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Kudos to Jessica Fischer at The Sexademic, Shelby Knox at Misogyny Watch, Jos at Feministing, and other feminist and feminist-leaning bloggers for calling out that stupid (and potentially triggering if you’ve got issues) Sex Really “men are assholes so make sure you use condoms” public service announcement.

If you’re having sex with the kind of men represented in that stupid PSA, and there’s not even anything wrong if that’s your decision, then yeah, you should probably insist on condoms. Just for starters. But you of all people probably know that.

But the implication that all men are like that is…

Well, it’s reinforcing the dominant “no-sex” class paradigm wherein not only are women disinterested in sex, at least for its own sake*, which I usually talk about more, but also the equally dominant notion that men are obligately, reflexively, thoughtlessly, incontinently, perpetually… and possibly exclusively sexual.

Actual feminists get that there’s more to men that that. Anti-feminist rape apologists and slut-shamers like Laura Sessions Stepp, who was involved with this PSA, don’t.

Inside the dominant paradigm all men must be that way — snakes, snails, and out of control giant hairless indiscriminately-wagging dog tails. Just as all women must be like the “girlfriend” character on the phone in the PSA — too wrapped up in wanting a baby to notice to care what her boyfriend thinks about sex. And, not to beat a dead horse, but if the thesis of the ad is “all men are irresponsible, inconsiderate sex-hungry assholes” then the message of the ad is that’s just what all women have to put up with, with all men… in which case using condoms is at best irrelevant and at worst counterproductive to the message that…

a) all men are obligate, reflexive, and sexual
b) all women don’t care because they just want babies and therefore
c) contrary to the surface “warning” to women the underlying message sent to both women and men don’t bother with condoms after all because men don’t like them and it just prolongs how often women have to have to endure icky old sex to get that baby.

Which, d) is pretty much the dominant paradigm folks like Stepp earnestly reinforce.

Never mind that even when men talk that way they tend to be considerably more attentive with their partners one-on-one. And never mind that women are directly interested in sex and not just its “innocent byproducts.”

Pay attention, instead, to the fact that the ad viciously stereotypes men and women, that it instructs men’s and women’s behavior by setting expectations for it. It’s instructing women that the only good thing they’ll ever get out of sex is babies. It instructs men that women really secretly do want unprotected sex, or at least don’t care if they do.

But anyway, why is it people keep getting away with saying it’s feminists that hate men?