And why radical feminism helps us find a path to real intimacy.

[An edited version of this essay appeared in the Houston Chronicle.]

The #MeToo movement fights back against sexual harassment and assault, rejecting the idea that women exist for men’s sexual pleasure.

But alongside the growing success of that movement, the pornography industry continues to thrive by presenting explicit images that sexualize exactly this idea — that women exist to serve men’s desires, whatever those desires might be, no matter how much humiliation and suffering they impose on women.

Increased attention on men’s violence against women has focused attention on not only rape and sexual harassment but also on the cultural support system for such behavior. While only a small fraction of men violate the law, lots of men engage in less blatant forms of aggressive and coercive behavior that injure and undermine women, and even more men are bystanders who fail to challenge other men’s abuse.

I spent the first half of my life trying to be a “normal” guy. That project didn’t go so well. The good news is that in the second half of my life I gave up trying, and things got better.

What led me to change course? An unexpected interaction with radical feminist writings that offered a critique of patriarchy, followed by the opportunity to meet radical feminists living in a patriarchal society who were working to advance the radical feminist critique of pornography and of men’s sexual exploitation of women in patriarchy.

As sex and gender issues simmer — and routinely boil over — at every level of government, now more than ever we need clear definitions of terms used in the transgender debate.

Since publishing my first essay challenging the ideology of the transgender movement four years ago, I have often found myself in settings where liberal allies of that movement try to divert a difficult discussion by claiming the moral high ground of compassion. With each of these encounters, I become increasingly frustrated at this “compassion-as-cover” dodge that seems designed to give liberals a way to avoid accountability.

A week after anonymous charges of sexual harassment against sociologist Michael Kimmel surfaced, I suggested that his half-hearted “apology” was unacceptable and that the pro-feminist men’s movement’s response was inadequate. With two more weeks now past, a follow-up challenge to Kimmel—a leading figure in the feminist-influenced study of men and masculinities—is appropriate.

The irony of one of the leading pro-feminist male scholars being accused of sexual harassment is painfully obvious. The accusations against sociologist Michael Kimmel have been anonymous so far and investigations are just beginning, but we need not wait to take seriously Kimmel’s own advice to men who find themselves in this position.

Since it’s becoming more common for people to “self-identify” in terms of sex/gender, I want to do the same, by challenging two ways I have been inaccurately labeled.

Men have long claimed to own, control, or have the right to exploit women’s reproductive power and sexuality. Those claims are deeply embedded in contemporary culture—so deeply that the resulting practices are routinely taken to be “just the way things are”—but the practices also are inconsistent with widely shared moral values of liberty, equality, and solidarity.