why i will never defend duty sex

and why we shouldn't treat sex as a reward that women give to men

Note: While most of my writing is currently free, due to the commentary I have experienced when speaking on this subject, and because I get a little more personal in this piece, it is for paid subscribers only.

On a Thursday night, I was at a crowded brewery watching the Carolina Hurricanes win game 5 of the Stanley Cup when I sent off a tweet that became The Discourse™ for the next week. It’s sitting at 12M views as of this post, and people had…feelings.

Before I delve into this, I want to get several things out of the way:

• I believe that for most people, sex is an important part of a relationship

• Some of this may be applicable to queer relationships, but I am specifically referring to heterosexual dynamics

• This is not about individual men or women, but rather a system that produces poor outcomes, which many people will fall on the outskirts of.

• I am not talking about chronically dead bedrooms or abusive dynamics where one person intentionally withholds sex from the other to punish them.
  

“Lie back and think of England” is commonly attributed to Victorian-era marriage advice. Then you have the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who wrote in 1929, “Marriage is for women the commonest form of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.”

This is not far off from what Andrea Dworkin said in 1987 in an interview: “There are many women who, for various reasons, have to barter sexual intercourse for economic survival. This is not a good thing. Some of those women are married, and some of those women are on the street.”