Causes are odd things. A specific cause often leads to positions that conflict with another set of positions that originate in another—equally worthwhile—cause.

This seems to be the case with PETA’s recent appeal to women to have a sex strike! Specifically, they want women to stop having sex with meat eating men!

The position is defended on the basis of solid research that establishes that men have more carbon emissions than women. This column’s grouse is not with that research. It seems intuitive that men have a bigger carbon footprint than women.

However, the issue we take is the implicit assumption that sex is a resource is that women control and can use it to change the behaviour of men. This assumption reframes women’s desire for sex as immaterial and relatively insignificant.

This we cannot abide!

It is a toxic assumption and one responsible for the worst misconceptions about sex.

It is an assumption that leads to men thinking of sex as something they have to negotiate with women, and that negotiation often gets entangled with notions of power.

It is an assumption that leads to women’s desire being wished away, the surest way for men to be bad in bed. The insecurities that arose from that lead to the most conspicuous manifestations of the much invoked ‘toxic masculinity.’

This is simply not cool, PETA. Surely if you think harder about what you want to achieve you will find better answers for how to get there, than this mindless appeal.