A long, long time ago, humans practiced a little-known, ancient tradition known as “getting married before having sex”.

For a lot of people, this was religious in nature. It was believed by some that God would punish you with a bad afterlife (and maybe even a bad life in this world) because God considered having sex a sin unless you’re married. For a lot more people, this was more of a social thing, because if word spread that you had broken this rule, you could be socially ostracized, which was a very big deal back when there was no internet and traveling was hard, so your local community was your entire community.

It’s worth noting that way back then, people were getting married right out of school, like around age 18-21, to people in their hometowns, then living out quiet lives together doing mundane jobs in their mundane communities. We didn’t do this thing we do today where kids are in school until they’re practically 30 racking up six-digits of debt before finally getting a job where they wear khakis and a dress shirt. Back then, telling your 15 year old child “You’re just a kid. Wait until you’re 18 and married to have sex” probably sounded a lot more reasonable than today’s version: “Wait 15 more years until you’re 30 and done with school, then get a job, start paying down that debt, get a few promotions, buy a house, and maybe then you’re ready to get married and can start having sex.”

For the most part, humans no longer practice the tradition of getting married before having sex. A very rare few do, and they are considered extremists. Backward radically religious nutjobs. Most people think there is something wrong with them, and that it is an extremely stupid decision for anyone to practice this outdated and silly tradition.

Part of the rationale for that outdated tradition was a minor technological gap between that olden era and our era. Just a small issue, really. See, back then, when two people had sex, there was a decent chance that the woman would get pregnant. This would lead to her body, in about 6-12 weeks, starting to physically display proof of her premarital sex to her entire community, ensuring everyone would know she shamefully broke the rules. She, her parents, the baby-daddy, his parents — they’d all have to come together and work out how this kid was going to be cared for. The whole community would talk about this for years. It was super-embarrassing.

We fixed that pesky problem in the mid 20th century with a little piece of biomedical technology. Today, by taking a small hormone pill each day, pregnancy can for the most part be prevented. This invention was great! Sure, it let married people have a lot more sex without worrying about how many more kids they could afford. But even better, it let NON-married people have sex without worrying about destroying themselves financially or destroying their reputation among the community.

There were some physiological side-effects, not to mention a few minor second-order consequences for society, but alongside the possibility to have SEX WHENEVER AND WITH WHOEVER YOU WANT, those teeny little consequences aren’t even worth mentioning.

You see, while waiting until you were married to have sex was the tradition back then, a lot of the women weren’t actually getting married for the purpose of having sex. If you can believe it. There were some other social benefits to marriage, such as being financially provided for by your husband (bonus points if he had a good job and your lifestyle was the envy of others), and the ability to have kids without being socially ostracized. Sex was… okay, but not the point. It was more of a necessary side-effect.

It’s not that the women disliked their husbands. It’s just that their husbands were just normal guys. With most people getting married before having kids, the really hot, fun guys in town could only marry one girl each. The rest of the girls ended up with whichever guys were left. I’m not trying to talk those guys down, mind you. Those guys were just fine. Decent, productive, loving, hard-working, good men that any woman would be lucky to have. They just weren’t always the most hot and most fun guy in town.

So sex with their husbands was… okay. But not the point of being married to them.

We’ve gotten a lot smarter over the years and realized that we had been oppressing women by socially expecting them to have sex only when married, and only with whatever normal, average, not-hot, not-fun guy they ended up married to. As long as these smart and capable, strong and independent adult women responsibly take steps to prevent unwanted pregnancy and all participants consent to the act, why shouldn’t they have sex outside of marriage? Maybe even with fun guys they don’t plan on marrying ever! Maybe even with hot, fun guys they wouldn’t normally have been able to to have sex with in ye olden days! Denying women that experience was one of the worst things society has ever done to them.

The thing is, eventually, most women want to end up married. Yes, yes, they know they’re not going to end up married to the hottest, funnest guy in the world. They’re not stupid. They’re okay ending up married to whoever the hottest, funnest guy they can get is. At least for a little while.

The problem with this is that now that it’s okay to have sex before marriage, it’s actually become sort of expected to have sex before marriage. So when a guy is having sex with a woman for fun, and when a guy is having sex with a woman he intends to marry one day, that looks pretty much the same. The only difference is the guy verbally saying one thing instead of saying another thing.

So it’s become possible for a man to … get this … tell a girl he is seriously dating her, is interested in a committed relationship, is interested in marriage, and so on, but never actually marry her. Maybe he intended to but things changed. Maybe he never intended to and was lying from the start. But whatever the case, a man can have sex with a woman without marrying her now!

And that’s oppressive! Only women were supposed to benefit from the abolition of the marriage-before-sex tradition! And here are those boring average men, ruining dating and sex today the same way they ruined marriage way back when.

If a woman chooses to wait until marriage to have sex, she will never fall victim to a liar who claims he’ll marry her one day so he can use her for sex… but then she doesn’t get to have premarital sex! That’s not fair! She shouldn’t have to give up something she wants because of men!

But if a woman chooses to have sex outside of marriage, then some guys she might actually want to marry could have sex with her without marrying her. That’s not fair either! She shouldn’t have to give up something she wants because of men!

Internet men: If you’re not the hottest, funnest guy in town, but you still look okay-ish and have decent-ish social skills, the relationship game may be for you. A woman who won’t go home with you for the cost of a drink simply because you’re hot and fun, but will go home with you after a few dates if you say you’re her marriage-minded boyfriend? Sounds like a blast to me. Why should opening up the sex box only benefit the ladies?

Marriage exists, and has always existed to protect women. If they gave up that protection, that’s on them.