Three options for American women to, um, *empower* men to bring Roe v. Wade back
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A few years ago actress and feminist activist Alyssa Milano suggested a Lysistrata-style protest by women after the latest round of Republican-backed abortion rights limits. She was pooh-poohed, including by myself for suggesting a sex strike, but now, with Roe gone, maybe she had a point...?
Not wanting to have sexual intercourse just got more attractive for any woman unfortunate enough to live in a bass-ackward state.
That sucks, when you're a healthy, red-blooded young American woman with carbonating hormones.
We can be sure of one thing: Abortion rights aren't coming back soon, unless everyone votes Democrat in the fall. Yeah, that'll happen.
Here's the thing: It benefits men mightily when women fear pregnancy. I'm not sure today's outraged progressive 'feminist' men have yet worked out just how much a Roe-less world benefits them as much as conservative men.
If you pay attention, you'll note that male feminism usually stops at the penis. When women's rights interfere with male sexual pleasure, one encounters resistance, pushback, and justification.
Don't believe me? Test your 'feminist' male friends by talking about how we need to crack down on sex trafficking of girls and women in porn and prostitution and see how 'feminist' they are on the subject.
I discovered this by accident last year when I told a man I'd started dating how I'd read a book that discussed the sex trafficking problem in porn. Boy, did he get triggered! He hotly denied there was a trafficking problem and demanded I provide evidence.
"Just Google 'sex trafficking in porn'," I replied. "The first page of search results contain articles from high-quality, factual sources about the problems at YouPorn and Pornhub," the two most popular sites.
I hadn't known him long enough to realize he watched a lot of porn. No wonder he got so angry. I'd just inadvertently made him feel like a dirtball. I hadn't known how popular porn had become. I never date anyone long enough to find out. Most men make me want to rip my brain out of my head before I'm half-finished with my coffee.
An article I read elsewhere described how men talk about 'sex work' as 'empowering' for women, using a new term to pretty up 'prostitution' so they don't have to feel ashamed at degrading women who suck stranger dick to feed their families, not because they like to.
To be fair, so-called female feminists have made these arguments too, including 'sex workers' I'm not convinced are feeling all that empowered.
I can think of three ways we can protest Roe in the bedroom and provide impetus for all men to hurry up and bring Roe back.
Protest Option #1: Shut your mouth
Let's consider this: A less intercourse-y world for men means something wondrous and beautiful:
BLOWJOBS! BLOWJOBS! BLOWJOBS! BLOWJOBS!!!
This works out fabulously for men, many of whom may not be that much into sexual intercourse anyway. Intercourse is more intimate, and usually involves facing your partner, being much closer physically, and, God help them, looking into her eyes. That's where connection happens. That's where feelings happen. The emotionally stunted man wants to look anywhere but.
Blowjobs, on the other hand, require nothing more than laying back and enjoying it. For some, it's being 'serviced', even if she's not a prostitute. For others, like rapper DJ Khaled, oral sex is exclusively the 'right' of the male to receive, because he is 'king' and there are 'different rules' for men and women.
I'd like to know who set those 'rules' and why he thinks he's 'king' when it was a woman who carried his heavy ass for nine months in her belly and pushed him out from between her legs. Can you imagine DJ, or any other man, having the courage, commitment, or fortitude to do that?
So yeah, there's a power element to getting women to give blowjobs, although to be fair many men are happy to reciprocate, and may even claim to like doing that the most.
But man, do men love blowjobs.
If we can't get what we want, they can't get what they want.
Men decided what women will do with their bodies. We'll decide what they won't.
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Protest Option #2: Require men to get better in the sack. Particularly with oral.
If you can't live without sex at all, Option #2 will require men to get better in bed. This will be painful for the ones who delude themselves into thinking they're better lovers than they are. Which is to say, nearly all of them.
And that means absolutely no blowjobs for men who don't reciprocate. That's right, DJ Khaled, go ask Lila Nas X or Saucy Santana for one. Learn to love the beard scratch!
No more faked orgasms, ladies! Men only get rewarded with loud screams if they produce it. No trophy just for sticking your tongue out!
While we're waiting for Roe's return men will have to make their partner's pleasure of primary importance, which means getting to know their bodies much, much better.
Pay attention, Ted Cruz! You MUST learn where the clitoris is located.
(No, it's not in the medicine cabinet!)
How many men, really, are good at oral sex? I've been with a lot of men and I can only remember one who possessed the one critical skill for giving good ladyhead: He listened and followed instructions.
Most men, I've found, have one way of going down and simply can't be taught anything else. A friend I recently discussed this with agreed. Most men learned how to go down from an early girlfriend and they either suffer from the delusion that all women are alike down there or they just don't care.
Several years ago I was with a man who only knew what could be described as the 'hummingbird' technique. His tongue moved so fast it had to have been a blur.
"Slower, slower!" I said. "And gentler. You need a much lighter touch."
"Okay," he said, and he slowed it down, for about thirty seconds. Then the hummingbird returned.
"No, no, slower and gentler!" I said. "You're killing the feeling."
"Oh, okay," he said and slowed it down.
Thirty seconds later--"Please! Stop doing that!"
Ten seconds later--"Okay, let's forget it. This isn't working."
What part of 'slow' and 'gentle' did he not understand? Unfortunately, I find this is fairly typical. They don't listen. You can't teach them.
But in a Roe-less world, they will have to learn, or go back to Rosy Palm.
Option #3: The double condom protest
If you prefer intercourse, and many of us do, insist on two condoms.
He should be using birth control anyway since men don't want to pay for unwanted children any more than unwilling mothers want to carry or raise them.
We all know how much men hate using condoms, right?
"I don't feeeeel as much!"
"You're not going to feel anything if you don't put it on."
"How about a blowjob instead?"
"Hang on, let me check something." She pulls out her mobile, scrolls and taps. "No, we still have no abortion rights. How do you feel about a condom now?"
"How do you feel about anal? You can't get pregnant that way."
"Gross. I don't do that porny shit. I want intercourse, and now that I have no abortion rights, you have to use two condoms."
"TWO CONDOMS? Are you out of your mind, woman?"
"In case the first one breaks."
"Screw this. I'll go find Camellia. She'll do it bareback!"
Fine, let her raise the dumb-ass's baby. Or contend with monkeypox.
Really, how pleasurable will sex be for women now that forced pregnancy is a possible consequence?
As sardonic as I'm being - Lysistrata was an utter fantasy even back in classical Athens - it's something to think about.
I really do see the popularity of blowjobs and anal sex exploding with men as they have for many years with teenage boys, many of whom never reciprocate on the oral. It's how girls cement early the misogynist idea that women exist to service men with their bodies, and that female sexual pleasure isn't important.
The pain must be evenly spread. It's not every American man's fault Roe is gone and it's plenty of American women's fault that it is. The bottom line is sex just got more dangerous for everyone, but especially women. Sexual intercourse in a restricted or no-abortion state needs two condoms to be safer. If intercourse is out, then men need to up their game in the sack and earn their partner's screams of pleasure.
Alyssa Milano and a fictional married war protester may be tongue-in-cheek, but there's a method to their madness. We need to spread the pain. Okay, Kavanaugh's doe-eyed poor-poor-baby wife won't refuse her wifely duties for her overprivileged frat boy, but what if his friends began griping to him at country club parties that this was all his fault?
Nothing will motivate American men to correct an injustice quite like limiting or cutting off male sexual pleasure.
Start with the blowjobs. Trust me, they'll turn into Gloria-freaking-Steinim before you even get to the condom thing, and we'll have Roe back by Thanksgiving.
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