Smart Sex - a review

Smart Sex by Jennifer Roback Morse has got to be one of the worst self-help books I have ever seen. The author starts with the warning "Please remove your political hat beofre reading. This book will self-destruct in the hands of politicians and policy wonks." Clearly, the author intends to be non-political, right? WRONG!

Of course, I should have been smart enough to know that a book endorsed by Chuck Colson (Founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries) would be anything but apolitical, or anything but a piece of propaganda. But I thought maybe Ms. Morse, after such an opening statement, would get beyond that. On the contrary she used the right's Calvinistic platform as her beginning arguments and tried to make them fit the complex world of sexual relationships. In the process she develops some rather strange and dangerous concepts.

For example, in a section describing the horrors of cohabitation, she describes how oxytocin is pumped into a woman's bloodstream when she is in labor, breastfeeding, or having an orgasm. She also says that oxytocin is known to decrease a person's cognitive ability and impair memory. Then she concludes that "This combination of factors may also explain why domestic violence is so much more prevalent among cohabiting couples than among married couples." What? How does a marriage license decrease oxytocin unless the age old joke about marriage decreasing the frequency of sex is correct.

Without understanding Maslow's heirarchy of human needs or ignoring it's implications, Ms. Morse pokes fun at statements by Gloria Feldt of Planned Parenthood saying reproductive self-determination is a fundamental freedom. Sexual rights and reproductive self-determination aren't even on Ms. Morse's radar screen. Ms. Morse claims that sex was meant to have consequences of pregnancy and to remove that consequence is both irrational and wrong. Clearly, the progress that we have made since the time when it was illegal just to distribute information about contraceptives should all be reversed. Ms. Morse liked things just fine when people were required to accept the consequences of unintended pregnancy. And the higher the risk, the better. The fact that women almost always bear the greater burden is lost on our sexist Ms. Morse, who thinks that must be the natural order of things.

She even re-defines date-rape so she can blame the victims who are "talked into" having sex. If it were real rape it wouldn't be called "date rape" she claims, thus eliminating in her mind any seriousness to the problem. In fact she says, "If sex were really no big deal, just another activity, then being talked into unwanted sexual activity shouldn't be any bigger deal than being talked into going to a ball game when you would have preferred a movie." If a man had compared date rape to being persuaded to attend a ball game, he would never hear the end of it. Ms. Morse should be called on this as well.

Don't bother to buy the book. Check it out of the library if you must but this sort of pseudo self-help shouldn't be encouraged.