Our perilous sexual moment

Everyone seems furious. And most everyone is wrong.

A happy couple.
(Image credit: Illustrated | OJO Images Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo, Tatomm/iStock)

We all need more freedom to openly discuss — and engage in — sex. Instead, we all too often pounce on provocative opinions and hem in what is deemed "acceptable" bounds of debate. This is a shame.

Consider the rhetorical maelstrom created when George Mason University economist Robin Hanson recently suggested that the Toronto attack — in which a self-described incel (an involuntary celibate) mowed down 10 pedestrians — shows that we should worry not just about income inequality, but also the sexual inequality that is leaving too many men sexually frustrated. Hanson, whose blog Overcoming Bias is dedicated to raising uncomfortable questions that cut against ingrained thinking, mused that "cultural elites" might consider "redistribution" schemes that could help incels get a fair share of the action.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.