Sex

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s June 2021 World edition. Subscribe here. I am tired. Men — purportedly single and ready to mingle — have worn me out. Not, sadly, in the way one might hope but in the new, peculiar, nightmarish way of the times. Since becoming single two and a bit years ago, I have romped around a fair bit on the apps: Bumble, Tinder and lately Hinge. Interestingly, the only men who have seemed raring to go — and interesting, educated and good-looking — were under 25. Too young to have become the unwanted dregs, they are also too young to worry that an older woman (I’m 38) will badger them about kids. At first, I was dazzled by the idea of dating younger men. But the reality soon dawned on me.

All good things come to an end or, in this case, all trash must return to the trash heap. The raunchy, sex-obsessed podcast Call Her Daddy is likely ending for good after negotiations with Barstool Sports went south. Barstool, founded by Dave Portnoy aka El Presidente, currently owns the rights to the Call Her Daddy podcast, hosted by Alexandra Cooper, 27, and Sofia Franklyn, 26. The podcast mysteriously went dark for several weeks until Portnoy recorded his own episode titled ‘Daddy Speaks’ revealing that the women were shopping the show to other platforms despite being under a three-year exclusivity contract.

Trans activists are discovering that, while their mantras may go far on Twitter, when it comes to biology and sexual attraction, virtue signaling garners less positive results. A 2018 study revealed a lot about how much sway gender identity ideology has in real life. Namely, if you are heterosexual, you want to date the opposite sex, regardless of how they identify. And if you are a lesbian, insisting that ‘transwomen are women’ will not persuade a woman who is only attracted to females. While the study did find that those identifying as ‘queer’, lesbian, or gay were slightly more willing to date a ‘trans person’, a large majority were still disinclined.

Many politically correct feminists aggressively dismiss Freud and psychoanalysis in general as outdated. I myself was recently attacked in Austria as an old white man who hasn’t read a book for 30 years. What they are effectively doing is repressing Freud’s basic insight, that of a split or divided subject and of the unconscious — the fact that people in general don’t know what they want and don’t want what they desire.This is why explicit free consent of both partners in a sexual act is not enough to preclude violence. Even if a written contract or a selfie of both partners is not required, the minimum that those who worry about violence in sex demand is explicit verbal consent, as is required by a new law proposed in New South Wales.

'Honey, could you run over to Walmart and pick up some Honey Nut Cheerios, some OJ, and a couple anal plugs?’ Walmart has been selling sex toys for a while, mostly online but also in its stores. Now 'America’s store’ is upping the ante. The Behemoth from Bentonville has contracted a small boutique manufacturer, Massachusetts-based Clio, to supply a range of high-tech sex toys, produced with 3D printing technology, for sale in almost all Walmart stores. Walmart got into the sex toy business late, but has dived decisively down that rabbit hole since acquiring the ‘hip' e-commerce site, Jet.com, in 2016.

Progressives spent decades telling conservatives how harmful sexual restraint was. Yet our open-minded friends on the left now seem to have discovered a new appreciation for the benefits of abstinence. Take the ‘#SexStrike’ led by the actress Alyssa Milano. The message is simple: no sex for men until new limits on abortion are rolled back. In particular, activists and their mainstream media allies are incensed about a new ‘heartbeat’ bill in the state of Georgia which would ban most abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy. This isn’t the first sex-strike aimed at female empowerment.