The terrible advice we give women about sex and relationships

Advice-giving as a way to normalize oppression

When I had my daughter, one of the first things I noticed about online mommy forums is how they normalized abusive, unequal, and bad marriages. A woman would post about her husband forgetting to feed the kids, or ignoring Mother’s Day because “you’re not my mother!” or pretending like he couldn’t possibly figure out how to clean toilets or whatever, and inevitably most group members would just advise the poster, “That’s just the way men are!” Often with a LOL added on for good measure. Because, of course, women sacrificing their lives to the altar of male incompetence is absolutely hilarious in a world where women, their time, and their suffering do not matter.

Pushing back on patriarchal norms is incredibly difficult. It requires social support. When advice givers fail to provide support, and instead urge women to accept and even love whatever bullshit patriarchy spews at them, it becomes even harder to live a good life.

Perhaps that’s why we collectively give so much advice to mothers—none of which focuses on the mother’s needs, and virtually all of which focuses on making her feel inadequate, incompetent, and deeply ashamed.

It’s certainly why we tell moms to be grateful for men who bring home a paycheck and do not beat them, no matter how neglectful and terrible their partners are in every other domain.

It’s why we shame women for divorcing shitty men rather than throw them parties lauding their bravery and honoring their suffering.

So I’m experimenting with a new feature: Once a month, in place of Feminist Advice Friday, I’ll run an example of bad, misogynistic advice in a real-world advice column. Then I’ll discuss why the advice is so terrible, and what a better columnist would have said instead.

I’ve added a poll to the end of this newsletter so you can offer feedback on this new feature. This helps me make my work better, and ensure you get a newsletter that’s worth your time (and your money, if you’re a paid subscriber). So please click on the poll, and consider commenting to tell me what you think!

Updates and Upcoming Newsletters

• I’ll be doing a live Q&A session here on Substack on July 23. I’ll also leave the Q&A open for 24 hours so you can leave questions for me to answer later. It’s a true ask me anything, and I’ll address as many questions as I can, so mark your calendars.

• The first round of data from the State of Postpartum survey is now live and available to free subscribers. Check it out. Round two of the data will be available to free subscribers in 10 days.

• Want to assess how unequal your relationship is? I’ve made an easy tool for that. Check it out in last week’s newsletter for paid subscribers.

Monthly Bad Advice

This month’s bad advice features Rich and Stoya on Slate, advising a woman who wants to know if “all men” make the same mistakes her husband does.

We don’t need to read the column to know that the answer is no, and that the woman is leaning hard on the notion that all men are incompetent so she doesn’t have to think critically about what is wrong with her defective mate.

This woman has been trying to teach her partner how to have sex with her for years. He can’t find her clitoris, and repeatedly “accidentally” penetrates her anally because he apparently also cannot find her vagina. He does not know how she likes to be touched, even though she has shown him over and over.

In short, he seems incapable of learning.

What do our advice-giving heroes offer to this woman, who worries all men are this way and whose partner is physically injuring her during sex?

Maybe he has ADHD.

Yes, really. They spend the rest of the column discussing the husband’s purported ADHD. And talking about themselves, of course.

I’ve talked before about how men’s neurodivergence is often used as an excuse for bad behavior. This takes it to a whole new level. The advice-seeker didn’t even say her husband has ADHD. The columnists have completely manufactured a diagnosis so they can then use the diagnosis to excuse his reprehensible and incompetent behavior that is hurting his wife.

This is offensive to all of humanity, but especially to people with ADHD.

The assumptions seem to include, in no particular order:

• People with ADHD are incapable of learning.

• People with ADHD are bad at sex.

• If someone is bad at sex, and there is no explanation for why, the most plausible explanation is ADHD.

Of course no one assumes the woman has ADHD. And I’m sure that, if she did, she’d get a wall of text telling her to focus on communication skills and empathy and blah blah blah because women with neurodivergence never get a pass.

The use of neurodivergence as an excuse for shitty male behavior is now so normalized that we just assume if a man behaves badly, surely it must not be his fault. Surely it must be because he’s neurotypical.

It couldn’t possibly be that a culture that constantly tells men women’s pleasure doesn’t matter, that constantly instructs men to prioritize their own needs, that feeds a 24/7/365 drumbeat of unrealistic pornography and beauty standards to men is a culprit.

Oh, no. Definitely it’s not the wide-spread, universal experience of exposure to misogyny.

ADHD makes more sense.

Blah fucking blah.

Here’s what a better advice columnist would say:

Is your partner able to find other things he wants or needs? For example, if you put a food he hates next to a food he likes, is he able to locate the food he likes? Can he drive? Does he routinely accidentally shove food up his nose?

If he’s not struggling with these issues, then his struggle to find your clitoris is about his intentions, not his abilities.

Talk to him one more time, clearly and directly. Show him exactly what you need, and tell him that anally penetrating you or otherwise injuring you are no longer acceptable.

If it continues, stop having sex with him. Sex is not a favor you owe him. If he can’t do it without hurting you, then stop. And spend some time thinking about why it is you keep having painful, unpleasant sex. What unhealthy norms have you internalized?

You deserve better. And I suspect this is just one of many ways in which this man ignores your needs and centers his own.

And no, of course this is not a problem with all men, or even most men. Men who want to keep having sex have to learn how to do it without injuring their partners.

There are millions of people with ADHD all over the world who manage not to accidentally anally penetrate their partners, BTW.