rhetorical conformity. Eventually, therefore, as the honest followers become disgusted and walk away, the movement is more and more composed of followers who are too stupid to understand what’s wrong with their belief system, and who do not recognize that the movement’s leaders are selfish, dishonest or just plain crazy.

Feminism is like Jonestown or North Korea, but the totalitarian cult vibe inside the movement is never apparent to True Believers like Emily Heist Moss. They continue parroting the belief system, continue upholding the truth of their ideology, and reject all negative feedback as “hate.” Nothing else can explain why Ms. Moss is willing to humiliate herself by publishing lunacy like this:

What Sex Counts As ‘Real’ Sex?
. . . Penis-in-vagina sex is not on the menu for same-sex couples for obvious reasons. By putting a premium on this one particular sex act as the only one that “counts,” we are implicitly suggesting that the other ones count less. Think about your LGBTQ friends; is your sex more important, more special, more “real,” than their sex?
If it is true for same-sex couples that sex can still occur without a penis penetrating a vagina (and it can, obviously, just ask them), what’s so different about straight couples? Just because you have the specific parts capable of penis-in-vagina doesn’t mean that you must use them in that specific way. If doing the things your gay friends would call “having sex” with your partner gets you going, why wouldn’t you call that “having sex” too?

Do you see what I mean? Ms. Moss insists that the way we talk about sex and think about sex must be changed, lest our “LGBTQ friends” get the impression that we believe there is something “important” or “special” about “a penis penetrating a vagina.”

When you put this weird “LGBTQ” sympathy in the context of her increasing antipathy toward males — those selfish jerks who refuse to wear condoms when their (unimportant) penises are penetrating Ms. Moss’s (non-special) vagina — perhaps you see why I say the odds are that her “hypothetical daughter” will remain strictly hypothetical.

Yes, it’s Patriotic Androgyny for the Equality Warrior!




 

 

 

Comments

133 Responses to “‘My Hypothetical Daughter’”

  1. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    September 29th, 2014 @ 11:05 am

    Isn’t she one of Elizabeth Warren’s staff?

  2. texlovera
    September 29th, 2014 @ 11:06 am

    Stacy, reading the crap these “women” pump out must be like ingesting hallucinogenic drugs.

    Perhaps their rantings should be called “peyotarchy”?

  3. texlovera
    September 29th, 2014 @ 11:07 am

    Are you shittin’ me??

  4. TiminAL
    September 29th, 2014 @ 12:29 pm

    “There is tremendous irony in her hypotheticals, you see. Is hooking up with random dudes likely to lead to marriage for Ms. Moss?”

    Two words: Pajama Boy

  5. RKae
    September 29th, 2014 @ 12:31 pm

    Think about your LGBTQ friends; is your sex more important, more special, more “real,” than their sex?

    Yes.

    Next question?

  6. jakee308
    September 29th, 2014 @ 12:53 pm

    “feminists are herd animals, who aggregate around certain online watering holes”

    I immediately pictured a crocodile just below the surface of the water, wearing a straw fedora, smoking a cigarette with a sardonic smirk on it’s face awaiting it’s next victim to approach the water’s edge.

    They just can’t help themselves can they Stacy?

  7. RS
    September 29th, 2014 @ 1:13 pm

    The problem with this series is the same which will plague you when you try to fashion it into a book: a surfeit of material.

    As for the substance of this installment, a classical secular humanist would see the philosophical foundation for the end of Western Civilization. That is, we see a foundation which reduces all Human achievement to simply what gratifies one’s genitals at any given instant. The purposeless orgasm is now the fulfillment of Human existence, to the exclusion of all other classical virtues.

    For the Christian, of course, we see the beginning of the end. 2 Timothy 3 (KJV):

    1. This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

    2. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

    3.Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,

    4. Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;

    5. Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

    6. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,

    7. Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

    8. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.

    9.But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.

  8. Matthew W
    September 29th, 2014 @ 1:26 pm

    OK, I’m not going to waste too much of my valuable time and brain cells on this, but just how often does she let an erect penis get into/near her lady bits without having gone over the ROE with said erection?

  9. McGehee
    September 29th, 2014 @ 1:32 pm

    Emily Heist Moss

    Her middle name is robbery? How astonishing.

  10. Sydney
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:12 pm

    I’m confused. Are you specifically arguing that men should be allowed to have condomless sex without their partner’s consent? And if that’s your argument, don’t you think that probably makes a lot more likely she’ll end up pregnant with the hypothetical daughter you think she’ll never have?

  11. Sam
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:17 pm

    “If she can’t even convince them to put latex on their weenies, how does she expect to persuade one to put a ring on her finger?”

    This is kind of like asking, “If root beer is so tasty, then why can ants carry 10 times their body weight?!”

  12. F.Jones
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:19 pm

    There’s a name for not going over the rules of engagement before sex: rape.

  13. E. Warren
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:22 pm

    I personally have never heard the argument that fetuses are adults. Can you cite a source where this has been argued?

    I’m perfectly happy for your set of morals to tell you that premarital sex is a bad thing. But how do your morals get to extend so far as to tell other people what to do? Doesn’t this assume you think you know better than everyone? And if you do, is that not a form of playing God? Shall we not humble ourselves in our knowledge of the world?

  14. lookingforcoolfriends
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:24 pm

    I want to be pals with any crocodile that can smoke underwater.

  15. sss
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:30 pm

    uh, how does one even…have sex with unborn fetuses? Is this a real fear of yours?

  16. Dan
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:31 pm

    No. The criticism is that she seems to have zero problem with hooking up with random men for sex, but gripes that one of them might not want to use a condom. Do you still not see the problem? If she actually bothered to develop a relationship built on trust, and respect this wouldn’t be an issue. Instead she acts like an empty slut, and then whines when some stranger she went home with doesn’t treat her the way she wants.

  17. Mm
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:31 pm

    No, he’s saying this:
    “What Ms. Moss seems to be saying is that when she picks up a random
    stranger for an exercise in meaningless hedonism, she is shocked — shocked,
    I tell you! — that these semi-anonymous creeps do not always heed her
    “rules of engagement.” But what do “rules” mean between two amoral
    fornicators? On what authority does Ms. Moss, an avowed atheist, base the rules for her loveless couplings?”

  18. Dan
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:34 pm

    She’d have less problems in this area if she wasn’t hooking up with random dudes for sex.

  19. Sydney
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:38 pm

    But she answered that. The “rules” are wearing a condom. Which doesn’t seem like that high a standard, honestly.

  20. Mm
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:38 pm

    The basis of EVERY civilization is a common set of morals, shared by a majority, which guide or “tell” everybody what to do. Surely you know this, and are just being contrarian?

  21. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:39 pm

    What does the moss refer to?

  22. Mm
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:39 pm

    Her rules, and she is surprised when

    “semi-anonymous creeps do not always heed her “rules of engagement.”

  23. F. Jones
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:39 pm

    What’s wrong with having sex with random dudes? Sex is fun.

  24. Sydney
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:41 pm

    Yes, that seems to be the point of the essay. That she is surprised when people are not respectful of others. What’s wrong with that point?

  25. Mm
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:42 pm

    Objectively? Risk. What’s wrong with potato chips and ice cream for breakfast? They’re fun. Never mind obesity and high blood pressure, I have a RIGHT to potato chips and ice cream for breakfast with no consequences whatsoever.

  26. Dan
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:43 pm

    You’re still not following. She’s hooking up with random men for sex. If she wasn’t doing that she wouldn’t have this problem. The solution is to develop
    an actual relationship instead of being an empty headed slut.

  27. Mm
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:44 pm

    When you are an atheist who creates your own moral framework, one that is not commonly shared by others, why is she surprised to find that people refuse to follow her rules? It’s almost like she’s calling people with a different ethical framework immoral or something. How very judgmental of her to judge the morality of another.

  28. Dan
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:45 pm

    yeah, sex is fun. Sex with random people is stupid, and dangerous. Whether or not they’ll wear a condom is the least of her problems. Grow up, Ok?

  29. E. Warren
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:45 pm

    At various points in history, common morals are used by that majority to oppress whole groups of people, as many Christians at the time relied on their morals as justification for slavery in America. A serious attempt to question the majority’s morals requires those morals to be justified or to fall away as the tools of the oppressor.

  30. McGehee
    September 29th, 2014 @ 2:48 pm

    On that, I defer to the room.

  31. Sydney
    September 29th, 2014 @ 3:03 pm

    Where does the word “random” appear in her essay?

    Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

    I don’t think randomness is implied at all, in fact. I can have regular sex with a person I know and trust and we’ll still run into issues of things one of us is game for that the other isn’t. The problem is when this isn’t a conversation, but an assumption or a sneak attack.

  32. Colorado Alex
    September 29th, 2014 @ 3:04 pm

    Sex with fetuses may be a bit hyperbolic, but the reality is that the left has long pushed for the sexualization of children. the FreeKate movement was an attempt to argue that 14 year olds were capable of consenting to sex. In Europe in the 60s, during the sexual revolution, there were a number of far left crackpots who tried to argue that relationships between adults and children as young as 7-8 were healthy and normal.

  33. Dan
    September 29th, 2014 @ 3:13 pm

    oh, I see. we’re going to split hairs here. People in committed relationships do not have these problems. If you still do you should question your relationship. If you actually bothered to write an essay on this then this is an ongoing issue and implies she is sleeping with random people on a regular basis because issues like this are usually cleared up after the first time you sleep with someone, and if you’re actually dating is discussed beforehand.

  34. NeoWayland
    September 29th, 2014 @ 3:14 pm

    And some of us think both those viewpoints are mistaken.

  35. ping
    September 29th, 2014 @ 3:15 pm

    Looks like Ms. Hyphenated-Name hasn’t been up-to-date on the evils of cultural appropriation. We’re a culture, not a costume! #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen

  36. Paul H. Lemmen
    September 29th, 2014 @ 3:17 pm

    … but how many guys want to marry such a ranting fanatic?
    Only the nutless wonders called beta males, too timid and spermless to be gay, they make the perfect accessory for the modern feminist. Rather like a chihuahua or a purse …

  37. Paul H. Lemmen
    September 29th, 2014 @ 3:24 pm

    Heh. I immediately flashed to the content of her cranial vault …

  38. Dan
    September 29th, 2014 @ 3:31 pm

    Were not talking about whether or not one of you wants to try anal, or bdsm, or is into feet. Even married people have issues like that. it’s a totally different beast. if you sleep with any woman on s regular basis you know if you have to use protection or not.

  39. Francis Fisher, Alan Grayson Wants You Stupid | Regular Right Guy
    September 29th, 2014 @ 3:35 pm

    […] ‘My Hypothetical Daughter’ […]

  40. RKae
    September 29th, 2014 @ 3:46 pm

    Sex is how we reproduce.

    What makes you think you can turn it into a hobby and not have consequences?

    Running with scissors can be fun, too.

  41. Dan
    September 29th, 2014 @ 3:56 pm

    We only have sex to reproduce? NO. And that’s totally self evident.

  42. RKae
    September 29th, 2014 @ 3:56 pm

    Christians were the only people OPPOSING slavery. And they were called “moralist busybodies,” “finger-waggers,” and “theocrats.”

    Christians who supported slavery were like Nancy Pelosi, who claims that abortion is “loving,” and therefore it’s part of her Christian philosophy. But in reality, she simply backs abortion and her “Christian stance” on it is a second place idea; a lame rationalization that is warped to fit. She’s not driven to support abortion by Christianity.

    It’s her abortion that comes first. Connecting Christianity to it is a “get me some votes” afterthought.

    Christians who supported slavery were BUSINESSMEN first and any Christianity they espoused was just to fit them into Christian society; a way to try and convince the “moralist busybodies” to leave them alone.

  43. RKae
    September 29th, 2014 @ 4:03 pm

    I didn’t say that. I said it’s how we reproduce. (Do you know some other way?)

    Therefore, it must be treated SERIOUSLY. That’s what marriage and fidelity are all about.

    I don’t care if 99.9% of people refuse to take it seriously (and say that those who do “have hang-ups”) it doesn’t change the reality of what the act is naturally for.

    It is indeed possible for 99.9% of people to be misled fools.

  44. JeffS
    September 29th, 2014 @ 4:05 pm

    One of the assumptions for sexual “rules of engagement”
    is that both parties are willing to follow them. This is naivety
    deliberately reinforced and supported by political correctness.

    According to the dictionary, rape is “the crime, typically committed by a man, of forcing
    another person to have sexual intercourse with the offender against
    their will.” (Emphasis is mine.)

    Anyone who is looking to bump their uglies with a total stranger is taking a risk on their partner NOT being a criminal. Among other issues. Especially for someone (like Miss Moss) who completely trusts a total stranger to slip on a condom while she’s laying on the bed, utterly oblivious to what her partner is doing.

    Hence, Miss Moss is not only a herd animal, she is way way way down on the food chain. The sort of trusting soul that people unconcerned with moral or ethical behavior will exploit in a heart beat.

    And I don’t limit that to rapists. Tyrants love themselves a docile population, they do.

    God help us all if this child is the wave of the future.

  45. Sydney
    September 29th, 2014 @ 4:16 pm

    Right! I actually think we agree on this — if you have sex on the regular with one partner, you know whether condoms are part of that sex, because you discussed beforehand. So if it’s the first time you’ve had sex with a particular partner — like a partner you just got into a relationship with — then shouldn’t there be a discussion about condoms? Her only point is this: it’s not ok to try to have sex without a condom if you haven’t discussed it. And the essay is about a phenomenon experienced not just by the author repeatedly — she talks to several friends (anecdotal, not scientific, sure, but by no means specific only to her) who report that in this first-time condom-or-no-condom situation, where there should be the discussion you’re referencing, there seem to be a lot of men who don’t realize this has to be a conversation.

  46. jakee308
    September 29th, 2014 @ 4:18 pm

    Punctilio is pointless.

  47. Adobe_Walls
    September 29th, 2014 @ 4:24 pm

    You’re crocodile below the surface analogy is very appt only I visualize it more like this.

  48. F. Jones
    September 29th, 2014 @ 4:25 pm

    But condoms are how you deal with the consequences!

  49. Adobe_Walls
    September 29th, 2014 @ 4:52 pm

    In the first passage wherein she expresses her shock that the random (not expressly stated) hookup doesn’t understand the rules, it appears she has assumed everyone has the same rules. Not a safe assumption in love or war. One wonders if she has ever watched Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

  50. RKae
    September 29th, 2014 @ 5:16 pm

    Not 100% effective.

    When I teach kids to drive, I tell them, “You’re in a metal and glass box going 60 miles an hour down a strip of pavement. This is NOT natural. Just keep that in mind! It can go haywire really fast!”

    Try to keep in mind when you’re stepping outside the lines.