Women are essentially conducting one of the most brutal cost-benefit analyses in human history every time they consider sexual intimacy with a man, and most men have absolutely no fucking clue how calculated and terrifying this decision has become for women in our atomized hellscape of a society. When a woman looks at a man and feels sexual attraction, her brain immediately launches into this devastating risk assessment: if I have sex with this person and get pregnant, will I be financially destroyed, socially abandoned, and left to raise a child in complete isolation while working multiple jobs just to afford rent and daycare? Because that's the most likely outcome in our current system. Even with birth control, even with all the precautions, the possibility of pregnancy turns every sexual encounter into a potential life-ruining catastrophe for women.

In a tribal society, a woman could see a man who was strong, funny, kind to children, good at providing for the group, emotionally intelligent, whatever traits turned her on, and she could act on that attraction knowing that if pregnancy resulted, the entire community would rally around her and the child. The man's individual economic status was irrelevant because the tribe's collective resources would ensure survival. His personality quirks were less critical because child-rearing was distributed across multiple adults. Even if the relationship with that specific man didn't work out, she wouldn't be condemned to poverty and isolation. The tribe wanted children - they represented the future and continuation of the group. Pregnancy was celebrated, not feared.

But we've created this insane system where women have to essentially perform due diligence on every potential sexual partner like they're considering a business merger. Does he have stable employment? Good credit? Mental health stability? A 401k? Health insurance? Will he stick around if pregnancy happens? Will he contribute financially? Will he actually help raise the child or just disappear? Can he handle the stress of sleepless nights without becoming abusive? Does he have family support that could help? Will he respect her bodily autonomy throughout pregnancy and child-rearing? The list is endless because the stakes are so fucking high.

And even if she finds a man who checks all these boxes, she still has to worry about losing him to death, divorce, job loss, mental health crisis, or just general life circumstances that could leave her stranded with a child and no support system. Because we've made child-rearing this completely privatized individual responsibility instead of a community investment, every sexual decision becomes this high-stakes gamble where the woman bears almost all the risk and consequences.

Meanwhile, some men are walking around horny and frustrated, completely oblivious to the fact that women aren't rejecting them personally - women are rejecting the terrifying prospect of potential single motherhood in a society that offers them virtually no support. The problem isn't that women don't want sex or don't find men attractive. The problem is that we've made the potential consequences of sex so catastrophically life-altering for women that rational self-preservation demands extreme caution.

If we had genuine community support for families - universal healthcare, guaranteed housing, community child-rearing, economic security regardless of relationship status - women could actually act on their sexual desires without having to conduct a full risk assessment of every man's potential as a co-parent and provider. They could have sex because they wanted to, not because they'd found someone who seemed financially and emotionally stable enough to bet their entire future on.

The sexual revolution promised women freedom to enjoy sex and create families, but it delivered the opposite: a world where sex became even more treacherous and terrifying because now women bear the consequences almost entirely alone.