I took time to read it this afternoon. Mostly I feel like the author missed the entire point, or was trying hard to misunderstand. My thoughts in response — I tried to go point by point:

- The first item in the tweet thread she takes issue with is the the theoretical idea that a man could cause 1000 unwanted pregnancies in a year. And shoot, that’s when I knew we were in trouble. I feel confident that example was obviously silly and fantastically implausible. The idea that she wants to take it seriously gives me a clue that she has very likely missed the whole point of the essay.

- Next, she’s very troubled that I used the male birth control study as an example. She writes, “I hope I’m not going out on a limb, here, but I think I can file: “gosh I wish my husband was moodier, more violent, and more suicidal” among the phrases I will never hear a woman say.” And I would agree with her. I’m sure no woman would say that.

But somehow the anonymous author missed the bigger picture here, which is that this is basically the only hormonal birth control option for men the public has ever even heard about. The medical/pharmaceutical community keeps coming up with new forms of side-effect-laden birth control options for women, instead of coming up with any viable options for men.

She also seems to discount the side effects women experience from our birth control options. How many women are “moodier, more violent, and more suicidal” because of their birth control? Answer: Too damn many. Why is this okay for women and not men?

- Then she briefly touches on this sentence I wrote: “we really don’t mind if women suffer, physically or mentally, as long as it makes things easier for men.”

She thinks I’ve pulled that out of nowhere, which I found a bit baffling. Saying this isn’t true is like saying patriarchy isn’t harmful (to both men and women). It doesn’t really feel like it’s something that can be argued. I mean any person who’s ever covered for a man who is a sexual harasser — at work, or school, or home, or church — has demonstrated how we let women suffer to make things easier for men. She suggests if I get new friends that this will no longer be true. Which I found obnoxious. But I guess she’s feeling sassy?

- Next: Hooray! She likes birth control and agrees it should be easier to access. We have something in common!

- Ah shoot. I lost her again. She is absolutely stunned at the tiny mention of stealthing (removing a condom during sex without telling your partner). She does some calculations, determines stealthing is exceedingly rare (no one said it was common), and that women sabotage birth control at least as often. Cool. No one argues otherwise. (Stealthing is not a big focus of my essay in any way.)

Then she ends this section by saying, “Nobody should formulate their world view as if an entire gender is out to get them.” Which I totally agree with. But I’m pretty sure she was trying to say that’s what my essay was doing. (It wasn’t.)

- She’s not happy about me mentioning pulling out. Okay. The stats I mention are correct. 96% if done correctly, 78% in practice. Not sure what to tell her. I didn’t make them up.

- She’s VERY not happy about these lines I wrote: “We’ve trained men from birth that their pleasure is of utmost importance in the world. (And to dis-associate sex and pregnancy.)”

It’s unclear why this makes her angry. The anonymous author seems to think she lives in a non-patriarchal society and that women and men have reached full equality. She doesn’t back this thinking up with anything, but recommends again that I get new friends. What I wrote about prioritizing male pleasure is not new or particularly original. I would recommend she read Girls & Sex by Peggy Orenstein.

- Woah. Now she thinks I’m slut-shaming. Again, I’m confident it was very clear to the vast majority of readers that I was doing the opposite. I was pointing out that a lot of people shame woman for having sex, for enjoying sex, and for unwanted pregnancies. I was pointing out that nothing about female sexual pleasure is harmful or shameful. Doesn’t it seem like she is intentionally trying to misunderstand at this point?

- Now she’s getting messy. I give examples of why men might not know they’ve caused a pregnancy, and she jumps to the conclusion that I’m passing moral judgement. I’m not.

- On the child support stat, she’s right. It was a typo which I corrected in this essay. Here’s the correct info: Only 61 percent of required payments by men are actually made, and there are little to no repercussions for skipping out. In some states, failing to pay child support doesn’t even affect your credit. If a man does pay child support, it doesn’t come close to what is required by a woman in the case of an unwanted pregnancy.

- Then she pretends to take my pointedly silly castration argument seriously. Why? What is she trying to prove here?

- Up until now, I’ve been mostly mystified, but I’ve reached a point that she actually made me angry. The anonymous author kind of randomly brings up abortion in the middle of the critique and writes: “The nuanced discussion is about what point in prenatal development we start granting rights to the fetus, and what those rights look like. That discussion is complicated, and nobody seems to be having it.”

I mean, are you kidding me? Nobody seems to be having it? To me, a member of a very conservative religious community, I can assure you that people are trying to have it, but that it proves pretty impossible if the pro-life stance is “stopping a beating heart is murder.” To me, what she wrote was a big reveal that the anonymous author doesn’t know or talk with pro-life believers. The author is deeply out of touch with reality here.

- She ends this section by referring to my essay as “all this man hating silliness.” Really? Where did I man hate? My confident answer: Nowhere. Because I don’t hate men.

- Now she’s mad I brought up vasectomies. It’s back to mysterious. Her husband has a vasectomy, and the stats on reversal are pretty freaking good. 90% if you’re young, 40% if you’re old. And can you imagine if we focused on making it better, easier, even more reversible? What kind of techniques would be invented, sooner than later, if vasectomies were more normalized?

- Now she gets to what really makes her mad about my essay. She says, “in putting 100% of the responsibility on men, it removes the women’s agency.” Nope that’s not true. Not even close. That’s not how any of this works.

- I mean. It’s clear the whole thing went entirely over her head. She missed it completely. She is of course welcome to blame it on my writing. It was my first twitter thread and was admittedly rough. She may like this edited essay-version on Medium better.

Here’s what she missed:

1. Currently the burden of birth control, the effects of birth control, and the consequences of failed birth control, are almost exclusively on women. My essay attempts to highlight the imbalance, by shifting the conversation to focus on men.
2. I attempt to show how ridiculous it is when politicians grandstand about, or try to legislate, women’s reproductive rights, while never mentioning the men involved.
3. I wanted to write an essay that got both sides of the abortion debate to a middle ground, and figured out prevention is a way to do just that.

The anonymous author doesn’t argue against any of those aims, or even acknowledge them. She missed all three. It seems like she got stuck on the title. While it’s biologically accurate, it was intended to be jarring and to bring readers in. But the title is not the point of the essay. Certainly having both men and women sharing equal responsibility for birth control is common sense. And yet, is that what commonly happens in reality? Nope.

I think people are good and want to do the right thing. Both men and women. There are a lot of men who don’t take on the responsibility of birth control, and seem to be content letting women carry the burden. Is it because they are evil men trying to hurt women? Of course not. As a society, for whatever reason, (maybe because we have a deeply patriarchal culture?), we haven’t asked men to pay attention to it, and assumed women would/should carry the risks and burdens.

If my essay gets more men to take on their fair share of birth control responsibility — especially keeping in mind that male birth control options are healthier and easier than female birth control options — that would be a great thing. If my essay helps people recognize that we shame women for unwanted pregnancies but don’t shame men (there’s no need to shame either men or women!), that would be a great thing. And if my essay helps people across the political spectrum bypass the abortion conversation, which divides us so deeply, and brings people together to talk about prevention, to my mind, that is also a great thing.

P.S. — I’m unclear on why her response needed to be written anonymously. Lots of people disagree with the essay and say so — even here on this post — and they aren’t attacked.