Sex and the State

I just watched Death of the Pastor’s Wife. Whew. I have thoughts. If you haven’t seen it, it’s the story of a woman named Mica who met and fell in love with a Pastor of one of those Evangelical, non-denominational churches named J.P. The two married. Things got very weird. And she ended up “killing herself.” Mica and J.P. had a classic love story. Mica was 16 years old and homeless when she started working for J.P., who was more than a decade older.

In Asia Times, Noah Smithjust wrote that standard economic measures can’t really explain why Americans are growing less happy with their lives over time. The problem is that what makes for a happy, meaningful life is much harder to measure than GDP or median income. I agree that standard economic measures alone won’t do the trick. But it’s not because it’s so hard to measure what predicts a happy, meaningful life. That’s actually pretty easy.

I’ve always been a little self-conscious about being so horny all the time. Of course, that hardly stopped me from posting nudes and lewds and writing about my sex life in detail. In my defense, my options sucked. I could have: Pretended it wasn’t happening. Boring. Inauthentic. Reifies misogyny and sex-negativity (but I repeat myself). Leaned into it. Attention-grabbing. Challenges the bullshit.

I have not followed the Lindsay Clancy case closely at all. I do know that she’s currently on trial, facing first-degree murder charges in the deaths of her three children. She has admitted to killing Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months. Sex and the State is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. She has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and claims she suffered from postpartum psychosis.

So, I read Dr. Claudia Goldin’s latest drop, The Rise of Female Autonomy and the Decline of Fertility: The Role of Mismatch. Goldin, for my little nuggets in training (that’s what I’m calling Goldin’s fanbase) is a Nobel-prize winning economist who’s been studying fertility trends. To sum it up for my babies without time to take this dank nug to the face (that’s what I’m calling reading her papers cover-to-cover) – it’s the phones and the men. Sex and the State is a reader-supported publication.

Let’s get this out of the way first. I have 8k Substack subscribers and 21k Twitter followers. I’m in the top 25% on OnlyFans. If that seems impressive to you, keep reading. If you know that’s what miserable failure looks like, you’re probably good. Close the tab. My expertise is that no one is more motivated to understand an industry than a mofo who can’t hack it, but keeps trying. Also, celebrity culture raised me. Some of you learned to read with Hop on Pop.

There was a time, kids, when you had to ask another live human directly for their recommendation when you wanted a new book, movie, or television show. The word “algorithm” was exclusive to math nerds. In those dark days, to avoid talking to someone you could pick up another book or magazine or… I’m honestly not sure. These days, “platforms” use their “algos” to decide what I consume next. As someone who is “very online,” you’d think I’d love this. And yet, I’m starting to wonder. I grew up online.

I want to live here again so badly. Then again, I could do without a few of the current residents. Coming from Alabama, it’s a real “out of the frying pan, into the fire” situation with regard to right-wing nutjobs. Then again a third time, that’s what the San Franciscans said about me. Budget-wise, I need to wait. I need to save up. I need my condo to appreciate. Or, at least waiting seems like the wise choice. Rob also wants to save. We’re looking at about three more years in Huntsvegas.

I kept asking myself one thing while reading Freddie deBoer’s latest book, All In Your Head (available for pre-order now!): “Who is this book for?” My babies might read that as a criticism. If anything, it’s a compliment. Our modern media landhellscape is constant tribal warfare. Every piece of “content” that “performs” is for one group and against another. What is this book about? Here are my takeaways: Movements to abolish psychiatry as a practice and mental illness as a concept are bad.

One of the reasons I never had kids is that there’s just no guarantee that they won’t suck. For example, a friend of mine has a friend whose teenage son is virulently anti-Semetic. Making a bad situation worse, she married a man who’s Jewish. This got me thinking. I’ve spent the past few years reading and writing a lot about what the heck is going on with men and boys.