To cleanse the palate, I have no deep thoughts on this. I just wanted to share the following passage from WaPo’s story about it, to let you know that our species might not survive much longer.

Hopefully we’ll last long enough for a custom to develop in which a man initiates sex by handing his lady a literal written introduction to his dong. That would be both woke and classy, I think, and obviously would favor those of us well practiced by profession at barfing up charming turns of phrase.

Now that I think of it, dick pics are a less literate man’s version of the dong introduction.

Over the summer, Geoffrey Knight is in bed with a woman he is dating. He puts his hand on her breast, and she swats it away. “You need to ask before you touch me,” he recalls her saying. Knight apologizes, saying he had assumed it was okay because they had just had sex…

Flash-forward a few months, and Knight, a 25-year-old Washingtonian, is sleeping with someone new. He is asking “Can I touch you here?” “Can I do this?” every step of the way, and his partner wants to know what is with all the questions. She prefers a more proactive approach.

Knight is well-prepared to date in the #MeToo era. He has completed a two-month discussion class on how to reject toxic masculinity. He still has his “Consent is sexy” T-shirt from freshman year of college. He has thought about how men have the power in courtship, and with that, the ability to abuse it. So when he meets a woman while out at a bar, rather than ask for her number and potentially make her feel pressured to give it, he will give her his number and wait for her to text.

He had sex with someone, then touched her breast unaggressively — and she literally slapped his hand away for crossing the line? What?

It sounds like he’s overcorrecting for a single bad experience. For every woman who’d give him five across the eyes for a post-coital fondle, I bet a dozen would have to suppress the urge to laugh listening to him babble about his “toxic masculinity” class. Same for the “Consent is sexy” tee. It’s not the sentiment that’s objectionable, it’s the desperation in signaling his sensitivity. In his own progressive way, he’s guilty of the same sin as pick-up artists: He’s trying way too hard. How do you get hot for a cartoon cultural stereotype like the woke bro who needs you to know how woke he is? How do you lose yourself in a lustful moment when Pajama Boy keeps pausing to whisper, “I respect your autonomy”? Is this a hook-up or a women’s-studies seminar?

This is what happens in the bedroom, I’d imagine, when you go home with this guy:

Man Wishes Women In Crowded Bar Would Let Him Read Jane Austen Novel In Peace https://t.co/m0IyxUZNYr pic.twitter.com/XZBDJ7zfWl

— The Onion (@TheOnion) February 11, 2018

His sex music, I’m guessing, is the Indigo Girls. Not because it turns him on but because he hopes, in his own cloddish way, that it’ll make you “comfortable” enough to give him some.

Here’s another head-scratcher about a different guy in the WaPo piece:

A 25-year-old single man in West Virginia, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concern over his job security, used to frequently pick up women in bars. He is treading lightly these days. “I don’t know what anyone’s thinking nowadays,” he says. “I don’t know what could be considered harassment or what won’t be.”

He’s worried about sexual harassment yet his M.O. is … picking up women in bars. Say what? If you’re not touching her, you’re not following her around pestering her after she’s turned you down, and she doesn’t work for you, what would constitute “harassment” at a meat-market scene like a bar? How do these guys struggle so much with the basic dynamics of human interaction? You can see why Ross Douthat’s recent thought balloon about banning porn was popped more quickly than any NYT op-ed idea in recent memory. What would these dudes do for satisfaction otherwise?

I know what social conservatives will say to that: They’d develop interpersonal skills by interacting with women instead of spending most of their time watching X-rated material. Perhaps. But maybe another social conservative idea would solve the problem less heavy-handedly than banning porn. All of the men in the WaPo piece seem to be struggling with their partners’ needs because they tend towards fleeting, casual encounters. It’d be less of a challenge figuring out what your lady friend is comfortable with if you knew her better, no? Intimacy, which usually requires more than a single evening of close contact, solves a lot of consent issues. Next time try wearing an “Intimacy is sexy” t-shirt while you’re at the bar reading Jane Austen. They’ll be all over you.