n the rush to proclaim that women and men are equals in every single respect, radical feminists have gotten a lot wrong.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the realm of sexuality.  There was a song that intoned that women want sex is as much as men do.  I have no qualms with that claim.  What is of importance is not whether women and men want sex to the same extent or not.  After all, any generalization in this regard must be adjusted to the particular woman and man involved.  The real issue is whether or not the ineliminable differences between the bodies of women and men have fundamentally different implications for the sexual experience of women and men.  

Radical feminism has made the mistake of suggesting that when it comes to sexuality the only substantive difference between women and men is that men have a penis whereas women have a vagina.  But this radically under characterizes the difference between men and women.

Even allowing that the sexual experience is vastly richer than vaginal penetration, what has to be acknowledged as well is that there is a vast psychological difference between women and men when it comes to the act of coitus.  During that act, women are penetrated and men are not; and that difference is absolutely profound.  For instance, it involves trust on the part of women that has no parallel whatsoever on the lives of men. 

Between couples deeply committed to one another and united by love, women have to trust men in a way that no man ever has to trust a woman during the act of coitus. 

Imagine, then, the very vulnerable position that hooking-up puts women in.  For the best analogy that I can think of would be that a man submitting to a rectal examination by anyone who walked through the door and claimed to be a physician. 

The very nature of hooking-up is that two people get together and have sex and if, per chance, they happen to learn anything about one another, including one’s another’s name, that is an unintended consequence.  Yet, women are supposed to have sex with a complete stranger with all that this involves in terms of making herself extremely vulnerable during the act of coitus.  And let us be brutally honest, any guy who is out to hook-up with a gal for sex wants there to be coitus at some point during that sexual encounter. 

This might explain why there is such a high correlation between women who drink and engage in hooking-up.  This is because the alcohol serves to numb women to the vulnerability that they take on in having coitus sex with a complete stranger. I regard the vulnerability to be so great as to constitute a form of psychological duress that will not go away, no matter what story of female-male equality that one puts forth.

It is this truth that radical feminists have ignored; and their doing so has caused young women great damage; for it has resulted in young women going against their better instincts.  After all, no self-respecting women can think it a good thing to make herself vulnerable sexually to a perfect stranger.

Changing gears entirely, another difference between women and men is that women become pregnant and men do not.  Of course, abortion is available nowadays.  Just so, there is the poignant fact that abortion is an operation.  It is not on the order of a manicure or a haircut.  This is surely yet another reason for hooking-up to be something that women find repulsive. 

Of course, the possibility of pregnancy underscores in a most dramatic way that women and men have quite different bodies.  On the one hand, from none of this does it follow that women cannot have or should not have an insatiable sexual appetite.  On the other hand, given the fundamental ways in which the bodies of women and men differ, why would anyone think it appropriate for women and men to be equally open to uncommitted sex?  Of course, men like the idea.  But that should come as no surprise.  For them, never has equality felt so good.  And I meant to use just those words. 

If before the era of hooking-up, it was a man’s world, radical feminism with its embracing of hooking-up has made things even more of man’s world. 

What I have argued?  I have not claimed that sex is wrong for women or that women should not be desirous of sex.  I hold no such view.  Nor, again, have I denied that women have been inappropriately excluded from positions of authority and power.  It seems to me obvious that they have.  But equality in the work place, which is as it should be, will never change the fact that women and men have fundamentally different bodies. 

Both women and men should take one another seriously.  And this means that genuine differences in the bodily configuration of women and men should be acknowledged.  A vagina is one kind of organ; a penis is an entirely different kind of organ.  Neither can be defined in terms of the absence of the other.  Accordingly, a body with a vagina and a body with a penis do not have an identical perspective on the interaction that takes place between these two organs.  No one thinks for a moment that the tongue and the hands should yield identical sensations of the same object.  And we expect people to have a concern for protecting their tongue that they do not have for protecting their hands.  Interestingly, we have more of an analogy here than not between the vagina and the penis. 

The mistake of radical feminism lies in the presupposition that equality between women and men has meant eradicating all differences in social behavior between women and men.  Ironically, because the bodies of women and men are constituted quite differently, eradicating all differences in social behavior between women and men is possible only at the expense of the well-being of either women or men—or perhaps both. 

There is no doubt in my mind that women are the worse off for the attempt to eliminate all differences in social behavior between women and men.  And one bit of proof of this is that while men are now more demanding of women—expecting them “to put out sexually” from the very start, it is hardly the case that men are more respecting of women.  This constitutes a loss-loss situation for women.  The expression “bitches and hoes” has become a part of the lingo for referring to women.  That ought to have been a hint that what wss countenanced as progress for women was anything but that.  It is, though, the language of hooking-up.  Men go out looking for “some bitches and hoes” to lay.  And that is preicsely what men find.